Zvi Aharoni ( he, צבי אהרוני; 6 February 1921 – 26 May 2012) was an Israeli
Mossad
Mossad ( , ), ; ar, الموساد, al-Mōsād, ; , short for ( he, המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, links=no), meaning 'Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations'. is the national intelligence agency ...
Frankfurt an der Oder
Frankfurt (Oder), also known as Frankfurt an der Oder (), is a city in the German state of Brandenburg. It has around 57,000 inhabitants, is one of the easternmost cities in Germany, the fourth-largest city in Brandenburg, and the largest German ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. He
immigrated
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
to
Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...
in 1938 as a boy.
After retiring from Mossad in the 1970s, Aharoni became a businessman in Hong Kong and China before settling in Devon, England, with his second wife Valerie, his first wife having died in 1973.
At his death in 2012, aged 91, he was survived by Valerie and by a son and daughter from his previous marriage.
Secret service career
After serving in the British Army, he joined the Israeli secret service and spent 20 years as a
Nazi hunter
A Nazi hunter is an individual who tracks down and gathers information on alleged former Nazis, or SS members, and Nazi collaborators who were involved in the Holocaust, typically for use at trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against huma ...
. He was the Mossad agent who identified "Ricardo Klement" as Eichmann.
Aharoni flew to
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
and tracked down the family's house in a remote neighborhood on the outskirts of town. On 19 March 1960 he spotted Eichmann. In his account of the capture, Aharoni wrote: "I saw him about two o'clock in the afternoon ... a man of medium size and build, about fifty years old, with a high forehead and partially bald, collecting the washing." His assistant photographed Eichmann using a camera hidden in a bag.