The hunter is here.
He has been instrumental in apprehending some thousand German War criminals. He spent years in tracking down Adolf Eichmann.
Tuviah Friedman is still hunting.
“Thousands of Nazi criminals live unmolested in Germany. Their names and deeds are known but they cannot be brought to trial because of lack of witnesses.”
He told us that on his visit here he will call upon survivors to come forward and to give evidence against the Nazi murderers.
“Many survivors are reluctant to testify. They are afraid to relive the past. They are afraid of seeing the beasts again who had tortured them and murdered their families. Numerous witnesses have broken down in the courts while recounting their sufferings at the hands of the Germans, and yet – we must not and dare not let these murderers, go free!”
Friedman has not come here empty-handed. He has brought along an exhibition featuring photographs and documents on the “Final Solution.” It is meant remind American Jewry of the tragedy of our European brethren and of their duty to avenge their blood.
Born forty-three years ago in Radom, Poland, Friedman lived through the Nazi hell in his hometown, many times brushing shoulders with death. He managed to escape from the local Ghetto shortly before the annihilation of its last remnants. Following the liberation, he joined the Polish army and shortly thereafter was assigned to newly-occupied Danzig to apprehend saboteurs and Gestapo agents left behind by the retreating Germans.
In the spring of 1946, Friedman found himself in Vienna. He had arrived with a group of Polish Jewish youths who prepared for emigration to Palestine. His stay in the Austrian capital was to have been temporary, but he remained there for six years, devoting most of his time to the apprehension of Nazi murderers of Jews.
He had set out on this work on his own, but soon found a friend and collaborator in Hagana emissary Ben Natan. The latter had originally been sent from Palestine to establish a group of devoted volunteers to track down S.S. and Gestapo murderers in Germany and Austria. However, his preoccupation with other tasks, the organization of “illegal” immigration and acquisition of arms, prevented him from carrying out this assignment. Having learned of Friedman’s activities in Danzig and of his hunt for Nazi murderers after his arrival in Vienna, he entrusted him with his original task.
It was at their first meeting that Ben Natan told Friedman, “find Eichmann.”
He was to live this command for many years afterwards.
Friedman and his friends collected much material on Eichmann. They followed many a clue – watched Eichmann’s wife, his brother and father, traced his comrades and visited and interrogated people who knew or worked with the Nazi beast. Their file on Eichmann grew thicker and thicker. They had pieced together all the details of his life until the end of the war. They had discovered a photograph of the arch criminal in an album of a concubine of his… but Eichmann himself, where was he ?
In 1952, Friedman settled in Israel. He worked at various jobs, as journalist, newspaper vendor and as director of the Haifa branch of Yad Vashem, but all the time he was preoccupied with Eichmann. From hunting Eichmann one could not make a living, and for many years Tuvia’s wife Anna, an eye surgeon, was the main breadwinner in the family.
The search for Eichmann was exasperating? Where might he be hiding? What disillusioned Friedman even more than the failure to find a clue to Eichmann’s whereabouts, was the apathy of leading Jewish personalities to his efforts. He knocked at many doors, yet only few encouraged him. At least his wife was understanding.
But the time came when she too would not understand him any longer. One evening she shouted at him: “Enough. It’s enough already. The war has been over thirteen years and Israel is ten years old, and you are running around like a fanatic. Always the same thing, Eichmann, Eichmann. All the big shots in Israel don’t care, everybody wants to forget and you, you think that a small man like you can go against everybody.”
And another time she cried: “The newspapermen in Haifa are calling you Herr Eichmann. I can’t stand to hear them mock you. I can’t stand that.”
Friedman let her weep, but he could not change his course of life. He had sworn to get Eichmann.
In the summer of 1959 he received a letter from Dr. Erwin Schuele, chief of the Nazi War Criminals Investigation Center in Ludwigsburg, Germany, informing him that Eichmann was in Kuwait. For six weeks Friedman carried the letter around with him, showing it to Israeli government officials and urging them to take action. The responses were not encouraging and he decided to publicize the information about Eichmann. The news spread from the Israeli papers to the world press. The report proved later to be incorrect, but it brought in its train the information about the actual hiding place of the Nazi murderer. Soon after the publication of the report, Friedman received a letter from a Jew in Buenos Aires which stated that Eichmann and his family were living in the vicinity of that city. After an exchange of letters with the Argentina correspondent, Friedman told Dr. A. Tarakower of the World Jewish Congress of his informant. Tartakower passed the information to the “right people.” What followed need not be told here. it was splashed over the front pages of the world press in May 1960.
After the capture of Eichmann, Friedman sat down and wrote his autobiography, “The Hunter.” The best selling book, published in English by Doubleday, ends with the plea to the nations of the world to ferret out the Nazis who are known to be hiding among them.
The epilogue lists the leading Nazi war criminals who played active roles in the massacre of European Jewry and who are still alive and in hiding. The list includes Joseph Mengele, the notorious Auschwitz physician responsible for the ‘selections” and the sterilization experiments.
“What about the search for Mengele?’ we asked Friedman.
“I have discussed the search for Mengele with various personalities.” Friedman replied. “He is being hunted. The hunt could be intensified if sufficient funds would be allocated for this purpose . The murderer is protected by a bodyguard of several men. His capture necessitates , therefore, the employment of a greater force.”
Does you answer imply that you would welcome the raising of a special fund to finance the search for Mengele. Would you also be ready to take a leading part in a concentrated and all out effort to capture the murderer?” we continued to ask.
“Definitely,” was the hunter’s emphatic reply.
The Jewish Press, Friday, June 11, 1965 p. 5