Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi

"THE ACCUSED, DURING THE PERIOD FROM 1939 TO 1945, TOGETHER WITH OTHERS, CAUSED THE DEATHS OF MILLIONS OF JEWS AS THE PERSONS WHO WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PLAN OF THE NAZIS FOR THE EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS, A PLAN KNOWN BY ITS TITLE *"THE FINAL SOLUTION OF THE JEWISH QUESTION.*"... this was part of the indictment brought by the State Of Israel against Adolf Eichmann on April 11, 1961 at 8:55 A.M. This intricately... historically detailed book tracks Eichmann from his days during the Holocaust as he despicably and callously... and with great personal pride... sets forth to wipe out every Jew in Europe. In a Hungarian ghetto Eichmann announced to Jewish prisoners: "JEWS: YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. WE WANT ONLY THE BEST FOR YOU. YOU'LL LEAVE HERE SHORTLY AND BE SENT TO VERY FINE PLACES INDEED." Those Jews were then forced into freight cars in which one entire village of one-hundred-three Jews were crammed into a single car that would have fit eight cows." The train of course led to one of many concentration camps where families were separated... and most... never saw each other again... as the chimneys of the crematoriums belched the smoke of Jewish death. At the war's end Eichmann and many other Nazi's escaped from Germany and some were helped on their escape route by the Vatican. The author comprehensively re-creates the many twists and turns that lead to Eichmann's numerous living arrangements... under many different aliases... that eventually culminate in Argentina under the name of Ricardo Klement. During this time period the Nuremberg Trials take place... and there is a great deal of damning testimony regarding Eichmann that will be used against him down the road... such as the testimony by Lieutenant Colonel Brookhart who when asked "WAS ANY QUESTION ASKED BY YOU AS TO THE MEANING OF THE WORDS "FINAL SOLUTION" AS USED IN THE ORDER?" Brookhart answered: EICHMANN WENT ON TO EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT WAS MEANT BY THIS. HE SAID THAT THE PLANNED BIOLOGICAL ANNIHILATION OF THE JEWISH RACE IN THE EASTERN TERRITORIES WAS DISGUISED BY THE CONCEPT AND WORDING "FINAL SOLUTION." "Was anything said by you to Eichmann in regard to the power given him under this order?" "EICHMANN TOLD ME THAT WITHIN THE RSHA HE PERSONALLY WAS ENTRUSTED WITH THE EXECUTION OF THIS ORDER." After almost fifteen-years of false leads and near misses Israel finally tracks Eichmann down... and here is where the author and story is relentless. Israel and the Mossad knew Argentina would not extradite Eichmann to Israel so Israel had to sneak an entire capture team into Argentina. The agents had to have multiple fake identities... one to get in from other countries... one to get out... and all the paperwork that would entail. They couldn't come in together... and how would they get him out? El Al airlines didn't fly into Argentina and it would be too risky by sea. When they captured Eichmann they had to keep him in a "safe-house" until the date of their ultra-

Two or three generations have now grown up to whom the name Adolf Eichmann, and indeed the whole ghastly 12-year Nazi era, are just chapters in history textbooks. It is good, though, to be reminded of these horrors and to draw lessons from them. Journalist and author Neal Bascomb has accomplished both ends in this narrative of the escape, pursuit, capture, trial and execution of Eichmann, the Nazi officer charged with carrying out the "final solution to the Jewish problem." That "final solution," of course, involved the roundup, deportation to concentration camps and summary execution of as many Jews as possible in Nazi-occupied central Europe. The now-accepted figure of six million victims has never been seriously challenged. Eichmann escaped from Germany in the chaotic last days of the defeated Third Reich and was sent under an assumed identity to Argentina, a country whose government and population were both infested with Nazi sympathizers. He hid there successfully for 15 years, joined by his wife and sons, keeping out of the limelight by holding a series of nondescript jobs. The victorious Allied governments, preoccupied with postwar occupation problems, had no real interest in tracking him down. Private-enterprise Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal worked fruitlessly at finding him, dealing with unfounded rumors that he was living in places like Kuwait, New Zealand, the United States and even Israel. Israel did not exist when Eichmann dutifully supervised sending those millions to the gas chambers. But the Israeli intelligence service, of course, had special motivation for going after him. They assembled, from within their own ranks and elsewhere, a band of a dozen expert operatives who went to work in deep secrecy. The group included a master forger, a doctor, an expert in disguises, people who knew Argentina well, an experienced interrogator of prisoners, and people with both the physical strength and the will to subdue Eichmann when the time came. Most team members had themselves been scarred one way or another by the Holocaust. It was a ticklish business --- in effect kidnapping a German citizen on Argentine soil and spiriting him off in secrecy for trial in Israel. It involved forged documents, deceptive identities, false cover stories, the whole repertoire of cloak-and-dagger tactics. They even developed a means of instantly changing license plates on the cars they were using in order to elude pursuit. Inevitably, a key element was sheer luck. The big break in locating Eichmann came when one of his sons bragged to a girlfriend about his father's major role in the Nazi death machine, not realizing that the girl's father was half Jewish and a passionate Nazi-hater. Learning about this, the man alerted the Nazi-hunting network in Europe, and the chase was on. Neal Bascomb tells this story in straightforward, almost journalistic style. He has a large cast of characters to manipulate --- the pursuit team itself, the several European

I loved Hunting Eichmann. Bascomb has taken a subject that itself is both universally recognizable and relatively interesting, but has taken it to the next level by crafting a narrative that jumps off the page and keeps you up reading in a way that rivals the best spy thrillers. He has also researched the heck out of this - talking with people in four languages on three continents and getting the fascinating first-hand details that make a very good book into an unquestionably great one. One of the two or three best books I've read in the last year. Highly recommend.

I'm a great fan of historical narratives, but it's rare that an author has access to the primary research that allows him to inject the book with real novelistic detail. Bascomb interviewed Mossad agents, El Al staff and combed through the archives of the CIA and other agencies, unearthing all kinds of new, exciting information, including the passport Eichmann used to escape Europe under the name Klement. While all this information in and of itself is interesting (and newsworthy), in Bascomb's hands it becomes the foundation for a rich, nuanced, taut thriller with relentless pacing. I could not put this book down, even though the conclusion is well-known to the world. Part of that was because Bascomb did a fantastic job of bringing the "characters" to life. The Mossad agents were all survivors in one way or another and their personal motivations and struggles were imprinted on every page of the manhunt, capture, and deliverance of the monster known as the architect of the Holocaust. I give this book my highest recommendation. I hope there's a movie, too! I assume they'll be one -- you can certainly see it in the book.

Bascomb's "Hunting Eichmann" is a revelation, a light shone in dark and hidden corners, for those of us who were electrified by the news of his capture back in 1960. Israel was little more than a decade old at that point, and the stunning victory of June 1967 remained in the future. Bascomb's access to the dwindling band of operatives who planned and executed this master stroke of international justice is a real service to modern history. These actors were both dedicated and self-effacing in their service to justice for the slaughtered millions. It is good to know their names and see their faces. Their persistence in the face of many false trails and of skepticism that justice would or could ever be done, their self-control in bringing Eichmann to trial, the loathing and dread they felt in his presence, banal as that presence was (whether taking his picture in close-up surveillance or sitting next to him on the El Al escape flight) -- these and much more are compellingly conveyed by Bascomb. I was particularly struck by Bascomb's ability to hold so many narrative threads in his hand and to play them out so clearly and in a way that left the reader engaged. One got a sense of both operational detail and high politics: The dreary, cold, rainy surveillance outpost on the railroad embankment above Eichmann's house; dealing with capricious banana-republic police; pushing the technical limits of the aircraft that spirited the criminal out of Buenos Aires; the scenes with Ben-Gurion and Meir; the Nazi underworld and its enablers in Peronist Argentina; the indifference of the Adenauer government in Bonn (indifference to everything but maintaining its myth of de-Nazification); the high dudgeon in Germany and Argentina over the supposed defects of a trial that neither state had any interest in initiating; and finally Eichmann's trial and the execution of sentence and disposal of Eichmann's corpse -- one could go on, but the point is that Bascomb has gathered these disparate element, structured them as a compelling narrative, and grips his reader from the very first page. I had the simultaneous feelings that I wanted to read pell-mell to the end and at the same time I didn't want to reach the final page and the end of the book's revelations of what really happened. In a larger sense, Bascomb has written an overdue tribute to these daring Israelis and their personal self-restraint (many lost their families in the Holocaust) and to the dignified sense of high justice the Israeli State brought to the whole affair. He does not use colorful or emotive prose, but lets the facts speak for themselves -- speak they do. Please don't be put off by S.McGee's review, which seemed to me to miss most of the book's many virtues. (McGee is, in fact, right to use the words "subjective" and "quibble" about his review of the book.) I'm glad I read the book before I read that review, because it might have put me off.