DonOperInfo/BRCFUA :: "Send the boys." | Three stories about Mossad revenge against war criminals and terrorists

 

"Send the boys." Three stories about Mossad revenge against war criminals and terrorists

"Ukrainian Pravda"

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In March 2022, the children of Lesya Lytvynova , a volunteer and co-founder of the "Svoi" charitable foundation, found themselves in an occupation near Kyiv. In the rare moments when the mobile connection broke, she supported them as best she could, asked them not to leave the house, convinced them that everything would end soon.

"The rest of the time I was filled with terror and rage, " she recalled . "And also an overwhelming desire for revenge. So strong that the body could not cope with the attacks of the desire to kill. Right now. In the most horrible ways imaginable. Slowly, savoring the pain and the fear of those who came to kill my children...

In the rare moments when I managed to fall asleep, I had dreams in which I tore to pieces with my bare hands those standing on the threshold of my house. I woke up deeply satisfied. Five minutes after falling asleep, I felt that I was able to live. And then everything started in a circle."

Hate, rage, desire to take revenge on the occupiers - the state in which millions of Ukrainians live today. The natural reaction of the psyche to the murders, rapes, and ruins that the "Russian peace" brought to Ukraine. A way to survive in a world where punishment for criminals can be deferred for years or decades.

However, if for most the desire for revenge is an acute emotional state, there are people who should serve this dish cold.

The "higher league" in this matter is the Israeli intelligence agency "Mossad". We recall three stories when, thanks to their special operations, criminals were punished decades after committing the crimes.

"Sit quietly or we'll finish"

On May 20, 1960, three cars drove up to the airport checkpoint in Buenos Aires. In two of them, passengers dressed as employees of the Israeli airline El Al chatted and sang. At three - they slept before the long flight to Tel Aviv with refueling in Dakar.

After passing the checkpoint, the cars drove to the Bristol Britannia liner of the El Al airline. He was on a special flight for the Israeli delegation headed by Education Minister Abba Even to return home. The day before, they flew to Argentina to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the country's independence.

The plane's crew headed for the gangway. Among the dozen Israelis was navigator Zeev Zikhroni. Unlike the others, he looked depressed. With careful support, colleagues helped him up the ladder.

A few minutes after midnight on May 21, controllers allowed the plane to take off. Within a day, he landed at Lod International Airport near Tel Aviv.

Having set foot on the Holy Land, Zeev Zichroni disappeared. In his place, under the watchful eye of Mossad agents, Adolf Eichmann stepped off the ladder. The man who worked out the logistics of the meticulous extermination of six million Jews.

Two and a half years before, in the late autumn of 1957, the Attorney General of the German state of Hesse, Dr. Fritz Bauer, secretly passed on information to a representative of the Mossad that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina. Bauer was afraid of information leaks through official channels - he knew that the German judicial system contained many former Nazis or sympathizers.

From that moment, Mossad employees began to look for Eichmann's trail in Argentina. And finally they found a resident of San Fernando, a suburb of Buenos Aires.

In 15 years, he changed several names. First, in May 1945, SS Obersturmbannführer Eichmann turned into a private Luftwaffe Adolf Karl Barth. Then to Lieutenant Otto Ekman - with this name he was sent to a camp for prisoners of war. After escaping from the camp, he hid as Otto Heninger until he escaped from Italy to Argentina in 1950 - with documents in the name of Ricardo Clementa.

By the time Mossad agents tracked him down, 53-year-old Klement managed to work on a rabbit farm, fruit juice factory, Mercedes-Benz factory and had every chance to end his life peacefully surrounded by his wife and four children.

Eichmann's certificate issued in the name of Ricardo Clement

...On the evening of May 11, 1960, Klement returns to his house on Garibaldi Street for the last time in his life. In the twilight, he does not see two cars parked on the side of the road, a Chevrolet and a Buick.

The light of the headlights of one of the cars hits Eichmann in the eyes. A short struggle and in half a minute he is lying on the floor of one of the cars - covered with a blanket and with a gag in his mouth. Cars are moving from place to place.

- Sit quietly, or we will end it! - he hears a phrase in German.

In fact, the killing of this criminal was not foreseen in the script. The first phrase Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion said when he learned that Mossad agents had managed to track down Eichmann was: "Bring him back dead or alive." And after a short pause: "It would be better to bring him alive. This is very important for our youth."

Mossad agents were to spend ten days with Eichmann in a pre-rented villa before the Bristol Britannia jet set off for Tel Aviv. It was the most difficult ten days of their lives.

"This was the most difficult stage of the operation. After all, the sons and children of the Jews killed by him, the brothers of the babies who were shot on his orders, buried alive, trampled with boots, were kept and lived with him under the same roof," Mossad head Isser Harel later wrote in his memoirs. who was also in Buenos Aires at the time.

On April 11, 1961, Eichmann's trial began in Jerusalem. It will last for eight months. 110 Holocaust survivors became prosecution witnesses. The accused was sentenced to death by hanging.

Eichmann in an Israeli prison

On May 31, 1962, in a special cell, Eichmann was placed on a hatch and a noose was placed around his neck.

His last words were: "I had to obey the laws of war and my flag. I am ready."

Words that war criminals always and everywhere say when their time comes.

"Those Who Never Forget"

"From now on, your name is Anton Künzle."

From these words, spoken by the commander of the operative department of the Mossad "Caesaria" Yoske Yariv in September 1964, the operation to eliminate the "Riga Butcher" began. This was the nickname of Herbert Tsukurs, who in 1941 organized the shooting of about 30,000 Jews in the Rumbul forest on the outskirts of Riga.

Yariv's interlocutor was one of the best agents of the special service - Yaakov Meidad, nicknamed "Mio".

If his life had turned out differently, the best theaters could compete for Maydad. In the Mossad, he was known as "the man with a hundred faces" due to his talent for reincarnation.

One of his colleagues recalled: "If you wake up Mio in the middle of the night, he will immediately start speaking the language of the person he has reincarnated into." Another added that on the days when he was driven from home to the airport for another assignment, he never looked back to wave at his children, because at that moment he had no children.

Meidad took up the "case of the Riga butcher" not only as a matter of official duty. He also had personal motives. His parents died in the death camp.

Herbert Zukurs

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol made the decision on the "spot liquidation" of Tsukurs in Israel. This time there was no question of kidnapping and show trial, as in the case of Eichmann. There were reasons for that.

It was at this time, in the mid-1960s, that there were discussions in Germany about whether to extend the 20-year statute of limitations for the crimes of Nazism, which expired on May 8, 1965. There was no burning desire to continue the search for Nazi criminals in other countries of Western Europe.

Israel's leadership should have sent a signal that the crimes committed during the Holocaust do not have a statute of limitations. And if European politicians want to turn over this page of history, justice for Nazi criminals will be carried out in other ways - without prosecutors and lawyers.

10 days after the meeting at the conspiratorial apartment in Paris, a bald man with a thick mustache and thick-rimmed glasses got off a plane bound for Rio de Janeiro. It was Austrian businessman Anton Künzle.

A few days later, at a marina near Sao Paulo, Künzle met the owner of a local air taxi company, Herbert Zukurs.

Flying was an old hobby of Tsukurs. Back in the 1930s, he made flights to the African Gambia, Palestine, Japan and China on the plane he assembled. The press called him the "Eagle of Latvia". After the arrival of the Germans, he began to serve the new masters.

At the end of the war, he managed to escape to France using forged documents, taking with him the Jewish girl Miriam Keitzner, whom he cared for during the war. She became his shield in a new place when he pretended to be an opponent of Nazism. However, as soon as he was convinced that he was not at risk of persecution, Tsukurs divorced Miriam and moved his ex-wife and three sons to Brazil from Europe.

After the first "accidental" meeting with Zukurs at the marina in Sao Paulo, Künzle began an active "courtship". He had to convince his new "friend" that meeting an Austrian who was ready to invest a lot of money in tourism in Latin America would allow Tsukurs to improve his financial affairs. And actually to lure into a trap.

We had to wait six months. Tsukurs agreed to travel with an "Austrian investor" to the capital of Uruguay - Montevideo - to disperse and look for premises for the future office of the business center.

The resolution of this story took place on February 23, 1965. A five-person Mossad operative group was waiting for them in one of the houses on Cartagena Street. The agents knew that Tsukurs was armed and that a bloody fight was ahead. Therefore, in order not to stain their clothes with blood, they carefully stripped down to their underpants, portraying construction workers.

After a short skirmish, everything was over. The body of Tsurkus was placed in a large travel chest, bought in advance. A typewritten letter was left nearby: "In view of the seriousness of the crimes with which Herbert Zukurs was accused, in particular, his personal responsibility for the murder of thirty thousand men, women and children, and in view of the appalling cruelty shown by Herbert Zukurs during the commission of the crimes, we sentenced the said Zukurs to the death penalty. The accused was executed on February 23, 1965 by "those who will never forget".

After everyone involved in the operation had left South America, an unknown person called several news agencies in Germany and reported that a Nazi criminal had been executed in Montevideo.

Whether it was a coincidence, no one will say, but later the German parliament rejected the draft law on the statute of limitations for Nazi crimes.

"Wrath of God" and red paper

On August 21, 1972, members of the Israeli Olympic team took a group photo before departing from Tel Aviv to Munich.

For 11 of them, he became the last.

Israel's national team at the Olympics in Munich

On the evening of September 4, members of the Israeli national team watched the play "Fiddler on the Roof" in Munich and had dinner in a restaurant. Then they went to rest before the competition.

A few hours later, at four in the morning, two taxis drove up to the A-25 gate of the Olympic town. Eight people in red sports suits came out of them. They got over the fence and went to Connollystrasse, 31, where the Israelis lived.

Two Olympians were killed at once. The rest were taken hostage, demanding the release of more than two hundred like-minded people convicted of terrorism from Israeli prisons. In case of refusal, they promised to kill one hostage every hour.

The Israeli government refused to negotiate with the terrorists, who called themselves the militant group of the organization "Black September". Prime Minister Golda Meir said: "If we give in, no Israeli anywhere in the world will be able to feel safe."

Then there was a failed operation by the German special services, during which all the hostages - 9 people - died.

Fighters of "Black September" during the capture of hostages

The tragedy in Munich became a turning point: from now on, Israel will kill terrorists where and when it deems necessary, without relying on the justice of other countries.

Many should have been killed. The first "shooting" list consisted of 11 names of terrorists who were directly related to the massacre in Munich. Later, it expanded to include those who were suspected of having connections with Black September. All of them became a "legitimate target" of the Mossad.

In the autumn of 1972, the word "revenge" became the most popular in Israel. She was talked about in the Knesset, in cafes and at train stations. Market traders and university professors called for revenge.

The preparation of this "dish" was carried out by a special unit of the Israeli intelligence "Mossad" - "Kidon". His task was the "spot liquidation" of terrorists around the world. This is how the "Wrath of God" operation began .

"It looks very bad when a civilized country sends groups of killers across its borders, but we have no other way to protect our citizens in the face of international terrorism," said Golda Meir.

She also had the last word in deciding the fate of terrorists who fell on intelligence radars.

Everyone's "case" was first worked out by the Mossad, then all arguments were weighed at secret meetings of the government. The head of intelligence acted as a prosecutor, the prime minister and members of the government acted as judges. If the evidence was not convincing enough, the "prosecutor" was rejected.

Golda Meir always had the decisive word. She never signed a "red paper" (so called a liquidation order because of the color of the paper it was printed on) unless she was sure of three things. The guilt of the accused, maximum security measures for the executors of the "sentence", and the fact that innocent civilians will not be harmed during the operation. Just in case the prime minister had no doubts, Mossad head Zvi Zamir, according to legend, heard the phrase from her: "Send the boys."

One of the "boys" was Nehemiah Meiri. He was born in southern Poland and miraculously survived the Holocaust. Along with other Jews of the town, Demblin stood on the edge of a hole in the forest. 12-year-old Nehemiah managed to jump into it a second before the command "fire!" and a machine gun queue. When the Germans left after the shooting, he climbed out of the mass grave, covered in the blood of those who were nearby. His loved ones died. After the war, along with other illegal emigrants on the Exodus ship, he went to Palestine.

Decades later, when asked if his shadow haunted those he had killed while serving in the Kidon, he replied: "I dream of my family. I dream of the valley of death over there, not far from Demblin in Poland; I dreaming of emaciated sick prisoners in death camps. That's what bothers me. I had no problem with any of the people I killed. Every one of them deserved a bullet in the chest and two in the head."

Ali Hasan Salame, nicknamed "The Red Prince", was the first on the list to be eliminated from the number of 11 terrorists. Rich, charismatic, lover of women, parties and expensive cars. In addition to all other "feats", on his account is the organization of the hijacking of the Vienna-Tel Aviv flight on May 9, 1972. The operation of the Israeli special services at the Lod airport, where the plane landed, went down in history as the first successful release of a plane with passengers captured by terrorists.

It is interesting that the group of special forces was then headed by the future Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak. And during the storming of the plane, officer Benjamin Netanyahu was wounded - another future prime minister.

Ali Hassan Salame nicknamed "The Red Prince"

The biggest failure of the Mossad during the whole time of the operation "Wrath of God" is connected with the hunt for Salameh.

In July 1973, a "landing party" of 12 Mossad agents landed in the Norwegian town of Lillehammer. The group was headed by the same Nehemiah Meiri.

Before that, they managed to track down Salame, who was allegedly hiding here under a different name.

On July 23, 1973, Norwegian newspapers reported on the front pages of the murder of Ahmed Bouchiki, a 30-year-old Moroccan, by two unknown men. He was shot eight times from a Beretta pistol as he and his wife, who was seven months pregnant, were returning home from a movie theater.

His only fault was that he looked like terrorist Ali Hassan Salameh.

Israeli intelligence caught up with the real Salameh only five and a half years later. On January 22, 1979, when he and 11 bodyguards in his blue Chevrolet minivan were compared to a parked red Volkswagen on one of Beirut's streets. The explosion of a car filled with explosives took the life of Salameh.

Operation "Wrath of God" lasted two decades. During this time, Israeli special services destroyed dozens of terrorists in Rome, Paris, Athens, Nicosia, and Beirut. There were also accidental victims, as during the liquidation of Salameh - four passers-by were killed when a car exploded on the street.

***

Terrorism or just retribution for criminals?

Are there "red lines" in a secret war, the details of which the public will learn only decades after the events?

Who and what can be considered a legitimate intelligence target, and are there rules of the game when there is a war for survival?

In the fall of 2022, the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense, Kyrylo Budanov , confirmed that Ukrainian special forces are already working "in the style of the Mossad." Journalists noticed the book "Mossad. The most outstanding operations of Israeli intelligence" on his desk in his office .

In this book, he must have drawn attention to the words of Meir Dagan, who led Israeli intelligence from 2002 to 2011: "It is true that in units like ours, the external boundaries can be blurred. That is why you have to be sure that your people are of the highest quality. The dirtiest jobs should be done by the most honest people."

Mykhailo Krygel, UP

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