Adolf Eichmann – His Escape and Capture in Argentina

Operation Eichmann

End of the Third Reich   

After the defeat of the Third Reich in May 1945 Adolf Eichmann, the RSHA specialist on Jewish matters, was arrested by the American forces near Ulm, along with his long-standing adjutant SS- Obersturmfuhrer Rudolf Janisch. The two men were taken to the prisoner of war camp at Weiden in the Upper Palinate.

At Weiden, POW camp Eichmann changed his identity with ease, he was arrested as a Luftwaffe Corporal Bart or Barth, then realising that officers were exempt from compulsory labour, he became SS –Untersturmfuhrer Otto Eckmann.

Eichmann and Janisch were moved to another camp at Ober- Dachstetten, in Franconia, Janisch was removed to another camp, fearful of discovery and alone Eichmann considered committing suicide.

The evidence provided by many former associates within the SS at the International Military Tribunal held in Nuremburg, meant that it was only a matter time before he was apprehended, and brought to justice, for his part in the destruction of European Jewry.  

With the help of Senior SS officers in the camp he was provided with false documents which identified him as Otto Henninger from Breslau, travelled to Prien, where he was sheltered by a widow Nelly Krawietz , the sister of a former SS man in the Ober- Dachstettien camp.

Eichmann and Nelly Krawietz travelled to Hamburg, where they parted, Eichmann continued to the small town of Eversen, that stands on the great Luneberg Heath, where he lived and worked as a woodsman, for the next two years, before looking after chickens near Altensalzkoth.

Fearing the net was closing in on him Eichmann, left the chicken farm and like numerous Nazi fugitives followed the well established “rat line” that led from Germany, through Italy to Argentina.

In Hiding in Italy

At the beginning of 1950 Eichmann made contacts with ODESSA, the organisation of former SS men, who enabled him to flee to Italy, via monasteries.

Eichmann had been issued with an ID Certificate in the northern Italian town of Termemo in 1948, the ID was numbered 131 and bore the name Ricardo Klement, it was valid for two years, and this was probably the reason why he fled in 1950.

Armed with the forged ID and a Red Cross passport number 100940, which was issued in the Italian port of Genoa on the 1 June 1950, with the help of a Franciscan priest Father Eduardo Domoter.

To Argentina

Eichmann and two other former SS men boarded the SS Giovanni C which left Genoa to Buenos Aires, Argentina on the 17 June 1950, the ship docked in Buenos Aires on the 14 July 1950.

Eichmann secured employment with a construction company called CAPRI that specialised in hydro-electric power plants, in the remote province of Tucuman, from August 1950 to April 1953.

In December 1950 Adolf Eichmann wrote a coded message to his wife Vera, advising her in code that he was alive and well, and that she should make arrangements to join him in Argentina.

Read the full article here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/trials/eichmanntrialcapture.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Teamwww.HolocaustResearchProject.org


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