ABSTRACT
It was a dark and stormy night somewhere, but it was mainly dark on the night of May 11, 1960, in Argentina. Three men in a car were waiting for a bus bringing commuters home from jobs in the city to a distant working-class suburb of Buenos Aires. As the bus pulled away from its stop, a middle-aged balding man with glasses began walking in their direction. As he approached the car, two of the men jumped out, overpowered the astonished commuter, and shoved him into the back seat. The car then drove away as fast as it could without attracting attention. This was a kidnapping. The man taken was Adolf Eichmann, one of the leading public administrators behind one of history's greatest crimes, the murder of more than 6 million European Jews. His kidnappers were Israeli agents. This quest for vengeance had a surprising result. The kidnappee, who was thought to be the personification of evil, turned out to be so ordinary that subsequent events caused people to question the nature of evil itself—and where it comes from.
