OPERATION EICHMANN (1961)

In a series of shorts scenes set between 1941 and 1945, narrated by a concentration camp inmate named David, we see Adolf Eichmann (Werner Klemperer, at left) set the machinery in motion for a "final solution" to the Jewish problem. His plan is to destroy all six million Jews in the lands under the Reich's control in order to divert food to German soldiers. At Auschwitz, already a prison camp, workmen wonder why they are installing shower heads not connected to water, but we know that they will be connected to containers of Zyklon B, an industrial-strength pesticide that will be used to gas Jews to death. When the Nazis realize that disposal of bodies will be a problem, they install crematoria to turn the bodies to untraceable ash. In 1945, with the Reich collapsing, Eichmann, under an assumed identity, escapes with his mistress Anna (Ruta Lee) to Spain but soon realizes that he is being followed by Israeli agents—including a grown-up David (Donald Buka)—and makes his way to Kuwait and then Argentina. Some of the agents on his trail, notably David's friend Jacob, who managed to survive Auschwitz with David, want to assassinate Eichmann, but David spoils their plans because he argues for bringing him to justice. It's not really a spoiler to note that eventually, he is caught and tried in Jerusalem.

This B-film was rushed into production after Eichmann's arrival in Israel in May of 1960 and was released in March of 1961, a month before Eichmann's trial would begin, though the movie opens with an abstract shot of Eichmann in darkness except for a spotlight, making a belligerent statement in a courtroom. Unfortunately, the rush resulted in a rather static and undramatic picture. The acting is generally fine. There is the risk that baby boomer audiences will associate Werner Klemperer too closely to the comic Col. Klink on Hogan’s Heroes, but his solid performance carries no trace of Klink. John Banner, who was Klink's bumbling assistant Schultz, plays the relatively small role of Rudolf Hess, Commandant of Auschwitz. Donald Buka (ar right), as the grown-up Davis, is mostly just called upon to look stoic and solemn. Though I chuckled when I saw Ruta Lee's name in the opening credits, thinking she lacked the chops for role of the mistress, she gives maybe the best performance in the movie after Klemperer. Eric Braeden (of The Young & the Restless and The Rat Patrol) has a small but crucial role in the last half-hour.

One problem is in the staginess of the movie, confined almost completely as it is to studio shots on sets that range from adequate to cheap, and the tone which comes close to exploitation. The film is well shot but lacks tension or gravitas. In a startling scene early on, we follow the first batch of Jews into the gas chamber and watch as they begin dying, a moment that even Spielberg couldn't quite bring himself to include in SCHINDLER'S LIST. The most effective scene in the movie is in the middle, when Eichmann is trying to get one last load of prisoners (including the young David and Jacob) transferred to Dachau before he flees Germany. His driver rebels, saying, "To call you insane is a generosity" and Eichmann orders a slaughter of the prisoners with soldiers shooting through the slats on the trucks. Afterward, a handful of survivors slowly exit the trucks, all of them children. The ending, as the agents chase Eichmann on the streets, is rushed and ineffective. But the movie itself is worth seeing as an interesting novelty. The same historical incidents are dramatized in the 2018 movie Operation Finale. [TCM]