Mossad agent who masterminded the daring operation to seize the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann from the streets of Argentina
With his leading involvement in two of the most daring Nazi-hunting missions carried out by Mossad, Yaakov Meidad was one of the Israeli secret service’s most successful operatives. Balding, and with a slight paunch, Meidad cut more of a George Smiley figure than that of a James Bond, although his exploits were indeed like something from one of the most exciting of thrillers.
Meidad’s most renowned mission was the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann off the streets of Buenos Aires in 1960. It was Meidad’s job to rent two apartments that were to be used as safe houses, as well as the hiring of suitably large cars that could transport the Mossad team and their victim around the Argentine capital. Finding such vehicles was no easy task, although the resourceful Meidad managed to rent a Chevrolet that was destined for the breaker’s yard for the huge sum of $5,000 — some $35,000 today.
Eichmann had earlier been identified with the aid of an old SS photograph by another Mossad agent, Zvi Aharoni (obituary, July 11, 2012). After Eichmann was snatched, Meidad was one of the agents who had to guard the former Nazi while the team waited to take their prize to Israel. Meidad later recalled how their captive was a “small nervous man”, whose physical presence somehow did not measure up to the enormity of his crimes.
Before the team left Buenos Aires, Meidad told the operation’s leader, Isser Harel, that the Chevrolet should be returned to the garage so that the State of Israel should have its deposit refunded. A reluctant Harel agreed, and Meidad took back the car and got back the money.
Meidad very nearly did not make it on to the El Al Bristol Britannia that flew Eichmann and the kidnap team out of Argentina. His hire car burst into flames en route to the airport, and he had to catch a taxi instead. He was the last person to board the plane, which eventually landed in Israel on the morning of May 22.
At 4pm the following afternoon, the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben- Gurion, informed the Israeli parliament and the world that “Israeli security forces” had located Eichmann, and that he was under arrest in Israel. Naturally, the identity of Meidad and all those who were involved was kept secret for years.
Yaakov Meidad was born in 1919 in Breslau in Germany –— now Wroclaw in Poland. His father was a doctor who had won the Iron Cross in the First World War, and his mother was a language teacher who passed on her linguistic skills to her only child. These would prove invaluable for Meidad in his career as a spy. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Meidad’s parents sent him to Palestine, where, at the age of 17, Meidad joined the Haganah, the Jewish underground army, and he enrolled in that organisation’s secret officers’ course.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Meidad was said to have been the first Jew in Palestine to volunteer to serve in the British Army, in which he served with distinction. Both his parents were murdered in the Holocaust. After the creation of the State of Israel, Meidad served in the Israeli Defence Forces as an artillery officer, and he fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After serving in several more military posts, he joined Mossad in 1955, where his languages, easy-going manner, military experience and unremarkable appearance quickly saw him rise through the ranks.
Although the Eichmann kidnap was the most famous operation in which Meidad was involved, his leading role in the assassination in Montevideo in February 1965 of the Latvian war criminal Herberts Cukurs would prove to be his most remarkable.
Posing as an Austrian businessman called Anton Kuenzle, Meidad had pretended to befriend Cukurs since the previous September. Cukurs was running a seaplane joyride business on the shores of an artificial lake near São Paulo, although the business was barely surviving, and the promises made by “Kuenzle” of exciting new money-making opportunities seemed to eradicate Cukurs’s natural suspicion of strangers. The Latvian had every reason to be cautious. His name had been mentioned during the Eichmann trial, in which it was revealed how Cukurs — nicknamed the “Hangman of Riga” — had collaborated with the Nazi death squads, and had personally killed Jewish women and children.
Over the next few months, Cukurs and “Kuenzle” formed a friendship and a nascent business partnership, during which Cukurs tested the shooting ability of Meidad, whose cover story claimed that he had served in the Wehrmacht during the war. Meidad passed the test, although he would later recount how he was more worried that Cukurs would spot the fact he was circumcised during a roadside rest break on a long car journey. Fortunately, Cukurs did not appear to notice.
By the New Year of 1965, Meidad had sufficiently gained the trust of Cukurs to entice him to Montevideo under the pretext of establishing a business in the Uruguayan capital. At the beginning of February, Meidad cabled for a four-strong Mossad hit team to fly to South America to join him and within a few days a small house some 100 metres from the sea was chosen as the place for the Mossad execution.
Cukurs arrived in Montevideo on Air France flight 083 on the morning of February 23, where he was greeted by Meidad and then driven in a black VW Beetle to the prospective “office”. Meidad got out the car, and bid a wary Cukurs to follow him up the garden path.
After the two men entered the house, Cukurs was jumped on by the Mossad agents, who were dressed only in their underpants in order to avoid staining their clothes with blood. Although the plan had been to overpower the Latvian and make him face a form of trial before killing him, Cukurs put up such a tremendous fight that he was shot twice in the head during the struggle. It is not known who pulled the trigger, and Meidad never revealed it.
Cukurs was packed into a trunk, and the Mossad agents quickly left the country. After his body was discovered, Cukurs’s family was convinced that the mysterious “Kuenzle” was responsible, and Meidad’s face was splashed in newspapers across the world.
Safely hidden back in Israel, neither the press nor police found Meidad, who would never admit publicly to his role until he published his memoir — under the name of Kuenzle — in Hebrew 15 years ago. The book was eventually published in English in 2004, to surprisingly little attention.
After his retirement from Mossad, Meidad took up the study of psychology in 1977. In February this year, he was able to attend the opening of the exhibition of the Eichmann kidnap at the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv, where, despite being in a very weakened state, he managed to smile.
Yaakov Meidad, soldier and spy, was born in 1919. He died on June 30, 2012, aged 93
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
