The man who uncovered Adolf Eichmann

Discussion in 'The Holocaust' started by Lindele, Aug 21, 2021.

  1. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    According to a fascinating article in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung of today
    the German families involved finally agreed to pass on their names to the newspaper.

    A young geologist from Göttingen immigrated from Genua to Argentina in 1949 as a passenger without a ticket .
    Gerhard Klammer, then working for a local company, one of his colleagues was Ricardo Klement, but all knew it was Adolf Eichmann.
    One evening, Klammer followed Klement to obtain his address downtown.
    The address was eventually passed on to Fritz Bauer, an attorney General in Germany. I think,what happened afterwards is pretty well known.
    Stefan.
     
    Last edited: Aug 21, 2021
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  2. davidbfpo

    davidbfpo Patron Patron

    Stefan,
    Does the article state what Klement's motivation was?
    Thanks
     
  3. alieneyes

    alieneyes Senior Member

    Ratline - Arnon Grunberg
    An intriguing story in the Süddeutsche Zeitung - unfortunately just in German - about the man who found Eichmann in Argentina. Spoiler: it was a German named Gerhard Klammer.
    Conclusion of article at link.
     
  4. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    In the environment of this action plays a film that is a revealing moral portrait of the time.
    The entire scum of the second tier had successfully saved themselves in office and dignity as if nothing had happened - and accordingly installed an exculpatory jurisdiction.
    The Nazi era alone was a terrible stain on German history - but the 20 years that followed were even more shameful:

    Lars Kraume's "Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer" pays tribute to that attorney general who initiated the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt against much resistance. A remarkable film.

    Here, in offices and official cars, there is such unrestrained smoking and excessive drinking as if one were in the TV cult series "Mad Men," which glorifies the sixties. But the settings of this film are not in New York, but, as you can also see from the furniture, in the Federal Republic of Germany of the late fifties and early sixties. "Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer" breathes the spirit of the Adenauer era - in that phase when high-ranking Nazis had long since been reintegrated into the state apparatus and the economic miracle was flourishing thanks to the Marshall Plan.

    After the Second World War, one man fought particularly vigorously against forgetting: Social Democrat Fritz Bauer, who had survived the concentration camp and served as Attorney General of Hesse from 1956 to 1968. His work was essential for the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt am Main from 1963 to 1968, an important impulse for coming to terms with the past.

    As was only revealed a decade after his death in 1968, the Attorney General played a decisive role in enabling the secret service of the young state of Israel to kidnap SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and hold him accountable in a trial in Jerusalem for his key role in the Holocaust. The fact that Bauer revealed Eichmann's escape route to the Mossad could have been interpreted as treason in the FRG at the time.

    How the attorney general nevertheless achieves his goals in a hostile environment of alumni who have long since reestablished networks in the secret services, politics and the judiciary is portrayed in an exciting mix of fact and fiction. Burghart Klaußner is congenial in the leading role. You don't think you can tell any difference in gestures and facial expressions compared to the short original recording of Bauer that is played. He is endangered from the beginning. Only by chance is the overworked man, threatened with murder, saved from drowning in the bathtub by his chauffeur. Too much red wine and sleeping pills. A suicide? His opponents want to spin it that way, make more pills disappear. He would have taken his gun then, growls the attorney general, when he is directly asked about a suicide attempt.

    He is assisted by a young public prosecutor. Ronald Zehrfeld plays this fictional Angermann, who, like Bauer, has homosexual tendencies and eventually acts them out. At the time, this was still punishable by law (Paragraph 175 from the imperial era remained in force until 1994). Here, the highly private creates tension. Two old Nazis, Chief Public Prosecutor Kreidler (Sebastian Blomberg) and BKA employee Gebhardt (Jörg Schüttauf), who consistently obstruct Bauer's work, use the protagonists' sexual preferences against them; they also do not shy away from lies, blackmail and betrayal.

    Bauer, however, has a strong ally: This piece of contemporary history, which is well worth seeing and features a fine character sketch, is also an appreciation of Hesse's Minister President Georg-August Zinn (Götz Schubert), who protected his fellow Social Democrat Bauer. During his first visit to Zinn's office, a picture of Rosa Luxemburg still hangs there. Later, the Marxist, who was murdered in Berlin in 1919, is replaced by a pretty landscape painting.

    „Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer“: Auf der Spur von Adolf...
     
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  5. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96



    soon after 1945 and seeing what had happened in the various concentration camps, etc., Klement was mad and and happy at the same time. In 1939 he wanted to join the SS, but his father had TBC which excluded him to be a good SS member.
    Stefan.
     
  6. TTH

    TTH Senior Member

    Fascinating stuff. I am trying to write some mystery fiction set in the 50s, and one of the characters is a German businessman with a doubtful past. Did the FRG have a secret service or state police organization at that time, and what attitude did such a force take towards ex-Nazis?
     
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  7. Tom OBrien

    Tom OBrien Senior Member

    I'd recommend having a look at the post-war "Bernie Gunther" thrillers (eg 'Greeks bearing Gifts', 'Prussian Blue', 'A Quiet Flame') by Philip Kerr which follow the eponymous anti-heroes career in the '40s and '50s. Plenty in there about collusion of the Adenauer era of the West German state with ex-Nazis. I think the Gehlen organisation in immediate post-war was the FRG's intelligence service (it morphed into the BND later). It appears it recruited heavily from ex-Nazi intelligence services.

    Regards

    Tom
     
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  8. ltdan

    ltdan Nietenzähler

    Since 1946, the predecessor organization of today's Federal Intelligence Service wasin fact the "Organisation Gehlen",
    named after its leader, Reinhard Gehlen - who led the "Foreign Armies East" division in the Third Reich.

    The only true Nazis were all on trial in Nuremberg:
    All the others were simply honorable men who faithfully did their duty for the fatherland according to the letter of the law: You really can't blame someone for that!
    You may guess once in which direction the ideological preferences went....
     
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  9. Lindele

    Lindele formerly HA96

    Let me suggest the book in German: Die Spionin by the historian Stefan Appelius.
    It is about the Stasi, Gelen and CIA. Berlin West/East and Moscow.Fascinating stuff too
    Stefan.
     
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  10. Ramiles

    Ramiles Researching 9th Lancers, 24th L and SRY

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