Hunting Eichmann

by Neal Bascomb

  Tacuara was a radical nationalist organization founded a few years before by a group of young, mostly bourgeois high school and university students, who had first mobilized to protest against the secularization of the education system. The name was taken from the makeshift weapon that had been used by gauchos in the fight for Argentine independence—essentially a knife tied to the end of a stalk of sugar cane. Fiercely Catholic, Tacuara had been modeled on the Spanish Falange, led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera. It was militant, fascist, and anti-Semitic. Its members favored violence to achieve their ends, which included freeing Argentina from liberal democracy, capitalism, and the Jewish influence. New members swore an oath of allegiance in a graveyard, cut their hair short, trained in militant camps, wore gray shirts and armbands stitched with the Maltese cross, addressed one another as "comrade," idolized Hitler and Mussolini, used the Nazi salute, and spread anti-Semitic and nationalist propaganda. They were often seen roaming the city on motorcycles.

  Though not Tacuara members themselves, Nick and Dieter shared similar political views and had friends in the organization. The idea of a group of Jews, potentially Israelis, operating illegally inside Argentina was anathema to Tacuara, and some of its members rallied to find Eichmann, to protect his family, and to hunt down his abductors.

  Without her knowledge, Luba Volk was providing camouflage for the escape. As part of her duties for the special El Al flight, the airline's headquarters had instructed her, on the advice of Isser Harel, to book private passengers for the return trip to Israel. They had sent Volk stacks of printed posters and flyers to help her promote the flight, which she had done over the past week through her contacts in the Buenos Aires travel industry. She had sold almost all the seats, but there was one stumbling block: the minister of aviation. She needed his permission to fly private passengers, but given that there was no reciprocal agreement between El Al and Aerolineas Argentinas, she doubted that he would approve her request. The tickets were sold with this proviso. Her superiors at El Al said that they understood this risk, but most unusually, she thought, they wanted her to forge ahead nonetheless.

  On May 14, she received her answer from the Ministry of Aviation. Her request had been denied; the flight would have no private passengers. Disappointed, Volk wanted at least to do a good turn for an elderly Israeli woman who was sick and needed surgery and who hoped to return to Tel Aviv for the operation. Volk submitted a "stretcher case" application to the minister for permission to fly the woman to Israel, unwittingly exposing the flight to even more scrutiny by the Argentines.

  Yosef Klein did not know of the request. Although he regretted being unable to reveal the flight's purpose to Volk, he was told to keep her in the dark. In any event, he had his hands full. The plane would arrive in five days. Klein had secured all the clearances and was finalizing the services (fuel, catering, cleaning) for the Britannia. He knew where the plane would be parked and had secured permission to taxi it under its own power from the maintenance area to the gate. He continued to befriend the airport staff, who now allowed him to walk unchallenged through security and around the airport. Klein had also introduced Shalom and the recently arrived El Al security chief, Adi Peleg, to the airport staff. Together, the three men reconnoitered the airport in order to plan the most discreet way to get Eichmann onto the plane.

  Occasionally when they met, Harel would pointedly remind Klein of the "historic importance" of what they were doing. "Everything is going to work. Hang on, hang on," Harel would say. Klein always left these meetings with Harel not only with more confidence in his abilities but also slightly choked up at the thought of helping to bring Adolf Eichmann to justice. Harel's encouragement eased his worries over the operation's danger and his role in making sure it went off successfully.

  Now that he was in charge of getting Eichmann safely out of Argentina, Avraham Shalom had no intention of leaving the operation solely in the hands of a civilian, even one as competent as Klein. Over the past two days, he had scouted out the harbor with Aharoni and Ilani. They were the only three members of the Mossad team apart from Harel not bound day and night to Tira. The southern quay was bustling with stevedores and customs inspectors overseeing the unloading and loading of cargo: too busy. The northern quay, where the cruise ships normally docked, offered more opportunities, particularly since it was winter in Buenos Aires. Still, Shalom was skeptical of any plan to smuggle Eichmann out by boat, mainly because of how long the journey to Israel would take and how exposed the ship would be at the various ports along the way. There had even been brief mention of getting a submarine to take Eichmann out of the country, but this had been abandoned as a wild fantasy. The El Al plane was still their best option, so that was the avenue on which Shalom concentrated his attention.

  Most of his reconnaissance time was spent at the airport, where he posed as a diplomatic official helping to arrange the El Al flight. He promptly determined that the guards watching the side entrance to the maintenance area would be easy to deceive. They were more concerned about theft than other kinds of security breaches. With Eichmann dressed in an El Al uniform, perhaps sedated by the doctor, they should be able to get him through without difficulty. Smuggling their prisoner on board in a caterer's cart or a diplomatic crate would be too complicated. Shalom liked simple and straightforward. He planned on passing through security every few hours over the next five days so that the guards were as used to seeing him as they were to seeing Klein.

  Next there was the question of how soon the plane could take off, who would give permission for it to leave, and what to do if there was a delay. Shalom thoroughly interrogated Klein and Peleg about every eventuality. The escape from Argentina had to be as meticulously planned as the capture itself.

  Shalom and Eitan were both distressed, therefore, when Harel proposed a new mission.

  "The search for the doctor is to be given the highest priority," Harel said as he set his coffee cup down on the café table on May 15. He went on to explain that he had sent orders for two more Mossad agents to come to Buenos Aires. They would participate in a commando raid to capture Josef Mengele—if they found him—and bring him back to Israel on the same plane as Eichmann.

  Eitan and Shalom had heard the reports about Mengele being in Argentina, and there had been some talk prior to leaving Tel Aviv about looking for him while they were there. Even so, Harel had never indicated to them that he wanted to take the doctor on the same mission.

  "Look, Isser," Eitan said, "I'm not sure that we will be able to bring the two of them safely to Israel. So, I don't want to risk another operation."

  Harel had waited to spring the assignment on the team, but with Eichmann secured at the safe house and no news of any search for him being in progress, the time had come. He relayed his plan to go after Mengele in no uncertain terms to Eitan and Shalom.

  "Try to catch a lot," Eitan said with a tight smile to defuse the tension, "and you will catch nothing."

  Although Eitan and Shalom were clearly not supportive of this second operation, Harel would not be dissuaded. They had specific leads on Mengele, and Harel could not live with himself if he did not pursue them while they were in Buenos Aires. He had shuddered at the stories Amos Manor had told about the Auschwitz doctor—stories that had come from his own experiences. After those conversations, Harel had burned within his bones, as he described it himself, to get the doctor.

  Harel instructed Eitan and Shalom to tell Aharoni to push Eichmann harder on Mengele. The Mossad chief was sure that their prisoner was lying and knew precisely where Mengele lived.

  Later that day, Aharoni asked Eichmann once again about Mengele. Now in his fourth day of captivity, with no idea whether it was night or day or how long they would keep him blindfolded and bound to the bed in this tiny room, the prisoner was steadily losing any resistance as to what he would reveal. At first Eichmann again told his story about not knowing Mengele at all. But after repeated questioning, he revealed that they had met once, by accident,
at a restaurant in the city. The doctor had offered Eichmann free medical care, he remembered.

  But Aharoni insisted that Eichmann must have met Mengele on more than one occasion. Surely he knew where he lived. Eichmann denied this vehemently, adding that he feared for his family should he say anything. Aharoni told him that he could wait months for him to answer the question. Nobody was looking for him. Hours later, Eichmann confessed that Mengele had once said something about staying in a boarding house run by a German woman named Jurmann. He did not know the address, but it was somewhere in Vicente López. The Pensión Jurmann already appeared in Harel's coded notebook. This proved that their intelligence was good.

  Feeling as though he was making progress with Eichmann, Aharoni pushed him again to sign a statement that he would willingly come to Israel and stand trial. Aharoni had prepared a sample text to that effect for Eichmann to copy and sign. To Aharoni's frustration, Eichmann held out. At one point, he suggested that he would go to Austria instead.

  "Stop insulting me!" Aharoni snapped. "It will be either Israel or nowhere at all. Either you agree or you refuse. But do not cloud the issue. If you have committed no wrong, then you have nothing to fear. Think about it. We have lots of time."

  That night, Harel visited Tira to see Eichmann and congratulate his agents on the successful capture. Earlier, when he had seen Eitan, Harel had been shocked by his grave demeanor. Now Harel found the rest of the team equally dispirited. He had always suspected that it would be stressful to watch over Eichmann, but he did not understand the debilitating morale until he went upstairs that evening to see Eichmann himself.

  The prisoner was lying on the bed in his pajamas, the goggles over his eyes. He made no move to sit up until told, and even then, he was retreating in his presence. Harel was stunned at how ordinary and pathetic Eichmann was.

  Despite Eichmann's attempts to convince Aharoni that he had been only a "small cog" in the Nazi machine, Harel knew that Eichmann had implemented operations across Europe. He had stripped whole populations of Jews of their rights, expropriated their wealth, forced them into ghettos, and then deported them to camps to be exterminated either immediately or through months of hard labor. He may not have killed Jews with his own gun, but his efforts had been even more devastating. On his arrival in Budapest, he had called the city's Jewish leaders into his Majestic Hotel office and promised, "Once victory is achieved, the Jews would be free and allowed to do what they wanted. In general, I am no friend of force and hope that things go well without it." The next day, Eichmann had sent his transportation chief to Vienna to finalize the railway details for the delivery of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. Over the following months, while one Jewish community after another in Hungary had been destroyed, Eichmann had cavorted around Budapest, sleeping with his mistresses and drinking himself into a stupor at the city's fine restaurants. When Rezsö Kasztner had urged Eichmann to allow some Hungarian Jews safe harbor in Budapest, Eichmann had flown into a rage, saying, "Once I've said no, it's no ... Get me straight, I've got to clear the Jewish shit out of the provinces. No arguments or tears will help."

  That someone who looked like a postal clerk, someone so average in appearance and temperament, could have been responsible for killing millions of Jews was a horror in and of itself. Harel later described the feeling he had that night. "The sight of that miserable runt, who had lost every vestige of his former superiority and arrogance the moment he was stripped of his uniform and powers of authority, gave them a feeling of insult and profound scorn. Was this the personification of evil? Was this the tool used by a diabolic government? This nonentity, devoid of human dignity and pride, was this the messenger of death for six million Jews?"

  Harel's visit had only a temporary effect on the mood in the house, and he instructed Eitan to allow each operative a day's leave away from the house on a rotating schedule. While putting on his overcoat to leave, he told the team, "I know what you've all been through. All you have to do is hang on for a couple of days 1onger." But as he closed the door behind him, Harel feared that if something went wrong with the El Al plane, they would have to remain weeks longer, not days.

  On May 16, the hunt for Mengele began in earnest. Through Ilani's seemingly endless network of sayanim, Harel recruited an Israeli couple, who were originally from Argentina and were back in the city to settle some family matters, to check out the boarding house. For the moment, he had decided, it was best not to divert any of the core team from their primary duties. When he met "Hilel" and "Neomi Pooch" for the first time, they looked and spoke like the natives they were: ideal for his purposes. Harel was straightforward about who they were looking for. The Pooches required only a short description of the horrendous experiments Mengele had performed on Jewish twins to volunteer wholeheartedly.

  They went to work that day, keeping watch over the Pensión Jurmann, a large house encircled by a white fence set on a narrow lane. They didn't see anybody resembling the photograph they had been shown, and a few discreet inquiries around the neighborhood told them that there were no Germans living at the boarding house. Harel grew anxious on hearing these reports. He had two separate sources both pointing to the Pensión Jurmann. The Pooches needed to be more proactive in finding out who lived there. Harel sent Hilel Pooch back to the neighborhood with a cover story and instructions to walk around until he met up with the postman.

  After spending several hours roaming the streets on May 17, Hilel found the postman and explained that he was searching for his uncle, a doctor, with whom he had long since lost contact but who he thought still lived in the area. His name was Dr. Menelle, Hilel said, altering the name slightly.

  "Dr. Menelle," the postman repeated, thinking the name over. Then he pointed toward the house surrounded by the white fence. "Oh yes, he lived over there until a few weeks ago, maybe a month."

  "Ah, my bad luck. So I've come just a little too late. Did he leave his new address?"

  The postman shook his head.

  "Do you know who's living there now?" Hilel asked, suggesting the new tenants might know.

  "He's an engineer from South Africa. Why don't you ask him?"

  Hilel thanked him and ventured off toward the house to keep the mailman from becoming suspicious of his questions. Hilel had no intention of knocking on the door.

  Although Harel was upset to hear that they might have missed Mengele by a few weeks, at least they knew they were on the right track; they had picked up the trail.

  Back at the safe house on May 17, the mood had darkened further. The days and nights were always the same. Two of the Mossad team kept a vigilant guard in case the police showed up. The constant worry that they might be discovered frayed their nerves.

  And then there was the prisoner. One team member watched Eichmann at all times, whether he was eating, sleeping, going to the bathroom, taking a shower, exercising in the garden, or lying stretched out on the bed. Their obedient prisoner continued to inspire loathing and an almost stifling depression in his captors, as if he were draining all the light and oxygen from the house.

  The boredom was also oppressive. Apart from listening to the radio for any hint of news about a hunt for Eichmann, there was not much constructive they could do when not on guard duty. The house had a few books in English, but those who could read that language had already exhausted the supply. To pass the time, they played chess; stared out the windows, watching the neighbors going about their lives; took naps in their rooms; and even invented games, such as an apple-eating contest. The inactivity only gave them the opportunity to dwell on their fears and their revulsion toward Eichmann, a vicious cycle.

  A few tasks did offer relief from the strain of watching over Eichmann. Tabor was supervising the building of a large wooden crate to smuggle their prisoner into the airport. On the inside of the crate, they attached four leather straps to secure the prisoner's arms and legs. They also drilled fifty breathing holes into the wood. They labeled the crate DIPLOMATIC POST—FROM: ISRAELI EMBASS
Y, BUENOS AIRES—TO: FOREIGN MINISTRY, JERUSALEM. Tabor also constructed a concealed chamber in a caterer's cart that Yosef Klein had managed to smuggle out of the airport. The plan was to bring Eichmann on board as part of the El Al crew, but they might need these containers as backups—or to bring Mengele onto the plane should he be found.

  The team spent that night preparing the extensive documentation—including an Israeli passport, a visa, a driver's license, health certifications, and an El Al badge—needed to pass Eichmann off as crewmate Zichroni. Under Malkin's supervision, Eichmann was given a close shave, had makeup applied to his face, had a dark, closely cut wig placed on his head, and was dressed in a nice suit. He looked startlingly younger and more imposing, more like his wartime photograph. The effect disturbed everyone at Tira, but not as much as Eichmann. He was convinced that they were preparing him for his execution, despite their assurances to the contrary.

  Shalom Dani came to the safe house to prepare the documents. He had suffered his own isolation at Maoz, frequently unaware of what was happening and lamenting that he had not been part of the capture. As a result, he felt useless, but without him, his compatriots assured him, the operation would never have stood a chance. Dani wanted to face Eichmann personally, to tell him what he had done to his family. This was his opportunity. But as soon as Dani entered the cell, the color drained from his face, and his hands began to tremble. He said nothing to Eichmann, other than directing him how to pose for the photographs, telling him to angle his chin this way or to turn that way for the camera.