In the farthest corner of a cobbled courtyard, at the top of a hill, up two flights of stairs in a 15th-century German castle, a handsome young professor is writing a book on Iraqi archaeology in the fifth millennium BC. In May of this year, when he was appointed professor of archaeology at Tubingen University in south-west Germany, he gathered his students around him and said, "I am Ricardo Eichmann. I suppose you all know the significance of the name Eichmann. Adolf Eichmann was my father. If you think that means I am a Nazi, then you had better leave now because I can assure you I am not."
Until two months ago, Ricardo Eichmann had lived in relative anonymity. Eichmann is to the German phone directory what Smith is to the British one and few would have suspected that the softly spoken 39-year-old academic was the son of the Nazi war criminal responsible for the mass deportation of Jews to the death camps during the Third Reich.
"Change my name?" he asks. "What would have been the point? You cannot escape from yourself, from the past."
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