For all of its excellent performances -- notably Ben Kingsley as Eichmann and Oscar Isaac as Peter Malkin -- the movie plays fast and loose with a number of details and fails to do justice to the painstaking planning and great risk involved in bringing Eichmann to trial in Israel.
While the Nuremberg trials prosecuted some 200 of the leaders of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, Schutzstaffel (SS), the Gestapo and "General Staff and High Command" of the German military, Adolph Eichmann remained at-large 15 years after the war.
Even more surprising is that Eichmann had been captured by the U.S. Army and held in several camps for SS officers. He changed his name to "Otto Eckmann" and escaped when testimony at Nuremberg focused attention on his role in the "Final Solution to the Jewish problem."
The chaos at war's end, Allied disagreement about who should be prosecuted as a war criminal and the limited information about Eichmann helped him avoid prosecution. He disliked having his picture taken, stayed out of the limelight surrounding Adolf Hitler and often delegated interactions with Jewish leaders to staff members. He was an average, ordinary looking man who melted into his environment.
As testimony at the Nuremberg trials laid open Eichmann's role as the executor of the Final Solution, the hunt intensified. In 1950, using false papers and helped by Catholic clerics, Eichmann escaped to Argentina, where President Juan Peron's pro-Nazi government offered safe haven to fleeing Nazis. With the help of other Germans in Buenos Aires, Eichmann was able to start a new life as "Ricardo Klement" and to bring over his wife Vera and their three children, who oddly enough kept the Eichmann name.
While Jewish Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal had provided a lead that Eichmann might be in Argentina in 1953, it was Lothar Hermann, a half-Jewish German who emigrated to Argentina in 1938, who provided the strongest lead to Eichmann's new identity and residence.
His daughter, Sylvia, began dating a man named Klaus Eichmann in 1956. Klaus boasted about his father's Nazi exploits but claimed that the man he and his family lived with was his uncle, Richardo Klement. Hermann sent Sylvia to see if she could confirm whether Klement was Klaus's father, Eichmann. She succeeded. Hermann sent the information on, where it reached Fritz Bauer, prosecutor-general of the state of Hesse. In 1957, Bauer gave the information to Mossad director Isser Harel, who sent operatives to try to confirm it.
They remained unconvinced. For one thing, Hermann was blind from a beating he had received in Dachau. For another, he drew unsubstantiated conclusions from his limited research, wanted money for his work and control of the search. The biggest stumbling block was believing that the man who implemented the Final Solution, was now living in a poor neighborhood of Buenos Aires without electricity or running water.
While the Nuremberg trials prosecuted some 200 of the leaders of the Nazi party, the Reich Cabinet, Schutzstaffel (SS), the Gestapo and "General Staff and High Command" of the German military, Adolph Eichmann remained at-large 15 years after the war.
Even more surprising is that Eichmann had been captured by the U.S. Army and held in several camps for SS officers. He changed his name to "Otto Eckmann" and escaped when testimony at Nuremberg focused attention on his role in the "Final Solution to the Jewish problem."
The chaos at war's end, Allied disagreement about who should be prosecuted as a war criminal and the limited information about Eichmann helped him avoid prosecution. He disliked having his picture taken, stayed out of the limelight surrounding Adolf Hitler and often delegated interactions with Jewish leaders to staff members. He was an average, ordinary looking man who melted into his environment.
As testimony at the Nuremberg trials laid open Eichmann's role as the executor of the Final Solution, the hunt intensified. In 1950, using false papers and helped by Catholic clerics, Eichmann escaped to Argentina, where President Juan Peron's pro-Nazi government offered safe haven to fleeing Nazis. With the help of other Germans in Buenos Aires, Eichmann was able to start a new life as "Ricardo Klement" and to bring over his wife Vera and their three children, who oddly enough kept the Eichmann name.
While Jewish Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal had provided a lead that Eichmann might be in Argentina in 1953, it was Lothar Hermann, a half-Jewish German who emigrated to Argentina in 1938, who provided the strongest lead to Eichmann's new identity and residence.
His daughter, Sylvia, began dating a man named Klaus Eichmann in 1956. Klaus boasted about his father's Nazi exploits but claimed that the man he and his family lived with was his uncle, Richardo Klement. Hermann sent Sylvia to see if she could confirm whether Klement was Klaus's father, Eichmann. She succeeded. Hermann sent the information on, where it reached Fritz Bauer, prosecutor-general of the state of Hesse. In 1957, Bauer gave the information to Mossad director Isser Harel, who sent operatives to try to confirm it.
They remained unconvinced. For one thing, Hermann was blind from a beating he had received in Dachau. For another, he drew unsubstantiated conclusions from his limited research, wanted money for his work and control of the search. The biggest stumbling block was believing that the man who implemented the Final Solution, was now living in a poor neighborhood of Buenos Aires without electricity or running water.
The decision to capture Eichmann and bring him to trial was a difficult one for the 12-year-old nation of Israel. Israel was focused on survival and state-building. Resources were tight. To effectively do surveillance and capture and extract Eichmann strained Israel's spy and security services at a vulnerable time. The international fallout from Israel's capturing a German citizen on Argentine soil and then trying him in Israel had unknowable consequences.
This is an exciting book to read. Bascomb and his team of research assistants did deep research across four continents to report the story. Hunting Eichmann begins at the end of World War II, follows Eichmann from Austria to Argentina, covers the search and identification of Eichmann through his capture and arrival in Israel. At every step, you find yourself incredulous that it took so long to find and bring him to justice. The behind-the-scenes view of how Mossad and Shin Bet agents carefully built evidence and laid plans is fascinating.
The book summarizes Eichmann's four-month trial and appeals and ends with his hanging on June 1, 1962, cremation and the scattering of his ashes in the Mediterranean Sea in international waters. His case remains the only death sentence in Israeli history.
In his epilogue, Bascomb describes the impact of the capture and trial on the world and also how the 15-year hunt affected those involved.
Neal Bascomb is an American journalist, author and former book editor. His award-winning books focus on inspiring stories of adventure or achievement.
This is an exciting book to read. Bascomb and his team of research assistants did deep research across four continents to report the story. Hunting Eichmann begins at the end of World War II, follows Eichmann from Austria to Argentina, covers the search and identification of Eichmann through his capture and arrival in Israel. At every step, you find yourself incredulous that it took so long to find and bring him to justice. The behind-the-scenes view of how Mossad and Shin Bet agents carefully built evidence and laid plans is fascinating.
The book summarizes Eichmann's four-month trial and appeals and ends with his hanging on June 1, 1962, cremation and the scattering of his ashes in the Mediterranean Sea in international waters. His case remains the only death sentence in Israeli history.
In his epilogue, Bascomb describes the impact of the capture and trial on the world and also how the 15-year hunt affected those involved.
The Author: Neal Bascomb (1971 - )
He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Miami University (in Ohio) with a bachelor's degree in economics and English literature. He worked as a journalist in London, Dublin and Paris before becoming an editor at St. Martin's Press in New York. He started writing books fulltime in 2000.
As of September 2018, he had written eight books, including The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goals and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It (2005), about the race to be the first runner to break the four-minute mile; Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City (2003), about the race between the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building and 40 Wall Street to claim the record as the World's tallest building during the 1920s; and The Escape Artists; A Band of Daredevil Pilots and the Greatest Prison Break of the Great War (2018), about a group of Allied prisoners led by ace pilot David Gray who escaped from the infamous POW camp, Holzminden.
An avid hiker, skier and coffee drinker, he currently lives in Seattle.
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