- [Laurence] Tonight, the global manhunt for a Nazi war criminal
who vanished after the Holocaust
and the stunning operation
that finally brought him to justice.
- [Christina] Adolf Eichmann was the architect of the Nazi
Nazi Holocaust.
- [Sami] He murdered millions of Jews,
yet the Allies never even knew his name.
- [Katherine] He takes this idea of the Final Solution
and turns it into almost an assembly line process.
- At the end of World War II, Eichmann hides in plain sight.
- [Kevin] There's so much chaos that the Allies don't even
realize that they have Eichmann in custody.
And by the time they realize it, he's vanished.
- [Sami] Nazi hunters are convinced that Eichmann is still
alive, but a decade passes and no one knows
where he could possibly be.
- Now we explore the top theories
surrounding Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts
leading up to his dramatic capture.
- [Katherine] These Nazis in Germany end up
with a really surprising ally, the Catholic Church.
- [Paul] An Israeli investigator receives a tip off
that Adolf Eichmann has been recently spotted in Kuwait.
- [Christina] There was only one existing photograph of Eichmann.
It's really like hunting a ghost.
- What really happened to Adolf Eichmann?
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] It's January, 1942,
and in a lakeside mansion near Berlin,
15 senior Nazi officials are meeting.
The topic, the systematic annihilation of Europe's Jews,
what the Nazis refer to as the Final Solution.
- Along with these high officials,
there's one lieutenant colonel,
very quiet, very unassuming, taking notes,
but he's also providing information
like the amount of Jews in different countries.
[dramatic music]
This is Adolf Eichmann.
- [Amory] Eichmann is not really well known
as a front man of the Nazis.
He's more of a behind the scenes bureaucrat.
And he really views the killing of millions of Jews
as sort of this logistical problem
that he's in charge of solving.
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] Eichmann grows up in Austria,
the son of an accountant.
He joins the Nazi Party in 1932 at age 26.
- [Anand] Eichmann had joined the SD,
the SS's intelligence agency in 1934.
In 1936, he's recruited by a member of the SD
to join the so-called Jewish Affairs Division.
And eventually he comes to take over this division.
He makes a name for himself after the annexation of Austria,
where he works out a system
for basically speeding up the immigration
of Jewish populations outside of Germany.
- [Sami] He figures out how to conduct these mass deportations
as fast as possible.
He devises a system to give deportation papers
to Jewish people on the spot
while also stripping them of their possession,
stripping them of the wealth,
and getting them essentially out of the country
within less than an hour's time.
- [Amory] Once World War II starts,
Adolf Eichmann becomes more and more fanatical.
And once the Final Solution is decided upon,
he becomes the central operational figure
behind the Holocaust.
Hitler is the one who's ordering these atrocities,
but Eichmann is the bureaucrat
in charge of actually carrying them out.
[dramatic music]
- [Paul] There are a lot of pieces of information
that come out of Nazi Germany during World War II.
And it's just so hard for Westerners
to comprehend this scale of tragedy
that it's not until we start to overrun
some of the outlying murder camps
that we can't deny what's going on anymore.
- [Amory] In January of 1945, Hitler retreats to his bunker.
By April of that year, he's dead.
And then on May 7th of 1945, the Germans surrender.
- [Sami] Despite the fact that many high-ranking Nazis
have been captured, Eichmann is never found.
And on top of that, most of the world
has never even heard his name.
- [Laurence] Six months go by
before the public finally learns about Adolf Eichmann
and his role in the Holocaust.
- [Kevin] In November of 1945, all eyes are on Nuremberg,
Germany, where 24 Nazi officials are put on trial
for their atrocities during World War II.
And it's here that Adolf Eichmann's name first comes up.
- [Amory] Prosecutors quote this Hungarian Jewish leader
who tells the story of a mass deportation
of Hungarian Jews from Budapest.
So, there's a special unit that is running operations there
and Eichmann is in charge of that unit.
He is the one who's gonna decide
who's going to the gas chambers and who will live.
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] A few weeks later, on January 3rd, 1946,
an SS captain with ties to Eichmann is called to testify.
- [Anand] He had joined the Nazi's intelligence service
and ended up becoming one of Eichmann's men
in the so-called Jewish Affairs Division of the Gestapo.
- [Kevin] He claims that he pushed back against this plan
to kill millions of Jews, but Eichmann simply told him,
"You're being too sentimental about it."
[pensive music]
- [Laurence] The Nuremberg testimony
gives Eichmann worldwide notoriety,
but his whereabouts are still unknown.
Finding Eichmann won't be easy,
but after the revelations at Nuremberg, it's a priority.
The question is where could he be?
- [Kevin] There are millions of Germans packed into POW camps
all over Europe.
The Americans alone have 2 million in captivity,
but these camps are cramped, they're not well organized,
they don't have the names of everybody in them.
But the obvious place to look for Eichmann
is in POW camps around Europe.
[dramatic music]
- [Sami] Despite the fact that most of the world
has never heard the name Adolf Eichmann,
the US Counterintelligence Corps
has actually been compiling a dossier on him for months.
- [Paul] Investigators go and track down Eichmann's wife Vera.
They find her in Austria.
She claims that she hasn't seen her husband in months
and she doesn't even have a photograph of him.
- [Amory] It's clear that he was really planning ahead here.
He was making sure
that there were no pictures of him left over.
SS officers tell Allied officials
that Eichmann was still alive at the end of the war
and he probably still is.
They don't think that Eichmann would've taken his own life
the way that other Nazi officials did at this time.
- [Sami] With all of the chaos, and the disorganization,
and the disarray of these POW camps,
it becomes very, very likely
that Eichmann is using these POW camps to hide out.
The Allies also assume that he's using an alias.
The CIC distributes notices to their regional offices
and they call Eichmann,
quote, "of the highest importance among war criminals."
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] As it turns out,
the Americans already have Eichmann in custody,
they just don't know it.
- [Kevin] At the end of the war,
Eichmann actually goes down into Austria to hide out.
And there are tons of Nazis all over the place
hiding from the Allies.
He meets with his wife and gives her instructions
on how to deal with Allied investigators,
which he knows are coming.
His plan is to head northwest through Germany
with his assistant, staying in homes of people
who are sympathetic to former Nazis.
- [Sami] A little later in May, however,
Eichmann and his assistant are picked up by a US Army patrol
and they're taken to a US POW camp in Weiden.
Eichmann gives a false name, a false identity
by the name of Adolf Barth.
- [Laurence] In the camp,
Eichmann plots how to keep from being discovered
and how to escape.
- [Paul] Eichmann is going to be identified sooner or later
because every SS officer like Eichmann
has a unique identifier
that's not common in the rest of the German Wehrmacht.
Every SS soldier has his blood type
tattooed inside his armpit.
And that means if you make all of the captives
take off their shirts and hold their hands up in the air,
you can quickly pick out the fanatical Nazis.
- [Anand] He tries to burn that tattoo with cigarettes,
but it doesn't work,
so he's not gonna be able to claim
he's not a member of the SS.
But there are plenty of SS men
who are POWs at the end of the war.
- [Kevin] So, what he tells the Allied officials
is that his name is actually Otto Eckmann
and that he's a lieutenant colonel in the SS.
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] Eichmann makes the switch
thinking Eckmann is close enough to his real surname.
If an old acquaintance
were to suddenly blurt out his real name, Eichmann,
in the camp, it would be less likely to rouse suspicion.
- [Amory] Eichmann knows that he can't play this game forever.
He's gotten through a couple of interrogations undetected,
but he knows it's only a matter of time
before he's found out to be who he really is.
- [Sami] He finds some SS officers in the camp
who help him in his escape.
He's able to forge papers that pass him off
as a hunter in the area,
and the SS officers in the camp
also get him some civilian clothes.
And one night, Eichmann is able to climb
over a section of barbed wire fence
that isn't viewed by any camp guards
and he's able to make his escape into the surrounding woods.
And there he vanishes.
- [Amory] Authorities learned that an SS officer named
Otto Eckmann has escaped.
And so they interrogate all the other former SS officers
that are in the camp.
And those people confirm that Otto Eckmann
actually is Adolf Eichmann.
- [Paul] It really shows how disorganized
the situation in Europe is at the end of '45
and beginning of '46.
The Allies wind up realizing
that they'd been looking for Eichmann for months,
when in reality he was hiding right underneath their nose
inside one of their own compounds.
And so, it's a little embarrassing,
it's a little frustrating,
but it also means that they're pretty hot on his tail.
- In the wake of World War II,
the Nuremberg Military Tribunal declared the SS
a criminal organization,
citing its direct involvement in war atrocities.
The Allied powers would go on
to arrest hundreds of SS officials.
But as of 1946, one of the most notorious of these
is still missing, Adolf Eichmann.
- [Christina] It's not just Allied officials
who are searching for Eichmann.
We also have the Haganah, the Jewish intelligence services
that ultimately became the IDF
once the Israeli state was established.
- The Haganah tried to find Eichmann
by assembling this team of five operatives
that are gonna track his family.
They launched this much more elaborate investigation
than the Allied forces had.
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] The team travels to Austria,
and after months of searching, locates the current homes
of Eichmann's wife and brother Otto.
- As the members of Haganah
start tracking Vera and her brother-in-law,
what they discover is the two of them
regularly take train trips out to the Austrian countryside,
basically between Linz and Salzburg.
They always travel separately but arrive at the same time,
and they then walk into the forest essentially
to a two-story house that's kind of camouflaged
from casual observation.
- [Kevin] The team investigates the house
and what they find is there's four men living in it
and they never come out.
But every night, an individual comes to the door
and brings them food.
The five-man team, from a distance,
sees one of these figures
that they think looks like Eichmann,
but they really can't tell.
They theorize that this is why Vera and his brother
are coming, and staying, and visiting for a while.
- [Laurence] Sensing they may have found their man,
the operatives stage a raid on the chalet.
- [Paul] One night, while the men are having dinner
inside this house, five members of Haganah approach.
Two of them kick in the door while the other ones pull guns
on the men inside this secluded home.
They single out the individual
that they think might be Adolf Eichmann
and they remove him from the house.
- [Sami] The operatives are shouting questions
at the man that they're convinced is Adolf Eichmann,
but the man is telling them,
"I'm not Adolf Eichmann.
My name is Wolfgang Bauer.
But after a bit of time,
Bauer reveals that he actually was an SS officer,
but he's still not the man that they're looking for.
- [Amory] He's not Eichmann, but he knows Eichmann.
He served with Eichmann.
And he was actually part of the Einsatzgruppen
that Eichmann oversaw.
This was this mobile death squad that came in
and exterminated Jews, usually by shooting them.
They killed millions of people.
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] Still convinced the man is Eichmann himself,
the operatives drag him out into a waiting car
and drive him deeper into the woods.
- [Kevin] They say, "If you're not Eichmann,
why are Eichmann's wife and brother
continually visiting you?"
And his only answer is that they were friends
with the owner of the chalet where they were staying.
- [Sami] They continue peppering him with questions.
One of the operatives is pointing a gun
directly at his chest,
and Bauer basically just laughs at the operatives
and he tells them, "All you can do is kill me."
So, that's what the operatives do.
They pump bullets into his chest,
and they bury him in a shallow grave,
and then later the Haganah go back to their superiors
and they tell them
that they have successfully killed Adolf Eichmann.
[dramatic music]
- [Paul] Nobody's quite sure
what to think about the Eichmann situation.
There are some that are convinced
that Haganah had gotten the wrong man,
that in fact the individual they shot
really was Wolfgang Bauer and he was telling the truth.
He wasn't Eichmann.
- [Sami] Others, on the other hand, are convinced
that Adolf Eichmann is killed by the Haganah
and it's officially over, case closed.
As for the Allied forces,
they're not as worried anymore
about looking for Nazi war criminals
considering that by 1947,
the Allied forces are dealing with, in their minds,
a much bigger deal, which is the burgeoning Cold War.
- [Laurence] One man still in pursuit
is an Austrian holocaust survivor named Simon Wiesenthal,
who's dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals.
- [Paul] Wiesenthal becomes convinced
that the Haganah victim was not Eichmann,
that this individual was someone else
who might have been connected to him.
In fact, Wiesenthal is fairly frustrated
that they shot the individual
rather than bringing him in for deeper interrogation
because he might have been able to offer some clues
as to Eichmann's actual whereabouts.
But he has to work with the materials
that are available to him.
So, he begins at the beginning
and he starts looking at the individuals
that were closest to Eichmann.
- [Laurence] Working with other investigators,
Wiesenthal is able to source a photo of Eichmann,
finally putting a face to the notorious Nazi criminal.
- [Amory] In December of 1947, Wiesenthal is called to Austria,
to the US CIC headquarters, for an urgent meeting.
He's told there that Eichmann's wife Vera
has just put in an application
to have her husband legally declared dead.
Now she says she does this
in the interest of their children.
But if he is in fact declared dead,
the warrants that are out on Eichmann will disappear.
The search for him will officially be over.
- [Christina] And the proof of the death is that there is a
report coming from a government officer
in Czechoslovakia named Lucas
that he witnessed Eichmann being killed
by a Soviet firing squad at the end of World War II.
[dramatic music]
- [Sami] Paul Lucas swears in an affidavit that Eichmann,
along with other Nazis, were apprehended by the Red Army.
They were lined up shoulder to shoulder
and executed on April 30th, 1945
by members of the Soviet Army.
- [Amory] Wiesenthal is not buying it.
He has interviewed people in the POW camps
who said that they saw Eichmann after April of 1945.
And he starts thinking
Vera has probably submitted this application
as an attempt to end the hunt for her husband.
- [Paul] Wiesenthal petitions the court
to essentially postpone the decision
about whether Eichmann was alive or dead.
Wiesenthal thinks that given a little bit of time,
he can actually prove that Eichmann is still alive.
- [Kevin] He sends investigators to Prague
to both find out more evidence on Eichmann
and also to basically check the background on Lucas.
So, this investigation is three years
after this alleged shooting,
so there's really no evidence to be found there.
But what Wiesenthal's researchers do find,
that's rather fascinating,
is that Lucas is married to Vera's sister.
[dramatic music]
- [Paul] When Wiesenthal approaches the judge and points
out that the star witness suggesting that Eichmann
was dead is actually married to his wife's sister,
the judge is mortified because that's something
that the witness should have revealed
at the very beginning of the discussion.
Ultimately, the judge throws the case out.
He can't rule Eichmann dead
on the basis of individuals testifying
who had a vested interest in an outcome.
- [Sami] So, to Wiesenthal,
this pretty much confirms his suspicions.
Eichmann is still alive and doing whatever he can
to elude the long arm of justice.
So, Eichmann could presumably be anywhere.
- [Laurence] By 1950, with the Cold War heating up,
the Allied powers are less focused
on hunting Nazi war criminals.
But it remains risky for Nazi fugitives,
even those with fake identities,
to pass through border checkpoints and escape Europe.
Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal
have no idea if Eichmann is still in Germany
or could have escaped thousands of miles away.
[pensive music]
- [Paul] In a major surprise to Western powers,
some of the former Nazis
are actually gaining assistance escaping Europe
thanks to the Catholic church.
The Catholic Church sees the Nazis as one of the great ways
to fight against the evils of communism.
- [Sami] There are still plenty of fascist sympathizers
after World War II,
and they start creating these secret routes via safe houses
that are called ratlines as a way to help Nazis
escape to safer areas.
And the Catholic church plays a role in this
because some of these ratlines, some of these safe houses,
are monasteries that exist in places like Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy.
- [Katherine] You have a number of cardinals
and a number of upper level Catholic administrators
who are sympathetic to the Nazis,
not because of their anti-Jewish stance,
but because they saw them as an ally
in the fight against communism,
which they saw as much worse than even Nazism.
- [Kevin] Italy is vital to all this because in Rome,
there's a Catholic bishop named Alois Hudal
who was very pro-Nazi,
and he's got the ability to make the fake papers
to get these former Nazis out of Europe.
- [Amory] These papers are accepted by the Red Cross,
no questions asked.
The Red Cross is really overseeing the flow of refugees.
And so these former Nazis and SS officers
are basically able to just blend in with other refugees
and being able to get out the country.
[pensive music]
- [Laurence] By the early 1950s,
investigators believe it's possible Eichmann
has taken advantage of the ratlines.
- [Katherine] About 90% of these Nazis escaped Europe
through Italy or Spain,
and they were on their way, most of them, to South America.
Argentina is a safe haven for these Germans.
- [Amory] President Juan Perón was a close ally of Hitler's
during the war.
So, Hudal knew exactly who he was helping here.
He writes to Perón actually in 1948
and asks for 5,000 visas to help Nazis escape.
So, Argentina seems like a good place
to try to start looking for Eichmann.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
- [Sami] There are rumors that start to circulate
that by the 1950s, Eichmann has fled to Argentina
and has started a life there.
Now, for the most part,
the newly formed West German government
largely ignores a lot of these rumors,
but there's one prosecutor
that just will not let this information go.
He's a German Jewish prosecutor by the name of Fritz Bauer.
[dramatic music]
- [Paul] He and his family had fled from German persecution
early on in the Third Reich,
so he escaped some of the worst evils of the Holocaust.
But when he returns to Germany in the post-war era,
he's determined to set some of the wrongs right.
Bauer can't be too open with what he's up to
because he doesn't know who in the German hierarchy
might be sympathetic to those individuals
and might tip them off
to the possibility of their discovery.
- [Laurence] In September, 1957,
Bauer receives a letter from Lothar Hermann,
a blind attorney living in Argentina.
- [Kevin] Hermann is one of the German expats
living in Argentina.
He's Jewish and part of a rather large Jewish population.
Even though Perón is really anti-Semitic,
there's a population of about 400,000 Jews
living in Argentina.
- [Sami] Hermann is a survivor
of one of the most notorious concentration camps
of World War II, Dachau.
In fact, he endured such vicious beatings
during his time at the camp
that he actually lost his eyesight.
- [Amory] He immigrates to Argentina in 1938
with his wife and his daughter.
In 1956, he's living in a suburb of Buenos Aires
with his family.
And his daughter Silvia is dating
this young German expat named Nick.
- [Kevin] So, one night, while having dinner
over at the Hermann's house,
young Nick says that his dad
was a high official in the Wehrmacht, the German army.
Nick has no idea that he's talking to a Jewish family.
The Hermanns do not publicize the fact that they're Jewish.
So, he just keeps talking and talking and eventually says,
"It's a shame the Nazis were never able
to complete their mission of extermination."
- [Katherine] The Hermann family just sits quietly.
The father doesn't say anything.
He's used to hearing anti-Semitic comments.
He knows that this is just how it goes sometimes.
He's disappointed that his daughter is
dating him, I'm sure, but he just lets it go.
A few months later, the Hermann family
move a couple of hundred miles away to another town
and the boyfriend is forgotten.
- [Sami] One day, in April of 1957,
Silvia is reading an article in the newspaper for her father
about Nazi war criminals
and she mentions the name Adolf Eichmann.
And she says her boyfriend Nick
said that his last name is Eichmann.
- [Laurence] Lothar Hermann instantly remembers
the boy's hateful comments at the dinner table.
- [Kevin] Silvia is still in touch with Nick,
but he's never given her his home address.
He gives her a different address to write to, to get to him.
And oddly enough, while Silvia and Nick were dating,
he never invited her over to his house.
So, Lothar immediately suspects
that this might be Adolf Eichmann's son.
- [Amory] They want to tell the German authorities
or the Argentinian authorities,
but they really can't 'cause Nazi sympathizers
are everywhere at this point.
So, instead, they write a letter
to the prosecutors in Frankfurt, West Germany.
And that's the letter that makes its way to Fritz Bauer.
So, Bauer's intrigued.
He knows that Eichmann's son is named Klaus,
but in German, Klaus is actually short for Nicholas.
So, this seems promising, but he needs more information,
such as an address.
- [Sami] Lothar and Silvia take a 10-hour train ride
from their home back to the suburb of Olivos.
And they pretty much spend the day
just walking around the town
until Silvia runs into a mutual friend of hers and Nick's
that tells her where Nick's house is.
So, he gives her the address.
- In 1957, teenager Silvia Hermann
and her father Lothar are convinced
Cynthia's old boyfriend is the son of Nazi war criminal
Adolf Eichmann.
They've tracked him to the Olivo suburb of Buenos Aires
but need to confirm his identity
before passing it along to the authorities.
[dramatic music]
- [Amory] Silvia goes to the house.
The door is answered by a woman who reluctantly lets her in.
There is a middle-aged man in glasses.
And she thinks that he looks like the guy in the picture
that Fritz Bauer had sent to her of Adolf Eichmann,
but she's not totally sure.
So, she asks him.
She says, "Are you Mr. Eichmann?
Are you Nick's father?"
And he sort of tersely responds, "No, I'm his uncle."
So, she sits down and just strikes up
a pleasant conversation with him.
[dramatic music]
- [Katherine] Nick comes home shortly thereafter
and sees Silvia.
He says, "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I just stopped to say hi.
I have to go, I have to go."
The middle aged man wearing glasses,
who has claimed to be the uncle,
stands up to walk her to the door, and Nick says,
"No, father, I can walk her to the door myself."
[dramatic music]
- [Sami] So, it would seem that the Hermanns
have stumbled on something pretty suspicious.
The fact that it took all this time
to figure out Nick's address,
why was he being so cagey about where he lives,
and then when Silvia arrives to the house,
the woman that answers the door reluctantly lets her in,
the man claims to be Nick's uncle,
but then Nick refers to him as father,
something just is not adding up in this situation.
[pensive music]
- [Paul] Although Fritz Bauer is intrigued, he's got a problem.
He can't really rely on German or Argentinian authorities
to follow up on this information.
There's just too many Nazi sympathizers
within both of those populations.
So, instead, he turns
to the new Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad.
- [Katherine] The Mossad go to the house
the Hermanns had told them about.
But when they get there,
they don't think it's the right address.
It is ramshackle, it's worn out,
and they just can't believe that an SS officer
of the rank and fortune of Eichmann would be living there.
As they watched the house,
they just don't see anybody coming and going
that matches Eichmann's description.
So, they're pretty certain
this is a case of mistaken identity.
- [Amory] The Mossad let the tip go.
The Hermanns, though, they don't wanna let this go.
So, in April of 1958, they're going through public records
and they find out that the home
is owned by a guy named Francisco Schmidt.
And they think that this is just the latest alias
of Adolf Eichmann.
And so they go back to the Mossad and they say,
"Look into Francisco Schmidt."
And they do.
And they say, "There's no way that Francisco Schmidt
is actually Adolf Eichmann."
So, at this point, they pause their contact with the Hermanns
because they just think
that they're full of unreliable information.
- [Kevin] A year later, in August of 1959,
an independent Nazi investigator, Tuviah Friedman,
says that he's been in contact
with some high government officials in Germany
and they've told him that Eichmann is not in Argentina,
he's in Kuwait.
[dramatic music]
[pensive music]
- [Amory] Now, Kuwait at this time
is this sort of obscure British territory.
There's only about 300,000 people living there.
North Africa and the Middle East
are actually very popular destinations for ex-Nazis.
- [Sami] Friedman immediately contacts
the Israeli Defense Ministry
and he says that Eichmann is in Kuwait.
You should send some agents over there to go pick him up.
But the ministry pretty much ignores Friedman entirely.
- [Kevin] Israel is a brand new country
and has a long list of security priorities.
And Friedman realizes that Eichmann
is not really the top of the list
or maybe even the middle of it.
But he's not gonna give up.
So, Friedman contacts an Israeli newspapermen and says,
"Have I got a scoop for you.
Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, is living in Kuwait."
[pensive music]
- [Paul] Friedman suddenly becomes an international
celebrity, and he uses his fame to draw attention
to the fact that Eichmann has not been located.
- [Kevin] Other Nazi hunters are not happy.
They believe it's gonna do nothing
but drive Eichmann either underground or out of Kuwait.
- [Laurence] No solid evidence of Eichmann
turns up in Kuwait
and the trail once again seems to run cold.
- [Sami] Nevertheless, Friedman is pleased with what he did
because now he's put Adolf Eichmann's name
in newspapers all over the world.
And this becomes a way
to potentially inspire not only Nazi hunters
but actual governments to locate this Nazi war criminal
and bring him to justice.
- [Laurence] In late 1959,
there's a rash of anti-Semitic activity
throughout West Germany.
Reportedly, swastikas are painted
on nearly 700 Jewish sites across the country,
along with graffiti reading, Jews out.
It's a painful time, but the attacks
do help galvanize all the parties
that are or should be hunting down Nazi war criminals.
- [Christina] It is important to acknowledge
that there were still Nazi sympathies.
Even though they had been defeated in World War II,
that didn't mean
that pro-Nazi sentiment completely disappeared.
This can explain why it took West Germany so long
to take the hunt for Eichmann seriously.
- Up to this point, there has been a lot of foot dragging.
West German intelligence has been sitting
on a lot of evidence that Adolf Eichmann
is alive in Argentina and living under an assumed name.
[pensive music]
- [Laurence] After years of pursuing Eichmann,
West German prosecutor Fritz Bauer receives new intel
pointing him to Eichmann's alleged alias.
- [Amory] Bauer gets a tip from a man named Gerhard Klammer.
And Klammer used to work for a construction company
in Northern Argentina with a guy named Ricardo Klement.
He's never forgotten the man's face.
And he's seen it in news coverage
as the years have gone by.
And he is thoroughly convinced that Ricardo Klement
is actually Adolf Eichmann.
- [Katherine] Now, he was German, but he wasn't a Nazi.
He was anti-Nazi, as so many Germans were.
And so he spends the 1950s trying multiple times
to notify the German government
that Ricardo Klement is there in Argentina
and that he is Adolf Eichmann.
[dramatic music]
- [Paul] In an amazing coincidence, Klammer is in
Buenos Aires and he sees a man get off the bus
that he recognizes as his old coworker Ricardo Klement.
He follows the man and writes down the address
where the man goes home.
Finally, in December of 1959,
we might have definitive evidence
of where Adolf Eichmann is hiding.
- [Sami] Klammer's findings make their way to Fritz Bauer.
And this is when Bauer starts to slowly put together
the pieces of this puzzle.
He knows the name Ricardo Klement
because that information was provided to him
by the Hermanns when Silvia found that name registered
on the electric meter of the house that he's living in.
On top of that, Klammer also has a photograph of him
and Ricardo Klement standing together.
And when Bauer takes this photograph
and puts it by the photo that they have of Adolf Eichmann,
the resemblance is incredibly striking.
- [Laurence] A few months later,
Bauer reaches out to the Mossad.
He knows where Eichmann is hiding.
He just hopes it's not too late.
- [Paul] The Mossad recognizes that they might have made a
mistake about whether or not Eichmann
is still alive and well in Argentina.
In March of 1960, a new Mossad agent is sent to Argentina,
and he starts to investigate.
- The agent who is assigned this case is Zvi Aharoni.
He was known as being very methodical, very unflappable.
He could do just about any job that needed to be done.
While he and his mother had escaped the Holocaust
and gotten to Palestine by 1938,
the entire rest of his family was killed.
So, the idea that he could capture Eichmann was personal.
- [Amory] Zvi goes to the neighborhood and checks out the
house in Buenos Aires, only to find that Ricardo Klement
has just recently moved out.
There's a team of painters painting the house.
So, Zvi finds an ally in this young Argentinian kid
in the neighborhood who goes up to the painters
and is trying to get the address
of where Ricardo Klement moved.
- [Paul] He claims to be determined to deliver a package
to the family that had previously inhabited the home.
And it turns out one of the workers
is actually friends with one of the Klement family sons.
And after a little more discussion,
he's persuaded to provide the new address
where the Klement family resides.
- [Amory] This new property was purchased by Eichmann's wife
using her maiden name.
And they've moved to San Fernando,
which is just outside of Buenos Aires.
The address is 14 Garibaldi Street.
- [Sami] Using caution, Aharoni surveils the address.
And during his surveillance, he notices a middle-aged man
that bears a pretty striking resemblance to Adolf Eichmann.
And with this information, Aharoni contacts the Mossad
and tells them, quote, "The driver is black."
This is a code that basically tells the Mossad
that Eichmann has been found.
- [Laurence] In the spring of 1960,
the war criminal investigation that began
with a hunch from a blind attorney and
his teenage daughter reaches the desk of Israeli Prime Minister
David Ben-Guiron.
- [Kevin] With this information,
the prime minister of Israel, Ben-Gurion,
decides to send an 11-man team of Mossad agents
to Buenos Aires to capture Eichmann
and bring him back to Israel.
It's called Operation Finale.
- [Sami] The Mossad agents run surveillance
on Eichmann for two months.
And they track all of his movements
because the better they know where he goes,
where he stops, what he does during the day,
it'll be much easier to figure out
when's the best time to strike.
And they figure out he gets off the same bus
every single day and makes this short walk to his house.
And that's when they'll strike.
- [Laurence] On the evening of May 11th, 1960,
the operation unfolds like a scene from a spy novel.
- Adolf Eichmann has become very set in his daily patterns.
Every day, he climbs off of a city bus at 7:40 PM
and he follows the same path to his house
just 110 yards away.
- [Laurence] But on this night,
7:40 Passes and Eichmann's bus has yet to arrive.
- Mossad operators are waiting for him near the bus stop.
They have a limousine full of agents.
They even have a couple of guys outside of the car
who are sort of pretending to work under the hood.
There's another guy in a backup car behind them.
7:40 comes and goes, the bus doesn't come.
So, now they're confused.
This is not how they were expecting things to go down.
It's getting later and later.
And they realize, really, the longer that they sit there,
the more likely it is
that they're gonna get noticed by someone.
[pensive music]
- [Kevin] So, finally, a bus arrives.
The agent's blood pressure rises
as they know that this is the moment,
but the bus doesn't stop.
It just whizzes by.
- [Sami] The Mossad agent's probably starting
to get a little bit nervous.
What if somebody tipped off Eichmann?
So, we should abort for tonight.
Maybe we'll try again later
with the hopes that this operation will work.
But then, five minutes later, at 8:05 PM,
another bus pulls up to the bus stop.
- [Laurence] 25 minutes late,
their suspect steps off the bus.
- He starts making the walk to his street.
They're gonna let him get to his street.
And it's there that an agent named Peter Malkin
goes up to him and says, "Un momentito Señor?"
And he must know something's up
because he takes off running.
Malkin has to go and and really tackle him to the ground.
After a struggle, they drag him into the limousine.
- [Kevin] And while they're in the car, he's strangely silent.
And then suddenly, in perfect German, he says to them,
"I am resigned to my fate."
Now, before this, the Mossad agents were 99% sure
this was Eichmann.
After he says this,
they know a hundred percent they've got their man.
[dramatic music]
- [Sami] For nine tense days, the Mossad agents
keep Eichmann sequestered in a safe house
while trying to figure out the details of his extraction.
Because you have to understand,
these Mossad agents are in a sovereign nation.
They have just apprehended a citizen of that nation.
And now they're going to try
to extradite this person out of the country
without the Argentinian government knowing.
So, they have to be very, very careful
about every step that they take
because if something goes wrong,
Eichmann could be allowed to stay in Argentina
and not be extradited back to Israel.
[pensive music]
- [Katherine] What they end up doing could
be a part of a movie.
They drug him, put him in a flight crew uniform,
and take him to the airport.
They drag him along as if he's just some drunk pilot
that they're gonna put on the plane.
They're very nonchalant, laughing about this.
Here's this drunk pilot, no big deal.
This isn't Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.
This isn't a prisoner who we've drugged.
This is just some drunk flight crew member
who we're gonna take home before he gets in trouble.
They finally get to Israel.
Eichmann is caught.
He knows that he is, and he's resigned to his fate.
- [Laurence] Now, at long last,
one of the primary engineers of the Holocaust
will stand trial for his crimes.
- [Paul] Eichmann's trial commences in 1961.
And his defense essentially suggests
that he's a low ranking bureaucrat
who was merely following orders and doing his job.
However, as the trial develops, the evidence makes it clear
that Eichmann was absolutely central
to the propagation of the Holocaust.
- [Sami] Eichmann is ultimately found guilty
of war crimes against humanity, is sentenced to death,
and is hanged for his crimes on June 1st, 1962.
[dramatic music]
- Government authorities eventually took down Eichmann,
but the details of his capture remind us of the role
played by ordinary people.
The Hermanns, a blind lawyer,
and his teenage daughter with no training
were the first to truly expose
Eichmann's new life in Argentina,
and they never gave up seeking justice.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching this case closed episode
of "History's Greatest Mysteries."