Eichmann in My Hands
A First-Person Account by the Israeli Agent Who Captured Hitler's Chief Executioner
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4.7 • 59 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The true story behind “one of history’s great manhunts” and the film Operation Finale by the Mossad legend who caught the most wanted Nazi in the world (The New York Times).
1n 1960 Argentina, a covert team of Israeli agents hunted down the most elusive war criminal alive: Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust. The young spy who tackled Eichmann on a Buenos Aires street—and fought every compulsion to strangle the Obersturmführer then and there—was Peter Z. Malkin. For decades Malkin’s identity as Eichmann’s captor was kept secret. Here he reveals the entire breathtaking story—from the genesis of the top-secret surveillance operation to the dramatic public capture and smuggling of Eichmann to Israel to stand trial.
The result is a portrait of two men. One, a freedom fighter, intellectually curious and driven to do right. The other, the dutiful Good German who, through his chillingly intimate conversations with Malkin, reveals himself as the embodiment of what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” Singular, riveting, troubling, and gratifying, Eichmann in My Hands “remind[s] of what is at stake: not only justice but our own humanity” (New York Newsday).
Now Malkin’s story comes to life on the screen with Oscar Isaac playing the heroic Mossad agent and Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley playing Eichmann in Operation Finale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Adolf Eichmann, ``architect of the Holocaust,'' was seized in Buenos Aires in 1960 by Israeli agents and spirited to Israel disguised as an El Al crewman. Malkin ( Carlos Must Die ) was the agent who made the actual capture. Writing with Stein ( One of the Guys ) he reveals how the most sought-after Nazi war criminal was located, apprehended and brought to trial. Particularly absorbing in this tense, exciting memoir, made possible by the expiration of the Israeli embargo on information about the case, are Malkin's reconstructions of his conversations with the prisoner. Eichmann, obedient and eager to please, comes across as a parody of the orders-worshipping WW II German military man: in one grimly hilarious passage he defecates ``by the numbers'' and requests permission to wipe himself. Eichmann was hanged in 1962, his ashes scattered at sea, ``ensuring that there would be no grave for Nazis, present or future, to turn into a shrine.'' First serial to Penthouse; Reader's Digest Condensed Books, BOMC and History Book Club selections.
Customer Reviews
Eichmann In my Hands
The author is much more humane than I could be. I’m not Jewish but one doesn’t need to be to feel the horrendous pain and indecency of how any human could treat another as insufferable as these people were treated. I hate that so many of those monsters were not brought to justice for how despicable they treated other human beings. I pray there will never be such atrocities again. However there is so much hate in the world that I fear it will occur.
A thriller in real life
This is a really good book. Better than a spy story because it is not a story, but a detailed account of the capture of Adolf Eichman, the brains behind the attempted Nazi extermination of the Jewish race. Detailed, incredibly intense, but full of feeling and aware of the challenge in pursuing an evil person not to succumb to evil methods one’s self. A good, good book.
Excellent book!
Excellent book! A perfect book to read to understand the movie Operation Finale. An amazing and true story about the capture of Adolf Eichmann by the Mossad and Shin Bet.