MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Eichmann Kidnapper Dies
Recall of Argentina Nazi abduction.
The Israeli Intelligence chief who master-minded the abduction of the Nazi killer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 for trial and execution in Israel has died in Israel, aged 91. Isser Harel was the head of Israel's foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, and also the first director of its domestic security agency, Shin Bet.
Eichmann, tasked by Adolf Hitler to carry out the mass extermination of Jews, in Europe, escaped to Argentina after the 1939-45 war, shedding his previous identity to live there, unsuspected for years by his Argentine neighbours, as the balding businessmen called Ricardo Klement. He was one of many former Nazis who went to live in South America, with the help of the SS organisation, ODESSA.
He lived quietly in Garibaldi Street, in a lower middle class area outside the capital.
Eichmann had been so keen to distance himself from his murderous past that he had removed his SS tattoo. But Israeli agents, determined to hunt down Nazis responsible for the Holocaust, detected him. Mossad, convinced that he would disappear again of they tried to extradite him formally, decided on a bold strategy to kidnap him.
Isser Harel travelled to Buenos Aires personally to oversee the operation. Eichmann's kidnap was his most public triumph. As Intelligence Chief, he had remained anonymous, known only as "ha memuneh" ? the Boss.
Kidnap in Garibaldi Street On the chosen day, May 11h, 1960, there was a hitch for three waiting Israeli agents when Eichmann missed his bus home. When he did turn into Garibaldi Street, they thought he had a gun in his pocket. But they grabbed him and bundled him into a waiting car.
They kept him captive secretly for nine days before sedating him and flying him on an El-Al flight to Israel dressed as a crew member. By coincidence, the eminent Israeli politician, Abba Eban, who became Foreign Minister, was travelling on the same aircraft, having been in Buenos Aires for the 150th anniversary of Argentina.
Harel went to the Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, and told him: "I have brought you a present". Harel said later he was not happy about the unorthodox way Eichmann was captured. But, he said, dealing with Nazi criminals did not demand the usual way of reasoning because of the extermination of six-million Jews.
Harel told the story of the kidnap in his book "The House on Garibaldi Street", despite objections from Israeli censors. He justified its publication by declaring: "I wanted to show not just the anatomy of that operation but the motivation of our Intelligence officers? The importance of Eichmann was not his capture but his trial".
This was a show trial, headlined around the world, with pictures of Eichmann sitting behind a bullet-proof screen surrounded by guards. He was executed in 1962.
Harel resigned the following year after falling out with Prime Minister Ben Gurion. Harel had launched a campaign against German scientists helping Nasser's Egypt to develop rockets that could reach Israel. But it coincided with an initiative by Ben Gurion to foster better relations with Germany.
Harel later became an adviser to the new Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, served from 1969 to 1973 in the Israeli Parliament, and ran a family business.
South America hunt for Mengele Harel had his differences with the famous Nazi hunter, Simon Weisenthal, based in Vienna, a former concentration camp inmate, who spent decades hunting Nazis, many of them in South America.
Both had tried desperately to capture the man who was perhaps the most wanted Nazi of all, Josef Mengele, the concentration camp doctor who carried out horrific experiments on Jewish concentration camp inmates. Harel blamed Weisenthal for publicising their hunt, which, he alleged, warned Mengele, enabling him to escape as Mossad agents were closing in on him. Mengele managed to evade capture for nearly 25 years after the war, moving ceaselessly from one South American country to another, until his death believed to have taken place in Brazil in the late 1970s.
Harel was married and had one daughter. He was born in Vitebsk, Byelorussia, in 1912. He died in Petah Tiqwah, near Tel Aviv, on February 18th.
Harold Briley, (MP) London
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