By David Strom

SAN DIEGO— The new book Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb is the latest of many books about Adolf Eichmann. The author’s exhaustive research incorporates interviews with some of the remaining captors of Eichmann, new information, and never published Mossad (Israel’s CIA) surveillance photographs. Bascomb’s work is well researched, exhaustive, exciting and depressing all at the same time. 
        
In May of 1960 Adolf Eichmann was captured and brought to Israel to face trial for wartime atrocities. He was the chief Nazi administrator who coordinated all the many activities that allowed the ‘final solution’ to be smoothly implemented. Eichmann ran his office as if he were just the chief CEO of any large corporation or international business.

Bascomb describes the extent of Eichmann’s role in carrying out the atrocities of the Holocaust:  “He set ambitious targets; he recruited and delegated to effective subordinates; he traveled frequently to keep tabs on their progress; he studied what worked and failed and adjusted accordingly; he made sure to account to his bosses in charts and figures how effective he had been.” Eichmann claimed never to have personally killed anyone, yet he made sure that his “office” operation efficiently murdered six million Jews, as well as hundreds of thousands of Rom, homosexuals, communists and others.
        
In 1934 Adolf Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish section of the “security services” of the German SS.  From then on he became deeply involved in the “Jewish question.” Initially, Eichmann and his office worked to let as many Jews leave Germany for other parts of the world. Then the Nazi policy changed.  They decided to transport the Jews to recently conquered countries.  This quickly changed again to a more extreme policy: Exterminate all the Jews.  This was the ‘final solution.’ Eichmann became deeply involved with the formulation and operation of the “final solution” to the Jewish question. As late as 1944, when it became clear the Nazis would lose the war, Eichmann took his job of ridding Hungary of its 725,000 Jews seriously. He was responsible for executing Hitler’s policy of annihilating the Hungarian Jews. He gave his subordinates targets to meet and trains to load. “Success” would be a total 725,000 Jews being murdered. He almost succeeded.
        
When World War II ended in 1945, the Allies tried to capture as many of the Nazi “top brass” as possible.  Many of them committed suicide or went into hiding,  changing their identities and leaving Europe for Argentina and other parts of South America. 

A very tiny number of Nazis were caught and even fewer stood trial and were sentenced to prison terms.  By the time of the Nuremberg trials, Eichmann was off the Allies’ radar screen.  Eichmann was skillful enough to keep his name from being a “household” word, unlike Himmler of Goring.  In fact, he was captured and twice placed in American POW camps, from which he eventually escaped. Eichmann chose to work and hide in the British zone of occupied Germany, right under the noses of the British officials who were looking for him.

He lived in hiding for five years, occasionally secretly seeing and meeting with his family. After seventeen months, the British search for Eichmann ended because they thought Eichmann was dead and therefore, were no longer actively looking for him.      
        
In 1950, after assuming a false identity and an International Red Cross passport and after being smuggled through the ratline, Eichmann reached Argentina. Using the name Ricardo Klement, he adjusted to a miserable life.  Many of his former Nazi colleagues were living a middle-class lifestyle or better, but he did not.  Few in the Nazi community knew he was Adolf Eichmann.  He wanted it that way. Eichmann lived in a hovel outside Buenos Aires where he worked at a Mercedes plant.
        
While all of this happened to Eichmann, a parallel story took place in different parts of the world. Neal Bascomb, in Hunting Eichmann carefully documented the work of Simon Wiesenthal and Tuviah Friedman, two of the many Nazi war hunters active in Europe in 1945 and after. They got conflicting reports about Eichmann’s whereabouts since he was allegedly sighted in Egypt, South America and points in between.
        
West Germany was interested in his capture. So was Israel.  For political reasons, West Germany would not pursue Eichmann, but they would secretly share information with Israel’s Mossad. A key element in his eventual capture was when the West German government shared an important piece of information sent from Argentina about the sighting of Eichmann and where he lived.

What was the information that excited the Mossad to return to Argentina and capture Eichmann? In December of 1956, “Sylvia Hermann welcomed her new boyfriend, Nick

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Eichmann, into her home.” She had dated Nick a few times and now brought him home to meet her German émigré parents.

The conversation was in their mother tongue-German. Lothar Hermann, Sylvia’s father, was blind (he became blind by a Gestapo beating). Nick, after feeling a bit more comfortable, spoke of Germany. He “proudly said that his father had been a high ranking Wehrmacht officer who had served his country well.”  Lothar said nothing. Eventually the conversation got around to the fate of the Jews.

“It would have been better if the Germans had finished their job of extermination,” Nick boasted.
        
In April 1957, Sylvia was reading a German newspaper to her father “when she came across an article about a war crimes trial in Frankfurt.  One of the individuals mentioned as still at large was the SS officer responsible for overseeing the mass murder, Adolf Eichmann.” Sylvia and her father thought that Sylvia’s boyfriend Nick might be the son of Adolf Eichmann.  They knew that many Nazis had come to Argentina after German’s defeat. 

Remembering the comments made by Nick Eichmann in their home, Lothar wrote a letter to the Frankfurt prosecutors mentioned in the news article.  Lothar Hermann would not give this information to the German embassy in Buenos Aires, “he was sure they would alert Eichmann.”
        
Dr. Fritz Bauer (a Jew), Attorney General for the state of Hesse, West Germany, hunted Nazis for his government.  He passed the Hermann family information on to Isser Harel of Israel’s Mossad. Harel had one of the secret agents in Argentina check out the lead.  The agent did. He concluded that Ricardo Klement was not Eichmann. 

That sloppy detective work led to a delay in capturing Eichmann, but Bauer insisted that Mossad double check.
        
Eichmann never felt remorseful for what he did.  Over a period of weeks, he talked to a friend in Argentina into a tape recorder and stated:…”What is useful for my people is holy order and only holy order to me. And finally, I have to tell you, I don’t regret anything.  I am not eating humble pie at all.”
        
“No, I must tell quite honestly that if, of the 10.3 million Jews shown by Korherr [an SS statistician], we had killed 10.3 million, then I would be satisfied and I would say all right, we have destroyed an enemy.” This is what he said and thought while living in Argentina and at his trial in Israel, he said the same thing.  He was a good foot soldier for the elimination of the Jewish people.  He claimed that he was only doing his duty.
        
What a horrible and depressing thought, that killing six million human beings is a “duty” and that Eichmann did it well. Despite this, the whole book is uplifting in that Eichmann, the Nazi mastermind, is finally caught and brought to justice.  Bascomb writes dramatically well, as we learn about each of the people directly involved in the capture of Eichmann. 

The following part of the story made tears comes to my eyes:

“For those like Peter Malkin, whose families had been devastated by the Nazis, their participation carried an even greater personal satisfaction. In 1967, while on a job in Athens, Malkin received a call from Avraham Shalom, who told him that his mother had been rushed to the hospital. Malkin returned to Tel Aviv immediately and went straight to her bedside.  Her eyes were closed, her face drained of color. She did not react when he spoke to her.‘She can’t talk.’ The old woman in the other bed said. ‘Mama,’ Malkin whispered close to her ear, ‘I want to tell you something. What I promised, I have done.  I got Eichmann.’”

His mother did not open her eyes, nor did she turn her head.  It was seven years after he grabbed Eichmann on Garibaldi Street. Malkin had kept the secret from her because of the oath he had sworn, but now he could not bear for her to die without knowing what he had done.
        
‘Mama, Fruma was avenged.  It was her own brother who captured Adolf Eichmann.’
        
‘She can’t hear you,’ said the old woman, growing impatient with his visit.
Just as Malkin was losing hope, he felt a hand cover his own, and then his mother tightened her grip.
        
“Do you understand?’ Malkin asked her eagerly.
        
Her eyes fluttered open.  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand.’”
        

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Hunting Eichmann is a well-researched and movingly written book.  Readers will cry tears of joy and sorrow and feel a lot of anger when thinking about Eichmann and his lack of human compassion.
        
In the words of a sixty’s folk song: “When will they ever learn?”