Original subtitles

he was a symbol of the holocaust the

methodical killer the nazi holocaust

monster

he is directly culpable for the murder

of six million jews

mossad receives this information that

adolf eichmann is living in buenos aires

we were sure that this man was iceland

the mossad agents are running a terrible

personal risk in going on this operation

the order was very simple

to capture him

to bring him to israel alive

[Music]

april 1960 argentina

one of the world's most notorious nazi

war criminals adolf eichmann is living

incognito with his family near buenos

aires

the family have in fact moved to a

street on the outskirts of buenos aires

called garibaldi street

but a blind jewish piano tuner whose

daughter briefly dated eichmann's son

has tipped off israel's secret service

now the man branded the architect of the

final solution is in the mossad's sites

the information on the table

was that he was in the argentine on the

name of ricardo clemente that he lives

in san fernando a suburb of buenos aires

in an isolated house why were we so

skeptic

there was no electricity no water no

nothing we asked ourselves why a man

like eichmann

goes to a dump like that

the mossad agents thought there's no way

that eichmann you know lieutenant

colonel in the ss

the murder of six million of our people

lives in this very very modest little

bungalow it's impossible

we're sure that we got the wrong person

it's not heichmann

it's the wrong man

mossad spy zv aharoni is sent to

argentina to investigate

he enlists a local volunteer to help

so averoni goes to rather extraordinary

steps with one of his people going up to

the house speaking to him about trying

to buy land in the adjoining district

we had the camera

hidden in the case so you can't see it

you would press certain buttons on the

handle and it would click these

photographs you can make pictures

and the man doesn't know that you've

been photographed

and that's how we got these pictures

he gets the pictures the man he thinks

to be eichmann he looks at it compares

it to all portraits of white men the

left ears

is like a fingerprint they photographed

this man with his left ear

and we had a photograph of eichmann in

ss uniform with his left ear

we

were almost sure i can't say 100 percent

that the man was ashamed

[Music]

aharoni returns to israel and presents

the evidence to mossad chief israel

harel takes it straight to the prime

minister david ben-gurion

ben-gurion recognizes an opportunity but

he's fearful that the israeli youth will

forget what happened to the jews and

that the world will forget what happened

ben gurion instructed israel to bring to

israel the adult iceman for a trial in

israel

the plan is simple but daring

a team of secret agents will kidnap the

war criminal and smuggle him 9 000 miles

to jerusalem

harel enlists the one man with the

skills and the nerve

to run such an operation mossad

commander rafi attan

i decided how many people i need

okay

and i started to choose the people

rafi aitan puts together this team

that is kind of the standard of what you

see in spy movies or spy novels each

individual on the team was picked for

his or her expertise whether it was as a

forger or as a master disguise or

whether it's someone who was excellent

at logistics

there are no james bonds debonair men in

flashy suits they are ordinary

individuals who you would never pick out

in a crowd and that's what made them so

good

[Music]

for the agents the mission is personal

adolf eichmann is the man who made the

nazis death trains run on time

he's the man who helped to send millions

of jews from all over occupied europe

to the gas chambers

eichmann has called the architect for

the final solution and he was very good

at his job

a lot of these agents parents would have

been killed essentially at this man's

hands

he was a very rabid intense

fiercely

efficient and virulent nazi towards the

end of the war eichmann tells a fellow

nazi that he will happily go to his

grave knowing that he's killed six

million jews

his role was to isolate the jewish

populations

bring them to ghettos and ultimately

ship them to extermination camps like

auschwitz

it was almost like he was operating this

factory of this factory of death

he was a specialist on jews and he he

knew quite a lot about them he was a

dust guy but he was also in the field he

would go and see the techniques that

they were using uh gas fans and just

shooting jews he was out there seeing it

he's an evil murdering nazi bastard

there's no doubt about it

this was an extremely significant

operation for the mossad this operation

if they're successful will put the

mossad on the map

it was an incredibly ballsy thing for

the israelis to decide is to show the

world that israel couldn't be messed

with wherever you are in the world we

will come and get you

two weeks after adolf eichmann was

photographed an advanced team of mossad

agents arrives in argentina on separate

flights on different days

we all traveled on false passports

on languages we didn't master in

countries we didn't know

and we had nobody to turn to

the logistic people of the mossad made

our timetable how to go

to the argentine

hotels to stay

what

identification to use

their task confirmed the man in the

photograph is still at the same address

surveillance expert abraham bendor heads

to garibaldi street

i wanted to see the area and the

surroundings

three was driving i sat near him

by chance

we came when the bus came

and suddenly i saw a man

walking and i said to tree that's him in

the photo it's eichmann it's eichmann so

he got so excited that he

slammed the brakes it was a lousy car

and the brakes were screeching

[Music]

and i said don't do that he might get

suspicious

[Music]

when

we hit the brakes i thought that he

could never be in my team

because he's so nervous

[Music]

eichmann he went on for 150 meters and

he turned

left

in another 50 minutes he turned left

into the house that was the only house

anyway

[Music]

we watched the house

of

iceman for days

they began finding out exactly what

eichmann did what time he woke up when

he left for work what bus he took

how long he stayed at work when he came

home what he did when he came home when

the lights finally went out at night

a single word is telexed back to mossad

headquarters in israel

carrot was the code word that tells you

a lot of things one

we found the man was in the picture that

three brought back second

the situation in the field there is

possible to make a kidnap operation

third

we are going to continue the

surveillance of the house

in jerusalem the mossad boss gives the

green light to operation eichmann

capture the man who organized the

genocide of europe's jews and bring him

to israel to stand trial for his crimes

i was 14 when i left czechoslovakia we

went to hungary and in 1944 we were

taken to auschwitz

all of us my mother

my sister my father

my grandfather

my aunt and me

together on the train

we were frightened very hungry we were

cold we were humiliated

we were strictly brought to auschwitz to

be exterminated

after decimating poland's jewish

population

in 1944 eichmann set about sending

hungary's seven hundred thousand jews to

their death

ultimately

anybody who

is a hungarian jew or has their roots in

hungary and is jewish will have

a relative an ancestor who was

ultimately killed by adolf eichmann

the doors opened and the first thing

before even seeing we heard the german

shepherd barking

and

couldn't believe it that here we were in

this

horrible horrible place

the mossad chief knows that an

extradition request for adolf eichmann

to argentina will likely fail

it would also send the nazi into hiding

the kidnap team arrives but they've got

lots of things to be getting on with i

mean it's not just a case of just like

hitting him over the head for demonic

carpeting an airplane let's go home job

done you've got to work out if we hold

him where are we going to hold him so

they've got to rent a house now renting

a house 1960 in argentina is not the

easiest thing to just go around doing

there's a lot of things like that which

one doesn't think about they had to try

and achieve

that task is given to master of disguise

yitzhak mesher

posing as a tenant he finds a villa an

hour's drive from buenos aires

they picked this house because the

neighbors were not too close it had an

enclosed backyard it had several rooms

big enough to keep all these agents it

was a normal house in a quiet

neighborhood in buenos aires so that was

the first factor

the second was they needed to get

eichmann out of the country

it was harold who came up the idea that

maybe they were to fly eichmann out with

an ll jet

but israel's national airline does not

fly to buenos aires with one

extraordinary exception

luckily it's one of those bits of

coincidence there's the uh anniversary

of argentina's founding and the israelis

say we want to send a delegation of

dignitaries out to come and help

celebrate and argentina says yes well of

course you must send this special flight

and it's this special flight that's

going to take eichmann out of the

country

so the schedule of when the operation

proceeded was based on when that plane

was arriving and could take off from

buenos aires

the plane is set to arrive on may 12 and

depart the next day

this means they have a week to kidnap

the war criminal

the clock is ticking

we saw him every day every day the same

time

except sunday

[Music]

same bus same hour

everything the same

likeman is a character of habit he likes

to get off the bus the 202 bus at the

same time

every day back from this big car factory

where he's working

the road

near the house

wasn't really busy there were no people

walking with it

and very few driving on it garibaldi

street in 1960 was the worst street in

the whole of the southern hemisphere to

conduct a kidnap it was completely

exposed the eichmann house is just his

concrete block

it's it's like putting a dice on a pool

table it's just there and there's not

much else around so if you're walking

along

and you look different you're gonna be

noticed straight away

it was a strange place to conduct a

kidnap but where else were they going to

do it so we thought

that's it

after watching him and his way of doing

things

we were convinced that the easiest and

the best way to get him

was just when he gets out of the bus

walking home

now

orchestrating that to come off

flawlessly is an entirely different game

[Music]

the basics of the plan were eichmann

gets off the bus

on his way back from work at night as

soon as he turns the corner onto the

smaller road leading to his house they

would grab him

the plan was to

mulching to walk between the house and

the bus the iceman

walked between the bus and the house

and they should meet

somewhere in two-thirds of the of the

way it's remarching had to tell him a

moment teachers in senior i would like

to ask you a question

the that was the plan from the beginning

to get the mechanism and the tactics

together we did it about three four

hundred times

they practiced

throwing eichmann into the car putting

him down on the floorboard and driving

off

in 20 seconds we wanted to do that they

practiced the route that they would

escape from numerous times in case the

police were chasing them we didn't carry

weapons because it wasn't incriminating

why do we need the weapons for

we we don't want to shoot anybody

we knew that the only enemy that we

could face were the argentine police

or the argentine military so we said

we don't need any weapons

and that's a risk we took

the mossad agents are running a terrible

personal risk in going on this operation

if you were caught in argentina in 1960

as a known foreign spy

you wouldn't be executed but you would

have been prison for ages and ages and

of course your mission probably would

have been denied back home as is the

great tradition of most spy

stories so yes it was a terrible risk

since the war argentina has offered a

safe haven to high-ranking nazis like

eichmann

there was a network that juan peron the

president of argentina put together to

bring nazis to argentina it was widely

known within the network of underground

former uh nazis that if they found a way

to argentina that the argentinian

government would help support them

with the allies victory in 1945 eichmann

became a wanted man and went on the run

he makes his way up to hamburg and then

ends up in a little town called everson

where he works as a forester then

forestry business goes bankrupt

and he finds his old nazi guide to

manage a chicken farm

and ends up running what is quite a

lucrative chicken business

but in 1950 fearing capture

nazi sympathizers in the catholic church

helped to organize eichmann's passage to

south america from the port of genoa

under the name ricardo clemente

the route he's been using is a very well

trodden escape route some people call it

a rat line lightning is given all the

paperwork he needs such as landing

permits for argentina exit permits from

uh italy and so on so forth and

eventually eichmann set sail with a

third class ticket to go to a new life

in argentina

eichmann was certainly not the only

senior nazi to end up going to argentina

there was almost a great tradition of

nazis going there some of them brought

some money some of them brought some

technical expertise and so on and so

forth

the former ss officer has a string of

jobs from running a laundry to raising

rabbits none are a success

he finally finds steady employment in a

mercedes-benz car plant

while argentina's military dictatorship

welcomed nazis like eichmann it would

not take so kindly to a team of israeli

spies on its soil

to outwit the authorities the agents

forge several different license plates

for their getaway vehicles

we had three number plates

and we didn't have

these revolving

things that they have in james bond

films

we had to

put one number plate upon the other

so we didn't lose time in taking off

the previous one

that was

really better than in movies

much quicker

for each license plate

we had different documents just in case

in argentina in the 50s the cars you

hired weren't the nice sedans we get

today they were pretty ramshackle

there's always a danger these cars would

break down

[Music]

the cars were in a terrible condition

all of them

once we had to push them

of course

anything wouldn't happen

operation eichmann moves into high gear

[Music]

from the second eichmann went

underground after the war he was

constantly worried about being found he

was constantly worried about

every footstep behind him with someone

coming after him

they're constantly fearful that if they

let the operation go

just one more day

that that day was the one that eichmann

would figure out he was being fouled and

he would vanish there was a danger that

he would try to escape and get away from

us of course what's the danger

one way or the other struggle or not

this was the moment to go

we don't have any communication

not communication not weapons

you could say it was a primitive

operation

okay

but sometimes primitive operation works

better than others

may 11 1960 the kidnap of adolf eichmann

is in play

the massage agents arrived in the dark

about 30 minutes before eichmann was to

return home from work to get their cars

in place

they have two cars one to capture them

the other to act not only as a backup

car but as an interference car in case

they were being pursued by the police

there are four agents in the front

and they're the snatch squad they're

gonna grab him they get out the car and

they have the hood up and they're

tinkering it's the classic tactic isn't

it of keeping covers playing with your

broken car

and they're waiting

bus arrives

and they wait for eichmann to come off

the bus

and he's not there

and they just can't believe it

the only night

that he didn't arrive on the seven

o'clock bus was the night we intended to

catch him

people

uh where how could i say quite tense

[Music]

every night eichmann has been on the

same bus

and the night of the kidnap he's not

and they wait

and they wait and there's no eichmann

and after 20 minutes to half an hour

the group are getting very nervous

some bicycles

went by and asked questions

and some men came by and asked questions

so the people became tense

triani asked me

what do you decide

maybe we go i say no we stay

and you can remember garibaldi street

this desolate empty place they're

looking very very obvious

[Music]

and then

suddenly another bus comes

out of it is the unmistakable little

five foot seven figure of

the little man walking along

adolf eichmann

there could be no doubt about it

we saw iceman coming

and then the operation started

when he comes

with his flashlight

i blind him with my headlights

so he doesn't see the other car

[Music]

and he's walking towards them

and uh one of the agents

malkin the only spanish he knows

is the spanish for a moment or a little

moment a moment of senor i would like to

ask you a question

you know trying to get lakeman over to

come and see him

and he says this to eichmann but

eichmann was frightened

and eichmann reaches into his pocket and

they think he's got a gun and then

malchim jumped on him and took him by

his neck instead of his mouth

he tried to hold his hand in his pocket

and therefore eichmann was free to shout

he started screaming and i made a lot of

noise with the engine

to overshadow this noise

and at that point malcolm grabs eichmann

and they wrestle their way into this

ditch

we jumped on him legs

belly head

we put him into the car

they tend to shut up

and this is the first order that

eichmann has ever been given by a jew

centavo

immediately went to the front

swear only was already inside the car

with the

engine running

and iron myself was in the back

his head on my knees and we covered him

with blanket and then triani told him in

german

if your life

dear to you

be quiet

and then he said you should cooperate

with our people otherwise we're going to

kill you he said

he harbor mission and manchester united

that means i have

surrendered to my fate

i had to lead the way to the safe house

no one said a word my hand was on his

mouth

he was completely quiet

after one mile we stopped and we changed

the plates

of the car

there were argentinian number plates we

changed them to other argentinian number

plates which were forged so there was no

suspicion on the cars we had to change

all that in seconds

garibaldi street is a long way from the

safe house and don't forget they're in a

really really bad argentine 1960 hire

car that can break down at any time and

if it's broken down and a policeman

comes to help it's all over

we crossed checkpoint

by

military and police

the police stopped me

and he said

nothing and i said nothing they

saw the foreign plates of the cow and

they said

go

it's a nervous drive

but they make it back and they get into

the safe house and there they've got him

we put

covered glasses on his face so he

couldn't see anyone and couldn't

remember anyone we didn't speak one

syllable nothing we didn't talk to him

he didn't talk to us

we took off his clothes to make sure

that he doesn't got any weapon or razor

blade to kill himself

he's given a medical by a doctor who was

part of the team to confirm that his

heart's okay it's a very stressful thing

to be kidnapped

one thing they have to do

they're 90 sure they've got eichmann but

they're not 100 sure they've got to make

sure they're not kidnapping the wrong

guy

before we went to the argentine we

studied the ss file

that we had in our archive

and we knew iceman

his measurements his facial scars things

like that and all these helped us

to identify him before we talked with

him

one of the agents of aharoni was given

the job of interrogating eichmann to

know to establish exactly who he was

what he'd been up to

and so on so forth

i asked him what's your name and he said

they can't claim it

and he said your real true name

and he refused to answer them

three is a very methodical interrogator

he can drive a person out of his mind

when he asks you slowly the same

question again

and again they can't do claimant

what's that always your name what what's

your name before

he said

that was the name that he used in

germany after the war

the agents know eichmann's ss

identification number they find the scar

where his telltale ss tattoo should be

but eichmann began to burn that off

directly after the war ended because he

knew that it was the chief identifier

sweden asked him

did you serve in the ss she said yeah

and what was your ss number he said the

correct number of frenchman so you

cannot say you're otto henninger when

you know the correct number of other

regimen

he's not a genius

he made a mistake

and eichmann then

knows that the game is up

within the space of 10 or 15 minutes

eichmann admitted

that

he was adolf eichmann

we were very happy of course that we got

the right man because until that moment

we were not really sure

i asked him if he had any role in the

holocaust how was he involved in it and

he denied of course everything denied

everything you would have thought a

monster like eichmann would have a much

more impressive physical presence but

it's just this sort of pathetic little

man yet he was the one who had organized

this enormous

murder

i hate trains

then when i hear that sound i'm

immediately transported back to

1944 and the trip to auschwitz

we had to jump off the train

and then we saw the soldier there and we

saw the people standing on line and one

went to the left one went to the right

we went to the right and

the elderly they went immediately to the

gas chambers

i didn't see my grandmother anymore i

never

saw her

actually leaving

mercifully

and they purposely always separated

families my aunt and me on one side my

sister and mother on the other and it's

the last time that i had seen them

the mission has gone like clockwork

until now

argentine officials delay the special

israeli plane that will take eichmann

out of the country

the team have a real problem now

they're stuck in this house with this

figure of evil thousands of miles away

from home

with some very hot property and that is

not a good situation to be in

the mossad agents holding adolf eichmann

have hit a serious problem

they thought they were going to be there

in the safe house for two or three days

in fact the special el al flight was

going to be delayed by up to a week

we knew that the flight would come to

the argentine

something between 20 and 21st

of may

and there's not much they can do until

their means of escape this ll jet will

be able to take them back across the

atlantic

they're stuck in the safe house

and

like any people living close together

under times of great stress a lot of

members of the team are

you know

mean it goes to each other they were

constantly worried in the safehouse

about people coming after them whether

the police

or eichmann's friends and most

importantly his family his family are

running around

trying to find him with various friends

of theirs sympathetic to the nazis

the risks were definitely the german

community of buenos aires

and less happens the more you get

worried

rafi was in charge

the most of the burden on him

he thought that it's impossible that the

nazis don't look for him with the family

he was really really really worried

they've got this very tense time and

what's not helped is they don't want to

let aikman out of their sight or he

might commit suicide to try and escape

these agents and this is what's really

unpleasant they even have to help him go

to lavatory and i mean help him do

everything

it's quite something to

clean someone off when you know that

that man has murdered six million of

your people

it would have been much simpler to just

kill eichmann but they needed to bring

him back to trial

all the people in the house though some

of them were

holocaust survivors

all of them knew

the importance

of bringing heichman alive to israel all

of them

they knew it they understood it

and they fully agreed with it

the agents insist eichmann sign a

statement that he is returning to israel

of his own free will

if caught by argentinian authorities it

might be the only thing that can save

them

eichmann tried to get them saying i'm a

german citizen i should be tried in

germany

but

they told him you're coming to israel

and ultimately they

got him to sign it he gave me a letter

signed by himself i have the letter here

he said

i adopted eichmann the one who has

signed this letter

i hereby stay clear

ready

to go to israel in order to

clear my

conscience

[Music]

he said he understood what his

faith will be

and he was

facing his faith

eight days after eichmann was kidnapped

the specially chartered ll plane finally

lands in buenos aires

24 hours later the final and most

dangerous phase of the mission begins

the way of getting eichmann out of the

country on this ll plane is

spectacularly brilliant

they decide they're going to disguise

eichmann as a flight attendant

we had a doctor with us

who looked after him and he gave him an

uh injection

and they're going to make out that he's

drunk

they leave the safe house

they eventually arrive at the airport

they drive through the special area

where the crew are allowed to go

and there is this

slightly comatose eichmann

they took him out and carried him on the

stairs into the plane

in uniform and we waited to get there

all clear for takeoff

the diplomatic crew that had come to

argentina had disembarked

the only passenger going back to israel

besides the crew and the mossad

was adolf hika

they told the crew an hour before they

were about to take off they were

escorting adolf eichmann

out of the country

the agents travel under the guise of

israeli diplomats and off-duty ll crew

even when they got eichmann onto the

plane and they sit him in a first-class

seat they still weren't home and dry

argentine immigration authorities turn

up onto the plane

as they're entitled to do they want to

check passports

and they walk up and down the plane

checking passports and there's a

passport for eichmann in a fake name

clearly

what's wrong with him

oh he's drunk too much partying you know

it's like buenos aires you know too much

of kind of dances and girls

and of course the argentine guy just

thinks that's perfectly normal this

won't be the first drunken flight

attendant he's seen

they get off the steps are taken away

from the plane

they're prepared to take off they're

taxing to the runway

when suddenly air traffic control says

stop you can't go anywhere

now you can imagine this moment where

they have eichmann they're ready to go

and

now what's wrong

moments before takeoff the plane

carrying adolf eichmann to israel is

grounded

they said five minutes and then 10

minutes and 20 minutes

but we were suspicious of everything we

were also tense

have the authorities been alerted that

eichmann is on board is this operation

about to unravel

israel wants to take off and risk

the

prowess of the argentinian air force an

individual named shaol shaol who is the

navigator of the plane

says i will go i will check out and see

what's wrong

so this normal navigator is told by

israel if you're not back in 10 minutes

we're taking off without you

and he steps off the plane his heart's

sinking into his shoes thinking i may

never come back

it turns out that they had not filed

something in the flight plan

the navigator gets back on the plane

then they take off

well of course it was a great

relief and

satisfaction then we finally took off

and went up in the air with eichmann in

into plane

the pilot announces that the plane has

left argentinian airspace

it was actually almost a celebration

that they had accomplished this

but they still weren't home and dry

normally in those days you would fly

north up to brazil from buenos aires

refuel at recife make your way across

the atlantic to dakar in africa where

you would then refuel and head on to

israel now of course the israelis did

not want to stay in south america at all

in case someone was onto them so they

had to try and get this plane across the

atlantic all the way to dakar on a

single tank of fuel and it was touch and

go they're almost flying on on vapor

when they land

[Music]

when it was announced that adolf

eichmann had been captured

the world was absolutely stunned for

the israeli

secret services to capture an individual

9 000 miles away and do it all secretly

and quietly it was extraordinary

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the eichmann trial was in many ways

more than iconic it in fact put the

holocaust on the cultural map it

reminded the world

of what had happened in the holocaust

and

launched this whole investigation of the

jewish experience during the war without

the trial people may have swept the

holocaust under the rub

a lot of very very powerful testimony

was made during the trial of those who

had either met eichmann or or survived

the camps and the extent

and the savagery of what had happened

was incredibly heart-rending

eichmann's defense was the tired

time-stained boring i was following

orders defense

eichmann's found guilty which will come

as no surprise

and he's uh

he's going to be executed

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when i heard that adaf achman was

finally captured and being brought to

justice i was of course very glad that

finally

he gets repaid for what he has done

it was difficult to understand how such

a man

who doesn't look like a big personality

was responsible for to test of magical

people

i don't know the answer

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the night before he's to be hanged he

writes letters to his family

and he declares how much he loves

germany and everything i did i just did

for my fatherland and he's then taken

out of his cell

and

he's hanged quickly

efficiently

he's then cremated

straight away

and his ashes are put in a bucket

and the bucket's put on a boat

and the boat sails off the israeli coast

out of israeli waters

they don't want to be touched by the

ashes of this man

and they tip the ashes into the water

and there are a few ashes left in the

bucket

and they rinse them out they want to get

every last grain of ice men out and

they'd rinse out the bucket

and they go back home

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the end was just

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you