With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Israeli Spy Recounts Daring Mission When He Captured Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Architect of the 'Final Solution'

Holocaust survivors often refer to the "banality of evil" when describing how remarkably ordinary even the highest-ranking Nazis seemed after their capture for aiding the mass murder of more than 6 million Jews during World War II.

At a gathering for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, Rafi Eitan looks like any other aging great-uncle: hearing aids, thick glasses, and a gray sweater under his blazer. His demeanor and appearance is much more fitting an aging insurance salesman than James Bond. The casual observer would give him the highest compliment for an intelligence field operative: There is simply no way he could be a spy.

Eitan led the Israeli Mossad team that captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, on a street in Argentina and brought him to Israel for trial in 1960.

Famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal received a postcard from a friend who said he saw Eichmann on the street, and slowly Israel's intelligence services began closing in on him.

For months, surveillance teams trailed Eichmann, trying to match pictures of him to those from his days in the SS.

Finally, they sent word back to Tel Aviv that they thought they had their man....


Read entire article at Fox News