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.
Fritz Bauer was a German Jewish judge and prosecutor. He was instrumental in the post-war capture of former Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann and played an essential role in beginning the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.
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 Peter Malkin, who captured Eichmann in 1960.
Zvi Aharoni was an Israeli Mossad agent instrumental in the capture of Adolf Eichmann.
Georg August Zinn was a German lawyer and a politician of the SPD. He was a member of the Bundestag from 1949 to 1951 representing Kassel, the 2nd Minister-President of Hesse from 1950 to 1969 and served as the 5th and 16th President of the Bundesrat in 1953/54 and 1964/65.
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 abducted 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.
Yossele Schumacher is a Soviet-born Israeli whose abduction as a child in 1960 became a cause célèbre within Israeli Jewish society. Schumacher was abducted by his Haredi Orthodox Jewish grandparents to prevent him from being raised as a secular Jew by his parents, and was found in the United States after an extensive international search by Mossad before being returned to his parents' custody. Schumacher's abduction led to an early major polarization among Israeli Jews due to disagreements between Orthodox Jews, who largely supported the abduction, and Secular Jews, who largely opposed it.
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 and Attorney General 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 whom 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 book had enormous impact in popular culture, but its ideas have become increasingly controversial.
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.
Operation Damocles was a covert campaign of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad in August 1962 which targeted 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.
Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi is a book by Neal Bascomb. It chronicles the efforts to capture Adolf Eichmann, a top official in the SS during World War II and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, in the years following the war. A network of concentration camp survivors and Nazi hunters in Europe, including Simon Wiesenthal, pursued leads on Eichmann's whereabouts and passed information to the government of Israel and its foreign intelligence agency, Mossad. A team of agents from both Mossad and Shin Bet traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Eichmann was hiding, and captured him in May 1960. He was taken to Israel, tried and convicted of war crimes in 1961, and executed by hanging in June 1962.
The People vs. Fritz Bauer is a 2015 German biographical drama film directed by Lars Kraume, chronicling the German Jewish prosecutor Fritz Bauer's post-war capture of former Holocaust planner Adolf Eichmann. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Operation Eichmann is a 1961 American crime film directed by R. G. Springsteen, with Werner Klemperer in the title role. It is a highly fictionalized account of the life of the war criminal Adolf Eichmann, from his career as a member of the SS and an architect of the Holocaust to his kidnap in Argentina by the Mossad.
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.
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.
Ricardo Francisco Eichmann is an Argentine-born German archaeologist. He was the director of the Orient Department of the German Archaeological Institute between 1996 and 2020 and previously a professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Tübingen.
