Operation Finale (Hebrew: מבצע פינאלה) was conducted by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to capture and secretly transport Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from Argentina to Israel in May 1960.
There are several accounts about how Israeli intelligence located Eichmann in Argentina. However, a pivotal role was played by information provided by Lothar Hermann, a German Jew living in Argentina, who suspected that an acquaintance of his daughter Silvia was Eichmann's son. After Hermann's information reached Israeli intelligence services, the head of the Mossad, Isser Harel, personally led the operation in Buenos Aires.
Mossad agents identified Eichmann's residence and placed him under surveillance. On 11 May 1960, agents abducted Eichmann on the street near his home. For nine days, he was secretly held at a villa rented by the agents in a Buenos Aires suburb, and on 20 May, he was transported to Israel on an El Al flight. In 1961, Eichmann was tried and sentenced to death for his crimes against Jews.
The operation was conducted unofficially. Argentina accused Israel of grossly violating its sovereignty. Israel justified the operation's illegality by citing the unprecedented nature of Eichmann's crimes, as he bore direct responsibility for organizing the Holocaust during World War II. Forty years later, Argentina issued an official apology to Holocaust victims for providing refuge to Nazis.
Background
Pursuing and punishing former Nazis was a highly sensitive matter in Israel: much of the country's population had either personally suffered during the Holocaust or had numerous affected relatives, friends, and acquaintances. Approximately 200,000 Israeli residents had survived Nazi concentration camps and ghettos. For Israel, Adolf Eichmann was the "number one" target on the list of wanted Nazis, and his capture was a matter of principle. Eichmann played a significant role in preparing and implementing the Wannsee Conference, and subsequently in executing its resolutions for the "final solution of the Jewish question." He oversaw all operations for the deportation of European Jews to death camps during World War II.
In 1945, Eichmann managed to evade the intelligence services of the Allied countries that defeated Nazi Germany. He fled to Argentina in 1950 and settled in Buenos Aires under the alias Ricardo Klement; his wife and three sons joined him two years later, and a fourth son was born in Argentina.
Search
There are several versions of how Israeli intelligence tracked down Eichmann, based either on the Mossad's narrative or that of Nazi hunter Tuviah Friedman.
Lothar Hermann
Despite conflicting accounts of Eichmann's discovery, it is undeniable that German Jew Lothar Hermann played a key role in his capture. His marriage to a German woman did not spare him from Nazi persecution. Despite his blindness, Hermann, a former lawyer living in Argentina, remained interested in events related to the search for former Nazis. He was aware that Eichmann was a fugitive and wanted. When he learned that his daughter Silvia had met a young man named Nicholas Eichmann from the Argentine German community, who boasted of his father's service to the Third Reich, Hermann suspected he was Adolf Eichmann's son and reported his suspicions.
Lothar Hermann received the promised reward for Eichmann's capture only in 1972, about a year before his death. When his name was publicized, he faced harassment from local Nazis, and his daughter was forced to flee Argentina for the United States.
Mossad's account
Lothar Hermann, suspecting that a member of the German community in Buenos Aires was Adolf Eichmann, wrote a letter to the Attorney General of Hesse (FRG) Fritz Bauer. Fritz Bauer passed this information to the Israelis.
According to a 2021 publication by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German named Gerhard Klammer worked for a time in Argentina as Eichmann's superior. In the autumn of 1959, Klammer encountered Eichmann in Buenos Aires, obtained his address, and informed Bauer through Bishop Hermann Kunst, leading directly to Eichmann's capture.
As described in his book The House on Garibaldi Street, Mossad chief Isser Harel received information from prosecutor Bauer on 19 September 1957 about Eichmann's possible location in Argentina through Dr. Shneer, the head of the Israeli delegation at the reparations negotiations in West Germany. This information reached the Mossad via the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to other sources, Bauer contacted Shaul Darom, a representative of Israeli security services in Frankfurt, and then Government Legal Advisor Haim Cohen. A third version, described by political scientist and expert on Israeli intelligence services Ronen Bergman, states that Bauer, skeptical of prosecuting Eichmann in Germany, deliberately leaked the information to the Mossad by leaving Eichmann's file on his desk during a visit by an Israeli intelligence officer.
Tuviah Friedman's account
According to another version, Eichmann was tracked down by former Nazi concentration camp prisoner and Yad Vashem employee (until July 1957) Tuviah Friedman. In 1957, Friedman established an independent "Institute for Documentation and Investigation of Nazi Crimes" in Haifa and secured a $10,000 reward (equivalent to $110,000 in 2025) from World Jewish Congress president Nahum Goldmann for information on Eichmann's whereabouts.
Friedman made his first attempt to locate Eichmann in late 1945, together with Asher Ben-Natan, who represented the secret Jewish organization Mossad LeAliyah Bet in Austria. After interrogating arrested SS Sturmbannführer Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann's friend and aide, they located Eichmann's driver and mistress. An ambush at the mistress's apartment yielded no results. However, they obtained Eichmann's first photograph from her.
In late August 1959, Friedman received a letter from Erwin Schüle, director of the Federal Center for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg, Germany, stating that Eichmann was hiding in Kuwait.
Friedman approached his acquaintance, journalist Moshe Meisels from the newspaper Maariv, proposing to publish this information. According to Friedman, they decided to do so on the eve of Yom Kippur, 11 October 1959, "to stir the conscience of government members and remind them of our duty to the victims".
The topic gained traction, and the article was reprinted or referenced by many publications worldwide. On 12 October 1959, the German-language newspaper Argentinisches Tageblatt, published in Buenos Aires, reprinted the information from the Israeli outlet. On 18 October 1959, Lothar Hermann sent a letter to Tuviah Friedman, stating that Eichmann was not in Kuwait but in Argentina.
In the letter, Hermann wrote:
The report in the German-language newspaper of 12 October 1959 about the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann is completely erroneous. This man is not living in Kuwait but in Buenos Aires under an assumed name with his wife and four children. I am ready to assist the institute and provide all information about Eichmann.
Israeli historian and journalist Shimon Briman writes that Friedman exchanged three more letters with Hermann, after which, in December 1959, he connected him with Mossad operatives.
Although most sources do not mention Tuviah Friedman, his name appears in the official Israeli list of participants in Eichmann's capture. The same list includes the name of Simon Wiesenthal, although his role in Eichmann's capture remains unclear and is disputed by both Harel and Friedman.
Address
The Mossad discovered that Eichmann's wife had remarried a German who had arrived from Argentina and soon left with him. It was hypothesized that she had married Eichmann himself, who had changed his name and passport. Mossad sent agents to Argentina, who confirmed that Ricardo Klement was indeed Eichmann, not another fugitive Nazi.
With Hermann's help, the address where Eichmann's family lived was established: Buenos Aires, Olivos district, Chacabuco Street, 4261. Surveillance was set up at the house. However, agents reported that it was a very poor area, and the house did not seem suitable for a high-ranking Nazi who, according to pursuers, had taken significant funds out of Europe.
In early 1958, Eichmann left the Chacabuco house and disappeared from Israeli sight. By December 1959, Mossad agents in Argentina rediscovered Eichmann's trail. His new address was identified: Buenos Aires, San Fernando district, Garibaldi Street. The house was purchased under the name Veronica Katarina Liebl de Fichmann. This name matched Eichmann's wife's name exactly, except for one letter in the surname (Fichmann instead of Eichmann).
Identification
Harel decided to send an experienced Shin Bet investigator, Zvi Aharoni, to Argentina. He arrived in Buenos Aires on 29 February 1960, accompanied by four assistants, including the Israeli embassy's military attaché in Argentina, Yitzhak Elron, and his wife Sarah.
Additional confirmation of Eichmann's identity was obtained on 21 March 1960, when a celebration was observed at Klement's house. Reviewing Eichmann's file, the agents determined that this was the day Adolf and Veronica Eichmann were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary. The ages of his wife and two eldest sons matched those of Vera, Nicholas, and Dieter Eichmann. On 3 April 1960, surveillance operatives managed to secretly photograph Eichmann near his new home. Based on the photographs and information gathered by Zvi Aharoni, it was decided that Eichmann had been reliably identified. However, final confirmation of identity was to be obtained only during the capture operation itself, and Harel began planning Eichmann's abduction.
Preparation
Capturing decision
Having established Eichmann's location, the Israeli leadership decided to secretly transport him from Argentina to Israel. There was a concern that attempting to secure Eichmann's extradition would lead to his disappearance again.
Post-1945 Argentina became a haven for Nazis. President Juan Perón, sympathetic to Adolf Hitler, not only turned a blind eye to the entry of numerous Germans with forged documents but actively facilitated their escape from Europe. Many former Nazis even found employment in the Argentine Armed Forces.
By the time Perón was overthrown by a military junta in 1955, pro-Nazi sentiments in Argentina's elite, particularly in its security forces, remained strong. The likelihood of Eichmann's extradition was deemed very low by the Israelis, and no one wanted to risk losing the criminal again. Moreover, as Harel noted, Eichmann could be extradited to West Germany, where, 15 years after the war, Nazis were receiving lenient sentences. The Israelis feared that due to a tendency to forgive past crimes, Eichmann might escape justice entirely.
The transporting of Eichmann from Argentina to Israel was personally authorized by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
Planning and preparation
Eichmann's capture was personally led by Mossad director Isser Harel. The operational group was headed by Rafi Eitan. All participants were volunteers, and all except Eitan had lost relatives during the war. The operatives were instructed to deliver Eichmann to Israel alive and unharmed.
Planning began in late 1959, with direct preparations starting in April 1960. The following items were sent to four different addresses in Buenos Aires via three different airlines, packaged as innocuous parcels:
- Eight French communication devices with spare batteries;
- Four pairs of British field binoculars;
- Six pocket flashlights;
- A dozen fake license plates;
- Two sets of miniature power tools;
- Three pairs of handcuffs;
- One portable forgery lab;
- Lock-picking tools, including security locks;
- A full set of makeup, including wigs, false teeth, and a beard.
The actual capture of Eichmann was assigned to Peter Malkin, later known as "Agent Seven Forty" and "the man who caught Eichmann." The final briefing for the main operational group in Israel was conducted by Harel on 27 April 1960.
Mossad operatives arrived in Argentina in small groups from different countries at different times. To facilitate these trips, the Mossad even created a front travel agency. The operation was timed to coincide with an official Israeli delegation's visit to Buenos Aires for the 150th anniversary of Argentina's independence. Since Israel had no regular air service to Argentina, it was decided to transport Eichmann on the plane carrying the official delegation, which was scheduled to arrive in Buenos Aires on 19 May and return on 20 May.
On 26 April, the first group of operatives began surveillance of Eichmann. On 29 April, Harel flew to Argentina to lead the operation on-site. A total of 30 people were involved in the operation, with 12 directly engaged in the capture and transport, and the rest providing support and logistics. At Harel's insistence, a woman, Yehudit Nissiyahu, was included in the overseas group as a full-fledged operative for the first time.