Nazi Hunter (25 page)

Like 1938 and 1939, 1968 and 1989, the year 1956 was one of those watershed years in history whose effects are still being felt in various parts of the world – not just in Eastern Europe.
A 1956 Middle Eastern event that looked like a disaster to Simon Wiesenthal and everybody else proved to be quite the reverse: the great Suez Canal fiasco turned the tide for Nazi-hunters. That
July, Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, inciting Israel to invade the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula in late October and prompting France and England to attack Egypt a week later.
Though US and UN pressure forced all three to withdraw, its initial military success made Israel feel secure that its Arab neighbours were not going to ‘sweep it into the sea’, as they
repeatedly said they would. Now the security services could spare some time, however belatedly, for the other enemy: Nazi criminals still at large.

On Wednesday morning, 22 April 1959, Simon Wiesenthal picked up the Linz newspaper
Oberösterreichische Nachrichten
(Upper Austrian News). On the back page was word that Frau Maria
Eichmann, stepmother of his quarry, had died. The obituary listed survivors: Adolf Eichmann was not among them, but his wife Vera was. ‘People usually don’t lie when they write obituary
notices’ says Wiesenthal. ‘It said “Vera Eichmann”. Apparently Frau Eichmann had neither divorced nor remarried.’ He cut out the article, put it atop his Eichmann
file, and sent word to the Israeli consul in Vienna as well as to Tuviah Friedman, Asher Ben Nathan, Yad Vashem, and a few others in Israel who might care.

Somebody high up in Israel
did
care. That summer, Wiesenthal’s information went to Isser Harel, the head of Israel’s secret services. Wiesenthal’s information
corroborated reports Harel was receiving from West Germany. He went to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and told him: ‘We have proof that Eichmann is in Argentina. Can I give orders for my men to
get on his track?’

‘Yes,’ said Ben-Gurion, ‘bring back Eichmann dead or alive. But I’d rather you brought him back alive. It would have great meaning for young people.’

Two young Israeli agents visited Wiesenthal in Linz and asked him to pick up where he’d left off in 1954. Knowing he would have no luck with the bereaved Eichmanns
in Linz, Simon sent a man around to visit Maria Liebl in Germany in quest of the whereabouts of her daughter, Vera Eichmann. Frau Liebl shut the door in the man’s face, but not before telling
him Vera had married some man named ‘Klemt’ or ‘Klems’ in South America.

Wiesenthal reported this to Israel. Again, it corroborated a German source which said Vera Eichmann was living ‘in fictitious marriage’ with a German named Ricardo Klement.

‘I was sure it was a real marriage – that Frau Eichmann was living with her husband Adolf Eichmann,’ says Wiesenthal. ‘Otherwise the Eichmann family in Linz
wouldn’t have listed her as Vera Eichmann in the obituary notices. The Eichmann boys lived in Buenos Aires with their parents. It occurred to me that they would probably be registered there
at the German embassy, since they would soon reach military age. I asked a friend to make a cautious inquiry. He notified me yes, the Eichmann boys were registered there, under their real
name.’

This was enough for the Israelis to move a team of three secret agents into a house on the Calle Chacabuco, opposite ‘Ricardo Klement’s’ residence. With telescopic lenses from
their windows and attaché cases that were really hand cameras, they photographed ‘Klement’ on the street, on buses to and from work, on his lunch hour, and every time he went
into or out of his house or appeared at a window. In early 1960, when ‘Klement’ and his family moved into a primitive brick house – with no electricity or running water –
which he and his older sons had been building themselves, the Israelis moved with them and continued the surveillance. The house was on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, one of the more run-down
suburbs of Buenos Aires.

Because its agents were operating illegally on foreign soil, Israel needed to take every precaution before abducting Eichmann. They had to net the right man. A misfire or an embarrassing case of
mistaken identity could rupture diplomatic relations with Argentina, an important trading partner and home of many thousands of Jewish refugees as well as Nazi fugitives. Despite the fact that they
had photographed ‘Klement’ up, down, and sideways, the Israelis were handicapped by the scarcity of early photos of Eichmann and by the
fact that he had aged
badly and lost weight. ‘Klement’ had the same thin-lipped, cruel mouth, but none of the dapper arrogance of the high-living officer who had romanced Maria Masenbacher and Margit
Kutschera. Even those who had known him personally in the past were reluctant to swear that this meek, shabby family man with the pallid, lined face was what had become of Adolf Eichmann. Until
they were sure that Eichmann and ‘Klement’ were one and the same, the Israehs would not move to seize him.

On Saturday, 6 February 1960, Wiesenthal read in the paper that Eichmann’s father had died the day before – following his wife to the grave (as is more often the case than we read
about) by less than a year. Learning that the funeral would not take place for another five days because the family was ‘expecting relatives from abroad’, Wiesenthal notified the
Israelis, though he warned them that this might refer to one of Adolf Eichmann’s four brothers, Emil, who lived in West Germany. His two young contacts came to see him. Though someone would
monitor the funeral for them, they told Wiesenthal their bosses were almost as hungry for a current photo of Eichmann as they were for the man himself.

Two days before the funeral, Wiesenthal went out to the cemetery, found the Eichmann family burial plot, and scouted not just the location of the grave, but the terrain for several hundred yards
around it. ‘I thought what I had in mind could be done, especially on a dark winter day,’ he recalls in his memoir. He took a train to Vienna and went to the Concordia Press Club, where
he sought out two photographers who were also trusted friends. ‘I asked them to come to Linz and photograph the whole Eichmann family while they stood around the grave during the funeral. I
told them it was essential that they remain unseen. They did a fine job. Hiding behind large tombstones at a distance of about 200 yards, they made sharp pictures of the members of the funeral
procession, although the light was far from perfect.’

Eichmann did not come to his father’s funeral. Five hours after the ceremony, however, Wiesenthal held photos of his quarry’s four brothers – Emil, Friedrich, Otto, and Robert
– in his hand. Reaching into his drawer, he exhumed the 1936 photo of Adolf Eichmann that ‘Manos’ Diamant had pried loose from Frau Masenbacher near Linz more than a dozen years
earlier. He put it in the pack with the other four. ‘Next to today’s pictures of the four brothers, Adolf, the eldest, looked like a younger brother. I took out a magnifying glass
and studied the features of the five brothers. Many people had told me that Adolf Eichmann most closely resembled his brother Otto. Looking at the photographs through the
magnifying glass, I suddenly understood why so many people had sworn they’d seen Adolf Eichmann in Altaussee since the war when they were really seeing one of his brothers. The family
resemblance was astonishing. . .

‘If “Ricardo Klement” in Buenos Aires was identical with Adolf Eichmann, his face must have gone through the same evolution as the faces of the four brothers. I cut from the
photographs the faces of the four brothers who had been at the funeral, and the face from the old picture of Adolf Eichmann. I shuffled the faces like playing cards and threw them on the table.
Somehow a composite face emerged: perhaps Adolf Eichmann.’

When the two young Israelis came to call, Wiesenthal performed his Eichmann card trick. ‘This is how he must look now – probably closest to his brother Otto,’ he told them.
‘All five brothers have the same facial expression. Look at the mouth, its corners, the chin, the shape of the skull.’

‘Fantastic!’ one of them exclaimed. ‘May we take the pictures with us?’ the other asked.

They were out the door with them before he could say yes: ‘Suddenly, they were in a hurry. I didn’t want to detain them, not for a second. I didn’t hear from them, so I assumed
that they didn’t need my help. There was nothing else I could do.’

With Wiesenthal’s portraits in their possession, the Israelis needed to play one more card before they could make positive identification of Eichmann with ‘Klement’ – and
he played right into their hands. On his way home from work on Monday, 21 March 1960, ‘Ricardo Klement’ did something he had never done before in the months the Israelis had him under
surveillance: he bought his wife a bouquet of flowers.

Checking his Eichmann file, the leader of the mission read that Adolf Eichmann had married Vera Liebl on 21 March 1935. This was their silver wedding anniversary – and his sentimental
gesture did him in. That very night, a three-word cable reached Harel in Tel Aviv: ‘
HA
’
ISH HOU HA
’
ISH
.’ (‘The man is the man.’)

In early April, while the surveillance team kept watch on Eichmann, a six-man ‘kidnap commando’ was installed by Israel in Buenos
Aires. Four
were Israelis who had arrived via different routes and were equipped with false identification papers and cover stories that would hold water. Two were Argentinian Jews, recruited locally and
warned they might have to leave Argentina for good – particularly if ‘Operation Eichmann’ proved successful.

When an intelligence report reached him that ‘Klement’ had been seen ‘with another high-ranking Nazi in the neighbourhood of La Gallareta, in the province of Santa Fé.
The description of that other man corresponds to that of [Dr] Josef Mengele’, Harel decided to double the stakes by going to Argentina himself and taking charge of Operation Eichmann while
keeping an eye out for the Auschwitz medical experimenter as well. When a couple of Israeli Cabinet members who were entrusted with the details of what was afoot complained about committing a large
passenger jet
and
the head of Mossad (Israel’s centralized intelligence organization) just to bringing back Eichmann, Harel told them blithely: ‘To make the investment
worthwhile, we’ll try to bring Mengele with us, too.’

A long-scheduled visit to Argentina by Abba Eban, Foreign Minister of Israel, provided Operation Eichmann with a respectable cover. Argentina was observing its 150th anniversary of independence
in May 1960, and Eban would be leading Israel’s delegation to the sesquicentennial celebration. El Al, the Israeli government airline, would also be inaugurating air services between Tel Aviv
and Buenos Aires at that time. The large prop-jet that brought Eban and his entourage on Wednesday, 11 May would, if all went well, fly home in a matter of hours or days with Eichmann and his
captors. As Harel and his team began renting ‘safe houses’ (seven in all) in which to hide Eichmann or themselves, they swore their landlords to silence with the story that Eban wanted
to hold secret meetings with Arab diplomats to discuss peace in the Middle East.

The kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann was set for 6.30 p.m. on 11 May. Early in May, however, the Argentine government postponed the Israelis’ arrival by eight days because its leaders could
not receive them before 2 p.m. on 19 May. Rather than alter a well-laid plan, Harel decided to stick to his schedule, but to use the extra week of holding Eichmann captive in Argentina to try to
snare Mengele, too.

On 11 May, the bus from the Mercedes Benz plant dropped Eichmann at his corner, as usual, at one minute before the half-hour. It was autumn in Argentina (in the southern hemisphere) and night
was falling. A car was parked on Garibaldi Street with its hood raised and three men bent over the engine. A fourth man, apparently the owner, was pacing impatiently. Another
car was parked nearby.

As Eichmann passed the ‘disabled’ car, he reached into his pocket. The car’s back door had just begun to open, but now – fearing he would produce a gun – the three
‘mechanics’ who were supposed to abandon their engine to shove him inside couldn’t risk waiting the extra fraction of a second. One of them made a flying tackle, diving to deflect
Eichmann’s hand, and knocked him to the ground. As they thrashed around, he and Eichmann rolled into a ditch, into which the other two ‘mechanics’ jumped to subdue their quarry.
The fourth man slammed the ‘disabled’ car’s hood shut and then stood lookout while the driver started the engine and the two men in the back seat made room for a third.

Eichmann tried to shout for help, but his false teeth had been dislodged by the tackle and were rattling around his mouth, almost choking him. When his three assailants flung him on to the floor
of the car, the two back-seat passengers pinned him down and searched him. The ‘weapon’ he had been reaching for was a flashlight, which he would have used to find his way in the
gathering dusk to his unlit door, which he never saw again.

‘One move and you’re a dead man!’ the driver said over his shoulder. He was Zvi Aharoni, chief interrogator for Israel’s domestic equivalent of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and a key figure for the days of dialogue with Eichmann ahead. The three ‘mechanics’ raced for the other car. The look-out ambled back to the Israeli spy-house to keep
watch on what the ‘Klements’ did when they realized that the head of the house had disappeared. With Eichmann still in Argentina for the next eight or nine days, who knew what might be
done to retrieve him or block their exit?

Only twenty-seven seconds had elapsed between the moment Eichmann had reached for his flashlight and the car’s take-off with him being bound and gagged in the back. Opaque goggles served
as a blindfold. Taking side streets rather than main arteries, Aharoni drove for an hour – with the second car checking that there were no pursuers – before arriving at a villa
code-named ‘Tire’ in the Florencio Varela district of Buenos Aires.

Inside the house, they searched their captive’s mouth for a vial of poison and found none. Then they looked at his left armpit and
found the telltale scars where his
SS tattoo had been removed. Only then did Aharoni ask him in German: ‘Who are you?’