Begin allegedly involved in bid to kill then German Chancellor

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"Former prime minister Menachem Begin played a central role in a failed attempt to assassinate then-West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, with the objective of sabotaging the reparations agreement in the works with Israel, according to the journal of Eliezer Sudit, one of the men who carried out the attempted hit.

Sudit's journal, which was published in a limited number of copies only, came into the possession of the Israel correspondent for the German daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Excerpts from the diary passed on to Haaretz reveal that Begin knew of the plans to assassinate Adenauer, and even initiated meetings to promote the operation. Among other things, Sudit writes that he heard Begin had offered to sell his gold watch to pay for the hit after the operation ran into financial difficulties."

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"On March 27, 1952, a German sapper was killed by an explosive device that had been hidden in an item of mail addressed to Adenauer. At the same time, two letter bombs were sent to the meeting place of the Israeli and German delegations by a group calling themselves the Jewish Partisans Organization.

A few weeks later, five Israelis were arrested in France on suspicion of involvement in the assassination attempt. One of the men arrested was Sudit, a former member of the Irgun, a prestate underground led by Begin. Sudit allegedly prepared the explosive device and hid it in the package sent to Adenauer."

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By Amiram Barkat

One of the men who carried out a failed assassination attempt on then-West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in order to sabotage the German-Israeli reparations agreement said yesterday that he does not know why Menachem Begin, who he said promoted the operation, and Begin's associates "kept their mouths shut" about the hit.

"Today I believe they saw the operation as a failure and thought that they had nothing to be proud of," Eliezer Sudit said in an exclusive first media interview with Haaretz. "I was a soldier and I carried out orders, but all in all I am pleased that I tried to do something against the reparations."

On March 27, 1952, a bomb Sudit made was sent by mail to Adenauer. It exploded when a German sapper attempted to neutralize it, killing the sapper. The affair was hushed up through the years by Israel and Germany. However a journal Sudit wrote in 1994, the only testimony linking Begin to the affair was distributed among his friends.As reported in Haaretz yesterday, the journal came into the hands of a reporter for the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine, Jorg Bremer, and parts of it were published Monday in the German paper.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/726482.html