Mossad captures Adolf Eichmann

On the evening of May 11, 1960, a team of Israeli Mossad and security service agents grabbed a man walking home from a bus stop on Garibaldi Street in a suburb of Buenos Aires. He was Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer who had organized the deportation of millions of Jews to ghettos and death camps, living in Argentina under the name Ricardo Klement. The agents held him in a safe house for nine days, then smuggled him onto an El Al plane that had brought an Israeli delegation to Argentina's independence celebrations, disguised as a sick crew member. On May 23 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announced to the Knesset that Eichmann was in Israeli custody.¹²

The tip came from Lothar Hermann, a German emigre in Argentina, via the West German prosecutor Fritz Bauer, who distrusted his own government. Argentina protested the violation of its sovereignty, and the UN Security Council asked Israel to make reparation, which the two countries settled diplomatically. Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961 featured more than a hundred survivor witnesses and was broadcast worldwide. He was hanged on June 1, 1962, the only death sentence ever carried out by an Israeli civilian court. Documents released in 2006 and 2011 showed that West German and American intelligence knew his alias years earlier but did not act.¹³⁴⁷