Israeli agents capture Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina
On this day · 11 May 1960
Mossad operatives seized one of the Holocaust's chief organizers on a Buenos Aires street, ending years on the run.
On the evening of 11 May 1960, agents of Israel’s Mossad seized Adolf Eichmann on a street near his home in a suburb of Buenos Aires, Argentina. A senior SS officer, Eichmann had been a principal organizer of the deportation of Jews to Nazi extermination camps, and had lived in hiding under the alias Ricardo Klement.
The operation, ordered by Mossad chief Isser Harel with the backing of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, followed a tip-off about Klement’s true identity. After his capture, Eichmann was held in secret for several days, during which he admitted who he was and signed a statement consenting to stand trial in Israel.
Eleven days later he was flown clandestinely to Israel aboard an El Al airliner.
His 1961 trial in Jerusalem, broadcast widely, confronted a global audience with detailed Holocaust testimony. Convicted of crimes against humanity, Eichmann was executed in 1962 — the only civil death sentence Israel has ever carried out.
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