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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Read "Hunting Eichmann" by Neal Bascomb as a narrative account of how survivors and Israel's intelligence service tracked down Adolf Eichmann, the SS official who organized the transport of Jews to camps. The conversation with former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman frames the book as both a thriller and a historical record, built on new archival sources.
Key Points
- Bascomb says survivors he met in college told him they could only speak openly about the Holocaust after Eichmann's capture and trial, which made the case a turning point in understanding the Holocaust.
- Bascomb's research spanned about two and a half years and covered Argentina, Israel, Germany, and the United States, with the Mossad and the Argentine government both approached as sources.
- The CIA's declassified files helped Bascomb trace what the U.S. government knew about Eichmann's escape after 1945.
- Bascomb's main claimed discovery is Eichmann's passport, used to leave Europe for Argentina, which he found through a lawsuit file his research led him to.
- Eichmann is described as the operational manager of the Holocaust, responsible for rounding up and transporting Jews, including the roughly 725,000 Hungarian Jews scattered across the country, over 700,000 of whom were rounded up, in spring 1944.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The transcript gives no step-by-step guidance for readers. Its only practical research advice is for aspiring writers and historians: first check whether a subject can yield new material, then pursue lawsuits, since legal cases generate documents, and file repeated requests with governments, which may take months to produce records.
- Eichmann's wife, the transcript says, sued Israeli authorities, specifically the Mossad, to try to have them jailed. Bascomb found a brief 1961 Argentine newspaper mention of the lawsuit and pursued its file.
- The Argentine Department of Justice initially refused access to the lawsuit file, then promised a response in six weeks. The file was released about six months after repeated requests, and the passport was reportedly given to an Argentine Holocaust museum a few weeks later.
- Eichmann began his deportation work in Austria in 1938, and was later sent to Hungary in spring 1944 after Germany occupied or moved to occupy the country, fearing it would defect to the Allies as Romania had.
- Eichmann reportedly arrived in Hungary a few hours after the first troops, with a convoy of 100 trucks, and was described as having worked his way from outer provinces toward Budapest to limit public protest.
- Elizabeth Holtzman, the interviewer, is the author of the Holtzman Amendment, which bars Nazi war criminals from entering the United States and pursues deportation of those already there.
Bottom Line
The book's value lies in its new archival sourcing, especially the passport and the lawsuit file, which add concrete evidence to a story long told through survivor testimony.
