Peter Malchin's Legacy
Peter Malchin has passed on. He has assumed his rightful and deserved place among the pantheon of Jewish heroes taken from us by time:
Malchin represented a different breed of secret agents from a time when spies would sneak into factories and secretly photograph blueprints of missiles, or catching enemy spies... "He was an ambassador of extraordinary and clandestine Israeli might," [said] journalist and long-time friend Uri Dan...
"Malchin convinced his commanders to let him trail Eichmann alone in order not to scare him off," Dan said. "He told me later 'I was determined to catch him because the eyes of six million are following me'."
"'Uno momento Senor,' he said to Eichmann as he walked down Garibaldi Street and then wrestled him into the ditch before grappling him into a car...
Malchin described the interaction with the Hebrew-speaking Nazi as he watched over the prisoner in the safe house in Buenos Aries before sneaking him back to Israel for trial... Malchin considered killing Eichmann right then and there after the Nazi began reciting the "Shema" prayer. "'I wanted to murder him when he said the same prayer that millions of Jews recited before they were burned up in the crematoriums'"
The deaths of the great place an awesome burden on the living: to prove themselves worthy of those who came before them. Malchin knew himself to be, with justification and without a shred of conceit, nothing less than an agent of historical necessity, tracking down the animal Eichmann. No one will ever again have to carry such a burden - because Malchin and people like him discharged it for us.
After capturing his filthy prey, Malchin restrained himself so that it could be the Jewish state that hung Eichmann: a national act of catharsis framed by the ritual of remembrance that was the trial. It was the trial that allowed Jews whose fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and friends had been murdered to quiet, if only for a time, the plaintive wailing of ghosts. Malchin steeled himself, in what must have been the daily torture of feeding and caring for Adloph Eichmann, so that he could give that much to them. To listen to Eichmann recite the holiest of holy Jewish prayers and to not end him - to hear the testament of faith that did not die on the lips of the martyred, but through which they continue to live, from the lips of the man who martyred them – that must have required almost superhuman self control. Malchin lost over 120 relatives, including his sister, in Hitler's death camps - and somehow he stared in into Eichmann's eyes and did not obliterate him. We must stand in awe - not only of the iron nerves that it took to track down and capture the animal, but of the personal force required not to brutally torture and execute it. But Malchin held himself severely so that the entire Jewish people could begin to heal and so that the entire world would understand that Jewish blood was never again to be shed with impunity.
How insignificant, how misguided, how small the post-Zionists look in the glare of the man who wrestled Eichmann to the ground. Everything Malchin did, he did in the interest and defense of the Jewish people - a task that required and requires, above all else, the security of a Jewish state that will never again allow Auschwitz to exist. And so he sacrificed decades of his life, first as an agent and later as director of operations in the Mossad, until at the end he gifted Israel with the one of best intelligence services on the planet. But the grim determination of the 1950s gave way to the careless euphoria of the autumn of 1967; gave way to the grinding violence of the 1970s and 80s; gave way to the desperate and ultimately ruinous hope of Oslo. Some among us became exhausted, and many lost faith. Not just faith in the rightness of Judaism, but faith in the justness of a strong and proud Israel that refuses to apologize for protecting Jewish lives. Peter Malchin knew Auschwitz - he knew that there is no horror that the world will not visit upon Jews. In the face of this ethical and inhumane abyss, having looked literally into the eyes of pure evil, he found the resolve to never again allow Jews to be forced into gas chambers; and he channeled that resolve into the sinews of Israel. We cannot do as much as he did, but certainly we - as parents and as children, as students and as workers, as soldiers and as those protected by soldiers - certainly we can't allow ourselves to lose the faith that he sacrificed so much to justify.
Malchin represented a different breed of secret agents from a time when spies would sneak into factories and secretly photograph blueprints of missiles, or catching enemy spies... "He was an ambassador of extraordinary and clandestine Israeli might," [said] journalist and long-time friend Uri Dan...
"Malchin convinced his commanders to let him trail Eichmann alone in order not to scare him off," Dan said. "He told me later 'I was determined to catch him because the eyes of six million are following me'."
"'Uno momento Senor,' he said to Eichmann as he walked down Garibaldi Street and then wrestled him into the ditch before grappling him into a car...
Malchin described the interaction with the Hebrew-speaking Nazi as he watched over the prisoner in the safe house in Buenos Aries before sneaking him back to Israel for trial... Malchin considered killing Eichmann right then and there after the Nazi began reciting the "Shema" prayer. "'I wanted to murder him when he said the same prayer that millions of Jews recited before they were burned up in the crematoriums'"
The deaths of the great place an awesome burden on the living: to prove themselves worthy of those who came before them. Malchin knew himself to be, with justification and without a shred of conceit, nothing less than an agent of historical necessity, tracking down the animal Eichmann. No one will ever again have to carry such a burden - because Malchin and people like him discharged it for us.
After capturing his filthy prey, Malchin restrained himself so that it could be the Jewish state that hung Eichmann: a national act of catharsis framed by the ritual of remembrance that was the trial. It was the trial that allowed Jews whose fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters and friends had been murdered to quiet, if only for a time, the plaintive wailing of ghosts. Malchin steeled himself, in what must have been the daily torture of feeding and caring for Adloph Eichmann, so that he could give that much to them. To listen to Eichmann recite the holiest of holy Jewish prayers and to not end him - to hear the testament of faith that did not die on the lips of the martyred, but through which they continue to live, from the lips of the man who martyred them – that must have required almost superhuman self control. Malchin lost over 120 relatives, including his sister, in Hitler's death camps - and somehow he stared in into Eichmann's eyes and did not obliterate him. We must stand in awe - not only of the iron nerves that it took to track down and capture the animal, but of the personal force required not to brutally torture and execute it. But Malchin held himself severely so that the entire Jewish people could begin to heal and so that the entire world would understand that Jewish blood was never again to be shed with impunity.
How insignificant, how misguided, how small the post-Zionists look in the glare of the man who wrestled Eichmann to the ground. Everything Malchin did, he did in the interest and defense of the Jewish people - a task that required and requires, above all else, the security of a Jewish state that will never again allow Auschwitz to exist. And so he sacrificed decades of his life, first as an agent and later as director of operations in the Mossad, until at the end he gifted Israel with the one of best intelligence services on the planet. But the grim determination of the 1950s gave way to the careless euphoria of the autumn of 1967; gave way to the grinding violence of the 1970s and 80s; gave way to the desperate and ultimately ruinous hope of Oslo. Some among us became exhausted, and many lost faith. Not just faith in the rightness of Judaism, but faith in the justness of a strong and proud Israel that refuses to apologize for protecting Jewish lives. Peter Malchin knew Auschwitz - he knew that there is no horror that the world will not visit upon Jews. In the face of this ethical and inhumane abyss, having looked literally into the eyes of pure evil, he found the resolve to never again allow Jews to be forced into gas chambers; and he channeled that resolve into the sinews of Israel. We cannot do as much as he did, but certainly we - as parents and as children, as students and as workers, as soldiers and as those protected by soldiers - certainly we can't allow ourselves to lose the faith that he sacrificed so much to justify.
