In memory of the El Al Captain who flew Adolf Eichmann to justice
As a pilot in the 1948 War of Independence, Wedeles also flew a battered Piper Cub into enemy fire, delivering arms to the notorious Nebi Samwil convoy.
By AARON DAVID FRUHAdolf Eichmann sits during his trial in Jerusalem, 1961.(photo credit: REUTERS)
Sixty years ago, at dawn on May 22, 1960, El Al captains Zvi Tohar and Shmuel Wedeles guided their four-engine Bristol Britannia passenger airliner out of the heavens toward Lod Airport near Tel Aviv. The plane was painted in brilliant white – dovelike. The royal blue Star of David on the tale rudder glistened in the morning sun.When the wheels gripped the runway, both Tohar and Wedeles breathed a sigh of relief, after completing their long-distance flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, a span filled with intrigue and danger.Probably the most famous landing in world history was the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle’s touchdown on the moon, July 20, 1969. Just as the Eagle’s lunar landing was a triumph for technology, the landing of the aircraft piloted by Tohar and Wedeles on that May morning in 1960 was a triumph for justice; for seated aboard the plane in the first-class cabin was the notorious architect of the Nazi’s “Final Solution,” Adolf Eichmann.The irony is that the Jews, systematically hunted down by Eichmann in every fissure and crack and ghetto in Europe, their gaunt bodies crammed and pressed by strong Aryan backs into cattle cars with no ventilation or light, not being afforded so much as a minimal mercy in their transport to the death camps, even offered Eichmann a seat at all, let alone one in first class.The part the late Wedeles played in the Mossad’s dramatic capture of Eichmann is of particular interest to me because he was the husband of my father’s cousin, Pnina (Boxerman) Wedeles.In my discussions over the years with my Israeli family about Wedeles, there has never been a hint of elevated importance of the man. No glowing commentary. They explained the part he played in Eichmann’s capture matter-of-factly, without great fanfare. Wedeles was known to be a quiet and modest man, but I’ve wondered if there was something that inspired his courage more than just the longing to be legendary that can drive some men to take uncommon risks. A glimpse into his early years may help answer the question because Eichmann played a role – an antagonistic one, of course – in molding his life.WEDELES WAS born in Vienna, and when he was 14 in 1938, Hitler annexed Austria into Nazi Germany. Soon, Wedeles would hear the name Adolf Eichmann. A dark rumor was spreading through Vienna’s Jewish community that a certain commissar of Jewish affairs named Adolf Eichmann promised a birthday present for the führer – a “judenrein” (Jew-free) Vienna. The rumor was true, and Wedeles’s family was soon evicted from its home, and Jewish children were barred from schools.Wedeles recalled watching frenzied Viennese, inspired by Eichmann’s inhumanity, encircle an elderly rabbi and beastly force him to devour a raw piece of pork. The attackers celebrated by giving an animalistic shriek, while one in the swarm ignited his cigarette lighter and set the rabbi’s beard aflame.What stunned Wedeles more than the hedonistic rage of the perpetrators was the crowd of onlookers – priests, pastors, bankers, schoolteachers, mothers with children in strollers – watching a defenseless rabbi being brutalized and robbed of his dignity, in total indifference to the spectacle. For a Jewish boy living in the cultured birthplace of Strauss and Schubert, it must have been horrific to witness so many in its citizenry wholeheartedly embrace the Nazi ideology of Eichmann.After the flames of Kristallnacht ravaged Vienna, the Wedeles family fled to Antwerp, where they hoped to escape Eichmann’s grasp. In 1940 Shmuel’s parents sent him to Israel under the Youth Aliyah umbrella. Not long after, the Nazis invaded Belgium, and Eichmann swiftly gathered up Shmuel’s family and transported them to Auschwitz, where they perished.
Now orphaned in Israel, Wedeles became a soldier in the Palmah, the elite fighting force of the Hagana. It was here that he heard the name Adolf Eichmann once again. Knowing Eichmann was in hiding after the fall of the Nazis, Hagana personnel were given Security Blacklist No. 8 in October of 1947, which warned them to diligently watch for Eichmann because “it is not inconceivable that he may have succeeded in infiltrating Israel.”As a pilot in the 1948 War of Independence, Wedeles flew a battered Piper Cub into enemy fire, delivering arms to the notorious Nebi Samwil convoy, surrounded by the enemy in Jerusalem. In one airdrop, he was shot in the face. Wedeles would go on to become a respected and seasoned commander in the Israel Air Force and later a captain for El Al.At 36, he was chosen to be the copilot on the Mossad’s mission to Argentina, and when he was told by the El Al manager of the operation, Yehuda Shimoni, that they would be bringing back Eichmann, he kissed him on both cheeks. He realized he would be responsible for transporting to justice the man who had transported millions to the gas chambers.I cannot imagine the sense of vindication that arrested his heart at that moment. And most likely a sense of foreboding as well, knowing he was about to confront the monster who murdered his loved ones and shattered his childhood innocence.Wedeles would later recall, “I knew the crew members well and knew that for most of them, just as it was for me, the Holocaust was a tragic, molding, and influential event which held great significance for their lives.”On the journey back to Israel, Wedeles opened the cockpit door and walked toward Eichmann. How did Wedeles respond to the heartless killer? The director of the Mossad operation, Isser Harel, sitting near Eichmann in first class, saw the handsome captain approach the Nazi. Harel records Wedeles’s reaction in his book The House on Garibaldi Street: “During the first part of the journey, Wedeles also helped to attend to Eichmann. To set a good example for the rest of the crew, he was ready to help with even the less pleasant tasks. He never ceased marveling at Eichmann’s healthy appetite. Wedeles himself couldn’t eat a thing from the moment Eichmann was brought on board.”Perhaps showing Eichmann kindness when he could have bitterly confronted him was part of Wedeles’s vindication. Perhaps he understood that he and the others in the operation were messengers for the six million victims of the Shoah, and he did not want to disgrace their memory with revenge.DURING EICHMANN’S trial in Jerusalem, the victims of his brutality came out of the shadows, and their televised gripping testimonies shocked the world. The voices of the messengers had not been collectively heard until then. The community of nations convulsed with horror at man’s inhumanity toward man, and one would think the morbidity of the revelations would have put an end to the agelong insanity of antisemitism or at least quench its fire, but it didn’t. The messengers spoke, but the world did not take the message to heart. Wedeles played a part in delivering the message, but the world, it seems, has forgotten it.In the dedication ceremony of the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, Elie Wiesel said, “There is a frightening character in all of Kafka’s stories. It is always the messenger who tried to deliver the message and is unable to do so. But there is something more tragic than that – [namely,] when the messenger has delivered the message, and nothing has changed. You have heard tonight those who spoke... about antisemitism and intolerance. Now? 60 years later? When the messenger has tried to deliver the message? Why should there be antisemitism? But there is! Why should there be suicide killers? But there are! Why should there be hatred? But there is! Fanaticism? Yes! It’s calmed? No! It is here! The messenger has delivered the message. What is our role? We must become the messengers’ messengers.”On the 60th anniversary of the landing of the Britannia from Buenos Aires, may we remember the brave men and women of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Mossad, and El Al who paved the way for the messengers to tell their stories to the world. By remembering and retelling, we become the messengers’ messengers – and maybe, just maybe, we can make the world a better place.The writer is the president of Israel Team Advocates International, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the Jewish people and Israel on Evangelical college campuses (israelteam.org). He has 90 family members who live in Israel.
