Hunting Eichmann

by Neal Bascomb

  The doctor checked the prisoner's vitals, to make sure he was not on the verge of collapse. Then, at the direction of Aharoni, he inspected Eichmann's body for any distinguishing marks, as listed in the Mossad's file. They did not have fingerprints to prove definitively that they had captured the right man, but if these characteristics matched—and, more important, if they were able to get a confession—all doubt would be eliminated in their minds.

  The doctor found several scars that matched the ones described in medical certificates and witness testimonies, including an inch-and-a-half-long pale scar below his left eyebrow and one above his left elbow. When the doctor inspected the top of his left arm, however, there was no SS tattoo—only uneven scar tissue, perhaps a sign of the tattoo's removal.

  Aharoni wanted to begin his questioning straightaway, when his subject was at his most unbalanced. He may not have been an experienced undercover operative, but as an interrogator, he was without equal in the Shin Bet. He never used force, knowing it only led to false confessions. Instead, he wore his subjects down with staccato bursts of questions, twisting them in their own lies and hammering them with known facts until the truth was the only way out. He had studied applied psychology and, under CIA purview, had apprenticed in Chicago with John Reid and Fred Inbau, the authors of the standard text on interrogation.

  Before the questions began, Malkin and Shalom dressed their prisoner in loose pajamas, laid him flat on the bed, and handcuffed his left ankle to the bed frame. They left his goggles on, rendering him vulnerable and disoriented.

  At 9:15 P.M., Aharoni asked his first question. He was prepared for a long night. He had Eichmann's entire file memorized so that he never had to delay asking a follow-up question.

  "What's your name?" Aharoni asked in a commanding tone.

  "Ricardo Klement," the prisoner answered.

  "What was your previous name?"

  "Otto Heninger."

  Aharoni grew tense. He had never heard the name, and the manner in which his subject was responding, coolly and credibly, surprised him. He changed tactics, deciding that only indirect questions would bring about a confession.

  "When was your third son born?"

  "On March 29, 1942."

  "What is his name?"

  "Dieter."

  "How tall are you?"

  "Five feet, eight inches."

  "What is your size in shoes?"

  "Nine."

  "What size in shirt?"

  "Forty-four."

  The answers came almost as quickly as the questions, and at this point, they matched what Aharoni had in the file. The prisoner was not lying.

  "What was the number of your membership card in the National Socialist Party?" Aharoni asked, keeping up his rapid pace to prevent Eichmann from having a chance to prevaricate or attempt to deceive.

  "889895," he said definitively and without pause. This was Eichmann's number. It was a critical admission, yet given as if Aharoni had asked for the color of his eyes.

  "What was your number in the SS?"

  "45326."

  Klement was Eichmann. It was a certainty. Now Aharoni wanted to hear him admit it. He looked across the bed at Shalom, who was equally anxious to hear the prisoner confess to his true identity. Then he continued.

  "When did you come to Argentina?"

  "1950."

  "What is your name?"

  "Ricardo Klement."

  He was still resisting, but his hands were trembling slightly. He must have known that he had revealed himself already with his party numbers.

  "Was your SS number 45326?"

  "Yes."

  "What's your date of birth?"

  "March 19, 1906."

  "Where were you born?"

  "Solingen."

  Aharoni was there. He knew it. He asked firmly, "Under what name were you born?"

  "Adolf Eichmann."

  Joy swept over the team, and Aharoni and Shalom shook hands vigorously over the prisoner. Gat later described the moment as like the sun coming out at night. They had their man.

  A few seconds after his admission, Eichmann spoke again, this time in an ingratiating tone. "You can quite easily understand that I'm agitated. I would like to ask for a little wine, if it's possible—red wine—to help me control my emotions."

  Aharoni replied that they would bring him something to drink.

  "As soon as you told me to keep quiet, there in the car, I knew I was in the hands of Israelis," Eichmann continued. "I know Hebrew. I learned it from Rabbi Leo Baeck. Sh'ma Yisrael, Ha'Shem Elokeinu—"

  Aharoni cut him off, refusing to listen to Adolf Eichmann say the holiest prayer in the Jewish religion, one recited in the morning and at night by the faithful. It was the prayer spoken at the hour of death, and millions of Jews had come to utter it because of Eichmann. Everybody left the room to calm their emotions and to avoid attacking the prisoner.

  Once they had settled themselves, Aharoni returned to his questioning for another hour, asking more about Eichmann's family: the birth dates and birthplaces of his sons and brothers, of his wife, and of his extended family. They already knew they had their man, but if he later tried to argue that he had been tortured into a false admission, these details, which Adolf Eichmann alone could know, would prove otherwise.

  Eventually, Eitan called an end to the interrogation. They had yet to send someone to report to Harel. He would be eager to know the results of the operation and that Klement had admitted his true identity.

  Shalom and Aharoni first drove into Buenos Aires and dropped the Buick limousine off in a parking lot. Medad would pick it up the next day and return it along with the Chevrolet. He planned on telling each rental agency that his wife was sick and he would rent the car again in a couple of weeks (saving the $5,000 fee). If the police were to look for the vehicles, they would find them back in the rental lots, traceable to an identity that existed by virtue of Shalom Dani. While the interrogation was in progress, Tabor had wiped every inch of the limousines clean of fingerprints and had removed the hinged back seat and the spring mechanism that allowed the license plates to be switched.

  When they reached the café, it was a few minutes shy of midnight. The chief was paying his check, ready to move on to the next location on his list. Over the past few hours, he had run through every conceivable scenario of what might have happened to make his men so late—everything from all of them being under arrest to their having had an unqualified success in their mission.

  When he saw Shalom and Aharoni, disheveled and tired though they looked, Harel glimpsed the excitement in their eyes. They sat down at the table, and Shalom told him directly that they had captured Klement, and that he was, beyond a doubt, Adolf Eichmann.

  "The moment I saw you," Harel said, "I knew you had done it. How was it?"

  Shalom recounted the operation. Aharoni was taken aback by his chief's muted praise and his stiffness as he listened to the account. But Shalom, who had worked more operations with Harel, knew that his mind had already moved on to what was to come next: getting Eichmann to Israel.

  They parted ways soon after. Harel hurried to a nearby restaurant, where a sayan, recruited by Ilani, was expecting him. Harel recognized "Meir Lavi" by the placement of a certain book on his table. Lavi had been moving from café to café for as many hours as Harel, not knowing the purpose of his actions nor whom he was supposed to meet.

  Harel greeted him but dispensed with any small talk. He instructed Lavi to go to Ilani and say, "The typewriter is okay."

  "That's all?" Lavi asked, disappointed that he had spent so many hours waiting to do nothing more than pass along a message that seemed like so much gibberish.

  The look on Harel's face informed him otherwise.

  "I'll go to him at once," Lavi said.

  Harel's message to Ilani, which translated to Eichmann being in their hands, would be passed on to Mossad headquarters, then to David Ben-Gurion and his foreign minister, Golda Meir.

  Instead of
flagging down a taxi, Harel chose to walk to the railway station to collect his bag. With each step through the streets of Buenos Aires, breathing in the cold fresh air, he slowly realized the significance of what they had accomplished. For a short while, he allowed himself to enjoy their success.

  At the house on Garibaldi Street, Vera Eichmann waited for her husband to return. It was approaching midnight, and although she had expected him to be late because of his union meeting, she had not expected him to be this late. He rarely deviated from his daily routine. He should have long since been home and in bed. He had to go to work the next day. Something was wrong.

  She had heard a car race past the house after eight o'clock, but besides that, she had not heard anything strange. It was possible that he had been involved in an accident of some kind; maybe he was in the hospital. But she expected the worst—what she had always feared: that those from whom he was running had finally caught up with him. She had convinced herself—perhaps out of necessity—that he could not be guilty of the horrible crimes they had described in the newspapers. Her conscience was clear on that, willfully naive though she was. Even so, she had never doubted the necessity of their remaining in hiding in Argentina.

  She was going to tell her sons that he had not come home. They would launch a search for him; find him; get him back.

  At midnight, Malkin gently rapped on Eitan's open door.

  "I'm going back," he said the moment his operations chief looked toward him.

  He explained that just before Eichmann's interrogation, he had suddenly realized that the Nazi did not have his glasses. A subsequent search of the limousine had revealed nothing. Malkin had mulled over the consequences if the glasses were found on Garibaldi Street. Vera Eichmann would have immediate proof that her husband had been abducted and grounds for a police search, even if she did not reveal his identity.

  Eitan considered the risks. "I'm not sure you should."

  "Listen, let me take care of it," Malkin urged. "You know I won't do anything dangerous."

  After some more wrangling, Eitan assented, and Malkin left Tira to drive alone into San Fernando, where he caught a late-night bus. A cold, wet wind blew across the plain as he slowly walked toward Garibaldi Street, making sure there were no policemen, nor anyone else, around. A single kerosene lamp still burned in the Eichmann house. They still expected him back, Malkin thought.

  He retraced his movements throughout the capture, searching the road and the ditch with a small flashlight. He spotted some broken glass in the mud by the side of the road but no frames. Nothing. Malkin continued to look in the scrub brush beyond the ditch, but it was fruitless. Someone might see him if he lingered too long.

  A few hours later, he arrived back at the safe house. While waiting for Tabor to open the gate, something jumped on his back. Malkin spun and reach behind him to flip his assailant over, then he realized he had grabbed a fistful of fur. A white cat had pounced on him. He released the yowling cat, cursing not only it but also himself for being so on edge. By the time Tabor came out, Malkin was able to smile at his reaction, and he let the cat into the house out of the weather.

  The house was quiet and cold on his return. The thick masonry walls deadened any sound but kept a chill in the air. That was not to say that everybody was sound asleep under piles of blankets. Far from it. With Shalom and Aharoni staying at a different safe house, there were only five operatives at Tira—Eitan, Malkin, Medad, Gat, and Tabor—to watch the prisoner and to stand guard in the front and back of the house in case it was approached. Only two of them could sleep at a time.

  It was unlikely that anybody had discovered where they were holding Eichmann—yet. Every precaution had been taken to ensure that they had not been followed. Even so, this was only the first night, one of ten to come, maybe more, until Eichmann could be flown out by El Al. Plenty of time for the police, the Argentine security services, or the expatriate Nazi community to find them. The Mossad team just had to sit, wait, and hope that their precautions would keep them safe.

  Each man had already considered when and how the news might break that Eichmann had been taken. Vera Eichmann would probably hold off before going to the police, but she or her sons could easily alert friends in the network of former Nazis still in Argentina. Some of them had influence within the government and the army. Or they might go looking themselves. If a public search was put together, it might take only one mistake, one indiscretion, for somebody to tip off the police and lead them to the house. The potential scenarios were endless.

  If the police came, Eitan was to handcuff himself to the captive and demand to see their superior. The rest of the men were to try to get away. But what if it was not the police who came? They might find themselves having to hold off an assault. If this were to happen, there was no way that they would allow Eichmann to get away. Tabor had already resolved to take Eichmann into the crawlspace he had devised above the cell, where he would strangle him.

  Then there was the potential that their prisoner might stage his own breakout. Eitan had already instituted a twenty-four-hour watch in rotating three-hour shifts. He wanted a guard in the room with Eichmann at all times. He wanted the door always open, the light always on, and he planned on sleeping in the adjoining room, just in case. What was more, he wanted the goggles to remain over the prisoner's eyes until he was in Israel. This not only reduced his chances of escape, but also, if he somehow did manage to get away, he would not be able to identify them. Eitan figured that their prisoner was already crafting a plan for how to get out of the house.

  Throughout his first night in captivity, Eichmann was restless, perhaps considering the possibility of flight. He had refused to eat anything and did not sleep. As he lay in bed, flat on his back, his face repeatedly twisted and then relaxed, seemingly beyond his control. Depending on which of his facial features was clenched or eased, he expressed a range of emotions: anger, spirited resistance, easy calm, deep introspection. He sometimes tried to adjust his body, clanking the handcuffs attached to his thin ankle against the iron bed frame.

  Blindfolded, stripped of any objects that he might use to spring the lock on his manacles, and guarded around the clock, Eichmann could plot and move about all he wanted. There was no realistic way to escape. But the agents knew that their prisoner was a schemer with cunning intelligence who had escaped from several POW camps and eluded his pursuers for years. They needed to be vigilant.

  22

  ON THE MORNING of May 12, Gat sat Eichmann up in bed. He was still blindfolded, and his ankle was still chained to the bedpost. Gat gave him a glass of orange juice and spoon-fed him some eggs and crackers, which Eichmann ate fastidiously. He remained submissive and silent, uttering not a word of complaint. His hands shook constantly.

  Aharoni arrived at the safe house soon after breakfast and sat down in front of the prisoner, a notebook and pen on the table by his side. In his clipped, staccato German, he took up his interrogation where he had left off.

  "I just have a few simple questions for you," he said. "Answer them, and we won't have any problems."

  "Yes, sir," Eichmann answered obediently.

  "Why did you use the name 'Otto Heninger' last night?"

  "That was my name for more than four years."

  "Where was that?"

  "In Germany. I worked there as a lumberjack before coming to Argentina."

  Without any reluctance, Eichmann chronicled his escape at the end of the war, from his last meeting with Kaltenbrunner, to his going into the mountains, to being imprisoned by the Americans, to his escape across Europe to Argentina. He preened over outfoxing his enemies, and he showed no hint of remorse for anything he had done in the past.

  "Why didn't your family live under the name Klement, like you?" Aharoni asked, knowing well that this had been Eichmann's undoing when his son Nick had met Sylvia Hermann.

  "You don't expect me to ask my family to lie for me," Eichmann said in disgust.

  Aharoni was incredulous at
the comment. Eichmann's wife and sons had been lying for him for years. The answer was typical of many the interrogator would receive, as Eichmann twisted reality to suit his ego. On the prior instructions of Isser Harel, Aharoni switched to questioning Eichmann about other former Nazis living in Argentina. First he asked him if he knew the whereabouts of the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele.

  "No, I don't know that."

  "I suppose you don't even know if he's in Argentina?"

  Eichmann shook his head.

  "And Martin Bormann?" Aharoni asked. Hitler's private secretary, who was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death at Nuremberg, remained at the top of the list of Nazis who had yet to be found. "Do you know anything about his whereabouts?"

  "No, I have no idea."

  "But didn't your friends help you with the false papers you needed to reach Argentina?"

  "That was a long time ago."

  Aharoni offered Eichmann a drink, which he refused. He changed the subject again, this time inquiring what Eichmann's wife would do when he did not come home. They needed to know what to expect.

  "Nothing," he said confidently. "She's frightened. She doesn't understand."

  "What about your sons Nick and Dieter?"

  "They will know something has happened."

  "Will they go to the police?"

  Eichmann said that he thought they would not, at least not straightaway. As for the former Nazis in the German community, he suggested that they would be too worried about saving their own skins to do much about find ing him. It was clear to Aharoni that Eichmann thought little of his former colleagues and also that he was telling the truth.

  The interrogation continued for several more hours, the two men sitting a few feet apart in the small chamber. Eichmann remained calm and forthcoming, at least about his own life. Eventually, Aharoni felt there was a comfortable enough exchange between them that he asked, "Are you prepared to come and stand trial in Israel?"

  "No. Definitely not. Number one: I did nothing wrong," Eichmann said forcefully, as if he had been waiting for the question. "All I did was follow orders. You could never prove that I did, that I committed a crime. Number two: What, what do I have to do with Israel? I'm a German. You can put me—if, at all, if I did commit any crime, I should be judged in Germany. Or in Argentina, I am a citizen here. But not in Israel."