Sixty years after he was captured by the Mossad and brought to trial in Israel, the German media first revealed the identity of the man who turned over the murderer Adolf Eichmann to Israel.
The German newspaper "Sudtisha Zeitung" published a long article this week describing the experiences of Gerhard Klammer, a geologist of German descent who worked with Eichmann in Argentina and was the one who passed on to the institution the knowledge of Eichmann's secret identity and the new life he built for himself in the South American country.
Eichmann (in a circle) next to Klamer (on the right) in Argentina,
According to the article, Klammer worked for the construction company "Capri" in the city of Tucumán in Argentina, where he met Eichmann, who worked for the company under the pseudonym "Ricardo Clement".
Eichmann revealed to Klamer about his identity as early as the 1950s and he repeatedly approached anonymous authorities in Argentina and Germany in the hope that they would act against the war criminal.
Klammer's relatives said that Eichmann's identity was an "open secret" in the German community and that pro-Nazis in the community acted to protect him and keep the hook secret.
Klammer himself was opposed to the Nazis and therefore sought to take action to bring him to justice.
In the 1960s, the company ran into financial difficulties and Eichmann left Tucumán to try and find work in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.
At that time Klammer returned to Germany.
In Germany, Klammer told a close friend of his, a priest who had served in the German army, about Eichmann's location and his new identity, and he decided it was time to take action against him.
The two passed Eichmann's details, in a photo, to the prosecutor, Fritz Bauer, who was in charge of the Eichmann case. Baur had already heard at that time that Eichmann had settled in Germany from a German Jew whose daughter had been dating for a short time with Eichmann's son, who had revealed to her the secret identity of his father. But many details about him were missing. Clammer's testimony was for Bauer "the golden vision" that Eichmann lived and was in Argentina. Bauer turned to an institution that began searching for Eichmann and eventually found him in a town near the capital.