(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)