Details

Release year: 1979

Storyline

A true-life political thriller that dramatizes the 1960 capture in Argentina of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, by the Israelis.

Top credits

Directors

Peter Collinson

Writers

Cast

Topol — Michael
Nick Mancuso — Ari
Janet Suzman — Hedda
Martin Balsam — Isser Harel

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Did you know

• Author of the source 1975 non-fiction book of the same name, Isser Harel, was an Israeli master spy who directed the capture of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1960. He was the first director of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security agency. Later, he was one of the founders of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. He was its director from 1952 to 1963.

• In the years following the events shown in Hannah Arendt (2012), Hannah Arendt's portrait of Adolf Eichmann in "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (1963) as a ''bureaucrat'', who only did his job without taking any responsibility for the consequences, can now be rejected by historians. Tape recordings of Eichmann bragging about his mass-murder exist that leave no doubt anymore about his strong anti-semitic motivation and personal enthusiasm to commit genocide. Arendt's failure at the time was, that she believed Eichmann's deceptive self-defense in the Jerusalem court too much, which turned out to be a lie. Further proof for Eichmann's strong anti-semitism is also presented by witness Benjamin Murmelstein in The Last of the Unjust (2013). Based on these additional sources, philosopher Bettina Stangneth created a much more accurate portrait in "Eichmann before Jerusalem. The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer" (2011).

• According to CIA documents released in 2006, U.S. and West German intelligence knew that Adolf Eichmann was hiding in Argentina in 1958. But they revealed nothing, fearing he might expose former comrades who had been useful to the CIA or the German government.