by Isser Harel
Neomi and Hilel came up with a feasible excuse for their inquiries and went to one of the neighboring villas to ask their questions. They were told that the tenants of the house they were interested in were North Americans.
When I heard this a little later I thought it quite possible that the neighbors were telling the truth and Americans were indeed living there now, but it didn’t rule out the possibility that Mengele was living there too, under cover as an American. I asked Shalom to go there himself early the next morning to watch the house, take a look at the tenants, and see if he could determine from their appearance if they were Americans or Germans. I asked him, of course, to take particular notice if any of them in any way resembled Mengele.
To lend an air of plausibility to his presence in the neighborhood, Shalom asked Neomi Pooch to go with him. Their surveillance lasted from six to ten A.M. Neomi whiled away the time telling Shalom, in fluent Spanish, all about a film she had seen. He knew only a few words of Spanish, but he tried his best to comment on her story with his meager vocabulary. The surveillance itself was somewhat disappointing – nobody who looked even remotely like Mengele entered or left the house. Fairly early they saw two children leave the house, but they didn’t know if the children had anything to do with Mengele.
The following day Meir and Hilel went out on surveillance. Shalom provided Meir with a briefcase camera and showed him how to use it. They were instructed to photograph everybody who went in or came out. That day too all they saw were the children leaving the house early, apparently on their way to school. Meir took a photograph of them, which did not come out well when it was developed.
I was getting impatient. Time was shorts I explained to Hilel, and we had to make an urgent effort to discover who the occupants of the villa were. I decided to try a shorter and more direct method of identifying them.
Hilel went to Vicente López the next morning. He strolled through the streets for about two hours until he met a postman. He went over and asked very politely, ‘Excuse me, but could you help me? I’m looking for my uncle, he’s a doctor. I lost touch with him a long time ago. I know that he used to live in this neighborhood but I don’t know his exact address.’
‘And what’s your uncle’s name?’ asked the postman.
‘Dr. Menelle.’
‘Dr. Menelle? Oh yes, there was a person by that name in the neighborhood. He lived over there’ – the postman pointed to the suspect house – ‘until a few weeks ago, maybe a month.’
‘Oh, bad luck,’ said Hilel, ‘so I’ve come just a little too late. Didn’t he leave his new address? Where do you forward his letters?’
The postman shrugged. ‘I don’t know. They’ve given me no instructions about a new address.’
‘Maybe the new tenants in the house know,’ Hilel suggested. ‘Do you know who’s living there now?’
‘The new tenant is an engineer from South Africa,’ the postman said. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
Hilel said, Thanks very much,’ and came to report to me.
The fact that Dr. ‘Menelle’ hadn’t left a forwarding address helped confirm my belief that it was indeed Mengele’s trail we were on. It could be, I thought, that something frightened him enough to change his hiding place. The question was, had he left Buenos Aires and Argentina altogether, or had he just moved to another part of the city?
I presumed anyway that the postman was telling the truth, and I attached great importance to the discovery of fresh tracks of the killer-doctor. It remained for us merely to find out if Mengele had requested that the postman keep his new address a secret, and we could find this out at the local branch of the post office. I briefed Hilel on the questions he should ask there, reminding him to be careful to avoid the postman he had spoken to before.
Hilel went to the post office about four hundred yards from the villa – choosing the time when the postmen set out on their rounds – and asked the chief clerk if the Dr. Mengele (I had told him not to distort the name this time) who used to live nearby had left his new address. The clerk said Mengele had lived there until a month ago, but he was sorry to say they didn’t have his new address and all the letters that came for him were ‘returned to sender.’
In my notes on Mengele was another item that gave me grounds for hoping to find his new hiding place: Mengele occasionally called himself Gregor and he kept two or three lathes at a service garage. We knew the address of the garage, also in Vicente López. There was always the hope that Mengele had not severed his connections with the garage when he moved out of his house a month ago.
When briefing Hilel for his visit to the garage, I started out with the assumption that the owners would know the Gregor whose lathes were kept there. I reasoned that they couldn’t possibly have done business with him for any length of time without discovering that he used different names for different purposes, especially since he had lately been living in the vicinity of the garage and was known to the neighbors by his real name. It could thus be inferred that the garage owners were allies of his, or would at any rate keep his secret. Obviously Hilel would have to proceed with great caution when he went to the garage, and he must have a credible cover story.
We finally came up with the idea that he should go there to order a large quantity of left-hand screws. He would say that it had taken him a whole day of running around the city to find a single left-hand screw, and that when he tried to buy more at hardware stores, he was told that ready-made left-hand screws were unobtainable except from workshops that did lathe work. He got hold of a visiting card of one of the big garages in the city to give the impression that he was their representative.
At the workshop where Gregor supposedly kept his lathes, he spoke to the secretary and explained that he represented a big garage and he needed a large quantity of left-hand screws. Mr. Gregor’s lathe workshop had been recommended to him, and he asked to see the gentleman in question. The secretary asked him to sit down and left the room. Hilel heard her talking to somebody outside, though he couldn’t catch the drift of their conversation. She came back, scrutinized him without saying a word, and went out again. Several minutes later she appeared and told him that they had nobody there by the name of Gregor and they didn’t do lathe work.
When I heard HilePs story about what happened at the garage, I was positive that our second item of information also had a solid foundation. It was obvious that if the people at the garage didn’t know Gregor the secretary would have told Hilel so at once. There would have been no need to consult with somebody about what answer she should give. Even if she were new to the job, the natural thing to do was to tell Hilel she would go and ask if they had anybody by the name of Gregor there. But her behavior proved without a doubt that she wasn’t surprised at his inquiry about Gregor and that she had heard the name before. She had obviously been told to go back, have a look at him, describe him to her employers, and eventually inform him that there was no such person at the workshop.
So it was reasonable to suppose that Mengele did have some connection with the garage, but if he still maintained this connection he was taking great care to keep it quiet. I was sure that the people at the workshop would lead us to Mengele if we had a team of professionals – like the task force at present occupied with Eichmann – who could invest the necessary time, patience, and skill. But I had at my disposal – and for a few days only – a handful of people lacking experience in undercover activities. I had no choice but to give up trying to find Mengele that way.
There was only one thing for us to do: a straightforward inspection of the villa in Vicente López to check if the neighbors, the postman, and the post-office clerk had misled us, either willfully or out of ignorance. Before I left Argentina, I wanted to be sure that I had done all I could to locate the unmerciful Angel of Death of Auschwitz and bring him to trial in Israel together with Adolf Eichmann. I decided, therefore, to make one last attempt to find out if Mengele was still at the house.
23
YEHU
DA SHIMONI had expected to leave for Israel on May 10 to supervise personally the final preparations for the special flight. When, at the last minute, his departure was postponed to May 11, he assumed it had something to do with the capture operation, and he was worried sick until he was told that the delay was purely technical.
The day he was to leave he went to the airport well in advance of his departure time and made a special point of seeing as many people as possible to make sure they would remember him. He tried to look gay and unconcerned, but he was under great stress. I had told him not to leave until he received final instructions from me, and he could hardly conceal his impatience. He knew that the most critical stage of the operation had been reached, and he waited for hours for a signal that all was well.
After what seemed to Shimoni an endless wait, Ilani appeared, perfectly calm. The expression on his face gave nothing away.
‘Have you got a message for me?’ asked Shimoni.
‘Yes, you can leave according to plan.’
That’s all?’
‘Yes, that’s all.’
Shimoni couldn’t for the life of him make out what was the matter with chatterbox Ilani, who chose this of all moments to be sparing with his words. But he didn’t have the nerve to ask questions. He had to content himself with the thought that if a hitch had occurred I would certainly not be sending him to Israel to get the special flight ready. So he said a cheerful good-bye to Ilani and left for New York at eleven o’clock that night. The following afternoon he continued his journey on an El Al plane. The nearer he got to Israel the more tense he became. He knew that he was the first to leave Argentina after Eichmann’s capture, and he should have been in a position to bring the news to Israel – but there he was, unable to tell a soul. Even he actually knew nothing about it.
As the plane was about to take off from Rome on the last lap to Israel, he saw Haggai join the passengers. Without stopping to think, Shimoni went up to him and said, ‘Mazel tov.’ Haggai looked at him a little surprised and made no response to his congratulations. Thinking it over, Shimoni realized that if Haggai was just returning to Israel from Europe he couldn’t know that Eichmann had been captured the night before, and he had the uncomfortable sensation that Haggai must have thought him a little peculiar. But when the plane landed at Lydda, Moshe Drori and Malka Braverman were waiting for him. Haggai joined them, and Shimoni was then able to break the news to all three: ‘Eichmann is in Israeli hands!’
A few days before the special flight was scheduled, Moshe Drori called Yehuda Carmel in for a talk.
‘I want to let you in on a secret,’ he began. He knew, actually that his disclosure wouldn’t come as a complete surprise to Carmel, because circles close to the operations group had already grasped the connection between the sudden disappearance of several outstanding operators, the interest displayed lately in specific files of Nazi war criminals, and the rumor current in the most restricted circles about the capture of Eichmann. No, Yehuda Carmel wasn’t at all surprised when Drori said, Adolf Eichmann is in our hands, and you may have to go to Argentina to help in transporting him to Israel. Would you be prepared to go?’
‘How can there be any doubt about such a thing?’ said Carmel.
‘Good. You must get ready to leave at once. And bring with you all the photographs you have of yourself.’
Carmel had reason to be eager to take part in Operation Eichmann: his parents, his brothers, and his 107-year-old grandfather had been murdered by the Germans.
The next day, Drori and another man spread out several pictures of Eichmann in uniform and in civilian dress, and next to these they put photographs Carmel had brought. Carmel shuddered as he watched the others comparing the two sets of photographs. He heard them say there was some resemblance but that fresh photographs of Carmel would have to be taken after applying suitable make-up. He was astonished to realize that he had been chosen to act as Eichmann’s double. He felt a momentary but fleeting reluctance. After all, he said to himself, the part has to be played by somebody, and actually what did it matter what his role was as long as he had the privilege to be one of the men bringing Eichmann to Israel.
It took a laborious process of photographing from various angles and with various types of make-up to achieve a picture of Carmel that was completely satisfactory. A few days later he was sent to the airline to be fitted with a crew uniform. Drori explained that he would be flying to Argentina as a crew member by the name of Zichroni. On the return flight to Israel, Eichmann might travel with the documentation prepared for Carmel, while Carmel would leave Argentina by another route.
Also on Carmel’s flight, under cover as airline employees, were two other operators – Yoel Goren, who reconnoitered 4261 Chacabuco Street in 1958, and Uri Haran. They were to be the escorts and guards of the ‘sick’ crew member Zichroni on his ‘return’ to Israel. They would have to handle any and all situations arising on the way, searches at intermediate stops, forced landings, or anything else.
Malka dealt with the documentation for the three new airline employees. No one knew how she managed to get the necessary papers, but in the end she brought Drori documents that were in no respect different from those of the rest of the crew. The three of them packed their uniforms in suitcases and boarded the plane in civilian clothes. The delegation thought they were ordinary passengers, while the crew thought they were security men who would be guarding the delegation during its stay in Buenos Aires.
I had yet another task in mind for Yoel and Uri: I was considering them for a last-minute commando operation, with the object of including Mengele among the plane’s passengers – if we succeeded in locating him in time.
The schedule for the special flight had been changed twice. The original date, May 11, was postponed to May 14 because of the difficulty of taking a plane off the regular route at the height of the season. Then, in deference to the request from the Argentine protocol officials, it was put off again, this time to May 18. The airline advertised the change, stating that the flight from Lydda to Buenos Aires would take off at eleven A.M. May 18, landing en route at Rome, Dakar, and Recife, Brazil, with an estimated time of arrival at Buenos Aires of five P.M. May 19. The plane would take off again from Buenos Aires at five A.M. May 21, arriving at Recife at twelve-twenty P.M.; it would spend one hour at Recife and then fly to Dakar, arriving at seven-thirty P.M.; another hour at Dakar, and it would take off for Rome, landing at four forty-five A.M. May 22; finally, after an hour in Rome, it would take off on the last lap to Lydda, due in at nine forty-five A.M.
The responsibility for all the airline’s activities in the Western Hemisphere, including South America, had always rested with its New York office. When the people there found out about the special flight they were extremely annoyed – and learning about it from the newspapers was considered a severe blow to their authority. The manager of the New York office complained bitterly to Mordechai Ben-Ari claiming that they had missed an excellent opportunity for a widespread publicity campaign on behalf of the company in Buenos Aires. He was also upset that he had lost the chance to sell tickets in New York to passengers wishing to go to Israel via South America. Ben-Ari apologized, explaining that the company was not in complete control of the flight because its purpose was mainly political, and for political reasons the date of the flight had been postponed several times; consequently, all the official announcements were under the authority of the political departments. Ben-Ari wrote to his New York friends,
We were not aware of the possibilities mentioned in your letter, but, for compelling reasons which cannot be detailed here, it was not in our power to exploit them as we could have wished. … You are kindly requested to refrain from any intervention, conversation, or remarks pertinent to this flight, either at the office or outside, and to leave matters in the hands of the Head Office, except where you are explicitly requested to handle them.
Needless to say, the manager of the New York office later apologized for his interference.
The official delegation was composed of people who would enhance Israel’s prestige; it included one of the army’s most eminent officers, Brigadier Zorea, who was then Chief of Northern Command. The delegates knew absolutely nothing about the drama of their flight. Among the passengers were the Ambassador-designate to Uruguay, with his family; another Israel diplomat going to South America, with his family; and Rabbi Efrati, who was going to Buenos Aires on behalf of the Chief Rabbi to supervise kashruth. The delegation was seen off at Lydda Airport by the Argentine Ambassador to Israel, the Director-General of the Foreign Ministry, directors of the airline, and newspaper correspondents.
Despite all the secrecy about our part in the special flight, it was impossible to prevent a few people, particularly the flight crew, from noticing various oddities and drawing their own conclusions. Vedeles, for example, said he was positive from the moment he was told he would be acting as copilot that a special operation was involved in this special flight. A glance at the list of the others flying with him only strengthened his suspicion. Vedeles was a veteran of Palmach and served as a pilot in the War of Independence. He was shot in the face when the ‘Primus’ (a rickety little Piper Cub) in which he flew was airlifting arms to the famous Nebi Samwil convoy, encircled by Arabs. Later he went overseas to graduate as a pilot, and for several years he commanded a transport and parachute squadron in the Air Force. Perhaps it was his Hagana experience that led him to guess that the flight had some connection with Nazi war criminals. Maybe he remembered the Hagana’s ‘Security Blacklist’ No. 8, of October 1947, warning the men against Adolf Eichmann: ‘speaks German, Hebrew and Yiddish … it is not inconceivable that he may have succeeded in infiltrating into Israel.’
