Sixty years after the capture and trial of Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann, a hidden story comes to light
By the 1950s, so many years of tireless activism meant Rav Kalmanowitz was no stranger to the corridors of power in Washington. And as the Eichmann whereabouts saga was unfolding, there was a flurry of correspondence between Rav Kalmanowitz and US government powerbrokers.
Rav Kalmanowitz’s urgent request regarding Eichmann made its way to the State Department where Parker T. Hart, director of Near Eastern Affairs, responded on behalf of the president on 24 August, 1953. “The United States has, of course, no power to arrest an individual in another country,” Hart noted. “In any event, it is by no means clear what country Eichmann is now in or what he may be doing. Under these circumstances, it is not possible for this government to make any representations to any other government concerning his activities, or to take any other action in the matter.”
Rejection was never a deterrent to Rav Kalmanowitz, so his next step was to utilize his contacts to appeal to the CIA, initiating his own contact with CIA director Allen Dulles. In his letter to Dulles, he referred to his involvement in the negotiations between Swiss politician Jean-Marie Musy and the Nazis, in coordination with the Sternbuchs, to rescue large numbers of Jews (Musy was involved in the release of 1,210 prisoners from the Theresienstadt concentration camp).
Around the same time the letters were being exchanged, articles began to appear in newspapers claiming Eichmann had been spotted in the Middle East. (It turns out that although those rumors were unfounded, they pushed Rav Kalmanowitz to work even harder to neutralize the Eichmann threat.)
Create a free account to keep reading.
