"When you say 'never again,' you have to tell what happened." — Avner Avraham, retired Mossad agent
On May 23, 1960, Ben-Gurion announced to the world that the notorious Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, was now in Israel. It had been a long journey to get to this point, and still the journey wasn’t over yet.
It began in 1945. The war was ending, and the allies were marching into Berlin, capturing Nazis along the way. They were thrown into makeshift POW camps while the allies decided what the hell they were going to do with all of them. Never before had there been such an evil regime. Never before had there been such senseless death. Now what? They couldn’t condemn all the German soldiers to death. Given the omnipresence of the Nazi party in Germany, this would only add genocide to genocide. So they smoked out the big names. Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and two other generals committed suicide before the allies got to them. The others, 24 in total, were tried at Nuremberg. But they missed one. In the course of the Nuremberg trials, there was one name that kept coming up in Nazi testimony: Adolf Eichmann.
Eichmann’s role in the Nazi war machinery was to arrange for the transport of Jews in Germany, Austria, Poland, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Italy and Hungary, to concentration camps throughout Nazi territory. In other words, his job was essentially to collect all the Jews in Europe and send them to their death. Yet he didn’t really see himself as guilty. If anything, he wrote, he was guilty of “complicity in killing,” and this was only when judging himself with "merciless severity." Yet he must have known he’d done something wrong, because he’d been on the run ever since Germany lost the war.
He escaped an allied P.O.W camp before they discovered his true identity, and hid out in the woods of northern Germany, working as a lumberjack. Meanwhile, the allies were liberating European Jews from concentration camps. Many were the sole surviving members of their family. They would never again feel safe in Germany, Poland or Hungary. Europe was no longer their home, so they moved to Palestine. It was out of this environment that the State of Israel came to fruition.
It was 1948, and Ben-Gurion was named the first Prime Minister. Soon they were fielding calls from Holocaust survivors and vigilante Nazi hunters in Europe looking for justice. One of the first calls came from Simon Weisenthal in 1953, who heard that Eichmann had been sighted in Argentina. Weisenthal had almost captured Eichmann himself, before Eichmann obtained a fake ID card and Red Cross passport in Italy and sailed across the Atlantic to Argentina. Unfortunately, Israel didn’t have the resources to pursue Eichmann so early in their statehood, and Weisenthal didn’t have an address.
The next call came from German prosecutor, Fritz Bauer, in 1957. Bauer heard that Eichmann was in Argentina from Lothar Hermann, a concerned father who’d lost his eyesight and immigrated to Argentina after receiving a beating from the Gestapo in Germany. He was half Jewish. Lothar’s daughter Sylvia had recently brought home a young man she was dating to meet her father. The man’s name was Nick Eichmann. He was Adolf Eichmann’s oldest son, and he had no idea that Lothar was half Jewish when he told him, “It would have been better if the Germans had finished their job of extermination.” As they say, loose lips sink ships. Lothar called the right man — Bauer didn’t stop until Ben-Gurion ordered the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, to investigate the matter.
It became the largest Mossad operation in history, and one of the most exciting real-life international espionage stories ever. This is the story being told in Avner Avraham’s Operation Finale — the story of how the Mossad located and captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, and brought him back to Israel to stand trial for his crimes. The story is so good, they’re making a movie out of it, with Avraham consulting (Operation Finale the movie is due out in September 2018).
“I believe that the story is not only for the Jewish people,” says Avraham, “I think the story is for all the people around the world, including Arabs, because the Holocaust is the worst example of genocide. And there are things that happen today that are very close to genocide — Syria for example.”
Avraham spoke to all but two of the Mossad agents involved in Eichmann’s capture and delivery to Israel. Through his communication with the surviving agents, Avraham was able to piece together a story from artifacts in the Mossad archives, which then became the traveling museum exhibit, Operation Finale. The exhibit has been so successful that Avraham was asked to establish a new Mossad museum in Israel. Since then, the exhibit has traveled to Jewish Heritage Museums in Tel Aviv, Cleveland, Chicago and New York City. Now it’s in St. Petersburg at the Florida Holocaust Museum.
The content is original, and Avraham is constantly adding things to the exhibit. A collector recently gave him a copy of the Eichmann trial on vinyl, and the records are now part of the exhibit. The exhibit is so large now that the Florida Holocaust Museum is the first museum in the U.S. with enough temporary gallery space to accommodate the entire exhibit — others could only show a portion of the artifacts.
Artifacts like these give the display energy, says Avraham.
“When you show, like, a camera they actually used to take the first pictures of Eichmann, you know that it’s a piece of history," he says. "And when you put it all together, it’s better than an exhibit with pictures only.”
The exhibit is a combination of pictures, background information, forged passports, spy tools, trial coverage and art. Avraham’s favorite artifacts are the original protocol they used to identify Eichmann, the letter Lothar sent to Fritz Baeur, and the Israeli passport the Mossad agents made for Eichmann’s trip to Israel. It’s very symbolic, says Avraham. The name the agents gave him, Zeev Zichroni, literally translates to “wolf memory” in Hebrew.
After the agents captured Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel, Israeli police helped prepare for the trial. A new police unit, Bureau 06, was created for this purpose. They “went on a facts finding mission, collecting maps, witnesses, death camps, documents, proofs, everything,” says Avraham, “This research was very important in telling the story of the holocaust.”
During the trial, the judges were presented with this new evidence of the Holocaust and Eichmann’s role in it. Jewish witnesses gave testimony to the horrors they experienced, with Eichmann sitting in the same room, right across from them. Their courage gave other Holocaust survivors the strength to speak out. For years they had remained silent, not wanting to relive the past, and afraid that others wouldn’t believe them.
“The neighbors didn’t believe them. They didn’t believe themselves with these crazy stories,” says Avraham, “And suddenly they start hearing the same stories, and they start talking with the second generation. That’s why it was very important.”
Not only was it important for Holocaust survivors and the Jewish community, but it was also important in writing “the book of the Holocaust.” The Holocaust is a chapter in the history of the world, and the Eichmann trial had a worldwide audience. For months, they taped the trial in Israel — four hours every day. It was cut down to two hours in London, and then sent by plane around the world. In the United States, they broadcasted two hours every day.
![Adolf Eichmann on trial in Israel. The bulletproof glass booth he is sitting in, made to prevent assassination attempts during the trial, will be on display at the Florida Holocaust Museum. - By Courtesy of Israel Government Press Office [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://media1.cltampa.com/cltampa/imager/u/original/12008137/adolf_eichmann_takes_notes_during_his_trial_ushmm_65268.5a7815f178479.png)
None of this would have happened if the Mossad hadn’t broken international law to retrieve Eichmann from Argentina. “Before the international law, there is the law of the human being,” says Avraham, “And that’s why it was right for the Israeli government to take an Argentinian citizen — he was a fake citizen because he entered with a fake passport, and the Argentinian government gave him a local ID — but it was more important than the international law. Because of the capture, the Argentinian government sent our ambassador home, and we got a bad connection with Argentina, but in just a few months it became normal.”
The capture and the trial were never meant to serve as legal precedent. They were a much-needed solution to an uncommon problem. Ben-Gurion never intended to carry out another operation like this ever again, according to Avraham.
“In another operation, where the Mossad killed a Nazi in South America, it was just to show to the Nazis an example,” says Avraham, “We can get you even if you are at the other side of the world. We will find you even if you are living undercover in the woods. We will find you and we will kill you, and we will never forget and forgive.”
Read Jen Ring's Seven Questions: Avner Avraham here.
