|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Dealing With Eichmann
| Article
# : |
20709 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1992 |
2,547 Words |
| Author
: |
Dennis Eisenberg
Dennis Eisenberg is an international journalist whose articles
have appeared in leading newspapers and magazines around the
world. He lives in Jerusalem. |
As he lay stretched flat in the muddy ditch, his binoculars trained on the man who called himself Ricardo Clement, Peter Malkin felt that his Mossad bossed had made a terrible mistake.
Malkin watched as Clement played joyfully with his bond, blue-eyed son Nicholas in the living room of his home. "How could a human being who loves a child so deeply be Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi chief who was responsible for killing one and a quarter million babies and youngsters in the gas chambers and extermination camps?" he kept asking himself.
"There must be something wrong. This cannot be the mass murderer we have sworn to punish for masterminding the deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust."
Eichmann had kept his tracks so well hidden that for many years the Israelis could find no trace of him. Then Mossad had a stroke of luck. And there was an element of sweet justice in how Eichmann's hiding place came to light. One day Nicholas came home to tell his father that he had fallen in love with a girl at school. "Her name is Sarah. She is Jewish," said the youngster in a matter-of-fact tone.
Sarah in turn told her father that she liked a boy called Nicholas Clement. "But his real family name is Eichmann," she added confidentially. "It's a secret." Sarah's father immediately guessed that this might be the Nazi mass killer but said nothing to his daughter. Instead, he contacted the German authorities, who passed on the information to Mossad.
'Ricardo' Was The Sought-After Man
All the evidence the secret service had accumulated indicated that the ten-man-strong, handpicked squad of Mossad operatives, including a doctor and master forger, had tracked down the right person. Malkin was given the task of seizing "Ricardo Clement" as he walked home from the nearest bus station to his house. Since fleeing from Germany after the war, he had been living under cover in Garibaldi Street, in a run-down suburb of Buenos Aires.
"Putting my hand over his mouth--the same mouth that had ordered the deaths of millions, including my sister and her children--in order to gag him as planned, was going to be one of the most difficult tasks of my whole life. The thought of feeling his hot breath, his saliva on my bare skin, filled me with such revulsion that I
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
