Alois Brunner was an Austrian officer who held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (captain) during World War II. Brunner played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, and Slovakia. He was known as Final Solution architect Adolf Eichmann's right-hand man.
ODESSA is an American codename coined in 1946 to cover Nazi underground escape-plans made at the end of World War II by a group of SS officers with the aim of facilitating secret escape routes, and any directly ensuing arrangements. The concept of the existence of an actual ODESSA organisation has circulated widely in fictional spy novels and movies, including Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1972 thriller The Odessa File. The escape-routes have become known as "ratlines". Known goals of elements within the SS included allowing SS members to escape to Argentina or to the Middle East under false passports.
Peter Zvi Malkin was a German-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.
Wilhelmus Antonius Sassen was a Dutch collaborator, Nazi journalist and a member of the Waffen-SS. He became known around 1960 as "the interviewer of Adolf Eichmann".
Herberts Albert Cukurs was a Latvian aviator and Nazi collaborator. He served as the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando, a collaborationist unit that carried out the largest mass murders of Latvian Jews during the Holocaust. Although Cukurs never stood trial, the accounts of multiple Holocaust survivors, including Zelma Shepshelovitz, credibly link him to personally supervising and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for the duration of the German occupation of Latvia. His crimes included shooting Jewish children and babies in captivity, burning Jews alive, and sexually assaulting Jewish women.
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.
Mariner Books, originally an imprint of HMH Books, was established in 1997 as a publisher of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry in trade paperback. Mariner is also the publisher of the Harvest backlist, formerly published by Harcourt Brace/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. HarperCollins bought HMH in May 2021 for US$349 million. As of fall 2021, Mariner Books was listed as an imprint of HarperCollins.
The Spy Machine is a UK documentary special about the work of the Mossad, written and narrated by Gordon Thomas.
Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and apprehended by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction 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.
The Eichmann trial was the 1961 trial in Israel of major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann who was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. Eichmann was a senior Nazi party member and served at the rank of Obersturmbenführer (Lieutenant-Colonel) in the SS, and was one of the people primarily responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution. He was responsible for the Nazis' train shipments from across Europe to the concentration camps, even managing the shipment to Hungary directly, where 564,000 Jews died. After World War II he fled to Argentina, living under the pseudonym "Ricardo Clement" until his capture in 1960 by Mossad.
The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, popularly known as Mossad, is the national intelligence agency of the State 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.
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 dramatic thriller 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 trial on charges of crimes against humanity. The film stars Oscar Isaac as the Mossad officer Peter Malkin, and Ben Kingsley as Eichmann, with Lior Raz, Mélanie Laurent, Nick Kroll, and Haley Lu Richardson. Several source materials, including Eichmann in My Hands, by Peter Malkin and Harry Stein, 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.
The Nazi Hunters: How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World's Most Notorious Nazi is a non-fiction book by Neal Bascomb. Taking place in Argentina in the years 1960 and 1961, the book follows the efforts by Mossad and Shin Bet, both agencies of the Israeli Intelligence Community, to capture Adolf Eichmann, a high ranking Nazi who played a major role in the Holocaust. The book was published in August 2013. It won the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2014.
