"She followed Mengele in Argentina in 1961 - and was murdered,"

Nurit Eldad

The members of the team who went to Bariloche

On March 23, 1961, the Israeli press published a report that looked like it had been taken from an overly imaginative Hollywood movie.

 "She followed Mengele in Argentina - and was murdered," the headlines screamed. "The mysterious secretary of the Israeli delegation in Cologne was apparently 'executed' by Nazi agents, who had found out that she was one of the Israeli commandos hunting Nazi war criminals who found refuge in Argentina," the reports claimed.

The name of the mysterious Israeli woman was Nurit Eldad, but she was also known as Eldod, Eldot, and Eldok - and the news report was the first clue to the extraordinary story of her life and death.

The day after the sensational report, the claims that Nurit had been killed while carrying out a spying mission on senior Nazi officials were vehemently denied.  "Nurit Eldod – a victim of an accident in the mountains of Argentina – was not murdered by Nazis," wrote the Davar newspaper, which stated that she "perished while hiking in the mountains of southern Argentina - something that was clear beyond a shadow of a doubt already a year ago."

The vigorous denials were effective. The story of Nurit's death and the jaw-dropping news that she was murdered by Josef Mengele, the infamous Auschwitz doctor, who selected who would be sent to the gas chambers, who to experiments, and who to hard labor, were dismissed as an urban legend. However, a close examination of the denials raises questions. An article from the Davar newspaper, which is not signed by any reporter but by Davar Staff, states that "according to the report that arrived in Israel about a year ago, Nurit slipped and fell into a deep crevice and there was no possibility to help her or to retrieve her body."

However, we can now reveal for the first time the testimonies of several people who were with Nurit on the trip where she died. These reveal that no one saw her fall to her death. Moreover, her body was found only after a four-day search by a rescue mission, and the testimony of the rescue personnel  indicates that she was found with her backpack and belongings lying neatly next to her – a far cry from the reports that denied foul play.

This did not prevent former Mossad director Isser Harel from publishing a report in the Maariv newspaper in June 1985 that categorically denied the details of the case. "This story has been circulating in various versions for years in the world media," Harel said. "But whenever I was asked about it, including recently, I denied it outright. There never was an 'Israeli agent' who was infiltrated by the Mossad into Mengele's vicinity and murdered by him."

In the years since not a single historian specializing in the study of Mossad operations has found out the riveting details of the story of Nurit's death. In 2007, the Mossad's history department published a large volume detailing the organization's extensive efforts to get its hands on Mengele. The volume contains not a single word about Nurit and the story of her and she remains an enigma shrouded in mystery.

Who was Nurit Eldot

Nurit was born in Frankfurt on December 12, 1912, as Nora, the eldest daughter of a wealthy family of furniture manufacturers. When the Nazis came to power, her father, mother, and seven children emigrated to the village of Rivera, Argentina, and 23-year-old Nora decided to make Aliyah to Israel and change her name to Nurit.

On September 2, 1934, after a period of training in France, she went to live on Kibbutz Na'an and later married a member of the kibbutz, but her marriage ran aground and she divorced, left the kibbutz, and moved to Tel Aviv, where she purchased an apartment at 85 Sokolov Street. She worked as a kindergarten teacher, married, and divorced again, without having children.

Osnat Avigdori, whose mother and Nurit were cousins, remembers family get-togethers with her "fair-haired" relative. "Nurit took in my mother in Israel after the outbreak of World War II and the connection between them was close," she says. "They had no other family in Israel, and I remember Nurit would come to us and they would converse in German. She was a beautiful yekke [a German Jew], always very organized."

Did you know anything about her work? There were rumors that she was connected to the Mossad, spying on Nazis.

"My mother passed away believing that Nurit was murdered for spying on senior Nazis. Her grave says she died a martyr's death. Why is that?"  In 1958, Nurit begins working in the Commercial Department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. A few months later, she was sent to Cologne, Germany, where she worked as a document translator for the delegation dealing with the issue of reparations from Germany, headed by the late Felix Shinar.

Shinar played an important role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann – he was the man who passed on the report from Fritz Bauer to Isser Harel about the whereabouts in Argentina of the architect of the Final Solution. Documents obtained by Israel Hayom indicate that in 1960 Shinar was also involved in tracking Mengele's whereabouts. A telegram sent to Jerusalem stated, "Dr. Mengele is in Argentina where he works as a doctor. The German government has been seeking his extradition for years, but Argentine authorities have refused to extradite him. There is a possibility of leaking the report to the German and English press." In a secret telegram, the Foreign Ministry that "we are familiar with the Mengele affair."

A few months earlier, in late 1959, Nurit traveled to Argentina to visit family. Her sister said in an interview that upon arrival in Israel, Nurit told the family that she had begun working in Buenos Aires for a Jewish lawyer named Jose Moskovitz. Moskovitz, a well-known figure in Argentina's Jewish community, specialized in recovering lost funds from Holocaust victims, and he too played a central role in the daring operation to capture Eichmann – the well-connected lawyer provided safe houses in Argentina to Mossad agents.

A deadly trip

At the beginning of April 1960, only a month before Eichmann's capture, Nurit took part in a trip with members of the "United Kibbutz" youth movement training before making Aliyah to Israel. She never returned from that trip. The 18 members of the group were also joined by Dov Zin, a mystery man who was considerably younger than Nurit. The person who asked the group to bring Nurit and Dov Zin along for the journey was an Israeli emissary of the kibbutz movement who was responsible for training the youth. The messenger explains to the teenagers that the couple wanted to travel and see Argentina.

Melech Ziv (who today is 84), was one of the youths who participated in the training campaign. He has vivid memories of Nurit and Zin. "We didn't take Dov Zin very seriously, he was introverted and not very intelligent, and the guys mocked him," he recalls, "but Nurit was 48 years old and very good-looking. She was always smiling, energetic and positive. Although they were described to us as a couple, they did not behave as a couple. I didn't see any intimacy between them."

"At first I couldn't figure out the connection between them, whether they were relatives or friends," recalls Miriam Zubinski, 83, who also took part in the training trip and was among the last to see Nurit alive. "They certainly weren't a couple," she states, "Nurit was several years older than him and there was no relationship dynamic between them."

As part of the trip, the group traveled to the picturesque town of Bariloche, a favorite haunt for Israeli backpackers to this day and also known as the residence of many Germans and a hiding place for Nazi criminals.

"Bariloche was stunningly beautiful, but everywhere we went we saw signs of a German presence. A huge farm surrounded by green fields with a gate adorned with the German eagle," Zubinski recalls. "I spoke a lot with Nurit during the trip. She was charming, kind, friendly, and beautiful. We spoke in Hebrew, and I asked her about her life on Kibbutz Na'an, as I was very curious to hear what my life on kibbutz was going to look like. We all walked the trails together, but Nurit and Dov conducted themselves separately from us in everything. They slept separately and their schedules were different."

Melech Ziv said: "Although I saw no trace of an injury, I had no reason to doubt the police version that Nurit fell to her death. Her face was a hundred percent healthy and intact. Her mouth was half open you could see her teeth; they were undamaged."

Dov and Nurit spent about three weeks with the group in Bariloche. "It was a beautiful trip," Ziv recalls, "We camped out in a place called Camping Argentina, and our last trip was to Cerro Lopez. Two and a half days before we were scheduled to return to Buenos Aires, we planned to climb to the peak, sleep there in a hostel, and return the next day.

"When we got to the peak, everything was normal and relaxed, and the next morning we got ready to make the return journey. There were three guys who wanted to go and develop some photos before leaving for Buenos Aires. Nurit belatedly said that she also wanted to go with them. She walked behind them alone, and when we got downstairs it turned out that she was gone. No one saw her, not the guys who went down early and neither did we, who were in the group that went down after them. We were very worried and ran all the way back, but Nurit was nowhere to be seen."

A martyr's death

When the group's efforts to locate Nurit failed, they decided that Dov Zin and Melech Ziv would remain in Bariloche to supervise the search. "We informed the police that she was missing, and local search and rescue teams began looking for her," says Ziv. "Dov was with me all the time, but I paid no attention to him. He didn't play a part because he was not fluent in Spanish and was of no use. "The police said they would take care of the search, and they housed us in the most luxurious hotel in Bariloche, at their expense. I told them I wanted to take part in the search and help them find Nurit, but they said that it's dangerous and that I would be more of a problem than a help. I was at the hotel with Dov for four days and from time to time they updated me that they were still looking for her. I didn't do anything other than wait for the police to tell me something.

"On the fourth day, the police said they said they had found her dead. They said that her legs were bent as if she wanted to relieve herself. They added that her liver had burst from the fall, and when that happens there is a desire to defecate, and that was how they found her lifeless. "

What did you do after the police found her body?

"…I was asked by the police to identify her body and I remember the whole process, the entrance to the morgue. There were a lot of covered bodies there and they lifted up the sheets. I will not forget the horrific sights.

They wanted to see my reaction, to see if I recognized her. Finally, we got to her and I saw that her body was well-preserved. I didn't see any sign of injury. She was even smiling, and I saw her teeth. I immediately said it was her.
"Although I saw no trace of injury, I had no reason to doubt their version. Her face was a hundred percent healthy and intact. Her mouth was half open you could see her teeth; they were undamaged.

"I realized she had to be given a Jewish burial, but where? For me, it would be Buenos Aires, in the Jewish cemetery. It was clear to me that she had to be taken there. I had no idea she had a mother and sisters in Argentina."

Ziv says that at some point after news of Nurit's death broke, Dov Zin disappeared. "He just evaporated. As far as I was concerned, it didn't matter much. I took it upon myself to accompany her body to a Jewish burial in Buenos Aires. It was not an easy task, and members of the Jewish community in Bariloche donated the money for the burial arrangements.

"I boarded a special train to Buenos Aires with the coffin, but halfway through the police stopped us and the commander told me to leave the body with him. He said they would pass it on to her family. They took the body away from me and I didn't know what they had done with it. Later I found out that she was buried in her family's village."

Nurit was buried in Rivera and her tombstone read: "She died a martyr's death in Bariloche."

Miriam Zubinski recalls: "I remember that reports began to come out that Nurit and Dov were connected to the Mossad. We saw the Germans in Bariloche, so we put one and one together, and in retrospect, we understood what they wanted. At that time, Eichmann was also caught, so everything fell into place."

Smuggled out in the dark of night

 Ziv returned to Buenos Aires, where he served as educational director for the youth movement for another year. In March 1961, the newspaper La Razon reported that Argentine authorities were investigating the death of a woman found dead in the Bariloche Mountains a year earlier. According to the report, the woman was an Israeli agent trying to track down Dr. Josef Mengele. The newspaper said that "Nora Eldok" was an Israeli who showed up one day at a resort in the Bariloche mountains and accepted a man's offer to go on a hike on the mountain. According to the report, the man returned by himself from the trip and claimed that his partner was missing. "The guest, whose name is not specified, has disappeared," the report stated.

The report went on to say that the woman worked as a secretary at the embassy in West Germany and that she had been carrying a document from the president of Argentina authorizing her to tour anywhere in the country. "A spokesperson for the president denied the existence of such a document," the report stated. The newspaper believed that the woman was murdered by a group of Nazis protecting war criminals hiding in Argentina. "The West German and Israeli embassies declined to comment," the La Razon report concluded.

La Razon relied on an Argentine intelligence report leaked to the newspaper which contained a detailed description of the incident. According to the report, Nurit was part of an Israeli commando squad trying to track down Josef Mengele. According to the report, Nurit was found dead at the foot of a cliff, with her bag and shoes lying neatly by her side. It found that she had suffered internal bleeding in her liver as a result of bruising. In addition, the report lists the names and addresses of all those who were with Nurit on the journey, which also indicates that the police had searched for them.

A few days before La Razon published its report, Israeli embassy officials came to Ziv and urged him to come with them urgently to the embassy. "I was at the embassy for several days while the whole world was looking for me," he recalls. "The kibbutz movement people at the embassy hid me, and when it was reported that Nurit had been murdered by senior Nazi officials, I understood the connection.

"A few days later, I was smuggled out in the middle of the night on a plane to Iguazu, a border town between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, known for its beautiful waterfalls. I was there for a few days and then they transferred me to Paraguay, from there to Brazil, and from there to Israel. Since then, all my life, I made sure not to visit Argentina and in fact did not return to my homeland until a few years ago. To this day, no one has told me why they had to smuggle me out."

Zubinski has no doubt that the real circumstances that led to Dov and Nurit joining them on the journey to Bariloche were hidden from the members of the group.
"I remember when the newspaper items and rumors began that Nurit and Dov were connected to the Mossad. We saw the Germans in Bariloche, so we put one and one together, and in retrospect, we understood what they wanted. It was around the same time that Eichmann was caught, so everything fell into place.

"During the trip, Nurit and Dov hiked with us, but apart from the trails they didn't eat with us, didn't sleep with us, and weren't with us. Almost everywhere we went they were apart from us. Before I made Aliyah to Israel, I saw Dov on the street in Buenos Aires, but I didn't approach him or talk to him. It was a few weeks after the trip."

After the reports were published, the police came one day to the home of Zubinski's parents, but she had already left Argentina for Israel. "When my parents told us that the police were looking for us, I understood that everything was a cover-up, that they were with the Mossad and were looking for Germans. To me personally, it's crystal clear that they were there on active duty."

One of the biggest question marks over Nurit's activity in Argentina regards her connection to Dov Zin. A search of the Population and Immigration Authority's database reveals that there is a man in Israel who answers that name – an 85-year-old man from Kibbutz Ein Gev. Unusually, the records do not mention his mother's name or her identity number. According to records, he was born on January 1, 1928, in Poland and came to Israel as a child in July 1935. Our inquiry with the archives of Kibbutz Ein Gev shows that no one who answers to this name has ever lived on the kibbutz.

Avner Avraham, a former Mossad operative and expert on "Operation Finale," the operation to capture Adolf Eichmann, describes how the Mossad quite often used Argentinian Jews and would smuggle them out of the country if they were exposed. "At the end of one of my lectures about Eichmann in the United States, a lady came up to me and told me that she and her family owned a photography shop that Eichmann used to buy in. She said that one day a stranger came to develop photos at the store and later it turned out that it was Zvi Aharoni, who was sent as an advance force to photograph Eichmann and would develop the photos at her family's store.

Avraham relates how when details of Operation Finale began to leak, a representative of the Israeli embassy in Argentina was sent to the owner of the photography shop, and shortly afterward the embassy smuggled the woman and her family to Israel.
"There is a great deal of evidence that Isser Harel used civilians who are not part of the official security apparatus to assist him in his pursuit of senior Nazis," says Avraham, alluding to Nurit and Dov's activities in Argentina. He adds that "Harel did not hesitate, for example, to employ two embassy employees in order to photograph Mengele, an attempt that failed."

CIA and BND get involved

 Argentine intelligence wasn't the only espionage agency taking an interest in Nurit's death. The CIA and West Germany's BND also published reports about her. Professor Holger Meding, a professor of Latin American history at the University of Cologne, who wrote a book about German immigration to Argentina after World War II, was given access to German secret intelligence archives.

He was not familiar with Nurit's story, but at our request, he searched the archives for details about her. In Mengele's folder, he found a document composed in 1961, which was unsealed for the first time at our request. The report states that Mengele is in Bariloche and that Eldot was killed in the area under vague circumstances. Meding explains that "after Eichmann's abduction, Germany's secret service searched for other Nazis in Latin America."

Meding told us that Nurit's name is also mentioned in a book written by Alfred Jarschel, a former Nazi who wrote extensively about senior Nazi officials who fled after the war. "He visited Latin America and had a lot of sources," Meding says. "It's a very interesting book, but it's hard to distinguish between truth and fiction. Jarschel knew a lot but also added many things that he made up.

"In this particular case, he mentions the name of the man responsible for Nurit's murder and calls him Albert, without giving a last name. He says that Albert was Flemish and that he was in contact with Nurit. Moreover, the book claims that there was a relationship between Nurit and a Nazi official. It says that they entered the forest together, but only Albert returned."

Another report, from the CIA, said Mengele was wanted for the murder of "Muriel Eldad." Eldad, according to the report, was a Polish woman, an Israeli citizen, whose family lived in Argentina. She gained Mengele's confidence, planning to kill him, however, Mengele killed Eldad. The source quoted in the report concluded that Eldad worked "for Israeli agents."

Israeli-Argentine journalist Leon Schachman, who also researched Nurit's story, visited the site where her body was found and interviewed a member of the search party that found her. The rescuer said that Nurit was found with her pants down and barefoot with her shoes and her bag neatly by her side. According to him, the rock below which Nurit was found was only a few meters high.

Another fascinating testimony about Nurit is that of local lawyer Jose Moskovitz, with whom she began working upon her arrival in Argentina.

Born in March 1926 in Hungary, Moskovitz was a well-known figure in the Argentine Jewish community. He was a Holocaust survivor whose entire family perished in the war. He managed to escape together with Hungarian partisans and later immigrated to Israel, fought in the Palmach, and in 1955 left for Argentina and became a prominent activist in the Jewish community in Buenos Aires. He served as president of a survivors' organization and represented hundreds of Holocaust survivors in claims to recover stolen funds. In 1960 he played a central role in the operation to capture Eichmann when he provided the Mossad cell sent to capture the "Angel of Death" with safe houses in the city. He passed away at a ripe old age in 2014.

Eva Eisenstadt and Malka Schmidtberg, veteran employees of Moskovitz's office both confirmed that they spoke with him about Nurit. The two state that Moskovitz told them emphatically that Nurit was murdered and did not die in an accident. According to them, the Jewish lawyer knew that Nurit had arrived in Argentina on a mission to spy on senior Nazis.

In interviews with the Deseret News website in 1992 and with the Seattle Times, Moskovitz said that Nurit had come to Argentina to track down Mengele. When asked if she was an Israeli agent, he replied: "Don't ask."

As for Mengele, in January 1945 he fled to Czechoslovakia, was captured by the US Army, and held as a prisoner of war but was released after they could not determine his true identity. In 1949 he managed to leave via Italy for Argentina, and from the mid-1960s the world's most wanted Nazi criminal lived on the farm of a German couple near Sao Paulo, Brazil. He drowned in 1979, after suffering a stroke while bathing at Bertioga Beach near Sao Paulo, and was buried under the name Wolfgang Gerhard.

Even after Mengele's death, the Mossad continued to search for his body and in 1985 an American-German-Israeli team was established to locate it. Acting on intelligence, Sao Paulo police investigators reached the couple who hid the bones of the Auschwitz doctor who decided who would live and who would die. At first, the two denied any connection to Mengele but later admitted everything. The skeleton was exhumed from his grave and in 1992 DNA tests proved that it was indeed Dr. Death's body, bringing the mystery of his disappearance to an end.

Itai Amikam is an investigative report for the Kan 11 program, Zman Emet.