Killing the SS Read online

Sylvia’s thoughts are of a different nature. She no longer has any feelings for Nick. His display of anger terrifies her and she is wary of further outbursts. But it is vital she ask him one simple question before they say their good-byes.

  “Why do you call your uncle ‘Father’?” Sylvia asks.

  * * *

  As expected, it doesn’t take long for Dr. Felix Shinnar to pass Fritz Bauer’s information about Eichmann to his superior in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They in turn contact the director of the Mossad.

  That man is Isser Harel. Russian by birth, he is small in stature and his large ears are his most distinguishing personal feature. Harel is Byelorussian by birth. He immigrated to Palestine at the age of sixteen, traveling by ship from Genoa, carrying a pistol concealed in a loaf of bread for protection. He is married, with two children, and enjoys reading detective novels in his spare time. His work is top secret, as is his profession: Harel’s neighbors have no idea that he is one of the most powerful men in Israel.

  Under normal circumstances, the director would put little credence in yet another suspicious Eichmann sighting. “We had never succeeded in verifying any of the so-called reliable evidence of people who claimed to have seen him,” Harel will later write. But even though Fritz Bauer refuses to reveal the name of his source, something about the prosecutor’s claim rings true: “Instinct told me this was no rumor plucked out of thin air.”

  Israel’s legislature, known as the Knesset, passed a law in 1950 ordering the prosecution of Nazi war criminals and their collaborators. Yet Harel has just one man on his staff focused on arresting these murderers. Rather than add to his burden, Harel sets out to educate himself, ordering every available file on Eichmann delivered to his desk. One of his habits is to catalog information on small cards. When the files are in his possession, Harel spends an entire night making his notes. “In my mind’s eyes,” Harel will write, “an image took shape, the image of an archfiend whose vicious crimes were unprecedented in the annals of humanity, a man on whose shoulders rested the direct responsibility for the butchery of millions.”

  Harel became Mossad director in 1952. Since that time, attitudes about Nazi war criminals have shifted. In Germany, there is currently talk of commuting the sentences of those convicted at the Nuremberg Trials. Part of the problem is with the Jews themselves—few Holocaust survivors wish to discuss those horrible years. Their silence only adds to the belief that the past should be forgotten.

  “People were tired of atrocity stories,” he will later reflect. “Their one desire was to dismiss those unspeakable happenings from their minds; they maintained that, in any event, there was no punishment on earth to fit the perpetration of outrages of such magnitude, and they were reconciled to the violation of law and the perversion of justice.”

  Only one war crimes trial has been conducted in Israel. Ironically, it focused on a Jewish-Hungarian journalist accused of collaborating with Adolf Eichmann. The residue of that inquiry is still fresh in Harel’s memory. Rudolf Kastner, as the individual was known, was convicted of helping the Nazis, but that conviction was overturned. Then, just six months ago, Kastner was assassinated in Tel Aviv by a three-man hit squad associated with the radical militia group dedicated to avenging the Holocaust. Sadly, Kastner was not entirely innocent of all collaboration charges, but this was necessary to brazenly negotiate the freedom of more than sixteen hundred Hungarian Jews with Adolf Eichmann. These men, women, and children were smuggled out of the country in June 1944, arriving safely in Switzerland after a long and perilous journey.

  Kastner’s trial and subsequent assassination reveals the deep divide in Israel concerning war crimes. Those he had smuggled out of Hungary were among the wealthiest Jews in the country, willing to pay the Nazis dearly in exchange for their lives. Indeed, the price for a space inside the thirty-five railway cars that would become known as the “Kastner train” was a fortune in gold, diamonds, and cash. Poor Jews, lacking such resources, were instead sent to the death camps. Rather than seeing Kastner as heroic, one prosecutor stated that he “sold his soul to the devil” in negotiating with Eichmann. The fact that Kastner and his family secured spots on the train to Switzerland reinforced the view that he was nothing more than a selfish collaborator.6

  The guilty verdict in Kastner’s trial was so contentious that it brought down the Israeli government. Rather than Jews working together to arrest Nazi war criminals, the Jewish people are fighting against one another, arguing over what constitutes a good and a bad Jew.

  But Harel will not allow justice to be perverted any longer. Vetting incoming refugees may be a more functional use of Mossad’s resources, but bringing “the head butcher” to justice is the morally proper thing to do—despite what public opinion might believe.

  Thus, with Fritz Bauer’s intelligence in hand, Isser Harel adds a new priority to the Mossad mandate.

  “I resolved that if Eichmann were alive, come hell or high water, he’d be caught.”

  7

  OCTOBER 11, 1959

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  DAWN

  The news could not be more devastating.

  As the sun rises over this beachfront Mediterranean city, Mossad director Isser Harel stares at the morning headlines. Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv, Israel’s largest daily newspapers, are both claiming that Adolf Eichmann has been found. According to German Nazi hunter Erwin Schule, attorney general of the city of Ludwigsburg in the south German state of Baden-Württemberg, Eichmann has been spotted, alive and well. But he is not in Argentina, as Fritz Bauer has insisted. Instead, the murderer is in Kuwait, working as an oil company engineer.

  The Mossad headquarters are in a section of Tel Aviv known as Sarona, first settled by Germans in 1871. The buildings were used as a military base during World War II, with a network of underground tunnels connecting the stone houses. Now, the complex is known as the Kirya, the provisional capital of Israel, housing the Israel Defense Forces and other government buildings. There is no sign advertising that this red-roofed building is the home of Israeli intelligence. It looks like any other modest structure. Harel’s office is not elaborate, decorated with just a desk, phone, conference table, and small safe. But the future of Israel is as dependent upon the handful of men and women working in this stone building as it is upon the nearby military base.

  Harel is unsure whether the rumors about Eichmann are true. Though his team of spies has not yet pinpointed the Nazi’s exact location, he strongly believes Eichmann to be somewhere in Argentina—not Kuwait. Harel clings to two pieces of evidence that support this theory: the first is that Sylvia Hermann definitely knows a young man by the name of Nick Eichmann, whose age and physical description match those of Adolf Eichmann’s oldest son. She claims to have visited his home in Buenos Aires, where she believes she has seen the war criminal face-to-face.

  The second indicator is that Vera Eichmann and her three sons abruptly departed their home in Austria in 1952. Clearly on the run and trying to hide her tracks, Vera and the boys made their way to Argentina. This should be enough evidence for Isser Harel to launch a major undercover investigation into Adolf Eichmann’s whereabouts.

  The truth, however, is that Isser Harel no longer knows what to believe about Eichmann’s location.

  The killer’s trail has gone stone-cold.

  * * *

  Years later, when the Israeli government lifts the vow of secrecy and allows him to tell his story in full, Isser Harel will write of his unrelenting zeal in chasing down Adolf Eichmann. But that is an exaggeration. Lacking the finances and manpower to investigate Fritz Bauer’s initial tip in 1957, Harel waits four months before sending a man to investigate 4261 Chacabuco Street, Eichmann’s purported home in the Buenos Aires suburbs.

  Upon tracking down the address, Mossad agent Emanuel Talmor is stunned that the residence is not a palatial mansion but instead a two-story apartment building.

  As a way of proving his theory about Eichmann’s location correct
, the German prosecutor reluctantly reveals to Isser Harel and the Mossad the name of his undercover source: Lothar Hermann.

  Two months later, in March 1958, Israeli agents once again attempt to locate Eichmann at the Chacabuco address. They do not see any physical sign of the SS killer and arrive at the same conclusion as Agent Tamor: a powerful Nazi like Eichmann would never reside in a run-down apartment.

  However, the two men—one Mossad, the other a policeman working in Argentina as a member of Interpol—take the investigation one step further by making contact with Lothar Hermann. Both men are astounded that he cannot see, and are equally impressed by the concentration camp survivor’s willingness to take great personal risks, at his own expense, to locate Adolf Eichmann. If Hermann’s name ever became known to the Nazi factions residing undercover in Argentina, the blind man’s life would be in danger.

  Yet Hermann has made a crucial mistake that undermines his theory about Eichmann’s whereabouts. Up until this point in the investigation, Hermann has shown himself to be a very capable detective. With Sylvia’s assistance, he has done a thorough search of property records in the provincial capital at La Plata. He has learned that the home on 4261 Chacabuco Street is divided into two apartments. The owner is an Austrian named Francisco Schmidt who had come to Argentina after the war. Hermann had heard a rumor that Schmidt actually arrived by submarine, which would have made him a very high-ranking individual.

  The property was purchased on August 14, 1947. Each apartment has its own electricity meter. One electric bill is sent to a tenant named Dagoto. The other is sent to the name Klement.

  This is where Hermann blunders. Based on Francisco Schmidt’s alleged Austrian heritage, Hermann deduces that he is in fact Adolf Eichmann. But one look at Schmidt’s identity card would reveal that he looks nothing at all like Adolf Eichmann.

  Rather than investigate whether or not the individuals living under the names Klement or Dagoto bear a likeness to Eichmann, and not being able to see these individuals himself, the blind man chooses to ignore his daughter’s first-person encounter with the man whom Nick Eichmann called “Father.” In an enormous lapse of logic, Lothar Hermann assures Israeli investigators that Francisco Schmidt is Adolf Eichmann. The two names on the electric meters are false, he claims, meant to conceal Eichmann’s identity. Hermann explains the discrepancy by explaining what he believes to be true: that the SS murderer has undergone enormous amounts of plastic surgery to change his appearance.

  “Francisco Schmidt,” Lothar Hermann assures the Israelis, “is the man we want.”

  But Lothar Hermann has made the same elemental mistake committed by Israeli investigators: he assumes Eichmann to be wealthy. The stories about the Kastner train are well known, as is the great wealth paid to Eichmann in exchange for letting Jews escape Hungary. It never crosses Hermann’s mind that Eichmann would be the tenant, not the owner.

  When the Mossad follows up, they discover that Francisco Schmidt does not reside on Chacabuco Street. When the Israelis locate Schmidt, they see no evidence of a wife and sons the same ages as Eichmann’s.

  “These findings damaged Hermann’s trustworthiness irretrievably,” Isser Harel will write.

  So in March 1958, less than a year after his first meeting with Fritz Bauer, Harel dropped the case, citing lack of progress. By August of that year, Israeli agents were told to cease all contact with Lothar Hermann.

  “The Mossad file on Eichmann was deposited in the archives,” one fellow Mossad agent will remember bitterly. “Even Bauer’s attempts to have the case reopened did not help.”

  Now the news about Adolf Eichmann being in Kuwait nineteen months after the case was closed troubles Harel deeply. It is sure to get picked up by the wire services, where it will quickly flash around the world. Wherever he might be, Eichmann himself may read the dispatches and go deeper into hiding. The Mossad might never again come so close to finding him. On the other hand, if Eichmann believes investigators are looking for him in Kuwait instead of Argentina, he may adopt a false sense of security. After careful deliberation, Isser Harel decides that this morning’s headline is actually good news.

  The greater problem is Eichmann’s notoriety. He is more than just another Nazi on the run. The fact that he makes headlines after more than a dozen years in hiding is proof. Adolf Eichmann is a symbol of Nazi bloodlust, abhorrent to peace-loving people everywhere but an inspiration to those who practice a manifesto of racism and hatred. The Israeli government and the media have begun to demand Eichmann’s capture, if only to stem a global rise in pro-Nazi sympathy.

  In Germany, throughout the late 1950s, radical groups trying to revive the Nazi movement are spreading hatred against the Jews. The swastika, the emblem of Nazi power that was banned after the war, is once again on display. Former SS soldiers in large numbers are escaping Nazi hunters by joining the French Foreign Legion to wage war in Indochina.1

  Isser Harel puts down his paper and sips his coffee. In order to counter the Fascists, Mossad needs to strike a crushing blow. But finding Eichmann appears to be an impossibility. It would take extraordinary new evidence to convince Harel to reopen the case.

  Of course, Adolf Eichmann is not the only Nazi on the run. Mossad would do well to find the location of the heinous Dr. Josef Mengele, who is also rumored to be living in Argentina.

  There also may be a third notorious Nazi in Argentina. As recently as a year ago, Adolf Hitler’s personal secretary, Martin Bormann, was allegedly spotted in Bariloche, a Nazi haven on the shores of Lago Nahuel Huapi in the Andes Mountains. The brutal Bormann was Adolf Hitler’s handpicked successor to lead the Nazi Party’s resurgence after the war. British intelligence agents will soon file a report stating that Bormann has successfully fled to the Argentine city of Posadas, having arrived by submarine on July 29, 1945. Between 1945 and 1952 the British spy agency MI5 was overwhelmed with reports of Bormann sightings around the world, largely from agents trying to make names for themselves. “He has been seen riding the Loch Ness monster,” one British agent finally joked in exasperation, recognizing that Mengele would be the world’s next big news story. Sir Percy Sillitoe, director general of the security service, put little credence in the Bormann reports and they eventually came to an end.

  Isser Harel knows that capturing Eichmann, Mengele, or Bormann would be an enormous triumph.

  Capturing all three, however, would be even better.

  But first, Harel must find them.

  * * *

  It is May 1, 1945. Berlin is lost. No German is safe. The Soviet army terrorizes the city, raping and looting as they battle their way toward the ultimate prize: the Reichstag. Capturing the vaunted seat of Nazi power and Adolf Hitler himself will avenge Germany’s invasion of Russia five years ago. The streets are nothing but rubble; full of corpses and waste. Dead German soldiers hang by their necks from street corner lampposts, executed by fanatical Nazis for retreating. The Berlin skyline is a haze of smoke and fire, the thud of artillery fire never ending.

  Inside Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker, the party is coming to an end. Ever since the Führer committed suicide two days ago, the soldiers, secretaries, and other bunker staff have danced and drunk champagne, knowing these might be their final days. The paranoia that preceded Hitler’s death has now been replaced by cold fear about what comes next. The Russians will not go easy on the Führer’s personal staff. Whether they will be murdered or imprisoned in a Soviet gulag, no one knows. Each man and woman longs to escape—flee the bunker and run for their lives. But that is not a possibility, for such behavior might be deemed a betrayal. The penalty could be a gunshot to the head by the SS or Gestapo who remain on duty.

  Only Martin Bormann remains calm. The bunker now belongs to him. The forty-four-year-old bureaucrat has been loyal to Adolf Hitler for more than a dozen years, serving as his personal secretary and right-hand man. Bormann holds the title of SS-Reichsleiter.

  Nothing Hitler accomplished during the war has taken place wi
thout Bormann’s knowledge. He has been married for sixteen years to the former Gerda Buch, who has given him ten children. But Bormann rarely sees his family—his loyalty has been to Hitler alone. The Brown Eminence, as Bormann is known, was the Führer’s confidant, financial adviser, and babysitter, enduring his leader’s moods and whims with patience and cunning, always searching for ways to increase his own personal power.2

  Bormann is a short, heavyset man with a fondness for cruel revenge. It was Bormann who suffered a perceived snub by famed tank general Erwin Rommel in the early days of World War II, then repaid the insult five years later by persuading the Führer to order Rommel’s execution after a failed plot to kill Hitler.3

  Bormann is also a realist, foreseeing the fall of the Reich as long as two years ago. With Hitler’s blessing, he began making plans for Germany’s postwar resurrection. In August 1944 he allegedly coordinated a gathering of German industrialists in Strasbourg to facilitate the movement of corporate capital to other countries, where it could be sheltered until after the war. Because of Bormann, 750 new companies have been established around the world to hide Nazi assets.

  Argentina is home to ninety-eight of these hidden corporations. Additionally, Bormann has overseen the shipment of diamonds, gold, and blue-chip stock certificates into the South American country. In an outrageous and still unproven act of deception, Bormann allegedly concocted Operation Tierra Del Fuego to ship this wealth to Buenos Aires by submarine. Bormann has also spent hours meticulously planning his eventual escape route from Berlin to Argentina, where he envisions a new life of power and luxury. He will be the new Führer, a head of state whose nation has just fallen. “Bury everything,” Adolf Hitler warned Bormann, anticipating his own death. “You will need it to return to power.”

  Bormann just needs to get out of the bunker alive.

  The air is stale and suffocating as Martin Bormann assembles the bunker staff to explain their escape. They will form into small groups, then travel by tunnel to the underground train station at Wilhelmsplatz. There, they will follow the subway tracks to another station at Friederichstrasse. Each group will leave the second subway station and climb to ground level. There they will walk the city streets, avoiding the Soviet tanks taking up position along the banks of the river Spree. They will then cross the Weidendammer Bridge. Finally, the group will disperse and assimilate into the local population. After that, each man and woman is on his or her own.