Location of war criminal no secret

GERMANY’S BND intelligence agency knew as early as 1952 that Adolf Eichmann was hiding in Buenos Aires, a report said.

The report in Germany’s Bild newspaper on Saturday comes after the US released files in 2006 showing the CIA told the BND in 1958 that the Nazi leader who orchestrated the Holocaust “is reported to have lived in Argentina” since 1952.

Bild said it obtained a BND file from 1952 that indicated the agency believed he was in Argentina. The BND did not return calls seeking comment.

The BND has 4,500 pages of classified files on Eichmann. The agency says the files need to remain secret, but a freelance reporter sued last year to have them released. They are now being reviewed in secret by three judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. Bild said it had also filed a lawsuit to have the files released.

Israeli agents abducted Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1960 and brought him to Jerusalem for trial. Eichmann, who helped organised the extermination of Europe’s Jews as the head of Gestapo Jewish affairs office during World War II, was found guilty of war crimes, and hanged in 1962.

Vice-president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, Elan Steinberg, said it was “disturbing to learn that the BND and CIA knew of the whereabouts of the “architect of the Holocaust” almost a decade before” he was brought to justice.