(suspenseful music) (cicadas buzz)
(birds caw) - [Narrator] My name is Zvi Aharoni. It was Argentina, 1960. I had been looking for the
Ricardo Klement for a long time. The first clue came from a
blind man named Lothar Herman who claimed to know the
address where Klement lived with his family. I met with him and after speaking with him I took out an Argentine bank note and cut it in half. (paper rips) I gave one half to Herman
and kept the other half. I said if anyone came to him
asking about any of the things we had discussed, they needed
to produce the other half of the bank note,
otherwise don't trust them. I went to the address in Buenos Aires which the blind man had
claimed was the residence of Ricardo Klement and his family. It turned out to be a shabby little house in a run-down neighborhood
and I thought to myself, "There's no way Ricardo Klement would live "in a place like this." I had to start thinking
that perhaps Ricardo Klement was not the man I was
looking for after all. To make matters worse,
I found out the family had just moved three weeks previously. But then something happened that told me I was on the right trail. When I went to inquire
about the forwarding address left by the family, I
was told that the family explicitly left no forwarding address. Who doesn't leave a forwarding address? unless they don't want to be found. I followed the trail further
into the dusty outskirts of Buenos Aires to a little no-man's land where there weren't even
official property lines on record. There I found a tiny
house with no electricity and no running water. I was convinced Ricardo
Klement lived there. What was it going to be
like when I finally saw him? On April 27th, I left my car
about a mile from the house and walked to a railway
embankment about 100 yards from the area. (crickets chirp) At 7:40pm the 203 bus from
San Fernando pulled up a couple blocks from the
house and the single passenger got off. It was Ricardo Klement. (soft music) Tonight, tell your family you love them. Hug your kids. Hug your spouse. (train wheels clack) You see I don't have much family left. Almost all of them were killed. Only me, my brother,
and my mother survived. We were on the last train out of Germany. The Third Reich had taken
away all the property of Jews, expelled them from public life, and forced them to emigrate. We knew where it was all headed. Adolph Hitler had galvanized
the hatred of the whole nation. (audience cheers) His henchman, Heinrich
Himmler, devoted his life to wiping out all the Jews,
calling it "a page of glory "in our history." Reinhard Heydrich, who they called "The man with the iron heart," organized the first killing squads. Then, at the Wannsee Conference,
he formalized the plans to expand the murders on a massive scale. Joseph Goebbels constantly
fueled the fire with propaganda. There was even a foremost
authority on the Jews in the Third Reich, Adolph Eichmann, who engineered the whole
system of extermination, transporting millions
to the killing centers. There were places like
Treblinka (fire crackles) which covered over 30 acres and there were no prison barracks. There were no labor yards. Everyone getting off
the train at Treblinka was killed immediately. 15,000 people a day,
men, women, and children, sent straight to the gas chambers. In the end, they killed 6 million Jews. And yet, one day it was
all over, just like that. The Nazi Third Reich, that was supposed to last a thousand years, crumbled. The war broke out in 1939 and in 1945, Adolph Hitler bit down
on a cyanide capsule, put a gun to his temple,
and blew his brains out. (gunshot fires) In that same bunker, Joseph
Goebbels killed all six of his children, then killed his wife, then killed himself. Reinhard Heydrich was
killed in Czechoslovakia. Heinrich Himmler went on the run, posing as a lower officer,
and when he was discovered, he bit down on a cyanide capsule
and dropped to the ground. The architect of the
Holocaust, Adolph Eichmann, fled to Austria and got
a job as a lumberjack. Eventually, through the rat
lines, he got a fake passport and fled Europe and in 1950,
he arrived in South America with a new home, a new
job, and a new name, and that name was Ricardo Klement. (stirring music) I sent a coded message back to Israel, indicating that, yes, I
had found Adolph Eichmann and he was alive. And yes, conditions were favorable to stage an abduction. You see, at the time, the
Argentinian government was sympathetic to the
Nazis, even protected them. We couldn't just send a
message to the embassy saying, "Hey, we think
there's a guy in your country "who's responsible for the
death of six million people. "We'd like to try him for war crimes." They would have protected him. A few days later, I
knew it would be a risk, but I decided to see if I could determine where Adolph Eichmann got on the bus. I knew where he got off the
bus every weekday at 7:40pm, but it was possible there
might be a better place for the abduction. On May 4th, I boarded the
203 bus about eight stops before the previous town of San Fernando and immediately feared I
had made a big mistake. Adolph Eichmann was already on the bus. I was hoping the bus driver
would not ask me any questions and my foreign accent would be heard. Fortunately, I put down my
four pesos with no questions and... (money jingles) Fate does funny things sometimes. You see, on this day, the
bus was almost entirely full and there was only one open seat. It was the one directly
behind Adolph Eichmann. (sad and longing music) I sat there, inches away from him and thought about the man
he was in the Third Reich in another life. I thought about my family,
my aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, all killed. I thought about all my
friends who had lost so many of their families in the Holocaust that this man, sitting in front of me, had been the architect of. But I thought about one other thing. He had been found and the noose that had hung
his friends after the war for what they had done, the noose that he thought he had escaped, had found him, was closing in on him, that 15 years after the end of the war, literally on the other side of the world, justice had finally caught up to him and was coming for him. (shakers rattle rhythmically) Over several days, a team of
agents originating from Israel began arriving in Buenos
Aires. (jet planes whistle) They were logistics guys, soldiers, a disguise expert, a document forger, and a doctor. To avoid suspicion, all
arrived on different days from different countries, none of them with travel itineraries listing Argentina as
the final destination. Of course, all had fake
names and documentation. Several safe houses were
rented and prepared. On May 11, 1960, I left the main house in a car with three other agents. There was a second backup car behind us with three agents in it. In a hidden spot just
outside the neighborhood, we switched the license plate
to a fake diplomatic plate which made us less likely
to be stopped by police. A short distance from Eichmann's
home in another hidden spot we switched the plate again
to a different local plate. If the abduction went as planned, we would switch plates again for the drive to the safe house. Even though the safe house
was south of Eichmann's home, we would drive north after abducting him, so if there were any witnesses,
they would send the police in the wrong direction. If we were chased by the authorities, our first plan was to
turn suddenly off the road and transfer the prisoner
to the second car and then drive the first
car back onto the road to mislead them. If the chase got desperate,
the second car was instructed to ram the police cars. If we found ourselves
unable to escape the police, the captain of the team, Rafi Eitan, was instructed to handcuff
himself to Adolph Eichmann with no key and demand to
be taken along with Eichmann to the nearest senior officer, to explain that he and
his volunteer friends had captured the war criminal, with the plan of bringing him to the Argentinian authorities. Everyone else on the
team would be completely on their own to get out of Argentina. (drumroll rattles)
(suspenseful music) At 7:25pm, I drove past the bus stop and down the street near Eichmann's house. I parked about 25 meters
from the main road. At 7:40pm, the bus that
typically carried Eichmann passed by without stopping. Had he been tipped off? We continued to wait. According to the plan, if
he had not arrived by 8:00, we would leave as our
presence there for too long would arouse suspicion. This was a major problem for the mission. How could we possibly park
there again the next day or two days later without being exposed? 8:00 came with no sign of Eichmann. (crickets chirp) Just as we were getting ready to leave, a bus pulled up from San Fernando, stopping to let off a
single passenger. I could see through my binoculars
it was Eichmann. But I saw something I had
not seen the other times I'd watched him get off the bus. This time he had his
hand in his coat pocket. He might have a gun. I told the other agents
to watch out for a weapon. Instead of grabbing him by the
neck as originally planned, an agent now had to grab
him by his hands first. This had not been
rehearsed and went terribly when the agent sprang on him. Both of them fell into the
ditch with Eichmann screaming at the top of his lungs. The other two agents went to help. I was revving the engine
to drown out the sound. We eventually got him
into the back of the car and took off. (engine roars) No one followed us. He was under a blanket,
held down by two agents. The first words I ever said
to Adolph Eichmann were, "Don't move and no one will hurt you. "If you resist, you'll be shot." There was no answer and no reaction. I asked him if he understood me. No answer. I asked him in Spanish
what language he spoke. Still no answer. I begun to worry that he had been hurt, had a heart attack or something. It was our main priority
to keep him healthy because we needed to get
him to Israel to stand trial before the world for what he had done. I started to worry that
maybe we didn't even have the right guy. But he finally spoke up in perfect German and I knew we had our man. The first words Adolph Eichmann
ever uttered to me were, "Ich habe mich schon in
mein schicksal ergeben," which in English means, "I
have already resigned myself "to my fate." (rhythmic insistent electronic bass tones) (soft music) (electronic humming)
I actually met a Nazi. My German girlfriend was living with me in Ireland,we visited west Germany and met her granddad. I asked her and her family if I could ask him questions about the war. They said sure, nobody ever did. The first question I asked was, were you a Nazi. Yes. Did You see Hitler, meet him? I saw him in Berlin. What was your rank? What did you do.? I was a truck driver, did you kill jews,? No I killed Russians. Brought many in the truck to be be shot. Many more questions and answers. It was freaky, seriously. He was old and his eyes were cold and I vividly remember a ticking clock in the background. He has no English my girlfriend's sister translated.
I mean Eichmen was a Nazi POS who deserved to die. But its pretty laughable to call him the Architect of the Holocaust. He was more like the middle management beureaucrat of the Holocaust.
I took an honors class in college in 1987 called "Eichman in Jerusalem." I can promise you, no one in that class every thought anyone would be criticizing authorities for "kidnapping" this Nazi.
First time I've seen a reference to Nazis on reddit that was referring to an actual Nazi.
Wouldn’t it be kidnapping, not capturing?
Excellent thanks for sharing
I saw something similar posted yesterday. Is it jaeger-nazi or nazi-jaeger? I think one means nazi hunter and the other a hunter that’s also a nazi. Which one would “The Nazi Hunter” translate to?