Israeli Expert Brands Documents Proving Bormann Alive As a Hoax

An Israeli expert said today that the recent “revelations” that Hitler’s deputy Martin Bormann was alive in Argentina were untrue and based on documents that “are a hoax.” Yaacov Caroz, an Israeli writer who is an acknowledge! expert on intelligence matters, said the documents cited by Hungarian-born author Ladislas Farag as proof that Bormann fled to Argentina in 1948 and still lives there contain no information that has not been available to the public from other sources for years.

Caroz also branded as false Farago’s account of the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires in 1961 which claims that it was the work of Argentinian intelligence rather than agents of Israel’s secret service, the Shin Bet.

Farago’s accounts of Bormann and Eichmann were published recently in the Daily Express of London and the Daily News of New York, accompanied by photographs of a man alleged to be Bormann. (The author, who has a $100,000 contract for a book on the subject, defended his account in an interview yesterday with the New York Times. The Times had published a statement by Juan Jose Velasco, the Argentine intelligence chief, branding Farago’s documents as forgeries and the accompanying photos is false.)

(Weot Berlin police were reported today to be piecing together clues relating to two skulls and other bones discovered in makeshift graves near Hitler’s former bunker. Wilhelm Metzner, the State Prosecutor from Frankfurt who is investigating the Bormann case, has asked for Bormann’s dental records to determine whether one of the skulls might be that of the No. 2 Nazi.)

FACTS AND FICTION ON EICHMANN CAPTURE

Caroz claimed that “no one who was the least bit familiar with the subject needs to make a deep study to discover that Farago’s ‘top secret’ Argentine intelligence documents contain reports published years ago and available at the public library.” He said, for example, that Farago’s “revelation” that Bormann fled Europe under the name of Eliezei Goldstein, was printed in Michael Bar Ohar’s book, “The Avengers,” in 1968.

Caroz said that an Israeli expert who checked Farago’s photographs of the alleged Bormann against war-tine photos of the Nazi found that they were definitely not of the same man. The muscle structure and facial folds were quite different, Caroz asserted, adding, Farago’s story of the capture of Eichmann was wrong in every detail.

Farago claimed that Argentine officials knew of the Shin Bet###hunt for Eichmann and even “protected” the Israeli agents who made themselves conspicuous at a posh hotel in Buenos Aires where they stayed. According to Farago’s account, Israeli agents jumped out of a moving car to grab Eichmann as Argentinian agents watched from hiding and Eichmann was spirited out of Argentina in the same plane that carried “Foreign Minister Abba Eban.”

Caroz said the Israeli agents stayed at different hotels and were not conspicuous; they were in two parked cars when Eichmann walked into a trap and was seized. Eban was not on the same plane as Eichmann and in 1961 was not Foreign Minister but Minister of Education, Caroz pointed out. He said that “had Farago, both as a writer and as a Jew, been interested in the truth rather than sensationalism, he could have checked out his story in Israel. The most superficial inspection reveals how full of inaccuracies his story is.”