Marcus Klingberg
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Abraham Marcus Klingberg born in Warsaw, Poland in 1918 is the highest ranking Soviet spy ever caught in Israel. The case of Klingberg is regarded one of the most destructive spy scandals in the history of the State of Israel.
At the beginning of World War II, fearing the Nazis, Klingberg escaped from Poland to the USSR. There, he finished his medical studies . On the first day of the German invasion to USSR (22.6.1941) he volunteered for the Red Army where he served as a medical officer.
In 1948 he immigrated to Israel. He served in the Medical Corps of the Israel Defense Forces, and in 1950 he advanced to the rank of Lt.Colonel. In 1957 he joined the top-secret Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona , where he served as Deputy Scientific Director (until 1972). He also served as Head of the Department of Epidemiology until 1978. Klingberg was Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine in the Medical Faculty of Tel-Aviv University from 1978 to 1983. He was President of the European Teratology Society (1980-1982) and President of the International Steering Committee for the Seveso Disaster (Italy) from 1976 to 1984.
Klingberg contacted the USSR for the first time in 1957, and soon after that he started his espionage activity. Israel's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet, began to suspect Klingberg of espionage, but shadowing brought no results. At one point, the scientist also successfully passed a lie detector test.
In January 1983 Shin Bet officers informed Klingberg they wanted to send him to Singapore where a chemical plant blew up. After leaving home with his suitcase, he was taken not to the airport but to an apartment in some undisclosed location where he was interrogated. After ten days, Klingberg confessed, describing his relations with the USSR in detail. He claimed he was not paid for the information he provided and had collaborated with the Soviet union for ideological reasons. He was found guilty of passing secrets to the Soviet Union and sentenced to 20 years in prison, of which he served 15. He spent the last five years under house arrest.[1] Details of his arrest and conviction were kept secret for a decade.
In 1989, Israeli attorney Amnon Zichroni, representing the state, worked out a deal in which East Germany and the Soviet Union would exchange Klingberg for Ron Arad, an Israeli fighter pilot believed to be captured in Lebanon. The deal fell through.
During the Jonathan Pollard investigation, a Soviet defector in US hands revealed that in addition to the two Soviet spies serving prison terms in Israel (Kalmanovitch and Klingberg), there was a third who had not been caught. He was well placed in the Defense Ministry, and still "active."
In 1997, Amnesty International appealed to the Israeli government to release Klingberg on medical grounds or transfer him to a less stressful environment. Because of his failing health (he suffered from several CVA's), he was released to house arrest in 1998. A camera was installed in his apartment, which was hooked up to the offices of MALMAB (Ministry of Defense Security Authority) at the Kirya, Tel Aviv. His telephones were wiretapped, with his knowledge. Special guards who were working for the MALMAB were assigned to him, and Klingberg had to pay their salaries. Klingberg also signed a commitment not to speak about his work.
After his release in 2003 he left for Paris to live near his daughter Sylvia and grandson, Jan Brosset.[2]. Klingberg's former son-in-law, Ehud Adiv, was also convicted of espionage.
Klingberg published his memoirs, Hameragel Ha'akharon ("The Last Spy"), written together with his lawyer, Michael Sfard in 2007.
Yad Vashem reports by Marcus:
Klingberg Hindzia HELENA
Hindzia Klingberg nee Cynowicz was born in Lomza in 1894 to Edidia and Chaja. She was married to Majer. Prior to WWII she lived in Otwock, Poland. During the war she was in Otwock, Ghetto. Hindzia perished in 1942 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 48. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by her son
Submitter's Last Name KLINGBERG
Submitter's First Name ABRAHAM
Submitter's First Name MARCUS
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Rabbi Klingberg Meir Schalom
Rabbi Meir Klingberg was born in Krakow in 1892 to Rabbi Moshe Chaim and Rozalia nee Hamburger. He was a rabbi and teacher and married to Helena nee Tzinovitz. Prior to WWII he lived in Otwock, Poland. During the war he was in Otwock, Ghetto.Rabbi Klingberg perished in 1942 in Otwock, Ghetto at the age of 50. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by his son, a Shoah survivor
Klingberg Ichak
Ichak Klingberg was born in Warszawa in 1928 to Majer and Hindzia. He was a pupil. Prior to WWII he lived in Otwock, Poland. During the war he was in Otwock, Ghetto. Ichak perished in 1942 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 14. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by his brother, a Shoah survivor
Cynowicz Chajcie
Chajcie Cynowicz nee Gedanke was born in Rozan in 1870 to Yekhezkel. She was married to Edidia. Prior to WWII she lived in Warszawa, Poland. During the war she was in Warsaw, Ghetto. Chajcie perished in 1942 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 72. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1995 by her grandson, a Shoah survivor
Rabbi Cynowicz Edidia
Rabbi Edidia Cynowicz was born in Lomza in 1870 to Rabbi Abraham. He was a merchant and married to Chaja nee Gedanke and had 7 children. Prior to WWII he lived in Warsaw, Poland. During the war he was in Warszawa, Ghetto.Rabbi Cynowicz perished in 1942 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 72. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by his grandson, a Shoah survivor. More Details...
Rabbi Cynowicz Avraham Yosef
Rabbi Avraham Cynowicz was born in Poland in 1850. He was a rabbi of a city. Prior to WWII he lived in Lomza, Poland. During the war he was in Lomza, Poland.Rabbi Cynowicz perished in 1941 in Lomza, Poland at the age of 91. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by his great-grandson, a Shoah survivor
Jafe Miriam
Miriam Jafe nee Cynowicz was born in Warszawa in 1898 to Edidia and Chaya. She was a housewife. Prior to WWII she lived in Siedlce, Poland. During the war she was in Warszawa, Ghetto. Miriam perished in 1943 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 44. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by her nephew, a Shoah survivor
Jafe Dina
Dina Jafe was born in Warszawa in 1928 to Jchak and Miriam. She was a pupil. Prior to WWII she lived in Siedlce, Poland. During the war she was in Warsaw, Ghetto. Dina perished in 1943 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 15. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 25-May-1999 by her cousin, a Shoah survivor
Eisman Srulek
Srulek Eisman was born in Sochaczew in 1912 to Meir and Sara. He was a public accountant and married. Prior to WWII he lived in Sochaczew, Poland. During the war he was in Poland. Srulek perished in 1944 in Stutthof, Camp at the age of 32. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 04-Jun-1999 by his brother-in-law, a Shoah survivor
Eisman Sara
Sara Eisman nee Lesman was born in Sobota to Mosze. She was a widow of Meir. Prior to WWII she lived in Sochaczew, Poland. During the war she was in Warsaw, Ghetto. Sara perished in 1942 in Treblinka, Poland at the age of 55. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 04-Jun-1999 by her son-in-law, a Shoah survivor
Pozner Gitel
Gitel Pozner nee Klingberg was born in Krakow in 1888 to Mojzesz and Rozalia. She was a housewife and married to Abraham. Prior to WWII she lived in Warszawa, Poland. During the war she was in Warszawa, Ghetto. Gitel perished in 1942 in Majdanek, Camp at the age of 55. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 17-May-1999 by her nephew, a Shoah survivor
Pozner Gitzia
Gitzia Pozner nee Klingberg was born in Krakow in 1888 to Moshe. She was a housewife and married to Avraham. Prior to WWII she lived in Warsaw, Poland. During the war she was in Warsaw, Poland. Gitzia perished in 1943 in Majdanek, Camp. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 17-Jun-1956 by her nephew
Tenenblum Mechel
Mechel Tenenblum was born in Mielec in 1895. He was a merchant and married to Rakhel nee Klingberg. Prior to WWII he lived in Mielec, Poland. During the war he was in Mielec, Poland. Mechel perished in 1945 in Mauthausen, Camp. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 17-Jun-1956 by his nephew
Oterman Miriam
Miriam Oterman was born in Krakow to Heniek and Braindel. Prior to WWII she lived in Warszawa, Poland. During the war she was in Warszawa, Poland. Miriam perished in 1943 in Warszawa, Poland at the age of 14. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 17-Jun-1956 by her cousin. More Details...
Oterman Bronka
Bronka Oterman nee Klingberg was born in Krakow in 1894 to Moshe and Reizl. She was a housewife and married to Henoch. Prior to WWII she lived in Warszawa, Poland. During the war she was in Warszawa, Poland. Bronka perished in 1943 in Warszawa, Poland. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted by her cousin
Klingberg Hanka
Hanka Klingberg was born in Krakow in 1894 to Moshe and Reizl. She was single. Prior to WWII she lived in Krzeszowice, Poland. During the war she was in Mielec, Poland. Hanka perished in 1942 in Treblinka, Poland. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 15-Jun-1956 by her nephew
Klingberg Dorothea
Dorothea Klingberg was born in Krakow in 1886 to Rabbi Moshe Khaim and Rozalia nee hamburger. Prior to WWII she lived in Krzeszowice, Poland. During the war she was in Mielec, Poland. Dorothea perished in 1942 in Hrubieszow, Poland at the age of 56. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 17-May-1999 by her nephew, a Shoah survivor
References
1. ^ I spy - Haaretz - Israel News
2.
3. ^ I spy - Haar
I spy
By Yossi Melman
PARIS - "I am not a traitor," says Prof. Marcus Klingberg, who is then asked if he is a patriot. "I do not like the word 'patriot,'" he replies.
There is something symbolic about the fact that this interview is being conducted on the eve of Israel's Memorial Day. Does he feel a twinge in his heart? "I have no twinges. I am not a sentimental person. I also do not like bombastic declarations. But I feel that I am Israeli, 100 percent. I lived in Israel for about 50 years. I have no other citizenship, only Israeli, and I am not looking for any other citizenship, even though I could have received Polish citizenship. I served the defense establishment for many years and I feel that I have shares in Israel's security. But above all I am a Jew. I was born a Jew. I received a Jewish education."
The symbolism of the date of the interview is even more acute, because this year the eve of Memorial Day fell on May 1 - a date that may be seen as reflecting the problems he has with his identity, identification and loyalty, or perhaps his multiple loyalties.
An international expert on infectious diseases and epidemics, Klingberg was formerly a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a senior scientist at the Biological Institute in Nes Tziona, outside Rehovot. He was convicted of aggravated espionage for the Soviet Union and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Shin Bet security service considers him the most dangerous spy ever to operate in Israel, and one who did very grave damage.
While he was confined to his bed in his small Paris apartment with possible pneumonia, his daughter Sylvia and his grandson Jan Brossot marched in the May Day parades in the city. His daughter, who in Israel was active in the far-left Matzpen movement and is now a member of a Trotskyite organization in France, marched with her trade union colleagues. The grandson, 26, who teaches French, is a member of the French Communist Party and marched with his comrades. "We are three generations," Klingberg notes proudly. "Yes, I am a communist, I do not deny it. I never spoke against the Soviet Union. Well, just once. It was after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. I went then with my wife to a demonstration against the invasion."
Wanda Yashinskaya, his wife and a central figure in his life, who died in September 1990, is buried in Paris in the famous Pere Lachaise cemetery. Not exactly buried: She willed that her body be cremated, and what is in the cemetery is a vase containing her ashes and a small relief with her name.
No regrets
In the past two years Klingberg has again become a popular lecturer in his areas of expertise. The department of public health at Oxford University had invited him to speak last month about his experience as an epidemiologist in the Red Army, and this month he has been asked to be a guest at the Ludwik Fleck Center of the Collegium Helveticum, an important university center in Zurich. Klingberg was one of the initiators of the establishment of this center and a year ago delivered the opening lecture there. A Jewish Pole, Fleck was a microbiologist and a philosopher of the sciences. He survived Auschwitz, immigrated to Israel in 1957 and got a job at the Biological Institute, where he became friends with Klingberg. Four years later Fleck died and Klingberg was appointed the trustee and executor of his will.
In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in the academic world in Fleck and his research, and this is another reason for Klingberg's popularity as a speaker. Still, the simple lesson one gleans from observing Marcus Klingberg is that it's not worthwhile to be a spy. Certainly it is not profitable. Since leaving Israel three years ago, Klingberg has lived alone in a one-room apartment of 35 square meters, though in an elegant building on the Left Bank. From the State of Israel he receives the pension of a lieutenant colonel - which comes to more than 2,000 euros a month - but he complains that this is barely enough for his rent, food, health insurance, medication and frequent hospitalizations.
He spends much of his time reading newspapers and preparing lectures for conferences to which he is invited. He sees his daughter every day and meets once a week with his busy grandson. But his sense of being a foreigner in Paris is more acute because he does not speak French. Nevertheless, he has no regrets.
"I do not regret anything I did, even though I am not proud of what I did," he says. "If I were approached today, I would certainly not agree to work for the Russians. But I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do. Why? Because of the Cold War. I wanted the two blocs in the Cold War to be the same thing, out of a desire for a more balanced world."
But you told the Shin Bet interrogators that the Soviets blackmailed you, in other words that you did not spy for ideological reasons.
"There are three reasons for a person to do this kind of deed: ideology, money or blackmail. I did not want to tell them the truth. I was afraid. Because in Israel the worst thing is to admit to ideological espionage. That is construed as the elimination of the State of Israel. I did not want to say that I received money, because I did not receive money, and I believe that to do it for money is prostitution. So I chose the third option, of blackmail. I thought I would get a lighter punishment if I admitted to having spied as a result of pressure and blackmail."
This, Klingberg says, was the genesis of the account that has prevailed since then in the Shin Bet, according to which the KGB officers blackmailed him and forced him to collaborate with them after they discovered that he had not completed his medical studies and lacked a diploma.
'Call me Mark'
The interview with Marcus Klingberg lasted a few hours over several days. It began as a telephone call from Tel Aviv and continued in Paris. The interview was also broken off before its end, because on Israel's Independence Day, Klingberg was hospitalized for a week. This is his first interview to the written press. While he was in prison and in detention in Tel Aviv, the security services prohibited him from giving interviews. His previous interview was three years ago, to the "Fact" program on Israeli television, shortly after he left the country.
He is relaxed in conversation. "Call me Mark," he says. "In Russia they called me Mark, but in Polish it is Marek."
Klingberg has a phenomenal memory. He remembers names, dates and places and is capable of describing in minute detail the appearance of his interrogators and what they wore. Vestiges of his Polish origins can still be heard in his voice. It was apparent that he was eager to talk, even though he did not reply to all the questions. "That I will tell in the book," he repeats evasively several times. Klingberg recently completed writing his memoirs, which he submitted to Israeli Military Censorship for approval.
He still refuses to say when, exactly, he became a spy. According to the indictment, based on his confession in the interrogation, he began his espionage work in 1957. He also denies the allegation that his first contact was formed when he visited the Soviet embassy, ostensibly to get confirmation that he had completed his medical studies.
"I was in the embassy only once, in 1959, with the authorization of Binyamin Blumberg" - the chief security officer of the Defense Ministry and the founder Ministry's Security Directorate, known by its Hebrew acronym, Malmab. "'Bibi,' as we called him - he was the first Bibi of Israel - sent me to meet a Russian scientist couple who had come especially for the first international conference of microbiologists held in Israel. Even [David] Ben-Gurion came to the opening of the conference in Jerusalem. But I did not meet with my handler at that meeting."
Did you have only one handler during all those years?
"No. There were a few. My activity was not continuous. People wrote - you among them - that I met with my handlers abroad. That is not accurate. Until 1967, during the period when the Soviet Union had an embassy in Israel, the meetings were in Israel."
Where?
"In the Russian church."
Did you have many meetings?
"Once or twice a year. And in the years when I was on sabbatical abroad there were no meetings at all. From 1967 to 1973 there were no meetings. After that there was one in Vienna and one in Geneva [headquarters of the World Health Organization], and that is all."
Were your handlers scientists?
"No. When I attended conferences abroad I met with Russian scientists, but they were not my handlers. I always told the Russian scientists that I had been in the Red Army and was very proud of that."
Father's request
Avraham Marcus Klingberg was born in Poland to a family of Torah sages. He studied Torah in a heder (religious school), but as an adolescent turned his back on the religious life and transferred to a regular high school. He then studied medicine at the University of Warsaw, and four years later, when the Nazis invaded Poland, he fled east, leaving behind his parents and his whole family, who perished in the Holocaust. According to the Shin Bet interrogators, his guilt feelings for having abandoned his family helped break him in the interrogation. Klingberg denies this vehemently.
"I left Poland because of the Germans, at Father's request," he says. "Mother was against it. But Father said, You have to leave. At least one member of the family must remain alive."
In the Soviet Union he continued his medical studies, completing them at Minsk University. On June 21, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. "At 10 A.M. on the day following the invasion I volunteered for the Red Army and I am proud of that to this day," he says. "I served on the front until October and I was wounded in my leg by shrapnel. It was a light wound, from which I recovered." (In 1950, when he was already an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, he was injured again, this time in a traffic accident. "I was hospitalized a long time. It was a serious injury and I could have received disability status. But I was ashamed to request it. A few years ago I read that Arik Sharon remembered after more than 40 years that he had been wounded in the War of Independence and requested recognition as a disabled veteran. I did not have the mental strength to ask for recognition as a disabled soldier.")
In October 1941, after recovering from his wound, he was transferred to a different unit. "They decided that I was needed more in my profession as an epidemiologist. My army ID booklet - which, by the way the Shin Bet took from me during the interrogation and has not returned to this day - contains a sticker stating that I am an essential worker." In 1943 he took an advanced course in Moscow and was part of a team that dealt with an epidemic which left thousands dead in the Urals. "When the epidemic broke out no one knew the cause," he relates. "But we were able to stop it and prevent its spread. It was only after I was already in Israel that I read in an article published in Russia that the cause of the epidemic was a fungus, which developed in wheat under the snow and emitted a toxin." Another contribution he made in this period involved research into typhoid fever.
Klingberg was discharged at the end of the war with the rank of captain. He returned to Poland, where he married Wanda Yashinskaya, a microbiologist by profession. In 1946 the couple decided to immigrate to the West. At first they tried Sweden, where their daughter, Sylvia, was born. They arrived in Israel in November 1948.
"Jacob Perry, the former head of the Shin Bet, for whom I have great respect, wrote in his book that I immigrated to Israel for Zionist reasons," Klingberg notes. "When he visited me in prison I told him, 'Mr. Perry, what you wrote about me is inaccurate. I was never a Zionist. I immigrated to Israel and volunteered for the IDF because I was a Jew. I did it also because the Soviet Union supported Israel."
In Israel, which was then embroiled in the final stages of the War of Independence, Klingberg was immediately drafted into the Medical Corps. He was assigned the rank of lieutenant colonel and given an apartment in Jaffa. To this day there are some in the Shin Bet who are convinced - including some heads of departments, who have close knowledge of the affair - that Klingberg immigrated to Israel at the instruction of Soviet intelligence and that already then he was a KGB agent. He denies this. "On my word of honor, I was not sent to Israel by the Soviets."
So when did you start working for them?
"Later, when I was already in Israel."
The long arm of Malmab
He served in the IDF until 1957, becoming head of the preventive medicine unit. He emphasizes with pride that at his initiative an institute to study military medicine was established in 1953. The institute was shut down four years later due to a budgetary shortfall. Recently it was reestablished, and Klingberg notes sarcastically, "These days the army is full of fat and has money for everything." After the institute's closure he left the army and found employment at the Biological Institute in Nes Tziona. His wife, Wanda, also worked there.
The Biological Institute is one of the most clandestine institutions in Israel. Administratively it belongs to the Prime Minister's Office, but responsibility for its security and for guarding its secrets lies with Malmab. Some of the institute's research projects are published in scientific journals, but according to foreign reports, Israel is also developing chemical and biological weapons there, as well as protective measures against a chemical or biological attack. Based on the foreign reports, it is likely that the toxins used by agents of the Mossad espionage agency in Amman in 1997, in their attempt to assassinate Khaled Meshal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, or in the chocolate bar that was sent at the end of the 1970s to the Palestinian terrorist Wadia Hadad, were developed with the help of the institute's experts.
From his first day in the institute until 1972, Klingberg was its deputy director. In 1964, after a two-year sabbatical in Philadelphia ("I also learned English then - who learned English in Poland before the world war?"), he was also appointed head of the epidemiological department. In 1972 he went on sabbatical to London and Oslo. Upon his return he no longer held administrative posts at the Biological Institute, having the status of senior scientist only. In 1969, concurrent with his work in Nes Tziona, he joined the staff of the school of medicine at Tel Aviv University. He was then appointed head of the department of preventive and social medicine (which is now called the department for epidemiology and preventive medicine). In 1982 he was appointed an associate professor.
"It is quite amusing that I remained head of the department until 1984, even after I was already in prison," he says. "It was only then that my appointment was canceled."
His work in the institute and in the university, and his research papers, earned him an international reputation in his field. He took part in conferences of the World Health Organization, and in 1976 was president of the committee ("In Italy," he jokes, "everyone calls himself 'presidente'") that monitored the ecological disaster caused by a chemical plant near Milan. He refuses outright to talk about his work at the Biological Institute, "even though I am convinced that I did not harm Israel's security. After all, I am well aware of what [information] I passed on and what damage it could have caused." What is he afraid of, then, of violating the oath of secrecy he signed? "No," he says, "it is because I know that Malmab has a very long arm."
In contrast, he has no problem boasting about his contribution to medical research in Israel. "Together with Prof. Nathan Goldblum, my wife and I were the first in the world - and this is an achievement I really like to brag about - to study Nile fever. We carried out the study in army bases at Tzrifin and Camp 80. We examined how the disease spreads, but we did not find a cure for it. From 1962 I started to deal with noninfectious diseases and I was even the president of the European Association for Congenital Defects."
Pure as the driven snow
While Klingberg was working at the Biological Institute, suspicion arose that he was in contact with foreign agents. The most suspicious of those involved was M., the institute's security officer, but his complaints did not always receive the treatment they deserved on the part of his superiors in Malmab. But in the mid-1960s, when information arrived to the effect that Klingberg was involved in suspicious contacts, he was summoned for a polygraph (lie-detector) test. This was no small matter. He was a senior official and a member of Mapai, the ruling party, took part in meetings of its Central Committee and knew leading figures such as Moshe Dayan (who was then in the Rafi party) and then prime minister Levi Eshkol. Klingberg reacted angrily and pretended to be offended.
Victor Cohen, who later became head of the Investigations Branch, admits that the test was a failure. "We asked him the wrong questions," he says. Klingberg was suspected of having met with agents of the Polish security service and therefore was not asked anything about a possible Russian connection. He passed the test. A few years later, new information was received along the same lines, but this time the Shin Bet, having been "burned" once, treated him respectfully. He was asked to answer a few questions in a conversation and emerged as pure as the driven snow. The third time, in 1982, the Shin Bet received information to the effect that Klingberg was expected to meet with a handler or someone suspect in a forthcoming trip to a scientific conference abroad. A Mossad team, led by operations man Moshe Levin, followed him but turned up nothing. Klingberg did not meet with his handler - for the simple reason, he says, that he broke his ties with the Soviets at his initiative in 1976.
Nevertheless, information of a suspicious nature about him continued to arrive. The Shin Bet decided to try again. In January 1983 the security service launched Operation Shunit, initiated by Yinon P., head of the branch, for foiling subversion and preventing espionage. Shin Bet agents pretending to be from the Mossad met with Klingberg and asked him to assist Israel. He was told that a Muslim country in Southeast Asia, which did not have diplomatic relations with Israel, wanted the help of an Israeli expert on epidemics, in the wake of a breakdown in a chemical plant. Flattered by the request, Klingberg said immediately that he would be glad to help. He was told to tell his wife that he would be out of the country on a secret mission.
On the day set for the flight, P. and another Shin Bet official picked him up and took him to a safe house in Tel Aviv, where two interrogators were waiting for him: Haim Ben Ami, who used the alias "Yisrael," and Shraga K. (the two were also involved in the interrogation of the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu a few years later). Rafi Rahav, the head of the Investigations Department, hid in the apartment and monitored the interrogation.
"They had nothing against me," Klingberg says. "Not a phone call, not a slip of paper. There was nothing. If I had not opened my mouth, they would have let me go."
Then why did you open your mouth?
"I don't understand it myself. After all, I knew the Shin Bet people. They told me that if I told them everything they would release me. What stupidity on my part - how could I have believed them."
Was there an agreement between you?
"What is an agreement? You are in their hands. It was a handshake thing, nothing written. And even if there had been a written and signed paper, they could have taken it and destroyed it."
Did you ask them why they were not honoring the agreement?
"Yes. Yisrael told me: We promised. So what."
According to Klingberg, "In the matter of the agreement there was a mini-trial during my trial afterward. I said they had extracted the confession by illegitimate means, in return for a promise. But it was my word against theirs. The judges believed them, of course, not me. My lawyer, Yaacov Hagler, argued in the trial that under the Interrogators Law, a log of the interrogations must be kept. The interrogators said: We don't have one, we didn't keep a log."
And what did the three judges say?
"Nothing. They did not react. To me it seemed that they had no interest in me or the trial. They did not ask questions. It was all fixed from the outset."
But you had a lawyer.
"Yes, but in my opinion he did not conduct my defense properly. He persuaded me not to testify. He told me, '[the prosecutor, now Judge Sara Sirota] Sirota will tear you apart. It's not worth it.' The trial ended very quickly, after six sessions. After the two sides presented their arguments for punishment, the judges let me speak briefly. Then the judges entered their chambers. Twenty-five minutes later - I timed it - they returned with the verdict. It was already typed up. They sentenced me to 20 years. Obviously they prepared the verdict before they heard what I had to say. In the appeal to the Supreme Court I said, referring to the District Court judges, 'What talented people the three judges are. Real geniuses. They managed to write the verdict in 25 minutes.'"
The Shin Bet account of Klingberg's activities, according to several people who were involved in the interrogation or knew the case well, is completely different. In this version no promise was made to him, so no promise was violated. In his book, Klingberg intends to add that he confessed because he was shown photographs of his daughter in Paris and this was a hint that they knew everything about her and there was an implied threat that she would be harmed. There is also a dispute over the question of what drove Klingberg to attempt suicide while he was in custody.
Is it true, as the Shin Bet also suspects, that your wife tried to bring about your death by bringing you a large number of medicines after she found out that you had talked and incriminated yourself?
"That is not true at all. It is true that my wife did not like the fact that I had talked in the interrogation. But I did not try to commit suicide because of her. I tried to commit suicide twice. The first time was even before I made a confession. That was after four days of interrogation."
What did you do?
"I tried to stick something metallic into the electric outlet in the room and electrocute myself. But it didn't work."
When was the second time?
"After I made the confession. I swallowed medicine. I asked my wife to bring me Coumadin [a blood thinner]. But to say that she tried to get me to commit suicide? Absolutely not. If it had happened because of her, she would have had a bad conscience for her whole life. The decision to commit suicide was mine. I saw that it was all over. I didn't want my family to suffer because of me."
The Shin Bet took Klingberg to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and registered him under the name of Avraham Greenberg. To maintain maximum secrecy, he was also held under this name during part of his incarceration in prison in Ashkelon. Indeed, his interrogation, trial and incarceration were one of the best-kept secrets in Israel. Journalists who took an interest in the case were immediately visited by the Shin Bet. Klingberg agreed to cooperate with his interrogators and not to disclose his true identity in the prison. He had no choice, he says now: If he refused, he was threatened with worse prison conditions and loss of rights, especially visiting rights. It was made clear to his wife and daughter that if they revealed the fact of his arrest they would not be allowed to visit him. "They were forced to tell anyone who asked - friends, mainly - that I was hospitalized in a Swiss sanatorium."
Were you surprised to be sentenced to 20 years in prison?
"Yes. I admit that I deserved punishment, but not such stringent punishment. Maybe 12 years, maybe 15, but not 20. I was convicted of aggravated espionage and of being in contact with a foreign agent, not of treason. Vanunu was convicted of treason and got 18 years. Udi Adiv was convicted of treason and got less than I did. It is disproportionate. When I entered prison I had just had surgery. I had a heart attack already in 1965. No one thought I would survive, and the truth is that I also wanted to die so as not to cause suffering to my family."
Bankrupted
by Horev
For a time in the early 1990s, Klingberg shared his cell with another spy, Shimon Levinson, a colonel in Military Intelligence, who worked for a few years for the Mossad in Ethiopia and with the Kurds in northern Iraq. In the mid-1980s, Levinson was the chief security officer of the Prime Minister's Office and under the authority of the Shin Bet. Beginning in 1983, when he was between postings, and afterward, when he was chief security officer, he acted as an agent in the service of the KGB. Levinson entered the service of the Soviets at his own initiative, his sole motivation being money. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and released after serving seven years. Among the public figures who testified on his behalf were Ariel Sharon and the Mossad agent Rafi Eitan (now minister of pensioners affairs, and a relative of Levinson).
"As I see it, a person who volunteers to spy for money is the worst of all," Klingberg says. "I do not understand why Levinson received such good treatment. He was immediately moved to a prison. I was held for five months in the detention facility of Abu Kabir, and there is no worse place than Abu Kabir - brutal conditions, rats and mice and dirt, and no food and no canteen. He [Levinson] received a television set in his cell right away. I was not given a television set for two years. It's only because he was a friend of everyone. It's all personal connections."
He is also contemptuous of Levinson's behavior in prison. "He was a submissive type. When a warder entered the cell he would get up to show respect. I always kept sitting. I did not get up even for the prisons service commissioner. He told me his whole story, but I kept silent and did not tell him anything. He told me he wanted a lot of money and that he had traveled to Moscow for meetings. I never traveled to the eastern bloc. Even when I was in Berlin I did not cross to the east."
Klingberg was also in contact with Mordechai Vanunu in prison; their cells were not far apart. "Vanunu told me all the time not to have a television set in the cell because the Shin Bet broadcast waves through it against you. Of course I was happy to have a television set. When I passed by Vanunu's cell I would call to him, 'Stop with your nonsense. It's all in your imagination.' He talked against the Shin Bet all the time. He had an obsession."
Klingberg reserves his most stinging criticism for Yehiel Horev, the head of Malmab, who did all he could to prevent the prisoner's early release. It was not until 1998 that Be'er Sheva District Court acceded to his request, which was submitted through attorney Avigdor Feldman, and ordered Klingberg released to his home. Former Shin Bet chief Jacob Perry contributed to this decision by testifying that Klingberg posed no danger to state security. Klingberg feels a debt of honor to Perry and occasionally sends him his regards.
Klingberg spent the last five years of his 20-year term in his home in Tel Aviv, under restrictive conditions. He was forced to pay himself for security guards who accompanied him everywhere; he installed in his apartment, also at his expense, a camera that was hooked up to the Malmab center in the Kirya (the Defense Ministry compound) in Tel Aviv. To pay for the conditions of his release he took loans and finally had to sell his apartment to repay them.
"Yehiel succeeded in bankrupting me completely," he laments. "No one in Israel wants to tangle with him. All the defense ministers are afraid of him and so he will hold that position for life. No one will touch him, I don't know why. Maybe he has a file on everyone, like Edgar Hoover did." (Horev chose not to respond to this.)
During this period Horev tried twice to deprive Klingberg of his army pension. On the first occasion he argued that a person who is convicted of serious security-related offenses against the state does not deserve to receive the pension of a lieutenant. But Sara Sirota, the prosecutor, and Ben Ami, the interrogator, came to Klingberg's defense, declaring that in the interrogation it was agreed that Klingberg's pension would not be affected if he confessed and cooperated. On the second occasion, Horev tried to block the pension by arguing that Klingberg did not complete his medical studies and never formally became a physician, but again he failed: Klingberg produced the necessary documents.
In the final analysis the Russians did not try very hard to obtain your release.
"That is not accurate. It is true that the first time the French lawyer whom Sylvia hired asked the Russians to take action on my behalf, they did not really believe his story. But afterward, when they authenticated it, they very much wanted to get me released. Even [Mikhail] Gorbachev, who in my view was very right-wing, tried to act. At some point in 1989 there was an offer to exchange me and release Ron Arad. The Shin Bet even told me to pack a bag. I have notes that I wrote to my wife, telling her what to pack. But then Israel kidnapped Sheikh Obeid in Lebanon and the deal collapsed. Afterward, when the drunkard Boris Yeltsin came to power in Russia, they really did not take an interest in me."
Are you angry at the Russians?
"I have only good memories of the Russian people. They helped me a great deal."
And at Israel?
"No. I received my punishment and I deserved punishment, though maybe not so weighty. I paid my debt."
Would you like to visit Israel again?
"Yes, very much, but physically it is not so simple and I don't believe it will happen."
Are you afraid of death?
"No. I am already 87 and a half. Three months ago I broke my leg. After that I spilled boiling water on the other leg while cleaning the refrigerator and I received second- and third-degree burns. For months I could not get out of bed. Now I may have pneumonia. I do not want to be a burden on my family and on society.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=721928&contrassID=2&subContrassID=14&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
* The Spies: Israel's Counter-Espionage Wars, Yossi Melman
* http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1374
* Marcus Klingberg, last KGB Spy to be Released in Israel
External links
* Medical Letter Writing Action dated June 6, 1997, by Amnesty International(urging Israel for him to be transferred to a less stressful environment or else released)
* IIBR official website
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Klingberg"
Marcus Klingberg. 'If I were approached today, I would certainly not agree to work for the Russians. I felt it was the right thing to do. Why? Because of the Cold War.'
Marcus Klinberg
Avraham Marcus Klinberg, an Israeli immigrant who spied on Israel for the Soviet Union,
Yesterday the TV interviewed Dr Abraham Marcus Klinberg, the vice director of the Ness Ziona Biology Institute, who was convicted of heading a spy ring for the Soviet Union. He is 95 years old and very alert. He explained that all his family was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto and he escaped to the Soviet Union, that was the only country in the world that opened its borders to Jewish refugees. In Russia he was treated very well, given the opportunity to study and to have a professional career. After the war, he returned to Poland to build Socialism, but apparently it didn't work out and he ended in Israel. Here he made a nice career, heading a Department in the University of Tel Aviv and doing research in the secret Ness Ziona institute. He loved much his wife Wanda, a blond and tough Jewish girl who survived passing as Polish in the Arian side of Warsaw. His best friend in Israel was another Polish biologist, they were neighbors, who apparently managed a secret affair with Wanda.
I know very intimately the kind of person and kind of atmosphere the case took place. Tahal in its beginning was the same, a few inflated "scientists" and "professors", idolized by everybody. It cannot be imagined today the position "science" and "scientists" had in East European Jewish minds. They were bona fide scientists, but had the highest social position. Like in the Soviet Union. And they were all communists or pro-soviet. In those times it was awkward for a European Jew to be ideologically anti-soviet, because only the Soviet Union were openly, ideologically fighting antisemitism. The fact is that when asked, Klinberg openly informed them what they were doing and even gave them a culture of something. In the interview, asked why he did it, he said that those were the days of the Cold War, and he wanted the Soviet Union to have the same as the other side had. He said that Israel never suffered any harm from what he did and I sincerely believe that he would not have harmed Israel. And that did not.
Now all these took place in the late fifties or early sixties. What were they doing in the Institute? According to open scientific publications Klinberg was working on rickettsias, mostly in typhus. In Israel there were thousands of people carrying the virus, because the Nazi camps had had terrible typhus epidemics. Anna Frank and her sister, as well my grandmother Ilona Lowy died of typhus. Epidemic typhus is caused by Rickettsia prowazekii. Humans are the natural reservoir for R. prowazekii, which is prevalent worldwide and transmitted by body lice when louse feces are scratched or rubbed into bite or other wounds (and sometimes the mucous membranes of the eyes or mouth). Louse infestation is usually obvious and strongly suggests typhus in the proper setting. Lice can easily eliminated by dusting infested people with DDT, malathion or lindane. But all these are insecticides that did not exist then. Klinberg's publication deals with recurring typhus, a disease that must have been quite common in Israel and that must have been very worrying for everybody. The secret work probably also dealt with typhus, a disease that in those times and in Israel, must have been - in the minds of these people - extremely important and dangerous. The Institute has many patents and US Patent 5411992 registers the use of terpenoids as lice repellents. Typhus as a biological weapon seems to me a poor choice, as it is transmitted by louse, that requires very poor sanitary conditions to thrive. Typhus, we now know, is a concentration camp or jail disease. I don't think they succeeded in making any effective weapon at all. Klinberg, in the interview, was provoked by the journalist who said: Imagine a person on a boat in the sea facing Tel Aviv, that opens a small box and a fine dust is carried by the wind to the city .... and Klinberg, 95 years old, replied in strongly Yiddish accented Hebrew, which we don't hear anymore in Israel, with theatrical earnestness: "I know the story, everybody will die, no, not only in Tel Aviv, but in all Israel...Don't you see that that is impossible, things do not work like that, that if there was something like that we would be all dead a long time ago...". He has a sense of humor, incredible for his age.
Now say that they did not develop any terrible biological weapon, as I think they did not, why the fantastic secret and trying to silence him? What is his real secret? Recently there was a public outcry because some soldiers who "volunteered" for an anti-anthrax injection before the Saddam Hussein war, now are suffering from side effects such as skin spots and other diseases. The Army explained that Israel was about to be attacked with anthrax (that was the disinformation coming from America) and that the American soldiers have been all injected with the same thing. But the press interviewed some former subjects of the experiment, and they were in terrible health situation, not faking it to extract money from the Army as could be assumed, and told about their "volunteering" and how the experiment was conducted. In a word, I can imagine that the terrible secret Dr. Klinberg is forced to hide is that in that time the Institute made experiment on typhus on human beings, Jews for sure, and that many had died. I can well imagine that that is what happened, because the same thing was being done in the Soviet Union and even in America, when a group of soldiers were subjected to the effects of an atomic bomb, to test how their fighting capacity would be affected. They never were told and many died of radiation-related diseases. But Russia and America are strong countries, Israel cannot afford a scandal of that proportion. Of course I have not even a fact to base this hypothesis, it is all my sick imagination. Let accept the official version, that the Institute developed some terrible biological weapon, that Klinberg delivered to the Soviets, and the revelation of what is that virus or rickettsia or whatever, would cause an irreversible damage to Israel. Truth is that I don't know and don't really care. The generation that created Israel has mostly died out, what they did, they did, and it was all for the good of the people as they understood it. I, for one Jew, forgive him and his collegues. I dont like their arrogance, but it hides insecurity and fear. Let them die in their beds and let them rest in peace and silence. The photo taken after the liberation of the camp by British forces shows a Mass Grave in the Bergen-Belsen camp, filled mainly with inmates who had succumbed to a typhus epidemic shortly before the end of World War II or thereafter.
Post Scriptum: Today's HaAretz brings another interview with a 100 years old scientist, the first director of the Nes Ziona Institute, who actually brought Klinberg into the place. He names names but they are all long dead scientists whose name says nothing to me. He says that the Institute was part of the Ministry of Science. The existence of a Ministry confirms the divine status scientists had in those times in Israel. He says Klinberg was no scientist but and administrative assistant, and the little work he did was in polio vaccine. The Institute's first mission was to develope the vaccine (that was before Salk did it). If so, they were working on polio virus, and the terrible secret of Klinberg may be unrelated to typhus. What can it be? It is known that the first mass polio immunizations in Israel failed, that is, they tried different vaccines and a large area near Hadera got a bad vaccine and many children got the disease. From July 31 to September 28, 1988, 16 persons in Israel (population 4.6 million) were reported with confirmed or suspected paralytic poliomyelitis. Thirteen cases were reported from the District of Hadera (population 180,000), located approximately 30 miles northeast of Tel Aviv. Israel began vaccination against polio with inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) in 1957. In the early 1960s, oral polio vaccine (OPV) replaced IPV nationwide. Hadera had reported the highest incidence of paralytic polio before 1982. The Ministry of Health reported in 1988 that the Hadera area received a Dutch batch and that is the reason for the failure. No one was guilty. In 1988 I was starting in the sewage business and living virus was found in the sewage. Dr Yair Folkman wrote an article saying that polio does not survive in sewage and there is no danger in sewage infected floodings. It may well be that Klinberg's secret is somehow related to this botched mass vaccination. Who knows? I dont know and it has no importance. Let sleeping dogs sleep.
http://h2oreuse.blogspot.com/2007/08/marcus-klinberg-case.html
Not afraid to go all the way
By Yitzhak Laor
tags: klingberg
"Hameragel ha'aharon" ("The Last Spy") by Marcus Klingberg (with Michael Sfard), Maariv Books, 423 pages, NIS 98
....Wanda Klingberg. ...From the little her husband reveals (she was a partner to his secret and even managed to smuggle out bacteria cultivated at the institute and to hand it over to the Soviets), she was a woman who lost everything in Warsaw, while hiding under a false identity in its "Aryan district." None of her family survived. She left Poland because she didn't want to live in the "giant Jewish graveyard" that Poland had become, but she didn't want to go to Palestine, and didn't like Israel from the start. She died in Paris, and was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery, while her husband was still in prison. ....
In public, Klingberg was a high-ranking officer who went on to become a very senior scientist in Israel's defense establishment. He knew everyone who was anyone (when Haim Bar-Lev visited Ashkelon prison as minister of police, Klingberg made a superhuman effort not to be seen). He helped to found the facility where Israel developed weapons of mass destruction. Why did he do it? Courage, love of science (i.e., his expertise in immunology), loyalty to the Soviet Union, a Faustian desire to excel, adventurousness, membership in a specific sector of Israeli society (in the early 1950s, the battle over which bloc Israel belonged to was not yet settled), and, if I understand correctly, a kind of pain that could not be smoothed away: the pain of losing his family.
His father encouraged him to flee the German occupation zone in Poland for the Soviet zone. The worst is on its way, he said, based on information he heard from an Austrian officer. He forbade Klingberg to tell his mother he was leaving for good (she did not believe the dire predictions). The son promised and kept his word. He didn't hug his mother more than necessary, and shed no tears. When he returned to Poland after the war, when he was already an acclaimed doctor with a senior position in Byelorussia, there was no trace of his family - all incinerated at Treblinka - apart from a bedspread he saw through the half-open door of their home, now occupied by strangers.
Family had been ripped from his life. In the meantime, he had a small family in Tel Aviv for 25 years, but danger was always hanging over his head. Now, toward the end of his life, Klingberg lives in a metropolis, Paris, near his daughter and grandson. With all the languages he speaks and reads - Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish, German, Russian and English - the only one he doesn't know is the language of the city where he lives. Anyone who thinks his punishment is over doesn't know what he's talking about.
Here is the time to mention that I met with Klingberg, after his release from prison and the restrictions imposed on him during his years of house arrest. Once, in a Parisian cafe, I said to him: "Why don't you write your memoirs?" "The truth is, I can't write properly in any language," he replied sadly. "Actually," he continued, "I wanted to be a writer. You know who I gave the notebook with my first stories to?" I didn't know. And then he dredged up a memory from the distant past that is missing, unfortunately, from this book: "Janusz Korczak, in Warsaw, in 1939."
At that moment, when the man sitting before me appeared to loom larger than quotidian life in the catastrophic history of the Jews in the 20th century, I almost offered to co-author the book with him. But Klingberg keeps the cards close to his chest. He didn't tell me that the details had already been worked out, that he was planning to write the book with his lawyer, Michael Sfard.
Sfard, it is worth pointing out, is the grandson of the great sociologist Zygmunt Baumen, who made some of the most important observations about the Holocaust and modernity. Why is that important? Because a kind of circle has been closed with this book. It might also be worthwhile to know that Sfard's other grandfather was the president of the communist Polish committee, in Moscow, where he met Klingberg in the winter of 1943. This is what I mean by circles. Michael Sfard, a famous human rights lawyer, both represented Klingberg during the struggle to release him from prison and has done an excellent job of writing up his story.
At any rate, after reading the book I was glad I had not helped write it. True, I would have wanted the protagonist of the book to be tough on himself. I would have insisted that he explain, for example, why he felt the need to keep in touch with the Shin Bet interrogator who used physical force on him, and squeezed out a confession that sent him to a horrible prison cell in Ashkelon. On the other hand, I would not have wanted to know about the weapons of mass destruction that Klingberg helped develop. Incidentally, he was the one who called upon the scientific community in Israel to devote its research to this cause. No one refused, he writes. Anyone who has complaints about the immorality of espionage should first ask themselves some questions about the morality of producing such vile weapons.
The law-enforcement authorities probably thought that Klingberg would die under the harsh conditions of his imprisonment, but he lived to tell the tale. If the book contains anything intriguing beyond the spy story, it is the light shed on the tremendous sense of indebtedness felt by people who spent the war years in the Soviet Union. In those days, when fighting the Germans was also their war as Jews / communists / Soviets, these feelings ran very deep, regardless of what the Soviet Union really represented.
Those who sell secrets for money are easier to understand. Every day we sell things for something we believe is more important. Those who spy for ideological reasons remain an enigma. After all, we ourselves would never go that far. There were other Jews who fought with the Red Army, who remained loyal to the Soviet Union even while serving in the Israel Defense Forces. None of them went to such extremes. On the contrary: If anything, they went in the other direction. Nonetheless, people who go all the way are more interesting than those who stick to the middle of the road - although I am not sure going all the way would be recommended to those who know what the ride is like.