The House on Garibaldi Street
Vciron, Benno Weiser
The House on Garibaldi Street Benno Weiser Vciron THE HOUSE ON GARIBALDI STREET BY ISSER HAREL Viking Press, New York. 296pp., $8.95. This book is a non-fiction Odessa File. Its subtitle is "The...
...The man who had literally railroaded European Jewry to the furnaces was an anti-villain...
...The merit goes to a man known only to a handful of specialists (and to the readers of Ladislas Farago's Aftermath), the late Dr...
...There was a specialist who continuously forged documents, passports and certificates...
...And though it cannot produce any surprises, it grips the reader like a good spy thriller...
...Farago claims that the Argentinian authorities discovered in 1952 that Klement was Eichmann...
...Today, they blend perfectly intb the rightist dictatorships of their host countries...
...These lines may connect with an item of Farago's Aftermath...
...Eichmann was shadowed for weeks and finally captured in a deserted street on his way home...
...Bauer supplied Dr...
...Late in 1957, he notified Dr...
...Bauer asked him to find Eichmann's address...
...Bauer was one of the few who took these laws seriously...
...There was the search for a house in which Eichmann could be held as a captive...
...They appear under pseudonyms.'' Though this discretion may be understandable, it strains the reader's patience to read, again and again, of "an airline company," though it has been common knowledge for 15 years that this company was El Al...
...As it turned out, the alienation was minimal...
...As a handbook for undercover operations, The House on Garibaldi Street is invaluable...
...There was a problem of making sure that Mrs...
...Eichmann and his guards remained in the plane, which, after a single stop in Dakar, landed at Lod...
...The blind man wrote a letter to Germany which reached the desk of Dr...
...The daughter got it through a common acquaintance...
...He found his tracks, but it was four weeks too late...
...There is more than one controversy attached to Aftermath and though its Eichmann chapter broadly coincides with the Harel account, it differs in some details — the Harel version being, no doubt, more precise...
...When I arrived eight years later in Paraguay, it would not have been impossible to track him down, but Israel could not afford a repeat of the Eichmann abduction...
...Abba Eban, the Vice Premier, in all probability would have refused to travel on the plane, had he known that on the next day it was to break international law...
...or to notice that in the enumeration of the Israeli Delegation to Argentina's 150th anniversary Benno Weiser Varon is a former ambassador of Israel to several Latin American countries...
...This condensation leaves out the painstaking planning, preparations and precautions which went into the adventure...
...The corresponding investigation led to a blind alley, was abandoned, and the matter lay dormant until Dr...
...Another man ran after him...
...The capture of Eichmann produced panic among the estimated 50,000 Nazi war criminals who found shelter in the Southern part of South America...
...There is, nevertheless, no contradiction between Farago's assertion that, unbeknown to the Israelis, the Argentinian authorities condoned the capture of Eichmann, and Harel's description of the departure of the plane...
...When she asked whether Nicolas was at home, she was told he was working overtime...
...A second emissary was dispatched in March 1958, and was more impressed by the account of the daughter and the attitude of her mother than by the blind father...
...A year and a half were lost, because As a handbook for undercover operations, this book is invaluable...
...There was a plan for every contingency: police search, stricter border controls, capture by the Argentinian authorities...
...It was not the fault of the Israelis that the agents who trailed Eichmann could not avoid noticing that he was also trailed by the Israeli team...
...The celebration of the Argentinian anniversary at the beginning of 1960 provided the opportunity to send a special plane to Buenos Aires, and a large team was dispatched to the country...
...As soon as he became aware of the Eichmann file, he issued secret and personal orders to intensify the surveillance with a view toward "an early disposition" of the case...
...According to Farago, not only was the capture witnessed by an Argentinian agent, but the regular immigration personnel was replaced at the airport so that the party could pass without incident...
...Israel's Foreign Ministry would have strenuously objected to an abduction...
...He walked through the exit door without being stopped, and almost ran toward the apron where our plane was standing...
...They were the first to face what later came to be known as "the banality of evil...
...My peace of mind was seriously disturbed and I could not relax even when I was seated on the plane and it was already moving off...
...The same applies to the identity of the people who took part in the operation...
...Bauer...
...Meek, frightened, subservient to his captors, it seemed utterly incredible that the same man who looked like a minor bank teller or postal clerk could have wielded power over life and death of millions, when he donned polished boots and a smartly fitted S.S...
...Pressed by the failure of this mission, Dr...
...He was held captive for ten days and his family did not announce his disappearance for fear of exposing Ricardo Klement's real identity...
...She went to the house, asked whether this was the home of the Eichmann family, and caused an embarrassed silence...
...This established where the Eichmann family lived...
...An eminent jurist, he was persuaded by the German authorities to come back, along with other "non-Aryan" judges and prosecutors, to replace the Nazi-tainted officials who crowded the German judicial apparatus...
...If the Eichmann capture has one hero, he is the man who made the lonely and difficult decision to break international law and infringe on the sovereignty of a friendly nation so as to bring the mass murderer to justice...
...Shi-nar with the address, but did not divulge the name of his informer...
...And though it cannot produce any surprises, it grips the reader like a good spy thriller...
...Eichmann's second husband was indeed Eichmann himself...
...A few Latin American Jews helped with their knowledge of Spanish, but no Argentinians were used...
...The Federal Republic had passed several laws to pursue and prosecute Nazi criminals...
...He understood...
...These showed that the house was owned by an Austrian named Schmidt and that the two electric meters were registered in the names of Dagoto and Klement...
...Eichmann's captors, his guards, the physician and the genuine crew members were the first to experience what four hundred newspapermen (I among them) felt a few months later during the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem...
...For this reviewer, The House on Garibaldi Street brings one surprise: the revelation that Isser Harel—as an afterthought, during the ten day waiting period between capture and departure — also considered abducting the infamous Dr...
...In 1958, after the downfall of Peron and a succession of interim regimes, Arturo Frondizi was elected President...
...Bauer revealed the name of his informer...
...In January 1958, Isser Harel sent an agent to Buenos Aires who, when he saw the shabby house, discarded the lead, since it did not fit with the (false) image of an Eichmann who allegedly had shipped millions of dollars abroad...
...Bauer visited Israel in December of 1959 and brought the information that Eichmann had changed his name to Ricardo Klement...
...He, nevertheless, put the father in charge of further investigations...
...And though the Argentinian Government declared Ambassador Arie Levavi (who was not in on the secret) persona non grata and brought the matter to the Security Council, President Arturo Frondizi merely went through the motions of being upset...
...I noticed a man in civilian clothes . . . who looked as though he might hold an important position...
...celebration (which provided the pretext for sending the El Al plane to Buenos Aires), the head of the delegation, Abba Eban, is conspicuously omitted...
...It is a story told, fact by fact, event by event...
...Ever since, he was under surveillance...
...All participants knew that they risked prison sentences, but Argentinians might have risked more...
...uniform...
...There was no chance to get Eichmann extradited, and any legal attempt to do so would have given him ample time to disappear...
...Dressed as a crew member, drugged, but not unable to walk, he was led up the stairs to the plane, reached through an entrance for maintenance crews, not subject to controls...
...From then on everything was smooth sailing...
...At the time the name Eichmann was in the news due to the trial of a war criminal in Germany...
...Though the author does not engage in polemics, his account puts an end to the boast of Nazi-hunter Tuvia Friedman to have "tracked Adolf Eichmann down," and to the credit frequently given to Simon Wiesental, though not claimed by him, to have tipped off the Israeli authorities...
...But Dr...
...While his sons continued to live under the name of Eichmann, he posed as the second husband of their mother who allegedly remarried after Eichmann had disappeared...
...Nor is there any contradiction between President Frondizi's silent acquiescence and his public reaction...
...Harel describes the departure of the plane: "I was not completely at ease...
...In 1960, Israel could still afford the risk of alienating world opinion...
...The pseudonyms have the disadvantage that they permit the reader to ignore names, and once the cast multiplies, it is easy to lose track of who is who among the 50-odd dramatis personae involved in the plot...
...Harel begins the story late in 1957 and ends it in mid-1960, and if the narrative is less than promised, that is because even 15 years after the greatest coup of Israel's Secret Service, Harel hesitates to present a genuinely "full account...
...The more prominent lived for several years the life of the hunted, though there were hardly any hunters...
...No fewer than seven were rented, for all possible eventualities...
...Its subtitle is "The First Full Account of the Capture and Abduction of Adolf Eichmann, As Told by the Former Head of Israel's Secret Service...
...President Frondizi gave orders "not to interfere with their activities...
...Cars had to be rented and changed frequently (and represented the greatest risk factor: though exorbitantly expensive, they habitually broke down...
...Bauer, a Jew, had spent the war years in Sweden...
...Shinar, the head of Israel's Reparation Mission in Bonn, that Eichmann was alive and in Argentina...
...Ben Gurion made the decision alone...
...Joseph Mengele, the "Angel of Death" of Auschwitz...
...As the plane reached the tarmac to pick up a restricted number of passengers, the crew descended and passed Customs and Immigration...
...When the crew members . . . passed...
...Fritz Bauer, Procurator General of the State of Hesse...
...the blind man suddenly developed a passion for detective work and decided that Schmidt was Eichmann...
...When I walked out on the apron, the two men stood next to the plane...
...Even the Soviet Union supported Israel in the Security Council...
...He admits that "various details . . . must remain secret...
...The basic story can be told in two paragraphs: A blind Jewish refugee from Germany, living in the province of Buenos Aires, learned that his daughter dated a young German, Nicolas Eichmann, who lived in the Capital...
...And it is no more (and even a little less) than what its subtitle promises...
Vol. 1 • September 1975 • No. 3
