Israel puts Adolf Eichmann items on display
Fifty years after Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann was convicted in an epic trial that helped shape Israel’s national psyche, the Israeli parliament on Monday put on display for the first time dozens of artifacts from the daring 1960 operation in Argentina that captured the Nazi criminal.
The gripping public testimony during the trial by more than 100 Jews who survived torture and deprivation captured world attention and vividly brought to life the horrors of the Holocaust. It also brought to light stories of Jewish bravery and resistance that shattered the myth of Jews meekly walking to their deaths. As a result, more survivors went public with their experiences, which greatly helped research and commemoration efforts.
“We carried out justice, partial, reduced, even minuscule compared to the crime, but of tremendous symbolism and the symbolism is that those who murder millions and those who plan the murder of millions will pay the price,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the opening of the exhibit. “The capture and the bringing to trial of Eichmann was a turning point in which the state of Israel and the Jewish people began carrying out justice against their tormentors.”
Known as the “architect of the Holocaust” for his role in coordinating the Nazi genocide policy, Eichmann fled Germany after World War II and assumed the name Ricardo Klement in Argentina. He was hunted down and captured by Israeli Mossad agents in an operation that remains one of the most defining episodes in the country’s turbulent history. Eichmann was hanged after his 1961 trial in Jerusalem.
The exhibit, which will be on display in parliament for three weeks before moving to a Tel Aviv museum, showcases items that had been classified and stashed away for decades: the cameras used by Mossad agents to track Eichmann, the briefcase in which they carried fake license plates, the keys to Eichmann’s Buenos Aires apartment and the forged Israeli passport — with the alias Zeev Zichroni — his captors used to smuggle him out of Argentina.
There are also original photos, documents and the gloves used to nab Eichmann, as well as personal effects found on Eichmann’s body — a comb, a pocket knife and a plastic cigarette holder.