The hunt for Adolf Eichmann, 1945–61
When Adolf Eichmann organized the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Germany was at the height of her power. But, during that year, the course of the war turned against her. By early 1945 it was obvious even to the most fanatical Nazi that the war was lost. Many who did not cherish the prospect of suicide, or a fight to the death, planned for their escape. Among them was Adolf Eichmann. In a post-war world men like him would be held accountable for the war crimes and atrocities they had committed, and so the best solution seemed to be to adopt another identity. As the war ended millions were being killed in desperate battles, or in the daily air raids that pounded the cities of the Reich to dust and rubble. It would be relatively easy to pretend to be someone else – especially someone who had died.
Eichmann, more than most Nazi fugitives, had much to answer for. He had organized the mass transportation of Europe’s Jews to the death camps. It was Eichmann who negotiated with the German railway managers a third class ticket price for all his “passengers”, with a 40% reduction for train loads over 1,000. He too, with others, had organized the setting up of the extermination camps in the first place. He had wielded his power with sadistic relish. “Jewish death lists are my preferred reading matter before I go to sleep,” he once told a group of Jewish elders, sent to negotiate with him.
As the war drew to its painful end, Eichmann adopted the identity of one “Adolf Barth”, a Luftwaffe (air force) corporal. Like many Germans, both soldiers and civilians, he was anxious to be captured by the Americans or the British. The war in the East, where the Nazi conquerors had behaved with inhuman brutality, had cost the Soviet Union 20 million dead. Now they had pushed the Germans back to Berlin, Soviet troops were in no mood to show their enemies mercy.
Eichmann surrendered himself to the Americans at Ulm, on the River Danube. What he didn’t expect was to be interrogated quite so thoroughly. After several sessions with American Intelligence officers, he sensed his alibi was unconvincing, and managed to escape from the flimsily secured camp where he was held.
Over the next month, in the chaos that followed the end of the war, Eichmann passed through several other detention camps, where he invented yet another false identity. This time he was a “Lieutenant Eckmann”. By June, he was held at a work camp at Cham in the Bavarian forest, where he and fellow prisoners were ordered to rebuild the town. Eichmann confessed to a German civilian, Rudolf Scheide, who was in charge of the rebuilding, that he was really Adolf Eichmann. Scheide had not heard of him, and told him brusquely that he did not care who he was. But other prisoners had come across Eichmann during the war, and they had some inkling of what he had done. When one of these men revealed to Scheide exactly who Eichmann was, he went at once to the American authorities. They prepared to arrest this prime catch when he returned from his day’s work. But Eichmann had friends as well as enemies among the prisoners, and he was warned in advance. By nightfall he had fled, heading north into an area of Germany that was occupied by British troops.
It wasn’t just the Americans who were looking for Eichmann. One Jewish survivor of the camps named Simon Wiesenthal had lost 89 members of his family during the war. Together with other Jews, he was now determined to track down the Nazis who had carried out these atrocities – most of whom had now vanished. Wiesenthal, another Austrian Jew named Arthur Pier, and others, set up documentation offices in Vienna and Linz, in Austria where they assembled files and dossiers on missing Nazis. Eichmann was at the top of their list. Wiesenthal was especially well aware of Eichmann’s role in “the final solution”, and was determined to bring him to justice. At the time, they did not even have a photograph to help identify him. But Wiesenthal guessed that sooner or later Eichmann would return to his hometown of Linz, or at least make contact with his family there.
The philosophy of the documentation office was a shrewd one. No one was to take the law into their own hands and kill any Nazis they uncovered. Their job was to report such men to the Allies. Pier and Wiesenthal decided the best way to smoke out Eichmann was to send a handsome young man to try to befriend his wife Vera, who was claiming quite forcefully that she was now a widow. A resourceful Polish Jew named Henyek Diamant was chosen. Initially repelled by the idea, he eventually agreed to try. But Vera Eichmann proved resistant to Diamant’s attentions, and he discovered nothing from her.
Another plan was called for. Eichmann was a notorious philanderer, and Diamant was asked to befriend some of his former mistresses. After several false starts he fell in with one of them, an Austrian woman named Maria Masenbacher. He told her he was a former Dutch SS man, who was too afraid to return home. Masenbacher and Diamant became lovers. One day, while going through an old photo album together, he spotted someone he thought might be Eichmann. When he asked Masenbacher who it was, she became flustered and quickly turned the page, telling Diamant that it was a friend who had died in the war. Sensing he was on to something, Diamant phoned a contact in Linz who had known Eichmann personally. Sure enough, he was able to confirm that it was Eichmann in the photo. Diamant vanished, along with the photo. Now, at least, they knew what their quarry looked like.
Although copies of the photo were circulated, they produced no immediate result, and Eichmann’s trail went cold until 1947. Then, the American intelligence service informed Wiesenthal that Vera Eichmann had applied for a death certificate for her husband. She told the authorities that a Czech citizen had described how he had seen Eichmann shot to death during the liberation of Prague in May 1945.
Wiesenthal was immediately suspicious. If Eichmann was declared dead, his name would be removed from “Wanted” lists, and it would be extremely difficult to convince others to carry on searching for him. Sworn statements were found from Germans who had seen Eichmann alive in late May and June of 1945. Frau Eichmann’s case collapsed when it was discovered that the Czech who had reportedly seen Eichmann die was in fact her brother-in-law. Many Nazis had escaped in this way. Officially declared dead, they had adopted new identities. Some had even remarried their supposedly widowed wives. Eichmann had been foiled, for now.
But help for Eichmann was on hand from other sinister quarters. In 1947, surviving members of the SS had used their formidable influence, and funds stolen from conquered territories, to set up a clandestine organization named Odessa (an acronym for ‘Organization of SS Members’). They intended to help former Nazis accused of war crimes to escape from Germany and begin new lives in foreign countries. They soon discovered that South America was a prime destination. Not only was it the only continent on Earth untouched by the Second World War, but many of the countries there were run by dubious regimes, with no scruples about providing work for former soldiers whose brutality was legendary.
In early 1950, Eichmann was living in northern Germany near the city of Celle, raising chickens under the alias of ‘Otto Heninger’. He had made contact with Odessa and was desperately saving his income to finance an escape. In May 1950, he was spirited away to Austria and Italy, and from there on to Argentina. He arrived in July with yet another alias – Ricardo Klement – and set about building a new life for himself. He was met in Buenos Aires by fellow Nazis, who found him work with a water company, prospecting for hydroelectric power plants.
But Wiesenthal now had friends among his former German enemies. He heard that Eichmann had been sighted in Rome, and was thought to be now in South America. Amazingly, this was confirmed when some other former Nazis approached Wiesenthal with a deal. They wanted to find Eichmann because they believed he had smuggled gold which they felt belonged to them. They suggested a collaboration. Wiesenthal declined the offer, but not before he discovered that Eichmann had definitely gone to South America.
Time passed, and the world moved on… Many of Europe’s surviving Jews emigrated to the new state of Israel, or to America. The Cold War between former Allies, America and the Soviet Union, created a new political climate. Former enemies were now considered useful friends. Even in Israel, the government was now more concerned with the hostile Arab states that surrounded it, than with hunting down former Nazis. In Linz, Wiesenthal kept up his surveillance of Vera Eichmann and her three sons, but they gave nothing away. Then, one day in the spring of 1952, the Eichmann family vanished.
Over in Argentina, Eichmann was doing very well. His skills as an organizer had led to rapid promotion, and within two years he had earned enough money to send for the rest of his family. His wife Vera received a letter from Eichmann, telling her that their “Uncle Ricardo” was prospering in Argentina, and that she should come and join him. Vera recognized the handwriting at once, of course. When they arrived, the boys, who had not seen their father for nearly eight years, when they were all very young, were told he was their dead father’s cousin. They liked their Uncle Ricardo very much, and were thrilled when he married their mother. In due course, another son was born.
Wiesenthal, on the other hand, had fallen into a deep depression, as so much of his work remained unfinished. A doctor friend advised him to take up a hobby to distract his mind from his harrowing past and present failure. Speaking frankly to Wiesenthal, he warned: “How many victims were there? Six million? Well, you will be number six million and one unless you get yourself a real hobby, like stamp collecting.”
So Simon Wiesenthal did just that. Then, in an extraordinary twist of fate, his hobby led him almost directly to Adolf Eichmann. One day in 1953, Wiesenthal attended a stamp-collecting exhibition in Innsbruck, and struck up a conversation with an old Tyrolean aristocrat, who invited him back to his villa. While they were looking through his stamp collection, the man began to talk about the Nazis, whom he despised. He remarked on how many former Nazis were regaining positions of power in the Tyrol, and then went on to say how well such men seemed to be doing in other countries too. Then, completely out of the blue, he fished a letter from Argentina from a drawer. A friend who had moved there after the war had written to say they had many former acquaintances out there. The letter went on: “Imagine who else I saw – and even had to talk to twice: that awful swine Eichmann who controlled the Jews. He lives near Buenos Aires and works for a water company.”
Although he trusted his new friend, Wiesenthal was too wily to let on that this information was of any particular interest to him. This man might write back to Argentina, and one way or another, Eichmann might hear that his trail was hot again. So instead, he just read the letter, and memorized as much as he could, writing it all down the moment he reached his hotel. Then Wiesenthal set about alerting the Israeli government and other Jewish organizations.
No one was interested. Eichmann had recently been reported sighted in several parts of the world, and there was no reason to suppose this claim was any more authentic. Disheartened, and now low on funds, Wiesenthal shut down his documentation office in Linz, and sent his files off to the Yad Vashem Historical Archives in Israel. But the one file he held on to was that of Adolf Eichmann. After that, he devoted his life to resettling refugees – both Jews and those fleeing from communist countries in eastern Europe. He worked as a director of schools set up to retrain people so that they could find work in their new countries.
Only in 1959 did Simon Wiesenthal pick up Eichmann’s trail again. On April 22 of that year, he was reading the local paper and noticed that Eichmann’s stepmother, Frau Maria Eichmann, had died. The paper listed Vera Eichmann as one of her surviving relatives. Someone, somewhere, obviously knew she was still alive, and probably with her husband. Wiesenthal cut out the piece and sent it off to several friends with contacts in the Israeli government. This time he provoked a reaction. It was enough to prompt the Israelis into reopening a search for Eichmann. Israeli agents came to see Wiesenthal, and he told them all he knew. Meantime, other Israeli agents had discovered Vera Eichmann was living with a German who went by the name of Ricardo Klement. From then on, Adolf Eichmann was living on borrowed time.
Further discreet inquiries revealed that the Eichmann boys were registered with the German Embassy under their real names. An address was also given. This further lead prompted the Israeli government to send three agents to Buenos Aires to set up house opposite the “Klement” family home. It now seemed obvious that they had found their man. Only it wasn’t. Ricardo Klement was a dreary fellow, who shuffled through life and looked far older than he actually was. The lack of useful photographs of Eichmann also made a positive identification impossible. The best one they had was now twenty years old. But then Wiesenthal had another lucky break. In February 1960, Eichmann’s father died, and the family gathered for the funeral. Friends of Wiesenthal photographed four of Eichmann’s brothers – all of them had a distinct family resemblance. Now the Israelis watching “Klement” in Buenos Aires could match these new pictures with their man. Finally, and not without irony, it was an act of affection that eventually betrayed Eichmann. On March 21, 1960, he came home with a bunch of flowers for his wife. The agents knew he and Vera had married on March 21, 1935. It was enough to convince them that this was their man.
Adolf Eichmann was seized by Israeli secret service men, drugged, and smuggled aboard a passenger plane bound for Israel. There, behind bulletproof glass, he was tried in an Israeli court. There were many memorable and harrowing moments during the trial. Among them was the testimony of one prosecution witness who brandished a pair of tiny shoes. He explained to the jury that these pitiful leather scraps had been picked up from a pile of discarded footwear belonging to children murdered at Treblinka, one of the most infamous Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland.
Wiesenthal was there in court to see the man he had devoted so much effort to bringing to justice. But, instead of some sort of demonic ogre, Wiesenthal was shocked to be presented with what he described as, “A frail, nondescript, shabby fellow… he looked like a book keeper who is afraid to ask for a raise.”
Eichmann was condemned to death by hanging – a sentence which was carried out in 1962. But, quite apart from other surviving Nazis, not everyone was pleased to see him executed. Even Simon Wiesenthal was uncertain. “When you take the life of one man for the murder of six million, you cheapen the value of the dead,” he told biographer Alan Levy. Since Eichmann’s death, fresh evidence has come up against him. Such evidence would have been brought against him in a court, but now never will be. Many people feel a life sentence is a far greater punishment than a quick death. Besides, as the war faded into history, some Nazi sympathizers began to deny the Holocaust had ever taken place. Real, living perpetrators of this most hideous crime, being forced to answer fresh accusations in courts of law, would have served as a reminder to the world that the Holocaust was not some fantasy nightmare. It really did happen.