The basics of Adolf Eichmann’s story are well documented: Commonly known as the “architect of the Holocaust” for his role in coordinating the Nazi genocide policy, he fled Germany, was captured in Argentina and hanged.
But Germany’s intelligence service, the BND, is sitting on 4,500 pages of files on Eichmann a reporter thinks could fill in gaps about his postwar life: Who helped him escape? How much did Germany know about where he was? Is there more to the story of his capture? The files could also help shed light on claims that the Vatican helped war criminals hide or escape after World War II — allegations church officials have always strenuously denied.
The BND says that the files need to remain secret, so freelance reporter Gabriele Weber sued to have them released. They are now being reviewed in secret by three judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig.
“I think it’s impossible that in Germany we are hiding documents about a convicted Nazi mass murderer today,” Weber said in a telephone interview. “I can’t imagine they will be able to maintain secrecy 100 percent.”
Court files, show the BND maintains that releasing the files would jeopardize the work of an informant, and has also argued that since much of the information came from a “foreign intelligence service,” giving them to the public would harm future cooperation with that unidentified country, said Weber’s attorney, Remo Klinger.
The BND has clarified that the intelligence did not come from the Americans, so it is widely assumed many of the files came from Israel, Klinger said.
Klinger disputed the BND’s reasons for withholding the files, saying it would be easy to black out anything indicating the source of the document. He said he thinks the real reason the BND does not want to release the files is that they could be embarrassing.
Already in 2006 the CIA released documents showing that it wrote to the BND in 1958, saying it had information that Eichmann “is reported to have lived in Argentina under the alias ‘Clemens’ since 1952” — both his correct whereabouts and only a slightly different alias, which was actually Ricardo Klement.
But neither side acted on that information because they were apparently worried about what he might say about Hans Globke, a former Nazi helping the US coordinate anti-communist initiatives in West Germany.
It was not until 1960 that Israeli agents abducted Eichmann in Buenos Aires and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann, who helped organized the extermination of Europe’s Jews as the head of the Gestapo’s Jewish affairs office during the war, was found guilty of war crimes, sentenced to death and hanged in 1962.
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