Tel Aviv (dpa) – Documents yellowed with age, a scuffed black briefcase with a hole in it, enabling the camera displayed next to it to take photographs, bogus passports. On their own, these are perhaps nothing more than testimony of how simple, almost – at least compared to the present day – primitive, spying and spycraft used to be. But taken together, they tell the story – or as much as is allowed to be shown – of how, in 1960, Israel captured Adolf Eichmann. As Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews during World War 2, it was Eichmann who organized the transport of the victims to the death camps. The more than 100 documents, artifacts, and photographs form “Operation Finale: The capture of Adolf Eichmann,” an exhibition at Tel Aviv's Beit Hatfutsot Museum of the Jewish People, which opened to the public on Friday. The display, says Beit Hatfutsot CEO Avinoam Armoni, “is not about the Holocaust. It is about justice.” The exhibition was put together by the museum in collaboration with Israel's Mossad intelligence service, which allowed some of its hitherto secret and classified documents to go on display. It shows that the operation to capture Eichmann was complex and intricate. Once the go-ahead to snatch the wanted war criminal was given, nothing was left to chance, as evidenced by the false passports, the photographs painstakingly combed over to verify identification, the hypodermic needle used to sedate the prey, even a cumbersome machine used to make false number plates. It was a special Mossad team that snatched Eichmann off a Buenos Aires street in May 1960, and spirited him to Israel, where he stood trial, and was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The capture of Eichmann was the culmination of a manhunt lasting years, and among the exhibits on display is the Mossad file on the man codenamed “Dybbuk” – a Hebrew-derived word meaning “malevolent wandering spirit.” Although captured in 1945, Eichmann managed to escape, and using a passport supplied by the Red Cross, made his way to Argentina, under the name “Ricardo Klement.” Information on his whereabouts began trickling into Israel in the early 1950′s, but the Mossad lacked the resources and experience needed to track him down and capture him. In 1957 Dr Fritz Bauer, the chief prosecutor of the Hessen region in Germany, received information of Eichmann's possible whereabouts. Fearing – perhaps correctly – that this information would not have the desired result if given to the West German authorities, he passed it on to Israel. Mossad agent Zvi Aharoni went to Argentina, located the now infamous house on Garibaldi Street (where the wanted man was living), and, using a camera concealed in a briefcase, returned with photographs of Ricardo Klement. In Israel, forensic experts checked the photographs of Klement with those of Eichmann – and, by comparing the ears, concluded that the two men were in fact the same person. On May 11, 1960, a seven-man Mossad team snatched Eichmann as he returned from his job at a Mercedes Benz factory. On display at the exhibition is a bronze cast of the gloves agent Zvi Malkin used to put his hand in Eichmann's mouth to prevent him from biting on a cyanide capsule he may have had hidden there. Personal effects found on Eichmann's body – a comb, a pocket knife and a plastic cigarette holder – are also exhibited. Eichmann was kept hidden in a safe house for nine days, before being brought to Israel for judgement. Standing in a corner at the exhibition is the famous bullet-proof glass booth in which Eichmann sat during his 1961 trial. A nearby video replays the opening speech of prosecutor Gideon Hausner, with its chilling words, “In this place, I stand before you … to serve as the prosecutor of Adolf Eichmann. I do not stand alone. With me here, at this very moment, are six million prosecutors.” Eichmann was found guilty and sentenced to death in December 1961; sentence was carried out in May 1962. Wandering through the exhibition at a special pre-opening event Thursday night, was an old man, indistinguishable from thousands of other elderly religious Israeli men. Shalom Nagar was one of the men who guarded Eichmann in his Israeli prison. He is also the one who acted as hangman when sentence was carried out. Peering intently at the artifacts, he recalled the events of 50 years ago, and reflected on how it felt to carry out the court's sentence. “He deserved it,” he said simply. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/Xcife Tags: Eichmann, Israel, Kidnapping, Nazi Section: Features, Palestine
