11 May 1960: After agents from the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad had captured Eichmann in a suburb of Buenos Aires, they swiftly took him to a hidden location. During his interrogation Eichmann admitted to his true identity and signed a document in which he agreed to stand trial in Israel. Eleven days later he was secretly flown to Israel in an EI AI aircraft. Photoraph: yadvashem.org
While at the Auschwitz Memorial Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee commented as follows on the present-day significance of Adolf Eichmann’s capture and abduction 63 years ago on 11 and 12 May 1960:
"To this day, the 11 and 12 May signify belated satisfaction and triumph for survivors of Auschwitz. They are intensely inspired by the fact that a key architect in the mass murder of their families fell into the hands of the Israeli judicial authorities on 12 May 1960, so that a case could then be prepared against him following his interrogation.
The Eichmann trial provided the assurance that never again and nowhere on Earth would a perpetrator of genocide be able to feel safe in their hideaway, no matter how remote. That was the most important message at the time, even though the survivors regarded the actual trial with pain and foreboding, because it would once again detail the monstrous crimes committed against their relatives and expose the inhuman efficiency and anti-Semitic hatred within the industrial machinery of murder. Nevertheless, for the survivors of the Holocaust the crucial message remains true and unchanged: The present-day perpetrators of war crimes and genocide will stand trial, face-to-face with their victims who will describe what they have witnessed and endured. There is nowhere to hide."