Master inquisitor

A slight, polite man with a marked German accent, Arndt is a well-known figure in the village: he always mans the barbecue at the tennis club socials, he is part of a rota of volunteers driving the sick and infirm to hospital, he is renowned for his kind-heartedness in adopting stray animals, great slobbering soft dogs and yowelly cats which he addresses exclusively in Hebrew.

What his fellow villagers are less aware of is that the 76-year-old with the charming lop-sided smile was, for 20 years, a leading figure in the Israeli secret service; that for a decade he was Mossad’s top interrogator, charged to extract confessions from the enemies of the Jewish state. But more than that, he was the main perpetrator of the most morally justified crime of the century. In 1960, Hermann Arndt went undercover to Argentina, where he organised the illegal abduction of Adolph Eichmann, the programmer of the Nazi’s final solution. It was a feat of danger, derring and do, a real-life Bond escapade. And the man who undertook it now lives in rural Devon with a stash of home-made quince wine in his downstairs cloakroom.

What is surprising about this professionally secretive man, is that he should now decide to reveal himself. The reason is this: he has written a book. The Truth About Operation Eichmann tells, for the first time he claims, the real story about lifting the bureaucrat of death from his cosy exile in South America.

The kidnapping of Eichmann is one of those historical events which has developed a thick residue of rumour, misinformation and myth. Since it had sanctioned an illegal act, at the time the Israeli government denied all responsibility for the abduction, vaguely talking instead about cells of active Jewish Nazi hunters. Thus all sorts have climbed aboard the Eichman wagon. A cottage industry of claims and counter-claims, books and refutations has developed over the years. In turn these have fostered a profound bitterness between the various protagonists over the ownership of the title The Man Who Caught Eichmann.

“I wouldn’t have spoken about Eichmann at all if others hadn’t,” he says, his gaze firm and unremitting. “Also the policy of Mossad is a general prohibition on books. Nobody should write, even about things which are not secret. But then Isser Harel, who for years was head of Mossad, he wrote so many books, he made millions, millions, how could they stop anyone else? I expect they are not happy about my book.” He only thinks they are unhappy? You might have thought when dealing with an organisation as sharp as Mossad, you would be eager to find out.

“Listen, I’ve cut all contact with them,” he says. “The old boys meet once a year in a concert hall in Tel Aviv, a big reunion. I refuse to go.” But in his book he makes it clear that at the time he felt it a privilege to work for Mossad. Why such a fundamental change? “I took part in building the internal security service and I was proud of it, of every thing we did. Today I’m disgusted by it.”

Hermann’s book is suffused with two things: a rare generosity of spirit towards those — Wiesenthal for instance — who he feels played vital roles in the Eichmann operation; and an utter moral certainty about the cause he was engaged in. He and his fellow early Mossad colleagues set themselves tough standards. Because their enemies had so compromised their own humanity, the good guys felt they had to act according to the highest of moral principles.

Once, in the early days of his pursuit, Hermann followed Eichmann on to a Buenos Aires bus, and sat behind him. The temptation to lean forward and personally gain revenge for the dead six million with a swift garroting was overwhelming, but he resisted it: Eichmann had to be given a free and fair trial. Likewise, in the many hours he spent alone with the killer, Hermann never once laid a finger on him.

“I had a great teacher from the CIA who taught me that to get the confession you must be the nice guy, the one who shows the prisoner sympathy, understandng,” says Hermann with a voice of such emollience, you can easily see how he did it. As a result of his methods — quiet conversation rather than matches drilled under the fingernails — a bond grew between the kidnapper and his hostage; between the pathetic Nazi in dishevilled underwear, blindfolded and chained to his bed, and the softly spoken, understanding, kindly Mossad man. It is a bond which clearly to this day rather disturbs Hermann.

After 20 years in the service, Hermann could take no more and retired aged 49. For a while he worked in Hong Kong for a Swiss bank, where he met his second wife, an Englishwoman who in turn introduced him to Devon. Then, when the bank went bust, taking the couple’s savings with it, he came to live in England and, desperate, found a job at the Holiday Inn at Marble Arch, London. Given his skills and experience you might think the hotel somewhat underemployed him: he was a night-watchman.

His last job, aged 69, was to coordinate the conversion of a house in Hong Kong for the man behind Jordache jeans. This left him with a wardrobe full of the kind of fashionably cut denim wear which makes him stand out as he immerses himself in English village life. “Every year we have a charity variety show in the village hall,” he says. “And every year I do the lighting. It so happens this year it will take place on November 29 at the same hour — the same hour — that the UN voted for state of Israel 50 years ago. Should I take the microphone and make an announcement? What should you do? That was my life.”