Revealed: Eichmann's wife visited Israel before his execution
Visit becomes public on state archive blog 53 years after Nazi SS commander was executed.
Sunday marked 53 years since the execution of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Israel and newly released state archives reveal that Eichmann's wife Vera visited her doomed husband in prison in Ramle one month prior to his execution.
The revelation came in a post on the state archives blog regarding a debate within the government on whether Vera should be allowed to visit Eichmann before his death. Her visit to Israel was kept secret and until this day no proof was found to confirm her visit with her husband.
Eichmann's trial.
The state archive cited the prison's visitor's log which listed Vera as a guest on April 30, 1962. She stayed for an hour-and-a-half and was accompanied by the district police commander and two Israel Prison Service officers.
Eichmann, who was a senior commander in the SS was one of the key players in carrying out Hitler's "Final Solution" against Europe's Jews during the second World War. He was captured by the Mossad in Argentina in 1960 where he had fled and lived under a false identity. He was tried and executed in Israel as opposed to the majority of Nazi criminals who have been mostly tried and sentenced by international courts.
The blog post from the state archive reveals the chronology of events that led to Vera's visit.
Two months before Eichmann's execution, she passed a request to the Justice Minister, Dov Yosef to see her husband. Yosef brought the request to the government on March 18, 1962 and told the ministers that Prime Minister David Ben Gurion thought that Israel would find it difficult to stand before international criticism if Vera would be prevented from seeing Eichmann. Yosef suggested that the meeting be held in secret and be carried out quickly - within 24 hours if possible.
On the same day, Foreign Minister Golda Meir brought the government's decision to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "I assume that most of us are completely satisfied with the entire process," she said. "But we know that there are many 'righteous' in the world who's attention now will be much greater than their attention during the Holocaust."
MK Ya'akov Hazan agreed with the decision and only asked, "that she won't help him go into the next world in a more humanitarian way."
