The Beast in Chains

The Israeli Parliament assembled last week for a humdrum budget debate. Then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rose and, in a voice breaking with emotion, said: "I have to inform the Knesset that one of the greatest Nazi war criminals, Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible together with the Nazi leaders for what they called the 'final solution' of the Jewish question--that is, the extermination of 6,000.000 of the Jews of Europe--is under arrest in Israel and will shortly be placed on trial in Israel.''

Drooping Nose. Israel and the world buzzed with excited questions. How had the most notorious of all Jew-exterminators, a man thought dead these 15 years, fallen into Jewish hands? Had he been living contemptuously close to Israel in one of the neighboring and hostile Arab states? Was he really Eichmann, the butcher? The Israeli government, obviously fearful of international embarrassment, clamped down a curtain of total secrecy, refused to release any pictures of Eichmann or the smallest detail of how he had been caught.

From Buenos Aires, TIME Correspondent Piero Saporiti last week supplied the answer: "The Israelis found Adolf Eich mann in Argentina. He arrived in this country in 1952 from Spain. He was traveling with an Italian Red Cross document obtained through the Vatican's D.P.-relief department, which qualified him as a displaced person. The document was in the name of Krumey. one of Eichmann's assistant exterminators who was rearrested in West Germany following Ben-Gurion's announcement."

Eichmann at first worked as a surveyor for a German-American engineering firm called Capri. For the next several years he turned up under various aliases in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. By 1956 he was back in Argentina with a job as mechanic in the capital's outskirts, worked later on as an overseer on a farm in the interior. In 1958 he returned to Buenos Aires, became an office employee in an automobile plant and lived near the airport with his German wife and four children (the last was born after his family joined him).

Eichmann, now 54, bore no resemblance to the jaunty SS officer of the past. He had gone almost completely bald, hollow-cheeked, with big, flopping ears and a long, drooping nose. Yet early last month Israeli secret agents identified their quarry. From then on, they stalked him day and night. A five-man commando squad headed by one Yehudah Shimoni was sent from Israel to Buenos Aires. At the same time. El Al (Israeli Airlines) New York Station Manager Joseph Klein, who himself bears a tattooed number from one of Eichmann's concentration camps on his arm, flew down to make arrangements for a special El Al flight. It was to carry an Israeli delegation headed by Minister of State Abba Eban to attend the isoth anniversary of Argentine independence.

Quick Grab. On May 13 Eichmann walked along General Paz Avenue on his way home from work. An automobile swerved out of the heavy traffic, screeched to a halt. Before the startled Eichmann could struggle or cry out, he was grabbed and flung into the car. That night a message was flashed to Ben-Gurion. Decoded, it read: "The beast is in chains." Eichmann's family spent the night telephoning friends and checking hospitals and morgues. Next morning, they disappeared into hiding.

At 5:52 p.m. on May 20. the El Al plane (No. 4X-AGE) carrying the Israeli delegation landed at Buenos Aires airport. At the controls was Zvi Tohar. chief pilot of the airline, and besides the delegation the Bristol Britannia transport carried an abnormally large crew of 19. Six hours later. New York Manager Joseph Klein went to the airport, had the plane fueled up and cleared for departure to "Dakar, Rome and further destination pending orders from El Al headquarters." Shortly after midnight, as a couple of sleepy watchmen looked on, Klein dispatched the plane himself, and in effect stranded the Israeli delegation. Had the Britannia's 19-man crew carried the captured war criminal with them? Israeli officials denied it, but three days later Eichmann appeared in handcuffs before a Jaffa court, said firmly: "I am Adolf Eichmann."

Blood for Trucks. Eichmann was formally arraigned under a 1950 Israeli law which holds that any person "who has committed . . . during the period of the Nazi regime in any enemy country an act constituting a crime against the Jewish people is liable to the death penalty." He had a lot to answer for.

Eichmann was born 54 years ago in the Ruhr, studied engineering in Austria, was an early Nazi adherent. As chief of the Gestapo's Jewish Section, he drew up the lists of names, marshaled the freight cars that carried the victims to the camps, perfected the methods of slaughter--finally settling on "Zyklon B" as the gas that was fastest and cheapest. Jews indelibly remember Eichmann's cynical offer in 1944 to trade 1,000.000 Jews for 10,000 trucks. "Blood for merchandise, merchan dise for blood," he told a Jewish leader. "You can make your choice from Hungary, Poland, Austria, from Auschwitz or Theresienstadt, from wherever you like. Potent males? Fertile women? Old people? Children?" At the Nuremberg trials, a witness reported Eichmann's defiant boast: "I will leap into my grave laughing because the feeling that I have 5,000,000 human beings on my conscience is for me a source of extraordinary satisfaction."

Spread Nets. Eichmann escaped trial because he could not be found and was considered dead. But he had not committed suicide, and in the chaos of the war squirmed through the nets spread for his capture. Taken prisoner by U.S. forces in Austria in 1945, Eichmann soon escaped, made his way to north Germany, where he worked as a forester, then to Spain before moving on to Peron's Argentina. After his capture, Eichmann is said to have remarked: "It's a relief. I've been expecting this for a long time."

Boneyards & Graves. As the Israelis prepared a "show" trial to take place later this year, diplomats and editorialists around the world asked about the legality of kidnaping a man from one country to stand trial in a second for crimes committed in a third. There is also the embarrassment of Argentina, whose sovereignty was infringed and whose laws against abduction were flouted.

Remembering the stinking holes of Poland's Auschwitz, the smoking crematoriums of Germany, the boneyards and mass graves of the Ukraine, vengeful Israelis are not disposed to argue the fine points of the law. Instead, they debate what punishment could possibly fit the crime. Hanging, most agree, is too easy. Said one survivor of Eichmann's camps: "He should be made to live under the very same conditions that we lived in the camps, eat the same crumbs of dried bread, work the same, smell the same putrid odors from the furnaces. Let's see how long he would last."

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