page_title: Adolf Eichmann
section_title: Capture
hierarchical_section_title: Adolf Eichmann / Capture
caption_attribution_description: עברית: מכשיר טלפרינטר ששימש להעברת מברקים בין הארץ לשגרירויות בחו"לEnglish: Siemens teleprinter used to send telegrams between Israel and embassies overseas
context_page_description: Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust—the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Nazi terminology. He was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Argentina on 11 May 1960 and subsequently found guilty of war crimes in a widely publicised trial in Jerusalem, where he was executed by hanging in 1962.
  After an unremarkable school career, Eichmann briefly worked for his father's mining company in Austria, where the family had moved in 1914. He worked as a travelling oil salesman beginning in 1927, and joined both the Nazi Party and the SS in 1932. He returned to Germany in 1933, where he joined the Sicherheitsdienst; there he was appointed head of the department responsible for Jewish affairs—especially emigration, which the Nazis encouraged through violence and economic pressure.
context_section_description: Several survivors of the Holocaust dedicated themselves to finding Eichmann and other Nazis, among them Jewish Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal learned from a letter shown to him in 1953 that Eichmann had been seen in Buenos Aires, and he passed along that information to the Israeli consulate in Vienna in 1954. Eichmann's father died in 1960, and Wiesenthal made arrangements for private detectives to surreptitiously photograph members of the family; Eichmann's brother Otto was said to bear a strong family resemblance and there were no current photos of Eichmann. He provided these photographs to Mossad agents on 18 February.
  Lothar Hermann, a half-Jewish German who had emigrated to Argentina in 1938, was also instrumental in exposing Eichmann's identity. His daughter Sylvia began dating a man named Klaus Eichmann in 1956 who boasted about his father's Nazi exploits, and Hermann alerted Fritz Bauer, prosecutor-general of the state of Hesse in West Germany. Hermann then sent his daughter on a fact-finding mission; she was met at the door by Eichmann himself, who said that he was Klaus's uncle. Klaus arrived not long after, however, and addressed Eichmann as "Father". In 1957, Bauer passed along the information in person to Mossad director Isser Harel, who assigned operatives to undertake surveillance, but no concrete evidence was initially found.
  Harel dispatched Shin Bet chief interrogator Zvi Aharoni to Buenos Aires on 1 March 1960, and he was able to confirm Eichmann's identity after several weeks of investigation. Argentina had a history of turning down extradition requests for Nazi criminals, so rather than filing a probably futile request for extradition, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made the decision that Eichmann should be captured and brought to Israel for trial. Harel arrived in May 1960 to oversee the capture. Mossad operative Rafi Eitan was named leader of the eight-man team, most of whom were Shin Bet agents.
  The team captured Eichmann on 11 May 1960 near his home on Garibaldi Street in San Fernando, Buenos Aires, an industrial community 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of the centre of Buenos Aires. The agents had arrived in April and observed his routine for many days, noting that he arrived home from work by bus at about the same time every evening. They planned to seize him when he was walking beside an open field from the bus stop to his house. The plan was almost abandoned on the designated day when Eichmann was not on the bus that he usually took home, but he got off another bus about half an hour later. Mossad agent Peter Malkin engaged him, asking him in Spanish if he had a moment. Eichmann was frightened and attempted to leave, but two more Mossad men came to Malkin's aid. The three wrestled Eichmann to the ground and, after a struggle, moved him to a car where they hid him on the floor under a blanket.
  Eichmann was taken to one of several Mossad safe houses that had been set up by the team. He was held there for nine days, during which time his identity was double-checked and confirmed. During these days, Harel tried to locate Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor from Auschwitz, as the Mossad had information that he was also living in Buenos Aires. He was hoping to bring Mengele back to Israel on the same flight. However, Mengele had already left his last known residence in the city, and Harel had no further leads, so the plans for his capture were abandoned. Eitan told the Haaretz newspaper in 2008 that they decided not to pursue Mengele as it might have jeopardised the Eichmann operation.
  Near midnight on 20 May, Eichmann was sedated by an Israeli doctor on the Mossad team and dressed as a flight attendant. He was smuggled out of Argentina aboard the same El Al Bristol Britannia aircraft that had carried Israel's delegation a few days earlier to the official 150th anniversary celebration of Argentina's independence from Spain. There was a tense delay at the airport while the flight plan was approved, then the plane took off for Israel, stopping in Dakar, Senegal to refuel. They ar
caption: The teleprinter that was used to send messages regarding the capture to Israel's diplomatic missions around the world
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