Avner Less
Israeli police officer (1916-1987)
Avner Werner Less (18 December 1916 – 7 January 1987) was a German-born Israeli police officer, best known for interrogating former German SS officer Adolf Eichmann after he was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina and brought to Israel to stand trial.
Life and career
Less was born in Berlin, Germany in 1916. He attended the Wald-Oberschule in Charlottenburg. In 1933, after the Nazis assumed power, he emigrated to France, where he started an agricultural studies.
In 1938, he emigrated to Mandatory Palestine, and during his first years there, worked on orange plantations. From 1941 to 1948, he was a police officer in Haifa and price checker for the local district. After Israeli independence in 1948, he became head of the Import-Export Section of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and was Deputy-Director of the Legal Department for price control in the Haifa district. In 1951, he joined the Israel Police, and worked in the Department of Economic Crimes. From 1954 to 1968, while still an officer in the Israel Police, he was loaned to the Foreign Service.
He initially served as an attaché in New York City, and as permanent representative of Israel to the annual conference of the UN Drug Commission in Geneva, and as a representative of Israel at Interpol.
The public source identifies “Avner Less” as israeli police officer (1916-1987). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Avner, Less and Israeli.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2254007. VIAF identifies the subject as 8008016. The Library of Congress control number is n83073843. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 1987, 1933 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Avner Less” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.