Wednesday, August 25, 2021

The photo that led Mossad to Adolf Eichmann


This is the photo of Adolf Eichmann (circled) with Gerhard Klammer stood to his right, which ultimately led to his capture  




The photo that helped bring Nazi mass-murderer Adolf Eichmann to justice has been revealed for the first time, alongside the identity of the man who turned him in.

That snap - taken in the early 1950s - shows Eichmann, who is circled in red, standing next to Gerhard Klammer, a German geologist who worked alongside the infamous Nazi at an Argentinian construction firm. 

Klammer's involvement in bringing Eichmann to justice was only revealed last week, 32 years after his death, with his family's blessing.

He emigrated to Argentina in the early 1950s to seek work, and began working for the Capri construction company in Tucuman Province, which sits in the north of the country.

Shortly afterwards Eichmann joined the same firm, calling himself Ricardo Klement. Klammer knew of his colleague's true identity, and tried to inform German authorities.

Klammer knew who Eichmann was because their company, which planned hydroelectric power plants, employed many Nazis, according to German magazine Der Spiegel

But they ignored his message, and he never received a response to the astonishing tip. 

Klammer shared the identity of his former colleague again in 1959 after returning to his home country.

He confided in a close friend - a priest who had served in the German army, and shared the photo of himself with Eichmann, as well as the mass-murderer's home address in Argentina. 

That information was then passed to a bishop, who in turn passed it to Fritz Bauer. Bauer was a German Jewish prosecutor who had made it his mission to hunt Eichmann down. 

US troops captured Eichmann after World War II, but he escaped from a prison camp in 1946. He landed in Argentina after living in Germany under a false identity for years, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Bauer fled his homeland during World War Two, but returned after fighting stopped.

Prosecutor Fritz Bauer (right) followed up on Klammer's claims and handed the information to Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency

He was the most powerful Jewish prosecutor in the country at the time. Eichmann was widely-known to have escaped to Argentina, but Bauer was the only German lawyer intent on bringing him to justice

Bauer had previously received intel on Eichmann from a half-Jewish man called Lothar Hermann who'd moved from Germany to Argentina.

His daughter had gone on a date with Eichmann's son, who'd boasted of his father's true identity.

That information sparked a 1957 attempt by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to try and track Eichmann down.

But they couldn't find him, and returned empty handed.

Bauer traveled to Israel to meet with head of Mossad Isser Harel to pass on Klammer's information.

Harel and Israel's then Attorney General Haim Cohn were sufficiently convinced  

It was Klammer's tip-off which ultimately helped Mossad track Eichmann down in Argentina in May 1960.  

Eichmann had since moved from the address Klammer had given him, but Mossad agents were still able to track him down from it.  

They were able to kidnap him and bring him back to Israel to face justice, in one of the most daring and famous missions ever carried out by government agents. 

An eight man team of Mossad agents arrived in Buenos Aries a month before Eichmann's capture on fake passports, and planned to seize him off a bus he regularly took to work. 

Their plan was almost abandoned when he failed to take that bus, but the Mossad crew got lucky when they spotted Eichmann getting off another bus 30 minutes later, and seized him. 

He was transferred between local Mossad safe houses for nine days. The Nazi killer was then sedated by an Israeli doctor, and dressed in a flight attendant's uniform before being loaded onto an El-Al plane, and flown to Israel. 

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion shared news of his capture with the world the following day.   

He spent nine months in jail, and was put on trial for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity in April 1961

Eichmann was convicted on all counts, and was hanged in June 1962. Klammer made Bauer promise never to reveal where the tip that led to Eichmann's capture had come from.

Bauer kept his promise, with Klammer's name finally revealed in a German newspaper story published Friday finally explaining his role in the historic capture.  

Klammer's name was first reported by German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said Klammer has earned 'a place of honor in Israeli history.' 

Eichmann was sent to Vienna with the mission of ridding the city of Jews after the city's annexation in 1938, according to History.com

'He set up an efficient Jewish deportation center and in 1939 was sent to Prague on a similar mission. That year, Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish section of the SS central security office in Berlin,' the website says.

In January 1942, Eichmann met with top Nazi officials at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, where he was appointed to organize the identification, assembly, and transportation of millions of Jews from occupied Europe to Nazi death camps where Jews were gassed or worked to death.

Eichmann's trial began in April 1961 following his capture.

He was convicted in December of 15 counts of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, war crimes and membership in a criminal organization, according to the International Crimes Database of The Hague.

He was hanged in May 1962 in prison in Ramla, Israel.    

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