Visitors are shown the original Mossad file on Eichmann – code-named ‘Dybbuk’ or evil spirit – including never before seen documents and names that led to his capture. Previously unknown details of the operation are also revealed, such as how forensic experts were able to confirm Eichmann’s identity by the shape of his ears.
Eichmann was tasked with masterminding the Third Reich’s ‘Final Solution’ in Nazi occupied Europe, a policy of systematic murder that killed six million people. He escaped capture by the Allies and fled to Argentina in 1950, having obtained a laissez-passer by duping the International Red Cross.
There he adopted the name Ricardo Klement and found a job with Mercedes-Benz.
He lived unnoticed until in 1957, his son Nick began seeing a girl named Silvia Hermann. Her father Lothar Hermann was a Holocaust survivor who became suspicious of Eichmann and dispatched a letter to his friend Fritz Bauer, the chief prosecutor in Hesse, Germany – his original letter is displayed in the exhibition.
It was Bauer who contacted the Israelis, triggering a two-year top-secret operation that led to Eichmann’s sensational capture. On May 11, 1960, seven Mossad agents waited for ‘Klement’ at the bus stop he returned to every evening from the Mercedes Benz factory.
When ambushed by the Israeli officers, Eichmann is reported to have said in German: “I accept my fate”.
At his trial in Israel, the world heard testimonies of 99 Jews subjected to horrific torture in the concentration camps of Europe and witnessed the genocide born from the ‘Final Solution’. Eichmann was hanged in May 31 1962 – the only World War II criminal to be executed in Israel.
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