Lothar Hermann

Lothar Hermann, 1935

Lothar Hermann (born 1901 in Quirnbach ; died in July 1974 in Coronel Suarez , Argentina ) was a German Jew and concentration camp survivor who made a decisive contribution to Adolf Eichmann's exposure in Buenos Aires , which ultimately led to the kidnapping and conviction of Eichmann.

Live and act

Early stages in life and exile

Hermann was born in 1901 as the third son of the cattle dealer Max Hermann and his wife Sophie in the small town of Quirnbach in the Westerwald . Some of his eleven siblings died early. After school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship at the Jewish textile house Stulz in Wittlich and then worked in a debt collection agency.

From his apprenticeship he may have been a member of the KPD . Although not a Zionist , he and his brother Ludwig are said to have regularly smuggled foreign currency from Germany to France in order to support Jews in Palestine . He was noticed by the police several times. In 1935, he was in another currency smuggling to France with 90 Reichsmark red-handed caught by the Gestapo arrested on suspicion of espionage in the Dachau concentration camp detained. There he was severely ill-treated and lost sight of one eye from being beaten.

After his release from prison in the concentration camp, Hermann left Germany in August 1936 for the Netherlands . There he met his later non-Jewish wife Marta Waldmann. In December 1938 he emigrated with his wife via Rotterdam to Montevideo ( Uruguay ) and then moved on to Argentina. His daughter Silvia was born in 1942, but she was not raised in the Jewish faith . During the Nazi period , with the exception of his brother Hugo and three other relatives, his entire family was murdered .

Unmasking Adolf Eichmann

After the end of the Second World War , Hermann lived as a stateless Jew in Olivos in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires . As a pension advisor - although he never had a doctorate - he appeared with a doctorate and advised German-Jewish emigrants in asserting their claims for “reparation”. Argentina had become the third most important country of exile for European Jews during the Nazi dictatorship . During Juan Perón's presidency , however, more and more of the perpetrators who had fled the Nazi regime came to Argentina, who under Perón had nothing to fear until his fall in 1955. In the following years, too, Argentina showed little interest in prosecuting and extraditing the Nazi German criminals.

In 1954, Hermann's then 12-year-old daughter Silvia happened to meet Eichmann's eldest son Klaus, who was 17 at the time, in the York district cinema. Lothar Hermann, who in the meantime had cataracts in his other eye and was almost blind, suspected after research that this Klaus was the son of Adolf Eichmann . In 1954, Hermann first passed on his assumptions to the Jewish community in Buenos Aires and then to the DAIA ( Delegacion de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas ), the Jewish political umbrella organization in Argentina, but they did not respond. Hermann then passed his information on to Fritz Bauer and also to Tuviah Friedman , who tried to investigate Nazi criminals from Israel , but was severely hindered by the Israeli authorities in further contact with Hermann. Fritz Bauer, who at that time was working as a public prosecutor in Hesse , passed this information on to the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad in secret . With the help of his daughter Silvia, Lothar Hermann was finally able to prove that Klaus' father Riccardo Klement had a false name and was actually Adolf Eichmann. Agents of the Mossad shaded Adolf Eichmann after initial doubts and kidnapped him in 1960 finally to Israel, where his 1961 trial made and he after conviction 1,962 executed was.

Hermann himself was arrested by the Argentine police in 1961 (under the pretext of the Mossad, here the concentration camp doctor Josef suspected in Argentina) when he wanted to publicly explain the full background of the years of preventing Eichmann's arrest and the actual circumstances of his subsequent arrest Having found Mengele ) and tortured in the Argentine prison. Only a comparison of the fingerprints 14 days after the arrest brought clarification, and Hermann was released. Later he never spoke again about the things; only through his great-niece Liliana Hermann did the events become public again. (See also the feature on Deutschlandradio on February 26, 2013.)

The wording of the feature by Gaby Weber , which was broadcast on several German public radio channels in 2012, brings up some details of the research carried out by Hermann's descendants, which do not make the State of Israel's dealings with Hermann appear in a favorable light during his lifetime.

Hermann's daughter Silvia fled to the USA for fear of an act of revenge . Until his death in Argentina in July 1974, Lothar Hermann never met his daughter again.

The reward of US $ 10,000 offered by the author and Nazi hunter Tuviah Friedman for the capture of Eichmann was paid to Hermann after long hesitation during the reign of Golda Meir in 1972.

A website hosted in Argentina has extensive coverage of Hermann. Also included are photos and notes to honor his merit. In an English-language article on a website for which Jack Beckett is responsible, Lothar Hermann is also explicitly named as the first informant and first source for Eichmann's place of residence.

“It was not until 1972 that Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister, approved the payment of the promised reward. In doing so, she recognized that Adolf Eichmann's discovery went back to Lothar Hermann. In 1974 he died in Coronel Suarez, where he is buried. But it was not until August 13, 2012, that Lothar Hermann was posthumously honored by the State of Israel as the person who discovered Eichmann, persecuted him and decided to arrest him. Six weeks later, on September 28, 2012, Ricardo Moccero, Mayor of Coronel Suarez, honored Lothar Hermann, who had spent the last years of his life in this city. Liliana Hermann, the great niece and his former neighbors as well as Coronel Suarez's Jewish community were present when a plaque was handed over and reminded of the injustices that Lothar Hermann had to experience. For a long time the grave remained nameless, now it has been cared for and his name is written on the tombstone. "

Movies

The author and director Raymond Ley filmed his research on Lothar Hermann and Adolf Eichmann in 2010 in the docu-drama Eichmanns Ende - Liebe, Verrat, Tod . However, in many ways this film does not correspond to the facts. Above all, the alleged love affair between Silvia Hermann and Klaus Eichmann is fictitious, but so is the background that led to Eichmann's capture.

On the basis of the interrogations and negotiations recorded by Adolf Eichmann, the Israeli director Eyal Sivan created the documentary Ein Spezialist in 1999 , which was produced by the Viennese company Lotus Film .

In 2018, director Chris Weitz staged the historical drama Operation Finale , in which Hermann was played by Peter Strauss .

Web links

• Entry on Lothar Hermann in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bettina Stangneth: Eichmann before Jerusalem: the undisturbed life of a mass murderer. Arche-Verlag, 2011, ISBN 978-3-7160-2669-4 , p. 404.
2. ↑ Darío Brenman: Historia de vida de Lothar Hermann ( Spanish ) Retrieved March 5, 2016.
3. ↑ Gaby Weber: The hero from Quirnbach: The late honor of Lothar Hermann . February 26, 2013. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
4. ^ Gaby Weber: Eichmann was still needed , 2012, Verlag Das Neue Berlin, p. 68.
5. ↑ cf. Isser Harel : The House on Garibaldi Street, London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1997, p. 16. ISBN 0-7146-4754-3 .
6. ↑ Franz-Josef Schmit: Late recognition for the exposure of Adolf Eichmann: On the history of the German Jew Lothar Hermann from Quirnbach ( Spanish , PDF) Retrieved on March 5, 2016.
7. ↑ Gaby Weber : Half-hearted honor. Without self-criticism: the Jewish community in Buenos Aires remembered Lothar Hermann. In: Junge Welt . August 15, 2012. (online at: ag-friedensforschung.de)
8. ↑ ^{a b} The hero from Quirnbach. on: dradio.de February 26, 2013.
9. ↑ SWR2 tandem manuscript service: The fight of the dwarf. (PDF; 80 kB) on: swr.de
10. ↑ This is how Nazi monster Eichmann was really exposed.
11. ↑ ^{a b} "Eichmanns Ende" on ARD: Devil's advocate meets devil's bureaucrat. on: spiegel.de , July 25, 2010.
12. ↑ Eichmann's end - love, betrayal, death . in the German language Wikipedia
13. ^ ^{A b} Lothar Hermann, who found Eichmann in Argentina. on: lotharhermann.com.ar , January 3, 2013.
14. ^ The incredible James Bond tactics used by Israeli spies to capture Nazi Adolf Eichmann in South America. ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on: warhistoryonline.com , January 18, 2013. 
15. ↑ Eichmann was terribly funny. In: Der Spiegel. 45/1999.