(HOLOCAUST).
‘GLOVES THAT CAPTURED EICHMANN 11.6.60.’Bronze sculpture by Zvi Peter Malchin ...

(HOLOCAUST).
‘GLOVES THAT CAPTURED EICHMANN 11.6.60.’


Bronze sculpture by Zvi Peter Malchin (Malkin). One of 18. Signed by artist lower left, with date and limitation.
Weight: 16 pounds. 20x30 cm.
1988


The artist of this work, Zvi Peter Malkin (1927-20015), was a veteran Israeli Mossad agent who in 1960 captured Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust, from a street outside Buenos Aires. Malkin approached Eichmann, then living under an assumed name, with the greeting "un momentito, señor" before wrestling him into a waiting car. The team of Mossad agents later smuggled him to Israel, where he was placed on trial, convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in 1962. In his book "Eichmann in My Hands" (1990) Malkin wrote about the capture, stating, he so repulsed, he wore gloves, to avoid directly touching Eichmann with his bare hands. Born in Zolkiewka, Poland, Malkin was reared in British Mandate Palestine and by age 12 was recruited to fight with the Haganah, the Jewish underground forces. He became an explosives specialist and eventually became chief of operations for the Mossad. Given his proclivities for the arts, during his clandestine work he often posed as an itinerant artist. Malkin’s actual brown suede gloves are housed at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jerusalem. See www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/obituaries/peter-zvi-malkin-israeli-agent-who-captured-adolf- eichmann-dies.html. https://artandseek.org/2018/09/18/the-artist-was-a-spy-operation-finale/. https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/15/middleeast/gallery/israel-mossad-eichmann/index.html. Provenance: From the family of the artist, Zvi Peter Malkin. Exhibited: The Museum of the Jewish People, “Operation Finale: The Story of the Capture of Eichmann.” Tel Aviv, 2012.