30 May 2007
The passport used by high-ranking Nazi and ‘mastermind’ of the Holocaust Adolf Eichmann to escape to Argentina after World War II has been turned over to the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires after a judge stumbled upon it in a court file. Eichmann fled to Argentina in 1950 under the name Ricardo Klement. The passport was left behind when Eichmann was abducted by Israeli agents in 1960 from a Buenos Aires suburb where he lived. He was taken to Israel, tried for crimes against humanity and hanged in 1962.
Mario Feferbaum, president of the Foundation for the Memory of the Holocaust, said that the passport would join an exhibit of photographs, letters, possessions and oral testimonies of concentration camp survivors, in a humidity-controlled display in coming weeks. Argentina was a haven for fugitive Nazis after World War II, including Josef Mengele, dubbed the ‘Angel of Death’ for his gruesome medical experiments on Auschwitz prisoners.
Federal Judge Maria Servini de Cubria opened the Eichmann file recently and spotted the passport amid aged papers, according to Feferbaum. He added that Eichmann's wife had presented the passport to authorities in 1960 when she went to them, complaining that he had been abducted. The legal file containing the passport was being kept in a courthouse repository housing millions of documents from historical court cases. Feferbaum thanked the judge for taking "the initiative to consider this a document for humanity."