Six decades after the massive Nazi assassin Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel for his crimes, a German news outlet has revealed that the person who led to his capture was a geologist who worked with him on a construction company in the Argentina.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Gerhard Klammer, a German who opposed the Nazi regime, provided key information that allowed Israeli spies to track down Eichmann, one of the organizers of the “Final Solution” against the Jews.
Klammer’s identity had been kept secret since agents of the Israeli Mossad spy agency abducted Eichmann in Argentina on May 11, 1960, and took him to the Jewish state, where he was tried. the following year and executed in 1962.
Now, 32 years after the geologist’s death, his family has agreed to reveal his name and role in bringing the notorious Nazi to justice in front of his accusers in a widely publicized and televised trial in Jerusalem.
Klammer, who studied geology, philosophy and history in Germany, emigrated to Argentina in 1950 to find work at the same time as Eichmann arrived in the country under a false name, according to Haaretz.
He found work at the construction company Capri, in the province of Tucuman, in northern Argentina. Under the name Ricardo Klement, Eichmann joined the firm shortly afterwards, but moved to Buenos Aires a few years later, when the company was in financial difficulties.
Klammer, who reportedly knew Eichmann’s true identity, returned to Germany. His family said he contacted German authorities in the early 1950s to inform them of Eichmann’s whereabouts, but received no response, Haaretz reported.
He later told Eichmann a friend priest who had served in the German army. The priest passed the information on to his bishop, who passed it on to Fritz Bauer, a Jewish prosecutor in Germany who was looking for Eichmann.
The German authorities were aware that Eichmann was hiding in South America, but made no effort to prosecute the desired war criminal, but Bauer’s information proved very valuable because it included Eichmann’s home address.
He also had a key photograph from the early 1950s showing Eichmann and Klammer standing next to the construction company.
Bauer had previously obtained information about Eichmann from Lothar Hermann, a German man who had moved to Argentina. The daughter of the half-Jewish man had been on a date with Eichmann’s son, who boasted of his father’s identity, Haaretz reported.
In 1957, Hermann sent this information to Bauer, who passed it on to the Mossad, but Israeli agents sent to try to locate Eichmann returned empty-handed.
Two years later, however, Klammer provided more detailed and valuable information to the Mossad that allowed him to capture Eichmann.
In 1960, agents finally located Eichmann after Bauer met in Israel with Mossad chief Isser Harel and Attorney General Haim Cohn to give them their information.
While Eichmann had lived at the address Klammer provided, he soon moved to a different location, but Israeli agents led by Rafi Eitan found him at his new location, kidnapped him and put him on a plane to Israel.
Bauer kept his promise not to reveal the source of his information and the Mossad has also kept his mother in check.
For 316 days after his capture, Eichmann, 55, was secretly detained in a special prison in northern Israel before being taken to Jerusalem for the historic trial.
The accused was “dressed in a black suit … with his eyes looking into the distance behind big glasses” as he listened impassively to the German translation of the 15 charges against him, AFP reporters reported.
“We expected a kind of monster, given the magnitude of his crimes, but Eichmann only looked like a small official,” Marcelle Joseph, who recorded the trial, told AFP in 2011.
A total of 111 witnesses took a stand during the four months and three days of the trial, each delivering gruesome personal accounts to the cameras of the world, including renowned writers such as Elie Wiesel and Joseph Kessel.
Eichmann insisted he was being tried for the actions of others and did not take personal responsibility for the crimes, saying he only followed orders.
On December 15, 1961 he was sentenced to death by hanging.
“Eichmann was guilty of horrific crimes, different from all crimes against individuals, insofar as it was the extermination of an entire people,” Supreme Court President Moshe Landau said in the full chamber.
Eichmann wrote an appeal to Israeli President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in May 1962.
“I wasn’t a responsible leader, so I don’t feel guilty,” he wrote.
On May 31, 1962, he was hanged in Ramleh Prison near Tel Aviv. His ashes were scattered in the sea, beyond the territorial waters of Israel.