Avner Abraham retired from the institution, turning the commemoration of Operation Finale into his life's mission

• Adolf Eichmann // Photo: From his case file in the Israel Police

"What's your name?", The Mossad officials asked the man they had just caught in San Fernando near Buenos Aires. "Ricardo Clement," replied the man who insisted time and time again that this was his true identity. After exhausting a long series of questions, they unexpectedly asked him what his personal number was and when he recited his Nazi membership number, the squad members realized that they had succeeded in their mission and captured one of the greatest Jewish criminals, Adolf Eichmann.

The culmination of Operation "Finale", the operation to capture those who believed in the destruction of European Jews during the Holocaust, happened exactly today 60 years ago, on May 11, 1960. Anyone who investigated the operation from all aspects and is considered a world-renowned expert on the operation is a former institution member, Avner Abraham, who served in the organization for 28 years.

"I retired five years ago," Avraham, 54, tells Israel Today, telling how he began to engage in one of Israel's most famous and complex operations. "Ten years ago I had an exhibition that included original items related to the operation. Netanyahu saw it and asked me to come with the exhibition to the Knesset. From there he broke into the Diaspora and large museums across the US."

Three years after the war, with the help of the Vatican, Eichmann received a fake passport. In 1950 he used it to flee to Argentina. Two years later, he was joined by his wife, Veronica, and their three children, Klaus, Horst and Dieter. Over the years, they moved several apartments until they settled in San Fernando near the capital Buenos Aires. "He tried his luck in a business world, including in the water business, raising rabbits and setting up a laundromat. But he was unsuccessful in his business and moved to work at Mercedes."

At the same time, in the late 1950s, then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion instructed the security establishment to "bring one Nazi to one trial," as Avraham describes. Members of the Mossad began various operations to locate senior Nazi officers until information about Adolf Eichmann arrived. "It all started from a love story between a boy and a girl. The boy was Eichmann's son, Klaus, and the girl, Sylvia Herman, was a Christian family whose father was half Jewish and a Holocaust survivor from Dachau. When Klaus visited his beloved home, he was asked by her father a number of questions about his family. "This information came to Dr. Fritz Bauer, who was the prosecutor general in Frankfurt and a Holocaust survivor himself, and he passed it on to the institution that began to embroider the action."

After a long follow-up from members of the Israeli squad, Eichmann was caught by Mossad members under the command of former Minister Rafi Eitan. "He was captured when he returned from his job at Mercedes with his body holding two certificates, an employee ID and a local ID with his fake name. When questioned, he reiterated that his name was Riccardo Clement, but the agents did an exercise for him. They asked him a lot of questions and then suddenly asked what his personal number is and he is out of habit of his Nazi membership number. That's how they actually led him to admit that he was indeed Adolf Eichmann. "

Avraham says that Eichmann, "was not too much information but it was enough to bring him to trial in Israel. At trial he tried to claim that he was a small screw in the machine and was only a soldier who carried out orders. However, his lawyer tried before the trial to challenge the lawyer to prosecute him. He claimed that the crimes attributed to Eichmann were committed until 1945 while the State of Israel was established only three years later. Of course, that did not help him. "

Two days after Eichmann was brought to Israel, Ben-Gurion announced his capture over the Knesset stage, but apparently without his knowledge, this announcement thwarted an operation to capture a well-known and well-known Nazi criminal - Dr. Josef Mengele. The institution wanted to bring it on the same flight. Rafi Eitan and Avraham Shalom, the unit's commander and his deputy, objected that it would jeopardize the operation. That is why they decided to catch Mengele on the second beat of the operation, after Eichmann was brought to Israel. Ben-Gurion did not know that three Mossad members stayed in Argentina for the continuation of the operation and after his announcement, the Mossad men took a bus in Argentina and saw that one of the passengers was holding a newspaper in which Eichmann's headline was taken. So they realized the story was coming out and they needed to fold back into the country. "

Even after retiring from the institution, Abraham continues to present the exhibition dealing with Operation Finella worldwide. The exhibits show items such as the camera in which Eichmann was photographed by the Mossad, the pictures they took, the airline tickets to Argentina, the fake passports and even the glass booth where the Nazi officer was in Israel during his trial. Over the years he has met many people who have been part of one or the other, sometimes without their knowledge, in the capture of Eichmann, meetings that led him to update the items on display.

"I occasionally get second and third-generation materials linked in one way or another to the story. One day I met an artist whose father designed and built the stove that used to burn Eichmann's body. The institution came to a furnace factory and told the factory owner that there was a plague of dogs and they needed stoves to burn It was only at the end of the call that he told him that the stove was actually intended to burn Eichmann's body after he was executed.

"In Miami, an 87-year-old Jewish woman who had a photo and glasses store near Eichmann's house and would occasionally come to buy elephants, develop photos and purchase glasses without knowing who they were. When the institution sent the first person for the operation, he also used the same photo shop and after all It was revealed they had to sell the store and move to Israel. "

What happened to Eichmann's wife and children?

"His wife, Veronica, wanted to come with her children to see him, but in Israel they allowed her to come alone and secretly before her husband was executed. His two older sons, Klaus and Horst, became the prominent leaders of the Nazis in Argentina. The third son, Dieter, also followed his father's path, however. The fourth son is definitely exceptional. "

During his stay in the Eichmann family in Argentina, the fourth son was born to a family that received the pseudonym of his father, Ricardo. When his father was captured by Israel he was only 5 years old and is currently a professor of archeology in Berlin, cut off from his family and waging war against the Nazi movements.

"He once came to Israel and none of the academics wanted to shake his hand and talk to him. Recently, Rafi Eitan, who was a close friend of mine, told me he was planning to go to meet Ricardo and offered to join him. But he died soon after. Enough. I'm personally sure that someday I'll meet him and it will be a kind of circle closure. "