Lothar Hermann

Lothar Hermann (November 11, 1901 – July 6, 1974)[1] was a German Jew and concentration camp survivor who contributed to the identification and arrest of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust.

In 1935 he was caught red-handed with 90 Reichsmarks in a foreign currency smuggling operation to France, arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp on suspicion of espionage.

After the end of the Second World War, Hermann lived as a stateless Jew in Olivos in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires.

There exist multiple versions of events that led Silvia and then Lothar Hermann to suspect that Klaus was the son of Adolf Eichmann.

Two fact-finding missions by Mossad in 1957 and 1958 led the secret service to doubt the information, citing that Lothar Hermann had moved outside of Buenos Aires and in the meantime had developed cataracts in his other eye and was almost blind.

[2] It was only after more pressure by Fritz Bauer and an independent tip-off by Gerhard Klammer that the Israeli government decided to put Eichmann to trial.

[5] In December 1971, Hermann wrote to the Israeli government again; this time, the cabinet of Golda Meir agreed to pay him a monthly sum of money as reward, twelve years after he had provided the information.