The Man Who Captured Eichmann on DVD

Category: Blu-ray's and DVD's

1960 was the year John F. Kennedy was elected as the 35th President of the United States. It was also an important year for the State of Israel. It was the year the notorious Nazi Adolf Eichmann was captured and brought to Israel to stand trial for crimes against humanity. The Man Who Captured Eichmann tells the story of the Mossad’s intricate plan to capture Eichmann from his home in Argentina, and then bring him back to Israel.

 

In 1979 there was another movie about this same subject. The House on Garibaldi Street also focused on the extraction plan. It was a more dramatized story than The Man Who Captured Eichmann. This 1996 TV movie involves more of the mindsets of the Mossed agents than the actual plan and procedure to capture Eichmann and get him out of Argentina.

 

Robert Duvall stars as the Nazi war criminal who had been living in Argentina under the name Ricardo Klement. Like many Nazi’s, he was living a comfortable life in South America with his family under aliases to conceal their true identities.

 

Arliss Howard stars as Peter Malkin, the Mossad agent who planned the capture of Israel’s number one fugitive. Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Tucci, Joel Brooks, Nicholas Surovy, Jack Laufer, Michael Laskin, Sam Robards, and Rusty Schwimmer co-star as the Mossad agents who are charged with Eichmann’s interrogation and keeping him safe until his return to Israel to stand trial. Seeing this man in person is difficult for the agents, most of which lost family members in the Holocaust. Eichmann was responsible for the deaths of six million Jews, yet he claimed he was not against the Jewish people. He was only doing his job. And his job was to annihilate the Jews. These conversation with their prisoner caused many of the agents emotional distress, but they knew, even though they wanted to kill him right there and then, that they could not do so. He needed to be brought back to Israel to stand trial. Unlike Eichmann, the Israeli’s were fair in their treatment.

 

Now that the Mossad had their man in custody, how were they going to get him out of the country? While the 1979 movie delved into this part of the story in a more dramatic way, this movie simply lays out the way Eichmann was prepared and left the country on an Israeli diplomatic flight.

 

The Man Who Captured Eichmann is based on the book “Eichmann in My Hands” by Peter Malkin and Harry Stein. Malkin was the agent who came up with the plan to capture Eichmann, so he had first-hank knowledge of the whole event. Watching this film is like a window into the past and a front-row look at this historical accomplishment.

 

The Man Who Captured Eichmann is not rated. It is an interesting film that focuses on a disturbing yet important piece of history. It is part of the Warner Archive Collection and is available from their website at www.wbshop.com.

 

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment business for 20 years. She also writes about technology and has been a travel writer for the past 12 years. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as Internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet: The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

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