Alois Brunner was an Austrian Schutzstaffel (SS) SS-Hauptsturmführer who played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, and finally Slovakia during the Second World War. He was known as Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man.
Peter Zvi Malkin was a Polish-born Israeli secret agent and member of the Mossad intelligence agency. He was part of the team that captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 and brought him to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity.
Isser Harel was spymaster of the intelligence and the security services of Israel and the Director of the Mossad (1952–1963). In his capacity as Mossad director he oversaw the capture and covert transportation to Israel of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann.
A Nazi hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, or SS members, and Nazi collaborators who were involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Prominent Nazi hunters include Simon Wiesenthal, Tuviah Friedman, Serge Klarsfeld, Beate Klarsfeld, Ian Sayer, Yaron Svoray, Elliot Welles, and Efraim Zuroff.
Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Herberts Cukurs, "The Butcher of Latvia" was a Latvian aviator and deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, the Latvian Auxiliary Police Unit founded by Viktors Arājs, which carried out the worst mass murders of Latvian Jews in the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial, multiple Holocaust survivors' accounts, including the testimony of Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to war crimes and crimes against humanity. After being identified by a local Holocaust survivor in Brazil, who tried to alert authorities after seeing Cukurs' face on the cover a Brazilian magazine, Cukurs was investigated and ultimately assassinated in 1965 during capture by Nazi hunter operatives from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. One of the Mossad agents who killed Cukurs, "Künzle," and a journalist, Gad Shimron, authored a book on the experience, The Execution of the Hangman of Riga, in which they referred to Cukurs as the "Butcher of Latvia." The term was later picked up by several sources.
Rafael Eitan was an Israeli politician and intelligence officer. He also led Gil and served as Minister of Senior Citizens. He was in charge of the Mossad operation that led to the arrest of Adolf Eichmann. He served as an advisor on terrorism to Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and in 1981 he was appointed to head the Bureau of Scientific Relations, then an intelligence entity on par with Mossad, Aman and Shabak. Eitan assumed responsibility for and resigned over the Jonathan Pollard affair, and the Bureau was disbanded. He was subject to an arrest warrant issued by the United States FBI. From 1985 until 1993, he was head of the government's Chemicals company, which was expanded under his leadership. After 1993, he became a businessman, noted for several large scale agricultural and construction ventures in Cuba. He was the chairman of the Vetek (Seniority) Association – the Senior Citizens Movement.
The Man Who Captured Eichmann is a 1996 American historical drama television film directed by William Graham and written by Lionel Chetwynd, based on the 1990 book Eichmann in My Hands by Peter Malkin and Harry Stein. The film stars Robert Duvall as Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who lived under the name Ricardo Klement in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Arliss Howard as Israeli Mossad agent Malkin, who captured Eichmann in 1960.
Zvi Aharoni was an Israeli Mossad agent instrumental in the capture of Adolf Eichmann.
Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust – the so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Nazi terminology. He was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. Eichmann was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina on 11 May 1960 and subsequently found guilty of war crimes in a widely publicised trial in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962.
Herbert Kuhlmann was a German SS commander during the Nazi era. During World War II, he served in various Waffen-SS units and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. After the war, he escaped to Argentina where he assisted Nazi criminals to hide from the authorities.
In 1960, the major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Israeli agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. His trial, which opened on 11 April 1961, was televised and broadcast internationally, intended to educate about the crimes committed against Jews, which had been secondary to the Nuremberg trials. Prosecutor Gideon Hausner also tried to challenge the portrayal of Jewish functionaries that had emerged in the earlier trials, showing them at worst as victims forced to carry out Nazi decrees while minimizing the "gray zone" of morally questionable behavior. Hausner later wrote that available archival documents "would have sufficed to get Eichmann sentenced ten times over"; nevertheless, he summoned more than 100 witnesses, most of them who had never met the defendant, for didactic purposes. Defense attorney Robert Servatius refused the offers of twelve survivors who agreed to testify for the defense, exposing what they considered immoral behavior by other Jews. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt reported on the trial in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
The Jewish Historical Documentation Centre was an office headed by Simon Wiesenthal in Linz. The centre collected and promulgated information about war crimes, specific mainly to crimes against the Jewish people as perpetrated by Nazi Germany in Europe during the Second World War.
Mossad is the national intelligence agency of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman and Shin Bet.
Events in the year 1960 in Israel.
Operation Damocles was a covert campaign of the Israeli Mossad in August 1962 targeting German scientists and technicians, formerly employed in Nazi Germany's rocket program, who were developing rockets for Egypt at a military site known as Factory 333. According to Otto Joklik, an Austrian scientist involved with the project, the rockets being developed were programmed to use radioactive waste.
The House on Garibaldi Street is a 1979 American television film based on the non-fiction book of the same name, written by Isser Harel. It was directed by Peter Collinson and starred Topol and Martin Balsam. The story is about the Mossad operation that captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 and returned him to Israel for trial.
Operation Finale is a 2018 American historical drama film directed by Chris Weitz from a screenplay by Matthew Orton about a 1960 clandestine operation by Israeli commandos to capture former SS officer Adolf Eichmann, and transport him to Jerusalem for a 1961 trial on charges of crimes against humanity. The film stars Oscar Isaac as the key Mossad officer Peter Malkin, and Ben Kingsley as Eichmann. It Also stars Lior Raz, Mélanie Laurent, Nick Kroll, and Haley Lu Richardson. Several source materials, including Eichmann in My Hands, Peter Malkin, provided the basis for the story.
Yonah Elian was an Israeli anesthesiologist and a Holocaust survivor, best known for sedating Adolf Eichmann during the Mossad operation to capture Eichmann.
Lothar Hermann was a German Jew and concentration camp survivor who contributed to the identification and arrest of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust.
