German court to decide on declassification of Eichmann files

16 March 2010

Germany's Federal Court of Justice has been asked by a journalist to decide whether 4,500 pages of secret documents relating to Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann's escape to Argentina and his capture there by Mossad agents in 1960 should be declassified. Campaigners believe the Eichmann files may prove German and Vatican officials colluded in his escape from Europe after World War II, according to the British ‘Daily Mail’.

According to the newspaper, the BND, Germany's foreign intelligence service, wants the documents to remain out of the public domain. Journalist Gabriele Weber is challenging the secrecy order before the Federal Court of Justice. The BND maintains that secrecy is necessary because “much of the information contained in the files was provided by an unnamed foreign intelligence service” and would, if released, damage the BND’s future cooperation with other intelligence agencies, the ‘Daily Mail’ reports.

Critics suspect that the files could reveal that officials provided Eichmann and other senior figures of the Nazi regime assistance in fleeing to South America after Germany was defeated by Allied forces in 1945.

The SS officer Adolf Eichmann was one of the chief architects of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution of the Jewish question’ and in charge of facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to the ghettos and death camps. After the war, he fled to Argentina  using a laissez-passer issued by the International Red Cross and lived there under a false identity working for the German car manufacturer Mercedes. He was captured by Mossad operatives in 1960 and tried in Israel on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Eichmann was executed in Jerusalem in 1962.

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