The Hunt for Adolf Eichmann: Case Closed (from History's Greatest Mysteries)

and now a history channel original podcast presented by Rewind. Today, the global manhunt for a Nazi war criminal who vanished after the Holocaust and the stunning operation that finally brought him to justice. Adolf Eichmann was the architect of the Nazi Holocaust. He murdered millions of Jews, yet the Allies never even knew his name. He takes this idea of the final solution and turns it into almost an assembly line process. At the end of World War II, Eichmann hides in plain sight. There's so much chaos that the Allies don't even realize that they have Eichmann in custody and by the time they realize it, he's vanished. Nazi hunters are convinced that Eichmann is still alive, but a decade passes and no one knows where he could possibly be. Now we explore the top theories surrounding Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts leading up to his dramatic capture. These Nazis in Germany end up with a really surprising ally, the Catholic Church. An Israeli investigator receives a tip off that Adolf Eichmann has been recently spotted in Kuwait. There was only one existing photograph of Eichmann. It's really like hunting a ghost. What really happened to Adolf Eichmann? Welcome to History's greatest mysteries, a history channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Each episode, we take a deep dive into some of the greatest unanswered questions from history, backed by some of the foremost experts on the subject. This week is a special case closed investigation where our hunt for answers ends with a solution. And today, we're diving into the hunt for Adolf Eichmann. Do you ever wish you could ask nosy questions about people's money? I have $729.71 in my bank account. We bought, you know, a $1.3 million house on a $350,000 income. On the podcast, what we spend, we ask those questions. It's a show about money and all the feelings that come with spending it. I want to be the kind of person who can just take care of the people in my life. Listen to what we spend, an Odyssey original available now wherever you get your podcasts. It's January 1942, and in a lakeside mansion near Berlin, 15 senior Nazi officials are meeting. The topic, the systematic annihilation of Europe's Jews, what the Nazis refer to as the final solution. Along with these high officials, there's one lieutenant colonel very quiet, very unassuming, taking notes. But he's also providing information like the amount of Jews in different countries. This is Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann is not really well known as a front man of the Nazis. He's more of a behind-the-scenes bureaucrat, and he really views the killing of millions of Jews as sort of this logistical problem that he is in charge of solving. Eichmann grows up in Austria, the son of an accountant. He joins the Nazi party in 1932 at age 26. Eichmann had joined the SD, the SS's intelligence agency in 1934. In 1936, he's recruited by a member of the SD to join the so-called Jewish Affairs Division. And eventually, he comes to take over this division. He makes a name for himself after the annexation of Austria, where he works out a system for basically speeding up the emigration of Jewish populations outside of Germany. He figures out how to conduct these mass deportations as fast as possible. He devises a system to give deportation papers to Jewish people on the spot, while also stripping them of their possessions, stripping them of the wealth and getting them, essentially out of the country within less than an hour's time. Once World War II starts, Adolf Eichmann becomes more and more fanatical. And once the final solution is decided upon, he becomes the central operational figure behind the Holocaust. Hitler is the one who's ordering these atrocities, but Eichmann is the bureaucrat in charge of actually carrying them out. There are a lot of pieces of information that come out of Nazi Germany during World War II. And it's just so hard for Westerners to comprehend this scale of tragedy that it's not until we start to overrun some of the outlying murder camps that we can't deny what's going on anymore. In January of 1945, Hitler retreats to his bunker. By April of that year, he's dead. And then on May 7th of 1945, the Germans surrender. Despite the fact that many high-ranking Nazis have been captured, Eichmann is never found. And on top of that, most of the world has never even heard his name. Six months go by before the public finally learns about Adolf Eichmann and his role in the Holocaust. In November of 1945, all eyes are on Nuremberg, Germany, where 24 Nazi officials are put on trial for their atrocities during World War II. And it's here that Adolf Eichmann's name first comes up. Prosecutors quote this Hungarian Jewish leader who tells the story of a mass deportation of Hungarian Jews from Budapest. So there's a special unit that is running operations there. And Eichmann is in charge of that unit. He is the one who's going to decide who's going to the gas chambers and who will live. A few weeks later, on January 3rd, 1946, an SS captain with ties to Eichmann is called to testify. He had joined the Nazi's intelligence service and then becoming one of Eichmann's men in the so-called Jewish affairs division of the Gestapo. He claims that he pushed back against this plan to kill millions of Jews, but Eichmann simply told him you're being too sentimental about it. The Nuremberg testimony gives Eichmann worldwide notoriety, but his whereabouts are still unknown. Finding Eichmann won't be easy, but after the revelations at Nuremberg, it's a priority. The question is, where could he be? There are millions of Germans packed into POW camps all over Europe. The Americans alone have two million in captivity, but these camps are cramped, they're not well organized, they don't have the names of everybody in them. But the obvious place to look for Eichmann is in POW camps around Europe. Which brings us to theory number one. He was hiding in a POW camp under a false name. Despite the fact that most of the world has never heard the name Adolf Eichmann, the U.S. counterintelligence corps has actually been compiling Adolfier on him for months. Investigators go and track down Eichmann's wife Vera. They find her in Austria, she claims that she hasn't seen her husband in months, and she doesn't even have a photograph of him. It's clear that he was really planning ahead here. He was making sure that there were no pictures of him left over. SS officers tell Allied officials that Eichmann was still alive at the end of the war, and he probably still is. They don't think that Eichmann would have taken his own life the way that other Nazi officials did at this time. With all of the chaos and the disorganization and the disarray of these POW camps, it becomes very, very likely that Eichmann is using these POW camps to hide out. The Allies also assume that he's using an alias. The CIC distributes notices to their regional offices, and they call Eichmann "of the highest importance among war criminals." As it turns out, the Americans already have Eichmann in custody, they just don't know it. At the end of the war, Eichmann actually goes down into Austria to hide out, and there are tons of Nazis all over the place hiding from the Allies. He meets with his wife and gives her instructions on how to deal with Allied investigators, which he knows are coming. His plan is to head northwest to Germany with his assistant, staying in homes of people who are sympathetic to former Nazis. A little later in May, however, Eichmann and his assistant are picked up by a U.S. Army patrol, and they're taken to a US POW camp in Viden. Eichmann gives a false name, a false identity by the name of Adolf Barth. In the camp, Eichmann plots how to keep from being discovered and how to escape. Eichmann is going to be identified sooner or later because every SS officer like Eichmann has a unique identifier that's not common in the rest of the German Vermont. Every SS soldier has his blood type tattooed inside his armpit, and that means if you make all of the captives take off their shirts and hold their hands up in the air, you can quickly pick out a fanatical Nazis. He tries to burn that tattoo with cigarettes, but it doesn't work, so he's not going to know the claim he's not a member of the SS, but there are plenty of SS men who are POWs at the end of the war. So what he tells the Allied officials is that his name is actually Otto Eichmann, and that he's a Lieutenant-Carnel in the SS. Eichmann makes the switch, thinking Eichmann is close enough to his real surname. If an old acquaintance were to suddenly blurt out his real name, Eichmann in the camp, it would be less likely to rouse suspicion. Eichmann knows that he can't play this game forever. He's gotten through a couple of interrogations. Undetected but he knows it's only a matter of time before he's found out to be who he really is He finds some SS officers in the camp who help him in his escape He's able to forge papers that pass him off as a hunter in the area and the SS officers in the camp also get him some civilian clothes and one night Ikeman is able to climb over a section of barbed wire fence that isn't viewed by any camp guards and he's able to make his escape into the surrounding woods and there he vanishes Authorities learn that an SS officer named Otto Eckman has escaped and so they interrogate all the other former SS officers that are in the camp and Those people confirm that Otto Eckman actually is Adolf Eckman It really shows how disorganized the situation in Europe is at the end of 45 and beginning of 46 The allies wind up realizing that they'd been looking for Eckman for months when in reality he was hiding underneath their nose inside one of their own compounds And so it's a little embarrassing. It's a little frustrating But it also means that they're pretty hot on his tail It's not just allied officials who are searching for Eckman We also have the Haganah the Jewish Intelligent Services that ultimately became the IDF once the Israeli State was established The Haganah try to find Eckman by assembling this team of five operatives that are going to track his family They launched this much more elaborate investigation than the allied forces had The team travels to Austria and after months of searching Locates the current homes of Eckman's wife and brother Otto as The members of Haganah start tracking Vera and her brother-in-law what they discover is the two of them regularly take train trips Out to the Austrian countryside basically between Lins and Salzburg They always travel separately but arrive at the same time and they then walk into the forest essentially to a two-story house That's kind of camouflaged from casual observation The team investigates the house and what they find is there's four men living in it And they never come out but every night an individual comes to the door and brings them food The five-man team from a distance sees one of these figures that they think looks like Eckman But they really can't tell they theorize that this is why Vera and his brother are coming and staying and visiting for a while Sensing they may have found their man the operatives stage a raid on the chalet One night while the men are having dinner inside this house five members of Haganah approach Two of them kick in the door while the other ones pull guns on the men inside this secluded home They single out the individual that they think might be Adolf Eichman and they remove him from the house The operatives are shouting questions at the man that their convinces Adolf Eichman But the man is telling them I'm not Adolf Eichman. My name is Wolfgang Bauer But after a bit of time Bauer reveals that he actually was an SS officer But he's still not the man that they're looking for He's not Eichman but he knows Eichman. He served with Eichman And he was actually part of the Einstein's group and that Eichman oversaw. This was this mobile death squad that came in and exterminated Jews usually by shooting them. They killed millions of people Still convinced the man is Eichman himself the operatives drag him out into a waiting car and drive him deeper into the woods They say if you're not Eichman why are Eichman's wife and brother continually visiting you And his only answer is that they were friends with the owner of the chalet where they were staying They continue peppering him with questions one of the operatives is pointing a gun directly at his chest and Bauer Basically just laughs at the operatives and he tells them all you can do is kill me So that's what the operatives do They pump bullets into his chest and they bury him in a shallow grave And then later the Haganah go back to their superiors and they tell them that they have successfully killed Adolf Eichman So that's theory number two. He was shot in Austria Nobody's quite sure what to think about the Eichman situation There are some that are convinced that Haganah had gotten the wrong man that in fact the individual they shot really was Wolfgang Bauer And he was telling the truth he wasn't Eichman Others on the other hand are convinced that Adolf Eichman is killed by the Haganah and it's officially over case closed As for the allied forces They're not as worried anymore about looking for Nazi war criminals considering that by 1947 the allied forces are dealing with In their minds a much bigger deal which is the burgeoning cold war One man still in pursuit is an Austrian Holocaust survivor named Simon Wiesenthal Who's dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals Wiesenthal becomes convinced that the Haganah victim was not Eichman That this individual was someone else who might have been connected to him In fact Wiesenthal is fairly frustrated that they shot the individual Rather than bringing him in for deeper interrogation because he might have been able to offer some clues as to Eichman's actual whereabouts But he has to work with the materials that are available to him So he begins at the beginning and he starts looking at the individuals that were closest to Eichman Working with other investigators Wiesenthal is able to source a photo of Eichman finally putting a face to the notorious Nazi criminal In December of 1947 Wiesenthal is called to Austria to the USCIC headquarters for an urgent meeting He's told there that Eichman's wife Vera has just put in an application to have her husband legally declared dead Now she says she does this in the interest of their children But if he is in fact declared dead The warrants that are out on Eichman will disappear The search for him will officially be over And the proof of the death is that there is a report coming from a government officer in Czechoslovakia named Lukas That he witnessed Eichman being killed by a Soviet firing squad at the end of World War II Leading to theory number three, he was killed by the Soviets Paralukas swears in an affidavit that Eichman along with other Nazis were apprehended by the Red Army They were lined up, shoulder to shoulder, and executed on April 30, 1945 by members of the Soviet Army Wiesenthal is not buying it. He has interviewed people in the POW camps who said that they saw Eichman after April of 1945 And he starts thinking Vera has probably submitted this application as an attempt to end the hunt for her husband Wiesenthal petitions the court to essentially postpone the decision about whether Eichman was alive or dead Wiesenthal thinks that given a little bit of time he can actually prove that Eichman is still alive He sends investigators to Prague to both find out more evidence on Eichman and also to basically check the background on Lukas So this investigation is three years after this alleged shooting So there's really no evidence to be found there But what Wiesenthal's researchers do find it's rather fascinating is that Lukas is married to Vera's sister When Wiesenthal approaches the judge and points out that the star witness suggesting that Eichman was dead is actually married to his wife's sister, the judge is mortified because that's something that the witness should have revealed at the very beginning of the discussion Ultimately the judge throws the case out He can't rule Eichman dead on the basis of individuals testifying who had a vested interest in an outcome So to Wiesenthal, this pretty much confirms his suspicions. Eichman is still alive And doing whatever he can to allude the long arm of justice So Eichman could presumably be anywhere Coming up, the hunt for Eichman continues far away from Europe By 1950, with the Cold War heating up, the Allied powers are less focused on hunting Nazi war criminals but it remains risky for Nazi fugitives Even those with fake identities to pass through border checkpoints in escape Europe Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal have no idea if Eichman is still in Germany or could have escaped thousands of miles away In a major surprise to Western powers, some of the former Nazis are actually gaining assistance Escaping Europe thanks to the Catholic Church The Catholic Church sees the Nazis as one of the great ways to fight against the evils of communism There are still plenty of fascist sympathizers after World War II And they start creating these secret routes via safe houses that are called rat lines as a way to help Nazis escape to safer areas And the Catholic Church plays a role in this because some of these rat lines, some of these safe houses are monasteries that exist in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain and Italy You have a number of cardinals and a number of upper-level Catholic administrators who are sympathetic to the Nazis Not because of their anti-Jewish stance But because they saw them as an ally in the fight against communism. which they saw as much worse than even Nazism. Italy is vital to all this because in Rome there's a Catholic bishop named Aloys Houdal who was very pro-Nazi and he's got the ability to make the fake papers to get these former Nazis out of Europe. These papers are accepted by the Red Cross. No questions asked. The Red Cross is really overseeing the flow of refugees and so these former Nazis and SS officers are basically able to just blend in with other refugees and being able to get out of the country. By the early 1950s investigators believe it's possible Eichmann has taken advantage of the rat lines. About 90% of these Nazis escaped Europe through Italy or Spain and they were on their way most of them to South America. Argentina is a safe haven for these Germans. President Juan Perone was a close ally of Hitler's during the war. So Houdal knew exactly who he was helping here. He writes to Perone actually in 1948 and asks for 5,000 visas to help Nazis escape so Argentina seems like a good place to try to start looking for Eichmann. Giving us theory number four, he fled to Argentina. There are rumors that start to circulate that by the 1950s Eichmann has fled to Argentina and has started a life there. Now for the most part the newly formed West German government largely ignores a lot of these rumors but there's one prosecutor that just will not let this information go. He's a German Jewish prosecutor by the name of Fritz Bauer. He and his family had fled from German persecution early on in the Third Reich so he escaped some of the worst evils of the Holocaust but when he returns to Germany in the post-war era he's determined to set some of the wrongs right. Bauer can't be too open with what he's up to because he doesn't know who in the German hierarchy it might be sympathetic to those individuals and might tip them off to the possibility of their discovery. In September 1957 Bauer receives a letter from Lothar Hermann, a blind attorney living in Argentina. Hermann is one of the German expats living in Argentina. He's Jewish and part of a rather large Jewish population even though Perone is really anti-Semitic. There's a population of about 400,000 Jews living in Argentina. Hermann is a survivor of one of the most notorious concentration camps of World War II, Dachau. In fact he endured such vicious beatings during his time at the camp that he actually lost his eyesight. He immigrates to Argentina in 1938 with his wife and his daughter. In 1956 he's living in a suburb of Buenos Aires with his family and his daughter Sylvia is dating this young German ex-pat named Nick. So one night while having dinner over at the Hermann's house, young Nick says that his dad was a high official in the Vermacht, the German army. Nick has no idea that he's talking to a Jewish family. The Hermanns do not publicize the fact that they're Jewish so he just keeps talking and talking and eventually says it's a shame that Nazis were never able to complete their mission of extermination. The Hermann family just sits quietly. The father doesn't say anything. He's used to hearing anti-Semitic comments. He knows that this is just how it goes sometimes. He's disappointed that his daughter is dating him. I'm sure but he just lets it go. A few months later the Hermann family move a couple of hundred miles away to another town and the boyfriend is forgotten. One day in April of 1957 Sylvia is reading an article in the newspaper for her father about Nazi war criminals and she mentions the name Adolf Eichmann when she says her boyfriend Nick said that his last name is Eichmann. Lothar Hermann instantly remembers the boy's hateful comments at the dinner table. Sylvia is still in touch with Nick but he's never given her his home address. He gives her a different address to write to to get to him and oddly enough while Sylvia and Nick were dating he never invited her over to his house so Lothar immediately suspects that this might be Adolf Eichmann's son. They want to tell the German authorities or the Argentinian authorities that they really can't because Nazi sympathizers are everywhere at this point so instead they write a letter to the prosecutors in Frankfurt West Germany and that's the letter that makes its way to Fritz Bauer. So Bauer's intrigued. He knows that Eichmann's son is named Klaus but in German Klaus is actually short for Nicholas so this seems promising but he needs more information such as in address. Lothar and Sylvia take a 10 hour train ride from their home back to the suburb of Bolivos and they pretty much spend the day just walking around the town until Sylvia runs into a mutual friend of hers and Nick that tells her where Nick's house is so he gives her the address. Sylvia goes to the house the door is answered by a woman who reluctantly lets her in. There is a middle aged man in glasses and she thinks that he looks like the guy in the picture that Fritz Bauer had sent to her of Adolf Eichmann but she's not totally sure so she asks him she says are you Mr. Eichmann are you Nick's father and he sort of tertiary responds no I'm his uncle so she sits down and just strikes up a pleasant conversation with him. Nick comes home shortly thereafter and sees Sylvia says what are you doing here oh I just stopped to say I I have to go I have to go. The middle aged man wearing glasses who has claimed to be the uncle stands up to walk her to the door and Nick says no father I can walk her to the door myself. So it would seem that the hormones have stumbled on something pretty suspicious the fact that it took all this time to figure out Nick's address why was he being so cagey about where he lives and then when Sylvia arrives to the house the woman that answers the door reluctantly lets her in the man claims to be Nick's uncle but then Nick refers to him as father something just is not adding up in the situation. Although Fritz Bauer is intrigued he's got a problem he can't really rely on German or Argentinian authorities to follow up on this information there's just too many Nazi sympathizers within both of those populations. So instead he turns to the new Israeli intelligence service the Mossad. The Mossad go to the house the hormones had told them about but when they get there they don't think it's the right address it is fram checkle is worn out and I just can't believe that an SS officer of the rank and fortune of Ikeman would be living there. As they watch the house they just don't see anybody coming and going that matches Ikeman's description so they're pretty certain this is a case of mistaken identity. The Mossad let the tip go the hormones though they don't want to let this go so in April of 1958 they're going through public records and they find out that the home is owned by a guy named Francisco Schmidt and they think that this is just the latest alias of Adolf Ikeman and so they go back to the Mossad and they say look into Francisco Schmidt and they do and they say there's no way that Francisco Schmidt is actually Adolf Ikeman. So at this point they pause their contact with the Hermans because they just think that they're full of unreliable information. A year later in August of 1959 an independent Nazi investigator Tuvia Friedman says that he's been in contact with some high government officials in Germany and they've told him that Ikeman is not in Argentina he's in Kuwait and that's theory number five he was living in Kuwait. Now Kuwait at this time is this sort of obscure British territory there's only about 300,000 people living there. North Africa and the Middle East are actually very popular destinations for ex Nazis. Friedman immediately contacts the Israeli Defense Ministry and he says that Ikeman is in Kuwait you should send some agents over there to go pick him up but the ministry pretty much ignores Friedman entirely. Israel is a brand new country it has a long list of security priorities and Friedman realizes that Ikeman is not really the top of the list or maybe even the middle of it but he's not going to give up. So Friedman contacts in Israeli newspaper men and says have I got a scoop for you eight off Ikeman the former Nazi is living in Kuwait. Friedman suddenly becomes an international celebrity and he uses his fame to draw attention to the fact that Ikeman has not been located. Other Nazi hunters are not happy they believe it's going to do nothing but drive Ikeman either underground or out of Kuwait. No solid evidence of Ikeman turns up in Kuwait and the trail once again seems to run cold. Nevertheless Friedman is pleased with what he did because now So he's put Adolf Eichmann's name in newspapers all over the world, and this becomes a way to potentially inspire not only Nazi honours, but actual governments to locate this Nazi war criminal and bring him to justice. Coming up, the Eichmann Trail leads back to Argentina, but investigators are still short on solid intel. In late 1959, there's a rash of anti-Semitic activity throughout West Germany. Reportedly, swastikas are painted on nearly 700 Jewish sites across the country, along with graffiti reading Jews out. It's a painful time, but the attacks do help galvanize all the parties that are, or should be hunting down Nazi war criminals. It is important to acknowledge that there were still Nazi sympathies, even though they had been defeated in World War II, that didn't mean that pro-Nazi sentiment completely disappeared. This can explain why it took West Germany so long to take the hunt for Eichmann seriously. Up to this point, there has been a lot of foot dragging. West German intelligence has been sitting on a lot of evidence that Adolf Eichmann is alive in Argentina, and living under an assumed name. After years of pursuing Eichmann, West German prosecutor Fritz Bauer receives new intel, pointing him to Eichmann's alleged alias. Bauer gets a tip from a man named Gerhard Klammer, and Klammer used to work for a construction company in northern Argentina with a guy named Ricardo Clement. He's never forgotten the man's face. And he's seen it in news coverage as the years have gone by. And he is thoroughly convinced that Ricardo Clement is actually Adolf Eichmann. Now he was German, but he wasn't a Nazi. He was anti-Nazi as so many Germans were. And so he spends the 1950s trying multiple times to notify the German government that Ricardo Clement is there in Argentina and that he is Adolf Eichmann. Bringing us back to theory number six, he was living in Buenos Aires with an assumed name. In an amazing coincidence, Klammer is in Buenos Aires and he sees a man get off the bus that he recognizes as his old coworker, Ricardo Clement. He follows the man and writes down the address where the man goes home. Finally, in December of 1959, we might have definitive evidence of where Adolf Eichmann is hiding. Klammer's findings make their way to Fritz Bauer and this is when Bauer starts to slowly put together the pieces of this puzzle. He knows the name Ricardo Clement because that information was provided to him by the Hermons when Sylvia found that name registered on the electric meter of the house that he's living in. On top of that, Klammer also has a photograph of him and Ricardo Clement standing together. When Bauer takes this photograph and puts it by the photo that they have of Adolf Eichmann, the resemblance is incredibly striking. A few months later, Bauer reaches out to the Masad. He knows where Eichmann is hiding. He just hopes it's not too late. The Masad recognizes that they might have made a mistake about whether or not Eichmann is still alive and well in Argentina. In March of 1960, a new Masad agent is sent to Argentina and he starts to investigate. The agent who has assigned this case is Svea Harone. He was known as being very methodical, very unflappable. He could do just about any job that needed to be done while he and his mother had escaped the Holocaust and gotten to Palestine by 1938. The entire rest of his family was killed. So the idea that he could capture Eichmann was personal. Svea goes to the neighborhood and checks out the house in Buenos Aires, only to find that Ricardo Clement has just recently moved out. There's a team of painters painting the house. So Svea finds an ally in this young Argentinian kid in the neighborhood who goes up to the painters and is trying to get the address of where Ricardo Clement moved. He claims to be determined to deliver a package to the family that had previously inhabited the home. And it turns out one of the workers is actually friends with one of the Clement's family sons. And after a little more discussion, he's persuaded to provide the new address where the Clement's family resides. This new property was purchased by Eichmann's wife using her maiden name and they've moved to San Fernando, which is just outside of Buenos Aires. And the address is 14 Garibaldi Street. Using caution, Ahorone surveils the address. And during his surveillance, he notices a middle aged man that bears a pretty striking resemblance to Eichmann. And with this information, Ahorone contacts the Mossad and tells them, quote, "The driver is black." This is a code that basically tells the Mossad that Eichmann has been found. With this information, the Prime Minister of Israel, Ben Gurion, decides to send an 11-man team of Mossad agents to Buenos Aires to capture Eichmann and bring him back to Israel. It's called Operation Finale. The Mossad agents run surveillance on Eichmann for two months and they track all of his movements because the better they know where he goes, where he stops, what he does during the day, it'll be much easier to figure out when's the best time to strike. And they figure out he gets off the same bus every single day and makes this short walk to his house. And that's when they'll strike. On the evening of May 11, 1960, the operation unfolds like a scene from a spine novel. Eichmann has become very set in his daily patterns. Every day, he climbs off of a city bus at 7.40 pm and he follows the same path to his house, just 110 yards away. But on this night, 7.40 passes and Eichmann's bus has yet to arrive. Mossad operators are waiting for him near the bus stop. They have a limousine full of agents. They even have a couple guys outside of the car who are sort of pretending to work under the hood. There's another guy in a backup car behind them. 7.40 comes and goes, the bus doesn't come. So now they're confused. This is not how they were expecting things to go down. It's getting later and later and they realize really the longer that they sit there, the more likely it is that they're going to get noticed by someone. So, finally, a bus arrives. The agent's blood pressure rises, they know that this is the moment, but the bus doesn't stop. It just whizzes by. The Mossad agents probably starting to get a little bit nervous. What if somebody tipped off Eichmann so we should abort for tonight, maybe we'll try again later with the hope that this operation will work. But then, five minutes later at 8.05 pm, another bus pulls up to the bus stop. 25 minutes late, their suspect steps off the bus. He starts making the walk to his street, they're going to let him get to his street. And it's there that an agent named Peter Malkin goes up to him and says, "Wun momentito senior?" And he must know something's up because he takes off running. Malkin has to go and really tackle him to the ground. After a struggle, they drag him into the limousine. And while they're in the car, he's strangely silent. And then suddenly, in perfect German, he says to them, "I am resigned to my fate." Now, before this, the Mossad agents were 99 percent sure this was Eichmann. After he says this, they know 100 percent they've got their man. So for this mystery, it's case closed. Ricardo Clement is Adolf Eichmann. For nine ten stays, the Mossad agents keep Eichmann sequestered in a safe house while trying to figure out the details of his extraction, because you have to understand. These Mossad agents are in a sovereign nation. They have just apprehended a citizen of that nation. And now they're going to try to extradite this person out of the country without the Argentinian government. No. So they have to be very, very careful about every step that they take because if something goes wrong, Eichmann could be allowed to stay in Argentina and not be extradited back to Israel. What they end up doing could be a part of a movie. They drug him, put him in a light crew uniform, and take him to the airport. They drag him along as if he's just some drunk pilot that they're going to put on the plane. They're very nonchalant, laughing about this. Here's this drunk pilot, no big deal. This isn't Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. This isn't a prisoner who we've drugged. This is just some drunk flight crew member who we're going to take home before he gets in trouble. They finally get to Israel. Eichmann is caught. He knows that he is, and he's resigned to his fate. Now, at long last, one of the primary engineers of the Holocaust will stand trial for his crimes. Eichmann's trial commences in 1961, and his defense essentially suggests that he's a low-ranking bureaucrat who was merely following orders and doing his job. However, as the trial develops, the evidence makes it clear that Eichmann was absolutely central to the propagation of the Holocaust. Eichmann is ultimately found guilty of war crimes against humanity, his sentence to death, and is hanged for his crimes on June 1, 1962. Government authorities eventually took down Eichmann, but the details of his capture remind us of the role played by ordinary people. The haremons, a blind lawyer, and his teenage daughter with no training were the first to truly expose Eichmann's new life in Argentina, and they never gave up seeking justice. Thanks so much for listening to History's Greatest Mysteries, a History Channel original podcast presented by Rewind Studios. Join us next time for a deep dive into another mystery, and all the theories behind it.