The Nazi Hunters

by Neal Bascomb

  To Justice Served

  — N.B.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  NOTES

  PHOTO CREDITS

  INDEX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  EICHMANN FAMILY

  Adolf Eichmann, Nazi commander in charge of transportation for the Final Solution

  Vera Eichmann, his wife

  Nikolas (Klaus, Nick), Horst, Dieter, and Ricardo Eichmann, his sons

  AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR

  Zeev Sapir

  NAZI HUNTERS

  Fritz Bauer, District Attorney of the West German state of Hesse

  Manus Diamant

  Lothar Hermann

  Sylvia Hermann

  Simon Wiesenthal

  ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES

  Zvi Aharoni, chief interrogator for the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service

  Shalom Dani, forgery expert

  Rafi Eitan, Shin Bet Chief of Operations

  Yonah Elian, civilian doctor

  Yaakov Gat, agent for the Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence network

  Yoel Goren, Mossad agent

  Isser Harel, head of the Mossad

  Ephraim Hofstetter, head of criminal investigations at the Tel Aviv police

  Ephraim Ilani, Mossad agent, based out of the Israeli embassy in Argentina

  Peter Malkin, Shin Bet agent

  Yaakov Medad, Mossad agent

  Avraham Shalom, Deputy Head of Operations for Shin Bet

  Moshe Tabor, Mossad agent

  EL AL PERSONNEL - AIRLINE MANAGEMENT

  Yosef Klein, Manager of El Al’s base at Idlewild Airport in New York City

  Adi Peleg, Head of Security

  Yehuda Shimoni, Manager

  Baruch Tirosh, Head of Crew Assignments

  EL AL PERSONNEL - FLIGHT CREW

  Shimon Blanc, engineer

  Gady Hassin, navigator

  Oved Kabiri, engineer

  Azriel Ronen, copilot

  Shaul Shaul, navigator

  Zvi Tohar, captain

  Shmuel Wedeles, copilot

  OTHER ISRAELIS

  David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel

  Haim Cohen, Attorney General of Israel

  Gideon Hausner, Second Attorney General of Israel

  “Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.”

  — Lord Chief Justice Gordon Hewart, 1924

  “I sat at my desk and did my work. It was my job to catch our Jewish enemies like fish in a net and transport them to their final destination.”

  — Adolf Eichmann

  “We will bring Adolf Eichmann to Jerusalem, and perhaps the world will be reminded of its responsibilities.”

  — Isser Harel

  A remote stretch of unlit road on a windy night. Two cars appear out of the darkness. One of them, a Chevrolet, slows to a halt, and its headlights blink off. The Buick drives some distance farther, then turns onto Garibaldi Street, where it too stops and its lights turn off. Two men climb out of the back of the Buick and walk to the front of the car, where one lifts the hood. Their breath steams in the cold air. One leans his burly frame over the engine. Another man gets out of the front passenger seat and climbs into the back, shutting the door after him. His forehead presses against the cold glass; his eyes fix on the highway and the bus stop.

  In five minutes, the bus will arrive. There is no reason for any of the men to speak. They have only to wait and to watch.

  A train roars across the bridge that spans the highway.

  A young man wearing a bright red jacket, about fifteen years old, pedals down Garibaldi Street on his bicycle. He notices the Buick and stops to ask if they need any help. It’s a remote neighborhood with few houses, after all. The driver steps halfway out of the car and, smiling at the youth, says in Spanish, “Thank you! No need! You can carry on your way.”

  The men standing outside the car smile and wave at the youth too but stay silent. He takes off, his unzipped jacket flapping around him in the wind. There is a storm on the way.

  Suddenly, headlights split the darkness. The green and yellow municipal bus emerges, but instead of stopping at exactly 7:44 P.M., as it has done every other night the men have kept watch, it keeps going. It rattles past the Chevrolet, underneath the railway bridge, and then it is gone.

  The man in the back of the Buick limousine speaks briefly. “We stay,” he insists. Nobody argues.

  At 8:05, they see a faint halo of light in the distance. Another bus’s headlights shine brightly down the highway. This one slows and stops. Brakes screech, the door clatters open, and two passengers step out. As the bus pulls away, one of them, a woman, turns to the left, while the other, a man, heads for Garibaldi Street. He bends forward into the wind, his hands stuffed in his coat pockets.

  He has no idea what is waiting for him.

  Adolf Eichmann in uniform during World War II.

  Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann stood at the head of the convoy of 140 military vehicles. It was noon on Sunday, March 19, 1944, his thirty-eighth birthday. He held his trim frame stiff, leaning slightly forward as he watched his men prepare to move out.

  The engines rumbled to life, and black exhaust spewed across the road. Eichmann climbed into his Mercedes staff car and signaled for the motorcycle troops to lead the way.

  More than five hundred members of the Schutzstaffel, the Nazi security service — better known as the SS — were in the convoy, leaving Mauthausen, a concentration camp in Austria, for Budapest, Hungary. Their mission was to comb Hungary from east to west and find all of the country’s 750,000 Jews. Anyone who was physically fit was to be delivered to the labor camps for “destruction through work”; anyone who was not was to be immediately killed.

  Eichmann had planned it all carefully. He had been in charge of Jewish affairs for the Nazis for eight years and was now chief of Department IVB4, responsible for executing Hitler’s policy to wipe out the Jews. He ran his office like it was a business, setting clear, ambitious targets, recruiting efficient staff members and delegating to them, and traveling frequently to monitor their progress. He measured his success not in battles won but in schedules met, quotas filled, and units moved. In Austria, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Slovakia, Romania, and Poland, Eichmann had perfected his methods. Now it was Hungary’s turn.

  Stage one was to isolate the Jews. They would be ordered to wear Yellow Star emblems on their clothes, forbidden to travel or to use phones and radios, and banned from scores of professions. He would remove them from Hungarian society.

  Stage two would secure Jewish wealth for the Third Reich. Factories and businesses would be taken over, bank accounts would be frozen, and the assets of every single individual would be seized, down to their ration cards.

  Stage three: the ghettos. Jews would be uprooted from their homes and sent to live in concentrated, miserable neighborhoods until the fourth and final stage could be effected: the camps. As soon as the Jews arrived at those, an
other SS department would be responsible for their fate. They would no longer be Adolf Eichmann’s concern. That was how he saw it.

  To prevent escapes or uprisings, Eichmann planned to deceive the Jewish community leaders. He would meet them face to face and promise them that the restrictions were only temporary, the necessities of Germany’s war with the Allies, which had been going on for four and a half years. As long as the leaders cooperated, he would reassure them, no harm would come to them or to their community. He might take a few bribes as well. Not only would the money add even more Jewish wealth to the German haul, he would also fool more Jews into thinking they might save themselves if they could pay up. Even when they were forced onto the trains to the camps, the Jews would be told either that they were being moved for their own safety or that they were going to supply labor for Germany.

  Eichmann knew that these deceptions would buy time and acquiescence. Brute force would do the rest. He thought it best to initiate stages three and four in the more remote districts of Hungary first, and to leave the capital, Budapest, for last.

  At dawn on April 15, the last day of Passover, gendarmes came to Zeev Sapir’s door in the village of Dobradovo. They were from the Hungarian police, which was cooperating with the occupying German troops. Zeev was twenty years old and lived with his parents and five younger siblings. The gendarmes woke up the family and ordered them to pack. They could bring food, clothes, and bedding — no more than fifty kilograms per person. The few valuable family heirlooms they owned were confiscated.

  The gendarmes bullied and whipped everyone in the community — 103 people — to the nearby town of Munkács. The very young and the very old were brought in horse-drawn hay carts. They reached Munkács in the evening, exhausted from carrying their baggage. Over the next several days, 14,000 Jews from the city and surrounding regions crammed into the old Munkács brick factory and its grounds. They were told that they had been removed from the “military operational zone” to protect them from the advancing Russians.

  Hungarian gendarmes guard the entrance to the Munkács ghetto.

  This news was no comfort to Zeev. His family now lived on the factory grounds, in a shelter with a roof but no walls, and with little food apart from spoonfuls of potato soup. There was hardly any water — only two faucets for the whole ghetto. The Hungarian gendarmes played cruel games with them, forcing work gangs to transfer piles of bricks from one end of the brickyard to the other for no reason other than to exercise their power. As the days and nights passed, the crying of hungry and thirsty children became almost too much for Zeev to bear.

  Then came the rains. There was no escaping the downpour that turned the brickyards into a mud pit and brought on epidemics of typhoid and pneumonia. Somehow, Zeev, his parents, his four younger brothers (ages fifteen, eleven, six, and three), and his sister (age eight) avoided getting sick.

  After three weeks in the ghetto, Zeev heard that there would be a visit from a high-ranking SS officer. Perhaps this “Eichmann” would be able to tell them what was going to happen to them.

  When Adolf Eichmann arrived, the entire population of the ghetto was forcibly assembled in the main yard. Flanked by thirty Hungarian and SS officers, Eichmann strode into the camp in his polished black boots. He announced to the prisoners, “Jews: You have nothing to worry about. We want only the best for you. You’ll leave here shortly and be sent to very fine places indeed. You will work there, your wives will stay at home, and your children will go to school. You will have wonderful lives.”

  Zeev had no choice but to believe him.

  Soon after Eichmann’s visit, the trains arrived. Brandishing whips, blackjacks, and tommy guns, guards forced everyone into the rail yard. Every last man, woman, and child was stripped, their clothes and few belongings searched for any remaining valuables. Those reluctant to follow orders were beaten. Terror and confusion reigned.

  A guard tore Zeev’s personal documents into shreds and then gave him back his clothes. Then all 103 Dobradovo Jews, including Zeev and his family, were crammed into a train car meant for eight cows. There was a bucket of water to drink and an empty bucket for a toilet. The guards slammed the door shut, casting them into darkness, and then padlocked the door.

  The train rattled to a start. Nobody knew where they were going. Someone tried to read the platform signs of the small railway stations they passed to get an idea of their direction, but it was too difficult to see through the carriage’s small window, which was strung with barbed wire to prevent escape.

  Jews are crowded into a cattle car and brought through France.

  By the end of the first day, the heat, stench, hunger, and thirst had become unbearable. The Sapir children wept for water and something to eat; Zeev’s mother soothed them with whispers of “Go to sleep, my child.” Zeev stood most of the time. There was little room to sit, and that was reserved for the weakest. Villagers of all ages fainted from exhaustion; several died from suffocation. At one point, the train halted at a station. The door opened, and a guard asked if they wanted water. Zeev scrambled out to fill the bucket. Just as he arrived back, the guard knocked the brimming bucket from his hands and the water seeped away into the ground.

  Four days after leaving Munkács, the train came to a screeching stop. It was late at night, and when the door crashed open, searchlights burned the passengers’ eyes. SS guards shouted, “Out! Get out! Quick!” Dogs barked as the Jews poured from the train, even more emaciated than they had been before. A shop owner from Dobradovo turned back: He had left his prayer shawl in the train. A prisoner in a striped uniform, who was carrying away their baggage, asked, “What do you need your prayer shawl for? Soon you’ll be going there.” He pointed toward a chimney belching smoke.

  They had arrived at Auschwitz.

  Hungarian Jews from the Tet ghetto arrive at Auschwitz, May 27, 1944.

  An officer divided the new arrivals into two lines with a flick of his hand or a sharp “left” or “right.” Zeev was directed to the left, his parents and siblings to the right. He struggled to stay with them but was beaten back by the guards.

  He never saw his family again.

  Adolf Eichmann had not reckoned that the war with the Allies would interfere with his plans to exterminate the Jews, but on July 2, 1944, six weeks after his arrival in Budapest, air-raid sirens wailed throughout the city. At 8:30 A.M., the first of 750 Allied heavy bombers, led by the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, released its explosives. Antiaircraft guns and German fighter planes attempted to defend Budapest against the surprise attack, but they were overwhelmed by wave after wave of bombs.

  When the bombardment was over, Eichmann emerged from his hilltop villa — a fine two-story building formerly owned by a Jewish industrialist — to find Allied propaganda leaflets drifting down from the sky onto his lawn. They said that the Soviets were pushing east through Romania, and that the Allies had landed in France and Italy and were driving toward Germany. The Third Reich was facing defeat, the leaflets declared, and all resistance should cease. President Franklin Roosevelt insisted that the persecution of Hungarian Jews and other minorities must stop. Those responsible would be hunted down and punished.

  Eichmann was unmoved. He had traveled a long road to become who he was, the man who sent millions of Jews to their deaths. Born in an industrial town in Germany, he had been raised in Linz, Austria, by a father who was a middle-class manager, a strict Protestant, and an ardent nationalist. Eichmann joined the Nazi Party in 1932, when he was twenty-five. He was a handsome young man, with fine, dark-blond hair, narrow lips, a long nose, and grayish-blue eyes. He went to Germany, received some military training, and enlisted in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Nazi intelligence service. Diligent, attentive to detail, and respectful of authority, he caught the eye of the man in charge of creating a Jewish affairs office. Given the degree of revulsion Hitler felt toward the Jewish people, Eichmann knew that being part of that office would serve his career well. Beginning in 1935, he spent three years studying
the German Jews and formulating plans to move them to Palestine — the preferred Nazi answer to “the Jewish question” at the time.

  The more territory the Nazis occupied, the more Jews came under their control, which meant more responsibilities and opportunities for Eichmann. When Germany seized Poland in September 1939, Heinrich Müller, the new chief of the German secret police, the Gestapo, gave Eichmann the job of running the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. Their new goal was to deport Jews to the edges of German-occupied territory to make room for ethnic Germans. Eichmann even came up with a plan to resettle millions of Jews in Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa, although this never came to pass.

  Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann of the SS, with top Nazi brass.

  In late summer 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Nazi spy service, summoned Eichmann to Berlin and told him, “The Führer has ordered physical extermination.” Eichmann was sent to report on killing operations already under way in Poland. He saw death squads organized by Heydrich follow the German army into Eastern Europe and Russia and set to work murdering Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and any other “enemies” of the Reich. Near Lodz, Poland, men, women, and children were rounded up and loaded into vans that were pumped full of exhaust fumes, poisoning everyone inside. In the Ukraine, people were forced into pits, ordered to strip, and then shot in the hundreds.

  Despite his feelings toward Jews, Eichmann was unnerved by what he saw. But the fear of losing his job, and the power that went with it, outweighed his misgivings, and he accepted the need to rid Europe of the Jews through extermination. Though only a lieutenant colonel, Eichmann was appointed head of Department IVB4, the SS division responsible for the Jews, in charge of managing all matters related to “the Final Solution of the Jewish question,” as Adolf Hitler called it.

  Eichmann took on his new job with bloodless enthusiasm. He got rid of any guilt and discomfort by telling himself that his bosses had “given their orders.” He had not set the policy of annihilation, he reasoned, but it was his responsibility to make sure it was a success. The more Jews he brought to the extermination camps, the better he looked to his superiors and the better he served the Reich. And in this he excelled, delivering millions to their deaths.