He sunk a cruiser with a torpedo bomber

            The Israeli Air Force today is a big and powerful organization that only the elite pilots can think of joining. That wasn’t always the case. During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 the Israelis practically begged veteran pilots from around the world to help their beleaguered brethren in their quest for a Jewish homeland. Most of the 101^st Squadron were Machal volunteers from many backgrounds. One of these pilots had an amazing story to tell even before he fought for Israel. Leon Frankel had sunk a Japanese cruiser during WWII and would have another hair raising experience flying for Israel.

            Born in St. Paul in 1923 Leon Frankel was just two years out of high school when he joined the navy in 1942. As with many youngsters in the 1940s he was fascinated by aviation and was elated when he was accepted into the naval aviation program. After graduating he was given a Grumman TBF “Avenger” torpedo bomber and assigned to the carrier USS Lexington.

            By February 1945 the U.S. was closing in on the Japanese home islands and B-29 Superfortresses were bombing Tokyo. Marines were about to land on Iwo Jima to provide a base for these attacks with the navy providing air support for the landings. Before the landings, aircraft carriers turned their attention to the Japanese capital with the Lexington’s planes making the navy’s first attack on Tokyo. Their mission was to destroy enemy planes and their support system. Frenkel took his plane to bomb an aircraft factory but the Japanese response was intense anti-aircraft fire. Enemy planes flew to meet the flyboys (an affectionate term for navy pilots) and two of Frankel’s buddies in his formation suffered severe damage and were “limping” back to the Lexington. Frenkel’s Avenger was able to provide adequate cover and everyone landed safely.

            Two months later, the Japanese were down to their last few capital ships and had even less fuel to keep them running. In keeping with the tradition of fighting to the death they sent the massive battleship Yamato, the cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers to destroy the American forces invading the island of Okinawa. It was called Operation Ten-Go but was doomed from the start. American submarines had been tracking the force and soon scout planes joined the party. 400 American planes were in the air headed towards the Japanese force and among them was Leon Frankel in his Avenger torpedo bomber. Anti-aircraft fire was pouring up from the destroyers but Frankel and his wing mates pressed on the attack. A torpedo from Avenger struck the Yahagi and soon the cruiser was gone. He was credited for sinking the ship and was awarded the Navy Cross for his efforts.

            The feat of being singled out as the pilot who sank a ship was sweet and was even more so considering it was one of the enemy’s biggest threats in the entire Pacific Ocean. Frankel went back to his home state of Minnesota after the war and was heralded as a war hero. He stayed in the naval reserve as a pilot while opening up a very lucrative car business in St. Paul. Then in 1947 a phone call came from a stranger that sent him back to war over 6,000 miles away.

            Despite the fact that he wasn’t a Zionist and impassioned pleas from his mother to stay home Frankel joined the Israeli Air Force. He didn’t want it on his mind that abandoned his brethren in a time of need when his skills could help turn the tide. Before going to Israel he first went to New York and found out that the organization that recruited him was being followed by the FBI. After lying about his purposes for going overseas he was given a passport and headed to Czechoslovakia for training in planes that had been kept secret from everyone. The plane was a Czech knockoff of the famed German Me-109 called Avia S-199. It wasn’t a great plane but it was all the Israelis had to fight the Arabs with who were flying the best British aircraft. Many of the pilots, Frankel included, weren’t trained as fighter pilots and had to learn the skills of aerial dog-fighting. Several of the early Israeli Air Forces losses were due to the inexperience of the fighter pilot. Frankel was determined not to be on that list.

Finally in May 1948 Frankel made it to Israel just in time for a truce. When he landed in a C-54 transport plane, a casket was waiting to be loaded onto the plane for transport back to the U.S. It was Colonel “Mickey” Marcus that Frankel helped with transferring who was the American commander of the ground forces and was killed by friendly fire right before the truce began.

            Frankel joined Israel’s first fighter unit the 101^st Fighter Squadron but for a while there was no action. Soon the truce fell apart and Frankel began flying photo reconnaissance missions and escorting bombers to their targets. Frankel describes a job on the three B-17 Fortress bombers in these terms, “They had a position on those bombers called the bomb chucker. They would tie a rope to him so he wouldn’t fall out of the plane. Someone would hand a 70-lb. bomb to the bomb chucker, and, at a signal from the pilot, he would chuck it out of the plane. I’m serious about that.” He also talked about his photo missions. “There was no escort. You’d just fly about eight or ten thousand feet and then turn on the camera. Then fly back and do it again. It was about the scariest thing I’ve ever done. You’re flying over Jordan or Egypt all by yourself.” The S-199 planes that they were flying were primitive examples of flying machines and didn’t even have a working gas gauge.

            On one mission in September he saw an Egyptian Spitfire and began to chase it and preformed a maneuver that was supposed to have the enemy lined up in his gun-sights. However, since he had very little training as a fighter pilot the enemy got away from Frankel. He returned to base to refuel and noticed that the plane was leaking oil. A mechanic cleared him for takeoff but soon he lost all oil pressure and had to return to base again. The plane began to fill with smoke as he tried in vain to reach the nearest air base. He crash landed in a wadi but wasn’t sure if he was in Israel or Jordan. Suffering from minor injuries and armed only with a pistol he began walking and soon spotted soldiers. They were Israeli and told him that he had just walked through a minefield and were surprised that he was still in one piece. They took him in their truck to an airbase in time to see another S-199 burning. That pilot did not make it out and after the funeral the next day Frankel became limp. He had seen enough war and after 25 missions was sent to the hospital and then back to the states.

            Frankel went back to St. Paul and continued with his car business and stayed in the naval reserve. While in Israel he befriended fellow pilot and future president, Ezer Weizman, and maintained a close relationship with his throughout his life. He looked back on his time with the Israeli Air Force with fond memories. “One day during the war I was in Tel Aviv, and planes were coming in from Europe, transport planes. I went over and the planes were full of refugees from the death camps. And you know what they did; they got down on their knees and kissed the ground. But at that moment, I knew why I had come to Israel. The Talmud teaches that if you save one life, it’s the same as if you had saved the entire world. That has always stood with me.”

Jews and the Rough Riders

           The Spanish American War was the shortest war the U.S. had partaken in as it lasted just the three months between April and August 1898. There were two theaters of war. One of them was in the Pacific where the U.S. fought the Spanish to gain land mainly for imperialistic reasons. The other took place in the Caribbean where the U.S. wanted to help Cuba declare independence from Spain and in doing so the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico.

The founder of the most famous unit in the war was a future president who was a big supporter of Jewish causes. During Teddy Roosevelt’s tenure as leader of the Rough Riders there were many Jews under his command. When a rabbi from Philadelphia who was serving in Cuba approached him and asked him for permission to conduct services, Teddy came along with his soldiers. When he ran for president in 1904 (William McKinley had died in 1901 and as vice president Teddy took over so this technically was his reelection bid) posters sprang up all over the Lower East Side encouraging to vote for him- a person who championed for Jewish rights and freedoms.

            The U.S. was not happy with Spanish dominance in the Caribbean because their economic status was being hurt by the ongoing conflict between Spain and Cuban nationals. The U.S. demanded that Spain leave Cuba and was further infuriated when the battleship USS Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor killing over 250 Americans including five Jewish sailors. Naturally, the U.S. blamed Spain and declared war on them in April 1898.

President McKinley asked for troops and hundreds of volunteers signed up to join the army. Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, who was assistant secretary of the navy at the time, asked the Department of War for permission to raise a Calvary unit. Teddy had no battle experience and therefore asked Colonel Leonard Wood, an army doctor who had won the Medal of Honor during the American-Indian War in the 1880s, to lead the regiment. It was called the 1^st Volunteer Calvary and soon was given the nickname the Rough Riders.

Since they were needed for war shortly after the creation of the unit, Roosevelt wanted men who were “in shape” and could easily prepare for battle. The regiment had about 1,250 men coming from two very different backgrounds. Many were from the west and were cowboys, Indians, cattle ranchers and other rough and tumble types. The rest were athletes from Eastern schools, mainly Ivy League colleges. Both types of men blended together nicely as a fighting unit as they were physically capable of handling the stress of the training.

On June 14, the men shipped out from Tampa and arrived on Cuban soil eight days later- minus a third of the regiment and practically all of their horses. This put the men at a major disadvantage because they weren’t used to marching and fighting as foot soldiers. Two days later on June 24, the Rough Riders saw their first action during the battle of Las Guasimas- a Spanish outpost. Weary from the trek to the outpost many men fell out of position and more couldn’t make it up the steep hill. They went into the hour and half battle with less than 500 men but were able to root out the enemy from entrenched positions. The Americans lost only 8 dead and 31 wounded. The first Rough Rider to die in battle was Trooper Jacob Wilbusky- a Jewish cowboy from Texas.

Before the Battle of San Juan Heights, Roosevelt was promoted to full colonel and made commander of the Rough Riders. The battle took place on July 1 on San Juan Hill and Kettle Hill but at the beginning they were only to be a diversion for the main assault. Roosevelt noticed that his men were exposed and taking advantage of loose orders and that he was the highest ranking officer in the vicinity, charged up the hill with his men following. The unit had three Gatling guns (an early version of the machine gun) in support that took care of 600 advancing Spanish soldiers. The heights had been taken but the Americans suffered many losses including fifteen Jewish Rough Riders who had been wounded or killed.

Once the heights had been taken the Spanish were forced to fall back on the city of Santiago and after a few minor battles, they surrendered to the Americans on August 12. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to get his Rough Riders out of the disease ridden country and back to the states and within a week they were sent to Long Island. Twenty men had died of from illness, most were from malaria, and many more were sick in the hospital recovering from it and other tropical diseases. The unit wasn’t needed anymore and the First Volunteer Calvary was disbanded after less than five months of service. They played a huge part of the United States gaining international prestige as they defeated a world power. 

Mickey Marcus- Israel's first commander

            Future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had a difficult situation on his hands in 1947. The British were about to leave the Middle East (except in Trans-Jordan where they organized the Arabs to fight the Jews) and since the United Nations were soon to give Israel statehood, he needed an army. The Hagana, under Israel Galali, was an underground unit of about 30,000 soldiers and the Palmach, a highly trained and Israel’s only full time unit under the command of Yigal Allon, had about 2,500 commandos. Ben-Gurion needed an experienced officer to lead the soldiers in the upcoming War of Independence and so he sent Shlomo Shamir to New York to search for that man. He consulted with a highly recommended Jewish colonel, Mickey Marcus, and before long they both realized that Marcus was the man.

            Davis Daniel “Mickey” Marcus was born on Hester Street in the Lower East Side to Jewish parents who were immigrants from Romania. He entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY in 1920 and graduated four years later. He studied law at night and in 1927 he became a law clerk in New York and resigned from the infantry to work as an assistant US attorney. He worked closely with Thomas Dewey (who would lose the 1948 presidential election to Harry Truman) and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed him as commissioner of corrections.

            Even though he was in the state government he still kept a reserve commission in the army. In 1939, his New York National Guard unit, the 27^th Infantry Division, was sent to prepare for World War II and now Lieutenant Colonel Marcus was the unit’s judge advocate. The division was then sent to Hawaii to await deployment to the Pacific after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. While there, Marcus was tasked with organizing and commanding a Ranger school (another branch in the US Special Forces) but because of his legal position in the army was turned down to lead them in combat. In 1943, he was sent to serve a tour in the Pentagon under Major General Hilldring of the Civil Affairs Department (CAD). He drafted many legal documents, even the terms of the Italian surrender. He also was the CAD legal advisor and was the military government advisor at the most important conferences of the war (the talks between the US, Britain, Russia and other allies on how to fight the war and what should be done after the war ended).

            With his magic tongue, Marcus convinced Hilldring to send him on temporary duty as a liaison to provide legal council for the military government of France. Hilldring became suspicious in June 1944, because he hadn’t heard from Marcus in a couple of weeks, and after a few inquiries he was told that he ‘was somewhere in France’(he wasn’t permitted to go the front lines because of the fear that he may give away secrets if he was captured). He had jumped with the 101^st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, in the predawn hours of June 6, D-Day, and was one of only two men to jump that night without ever having jumped before. When the commanding general of the 101^st asked him what he was doing there, Marcus replied, “Oh, just looking around”. He had distinguished himself in firefights with Germans and had rescued American paratroopers that had been captured. Hilldring ordered him back to the States and thus ended his only front line duty of the war.

            After the war, Marcus was sent to join the occupation force in Germany and was assigned to the general staff. His boss, General Lucius Clay, wanted his staff to see the German atrocities and ordered his men to travel to the Dachau Concentration Camp. Marcus always knew that he was Jewish but this trip opened up a new chapter for him and he became a Zionist. In 1946, he was posted back to Washington where he became head of the Pentagon’s War Crimes Division. It was his job to select the judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the upcoming trials of Nazi and Japanese war criminals. One of these trials was the Nuremberg trials, which he attended. He wanted everything documented so that future generations would be able to see the atrocities and destruction that these animals had done.

            In December 1947, he was approached by Major Shamir and the only obstacle that he needed to overcome was the opposition from his wife. He convinced by telling her that he was like the foreign generals helping the Americans during the American Revolution. He traveled to Israel under the name of Michael Stone.

            On his arrival, Marcus met with Ben-Gurion and visited the existing Hagana bases while suggesting improvements for each one. He discovered that the problem with the Hagana was that it was an effective underground force but it couldn’t translate those skills into a conventional army. Marcus tried his best to change that and employed his knowledge and skills leant while teaching the Rangers in Hawaii to the fledgling Israeli Army.

            Two hours after the announcement of the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, the Arabs attacked and with Marcus leading them the Israelis were ready. The soldiers attacked at night, when the Arabs were least expecting them but through all of this fighting the Arabs still held the road between Tel Aviv and Yerushalyim. In between the two cities was Latrun- a fortified police station that the Israelis had failed once to capture. Following Marcus’s suggestion that all the Israeli forces be untied under one command, Ben-Gurion appointed Marcus as the country’s first aluf (general). Five days later, Marcus was prepared and ready for another attack on Latrun. However, this attack failed and Marcus needed to find another way to get to Yerushalyim.

            During the China-India-Burma theater of operations in World War II, the Americans had built a road to get supplies to the Chinese who were in desperate need of provisions while fighting the Japanese Army. It was an enormous engineering feat but it was done and it helped push back the Japanese. It was called the Burma Road and Marcus wanted to use the same idea to get to Yerushalyim. The idea, it was also called the Burma Road, worked and the siege around the city was broken hours before a cease-fire was called on June 11.

            However, Mickey Marcus did not survive to see the cease-fire. He had left his quarters in the middle of the night to get a bit of fresh air and was returning at 4 AM when the sentry called out for the password. However, since Marcus, who was wearing a uniform without showing his rank, didn’t know much Hebrew, he responded in English. The sentry, a 19-year-old recruit who didn’t speak any English, shot and killed Marcus. He was last Israeli casualty before the cease-fire.

            Marcus’s body was flown back to New York, where he was buried in the West Point Cemetery. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said of him,” He was the best man we had”. It was a fitting remark for a man whose gravestone reads “Colonel David Marcus-A Soldier for All Humanity”.

The officer behind one of the greatest deceptions in history

         The story during World War II of a corpse fooling Hitler and the German High Command into thinking that an Allied landing was to take place on one beach when in actuality the landings were hundreds of miles away, is one of the most fascinating tales of the war. It’s also one of the most mistold stories of an undercover operation in history. What’s even more unbelievable was that it was the brainchild of a semi-religious Jew from the office of the British Admiralty. This is the true story of Ewen Montagu and Operation Mincemeat.

            Ewen Montagu was born in 1901 to a prominent Jewish family and was a machine gun instructor during World War I. He was educated at prestigious universities such as Cambridge and Harvard and was called to the bar in 1924. During World War II when London was bombarded with bombs coming from German planes, he had the rank of lieutenant commander in the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty.

One of the tasks given to the division was to think long term on how to protect Allied invasions. The idea to place corpses carrying falsified information wasn’t new. In August 1942, during the North African Campaign a corpse was found by the German 90^th Division showing British minefields. The mines weren’t there but the Germans went around the area and got bogged down in soft sand. In September that year, an American courier’s body washed up on the Spanish coast. He was carrying a letter that contained the names of spies as well as the dates for the American landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) but the Germans thought it was a plant and ignored it, even though this time it was real. When Montagu’s office was given the task of protecting the secret information they came up with a brilliant plan that was almost foolproof. They would also use a corpse but prepare it in a way that that it would reach the German High Command and Hitler himself.

Montagu worked closely with Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley who was the one who came up with the idea of dropping a corpse out of an airplane. There were problems with that plan so Montagu thought of the idea to launch the body out of a submarine. The corpse would have an attaché case containing highly sensitive documents outlining future operations. It would be launched off the coast of Spain near a town where the British Intelligence knew of a certain Abwehr (the German intelligence service) agent was operating.

Montagu put himself in the minds of the German counterintelligence agents and thought about what they would consider genuine and what was a plant. Therefore, in preparing the body and documents, Montagu paid attention to every detail. The body itself couldn’t be just any corpse. They searched and finally found a 34 year old man who had died of pneumonia (documents released recently reveal that he may have died of rat poison). A renowned pathologist was consulted and he said that it would appear to the Germans like the body had drowned or died of hypothermia and had washed up on the shore. The corpse was obtained from a coroner with the instructions from the family that his real name never be revealed. We now know that his name was Glyndwr Michael but he would have to be given a new identity. The division decided to make a Royal Marines so that way there would be reason for him to carry sensitive documents. However, the Royal Marines were a tight knit group and since most officers knew of one another, Montagu picked a surname that was common among the service. Thus the legacy of Major William Martin was born.

Now the team needed to outfit Major Martin. First they needed him to look like a young marine officer but important enough to be carrying vital information. He was dressed in battle uniform and not dress clothes like members of other service branches would be on this type of mission. Some of the personal effects included a snapshot of “his girlfriend” Pam (who in actuality was a clerk in the office), two love letters and ticket stubs to a London theater.

All of this stuff was easy to obtain, but his ID card was another story. Normally, navy or army personnel wouldn’t carry ID but Royal Marines did. Montagu decided to take a risk and give him a replacement card. This would show him as a bit careless and could make the Germans wonder why such a man would be given a sensitive document. However, if the Germans bought into it, then it would put a touch of reality to the situation and it would make him more believable. Then when putting together the ID card they realized they didn’t have a picture. They didn’t want to use a real picture of Michael because it would be shameful to his family. Instead, Montagu had a stroke of luck when he found someone who could have been the dead man’s twin. After putting the ID together, Montagu wanted to make it look used, so he rubbed it against his pants until it looked used.

The entire operation was put into motion to try to deceive the German into thinking that the Allied invasion was going to be at Corsica and Sardinia with another attack on Greece. The actual invasion site was the island of Sicily and the entire British team knew that just by looking on a map that it would be obvious to the Germans that it would be the site of the next invasion. Therefore, Montagu felt there was no harm to write in the deception letters that Sicily wasn’t the target. Some cautious officers in the British General Staff felt that it would tip the Allied hand even more and so the matter was brought before Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He was told that if the operation went wrong then the Germans could pinpoint Sicily to which he replied, “I don’t see that that matters. Anybody but a damn’ fool would know it is Sicily.” There was also the risk that a Spaniard would find the body and return it directly to the British instead of the Germans. Churchill was not worried about that either, “I don’t see that that matters either. We can always try again!” With the prime minister’s approval, as well as the go-ahead from American General Dwight Eisenhower who would be in charge of the invasion, the mission was put into action.

Montagu and his team prepared Major Martin for his journey and delivered the canister containing the major to the submarine HMS Seraph. The entire operation was so secret that most of the men onboard the sub were told that it was a meteorological device. The Seraph, commanded by Lieutenant Bill Jewell, left Scotland on April 19, 1943 and arrived off the coast of Huelva, Spain on April 30. With the enlisted men below deck, the officers, who knew about Major Martin, went about preparing him for launch. They fitted him with his clothing, inflated his Mae West (life preserver) and said a prayer. Gently they pushed him into the sea about a mile off the coast. The canister was sunk by machine gun fire and Jewell signaled “Mincemeat Completed”. The British had done their part and now it was in the hands of the Germans to see if the ploy had worked.

The deception plan went down like clockwork. José Antonio Rey Maria, a Spanish fisherman, found the body and soon it was reported to the local German Abwehr agent, Adolf Clauss. On May 3, the British Naval Attaché in Madrid signaled Montagu’s office that they had been informed by the Vice-Consul in Huelva that a body of a Major Martin had been found by a fisherman. The body was returned to the Vice-Consul for proper burial. Major Martin received a full military funeral in Huelva.

However, in the signal there was no mention of the briefcase which carried the deception papers. After a few inquiries that were made to sound genuine, Montagu found out that that the briefcase had been handed over to the Spanish Military and was now on its way to England intact. When it arrived and was examined it was determined that the two most important letters had been opened but were carefully replaced and resealed. After the war, it was learned that the letters had been copied and translated and made their way to the German High Command.

The question still remained; did the letters of deception do their job in fooling the Germans of the actual invasion site or did all of the effort go to waste? During the war, Montagu only found out a few facts. Operation Husky, the codename for the Sicily landings, had taken place on July 9, 1943 and it quickly discovered that the Germans had been expecting a landing on the northern coast and not on the southern beaches where they actually took place. Even if the Allies were to have landed on Sardinia and Greece they still would have needed to invade Sicily, but would have done so from the northern coasts. This clearly took the Germans by surprise, but the full effect of Mincemeat was not learned until after the war by examining captured German documents. Hitler had swallowed Mincemeat whole. He sent one of his best general, Erwin Rommel to spruce up the defenses in Greece (it’s a hot debate topic as to who was Hitler’s best and favorite general. Rommel clearly wasn’t the favorite as Hitler made him commit suicide). He also sent a squadron of R-boats, fast motor torpedo launches capable of hampering an invasion, and minelayers to the Greek coast. Panzer divisions were moved to Greece, away from the Russian front, which Stalin never fully appreciated, and far away from any fighting at the crucial moment.

Hitler and the German intelligence units were surprised when the landings took place on the southern coast of Sicily. They were so taken aback that they were so wary of another plant by the Allies that when the Allies did slip up and valuable documents reached the Germans, they weren’t believed. Mincemeat was more successful than anyone would have imagined when it was first suggested.

After the war, Ewen Montagu was the Judge Advocate of the Fleet for almost 30 years. He was also the president of the United Synagogue for several years. He wrote down this story in a book entitled “The Man Who Never Was” which was later made into a movie. An interesting side note to this story is Ewen’s brother, Ivor, who was a filmmaker and after the war was accused of spying for the Russians. 

Australian version of George Washington

            Usually a commander on the battlefield has been with troops through training, getting ready for battle and the actual fight itself. Sometimes a change is needed while the soldiers are in the trenches. The most famous cases of this is General Ulysses S. Grant taking control of the Union Army during the Civil War after five previous generals had failed to take the chances to win the war, and Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery taking control of the British 8th Army in North Africa to defeat Rommel’s Afrika Korps in WW2. In both cases, moral was sagging and the person who took over was well experienced and beloved (Montgomery was loved by the British and loathed by the Americans) and therefore were able to get the best out of their armies and win the battle. A third example of this is Australian General John Monash during the First World War.

            John Monash didn’t come from your typical military family. His parents were Jewish immigrants coming from Poland. They spoke German (probably Yiddish) and that gave rise to critics of Monash that he was a German spy. The irony was that his parent’s old home in Poland was near where German General Erich Ludendorff was born. As fate would have it, Monash and Ludendorff would soon be commanding armies on opposite sides during the Battle of Amiens.

            Monash was born in 1865 in Melbourne and he attended the University of Melbourne with graduate degrees in civil engineering, law and in 1921 a doctorate in Engineering. While in college, he joined the militia and slowly rose in rank and he became a full colonel in 1913 commanding the 13th Infantry Brigade. The military was only a side job that he took on. He was mainly a civil engineer and was a partner in a contracting business that was dissolved in 1905. For a few years, he deeply in debt but soon formed his own company and by 1912 he was a very rich and networked executive.

            World War I broke out in 1914 and because England was involved, Australia, a British colony, joined the war. Monash, who joined the army as a regular officer, was given command of the 4th Infantry Brigade, which was stationed in Egypt fighting the Ottoman Imperial Army. During the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 his brigade, fighting with New Zealanders, entrenched themselves in a valley that became known as Monash Valley. Even though they were decisively defeated, Monash made a name for himself as a great strategist, decision maker, organizational leader and a beloved commander.

            Later that year he was promoted to brigadier general. Even though the army had to evacuate the area, under Monash they were able to do so with only minor loss to men and the vital equipment that was need to mount another offensive quickly. They also retreated without alerting the enemy, so when a few hours later the Turks opened up a furious bombardment they attacked empty trenches.

            He was soon recalled to England to take command of the newly formed 3rd Australian Division. He trained it from the start and led them through many battles in France. Even though the division suffered heavy casualties his enthusiasm did not go unnoticed by the high command and he was promoted to lieutenant general (three stars). He was given command of the Australian Corps heading in to the pivotal and final year of the war.

            Under Monash, the Australians recaptured the town of Villers-Bretonneux in a battle that he called the turning the point of the war. The Battle of Hamel took place on July 4, 1918, with the Australian Corps coming under the overall command of the British 4th Army under General Sir Henry Rawlinson. The army won the battle and because of the brilliance displayed by Monash he was praised by Rawlinson and sometimes was given command of servicemen from other countries. During the subsequent battles he led divisions coming from Canada, England, the U.S. as well as Australians.

            On August 8, 1918 the Battle of Amiens took place. It was one of the first major battles in history to see tanks used on a large scale. The Allied advance was led by the Australians under Monash and his brilliant strategy for attack. The key to the attack was armor and surprise and that is what led the Allies to victory and the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive that led to the end of the war. The German General Erich Ludendorff called it “the black day of the German Army.”

            Four days later, King George V knighted Monash on the battlefield, the first time a commander had been bestowed such an honor in over two centuries. He commanded over 200,000 troops past the Hindenburg Line and into Germany and on October 5 the Germans asked for an armistice.

            Monash returned to Australia a national hero. He took on several prominent civilian positions including the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand. He died in 1931 and there were about 250,000 people who attended his funeral. He was honored by having a suburb in Australia named Monash and being depicted on the $100 bill. Kfar Monash in Israel is also named after the great hero who is often called the Australian George Washington.

The admiral who risked his career to ban flogging

            Sometimes military heroes are people who may have or have not served on the front line but servicemen and woman who left a legacy for generations to come. Prior to the Mexican American War (1846-1848) flogging was an acceptable form of punishment in the American Navy. Uriah Levy was the man who changed that policy and was kicked out of the navy (later he was reinstated) for standing up for the right thing.

            Uriah Phillips Levy was born on April 22, 1792 into a religious Jewish family in Philadelphia. His grandfather, Jonas Phillips came to the U.S. from Germany, fought for the patriots in the Revolutionary War and Uriah’s nephew became a congressman from New York. His family was thoroughly dedicated into giving back to the country that gave so much for them in particular religious freedom. His great-great grandfather was one of the few Jews to escape the Spanish Inquisition to make his way to America via England.

            As well as being loyal patriots, the Levy family was drawn to the sea and Uriah continued the tradition. He ran away when he was 10 to sail as a cabin boy but returned to Philadelphia to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah with his family. In 1806, Uriah gained valuable skills as an apprentice on a family friend’s ship and a few years later graduated from navigation school.

            Levy was 20 when the War of 1812 against Great Britain broke out, and he volunteered for military service. The captain of his ship quickly recognized his skills and he was appointed as a sailing master on the USS Argus. After dropping off an American minister in France, the Argus sailed to the English Channel and captured at least 21 ships. Levy was placed in charge of one of these captures, the Betty, but on August 12, 1813, the Betty was captured. Two days the Argus was captured by the British ship, the Pelican, and the entire crew, including Uriah, was interred in England for the rest of the war.

            After returning to the U.S. he was assigned to the USS Franklin as a second master. Anti-Semitism shown by other sailors was a problem for Levy and when a drunken officer provoked him, Levy retaliated. The officer challenged him to a duel. In those days, a man could not back away from a duel (where the two combatants shoot at each from a predetermined distance) without shaming his name for a very long time, so Levy accepted and killed the officer. He was indicted but was found not guilty as dueling was an acceptable way of settling arguments.

            Despite this black mark on his record, Levy was commissioned as a lieutenant. Aboard the USS United States, Levy got into another fight (not a duel this time around) and after a court martial was dismissed from the navy. The only person that could make this ruling official was the president and two years later following the advice of the secretary of the navy, President James Monroe reversed the court’s ruling. He was subsequently given his first command a gunboat appropriately named the USS Revenge.

            In 1925, Levy was the second lieutenant aboard the USS Cyane. He was instrumental in aiding an American forced into the Brazilian Navy and whose life was in danger. The Brazilian Emperor, Dom Pedro, was so impressed with Levy that he offered him the rank of captain (the highest ranks in the navy at the time) in his navy. He refused the offer and rode a wave of popularity back home in the States.

            Since he was offered a shore job and not another command, Levy decided to become a private citizen and when into real estate in New York (Jewish real estate agents have a long history in the U.S.) and became very wealthy. He was still in navy and in 1938 he was given another command. He developed his own system of discipline, substituting mild reforms for corporal punishment. Because of his refusal to inflict corporal punishment on a young seaman, he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service; however President Tyler overturned the decision. In 1850, a member of congress took up the case for anti-flogging and in 1862 it was passed as a law.

            Right after the last of the six court-martials against was overturned and he was reinstated, Levy took command of the warship, Macedonian, and became commander of the entire Mediterranean Fleet. In 1960, congress created the rank of Commodore and appointed Levy to the highest rank in the country.

            Levy was an admirer of Thomas Jefferson because he was a major advocate among the Founding Fathers for the freedom of religion. When Levy heard that Monticello, Jefferson’s plantation in Virginia, had come upon hard times and was up for sale, he bought it. Even though his navy duties required that he be in New York for much of the time, Levy used Monticello as a vacation home and his family moved there permanently. He fixed up the rundown property and showed it off to visitors and when he died in 1862, the U.S. government didn’t want it because it was in the south and had no way to look after it. It was confiscated by the Confederacy but after the war, it was returned to Levy’s heirs. His nephew, Congressman Jefferson Levy, bought it out from the other heirs and spent a lot of his own money for the restoration and preservation efforts. He sold in 1923 to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation who made into a museum. The foundation had anti-Semitic members on its board and until the 1980s gave very little credit to the two Levy men that had done so much for the property. Finally, in 1985 the two were honored in a ceremony and there are memorials and information on-site about Uriah and Jefferson Levy.

            Uriah married his niece in 1853 after both of her parents died. She was 18 while he was 61. He died in 1862, and buried in a Jewish cemetery in New York, with both military honors and Jewish traditions. His legacy lives on, as the USS Levy, a WWII destroyer escort, was named after him as well as the Jewish chapel in the Norfolk Naval Base. Uriah P. Levy is best remembered for his role in banning corporal punishment in the navy and his dedication for the men that served under him making him a hero behind the lines.

A Jewish outlaw

Over 100 years ago, west of the Mississippi River there were huge areas of land filled with cattle, buffalo, Indians, cowboys, lawmen, outlaws and of course the famous gunslingers. The area and time was known as the Wild West and the stories of the gunfights, bank robberies, train holdups and other lawless activities that took place are still legendary in today’s society. Among the celebrated names that came from that era were Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp and the most famous Jewish gunslinger Jim Levy.

            The era of the Wild West started before the Civil War (1861-1865) and the image of a swashbuckling cowboy on a fast horse brandishing his six shooters can be traced to the territorial wars with the plains Indians in the 1820s. After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 from France, America doubled in size and the government wanted citizens to settle on the lands. Obviously, the Indians and the Mexicans living in Texas were livid and fought a prolonged war with the settlers (and American soldiers that would from time to time to help) that would last until the end of 19^th century.

            At the beginning, the setters suffered terribly because the Indians would attack on fast ponies and were able to shoot about twenty arrows a minute. The settlers had mainly slow horses and muskets that would only shoot at most three bullets a minute. Even when the US Army stepped in, they could only do a little better with there faster horses (this unit was called the Dragoons and were a precursor to the cavalry).

            The settlers also created a horseback unit called the Texas Rangers and they were only able to do so much with the outdated firearms available at the time. The call went out for manufactures on the east coast to create a weapon that could shoot several bullets a minute. The manufactures, Smith and Wesson, Remington, Winchester and Colt, answered the call and produced the six-shooter. The first six-shooters even had removable chambers that after fire a quick six shots the shooter would pop out that magazine and simply put in the next one. The results were felt immediately because in the first battle with this gun the cavalry of 14 men decimated a band of 70 Indians. Sam Colt patented the first repeating firearm in the US- the Colt 45. A gun that would be the most sought after was the Colt 45 and it was the best-known revolver in history. It was a gun that everybody in the Wild West had to have.

             The gunslingers were known as the toughest men around and that’s exactly the reputation that Jim Levy gained in 1871. He was born in Ireland, came to the US, and worked in the coalmines. He was also a gambler and a merchant but his real calling was the six-shooter. On May 30, 1871, he witnessed the shooting of Tom Gasson in Pioche, Nevada. Supposedly, on his deathbed Gasson bequeathed $5,000 to the person who would hunt down his murderer. Michael Casey, the murderer, knew that Levy was hunting him down and challenged him to a duel.

            Duels were extremely rare in the Wild West (they were made famous in the movies but there are only a handful of documented cases), but the gentleman’s law stated that you can’t shoot an unarmed man, so Levy was allowed to retrieve his gun. The details of the gunfight are a little too gory for this article, but at the end, Casey was dead and Levy had a permanent scar on his face. Levy was acquitted for the murder because he claimed it was in self-defense and got the $5,000.

            After this gunfight, Levy had at least 16 other confrontations in the Wild West. The most famous was with a prolific outlaw Charlie Henderson in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Levy was unknown in this area and everyone thought that Harrison would win with no problem. Harrison said some racial remarks about Levy being Jewish and Irish and the fight quickly escalated. Harrison shot very quickly but missed and Levy, who was always cool under fire, shot and killed Harrison. Both Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp believe this battle was a keen example of how “calm deliberation” will always have an edge over speed in situations such as these. Levy was ambushed at a saloon and was killed in 1882.

The photographer that documented wars around the world

            Since the American Civil War in the 1860s there have been photographers on the frontlines of every war that the United States has partaken in. Along with journalists, these men and women literally live and die with the soldiers as they do battle with the enemy. They understand what the soldiers are going through so they are able to capture the moment through writing, videos and pictures. World War II was a prime example of the work they do as was evident in the famous photo taken by Joe Rosenthal (who was Jewish) depicting six marines raising the American flag on the pacific island of Iwo Jima. Another photographer who captured the most famous invasion in history was Robert Capa.

            He was born Endre Erno Friedmann in Budapest in 1913 and at the age of 18 moved to Berlin where he learned professional photography. After the rise of the Nazi party he moved to Paris in 1933. He found that if he changed his name, it would be easier for him to get a job and sell his photos so he adopted the American sounding name of Robert Capa.

In Copenhagen, Denmark in 1932, Capa was assigned to photograph Leon Trotsky giving a speech on the Russian Revolution.  These amazing photos made him famous and he was sent to photograph other historical events. The first war that he photo-documented was the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). On September 5, 1936, he took the photo entitled “The Falling Soldier” depicting a loyalist militiaman after being shot at Cerro Muriano. The picture was later determined to have been staged but it gave Capa the worldwide exposure (no pun intended) that made him famous. During the rise of the Nazi regime in Europe, Capa fled and during his travels many photographs that he took during this war were lost. However, several were found during the 1990s and Capa was given credit when they were displayed in a museum in Manhattan.

Before the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, there were several battles that took place and were finally settled during the war. One of these was the war between Japan and China, with Japan mauling the Chinese interior and killing millions of innocent civilians. There was one victory for the Chinese and that was at Taierchwang in 1938. Capa was there on a break from the Spanish Civil War and he took some memorable pictures of the battle. After that he returned to Spain before he had to flee Europe entirely to avoid capture by the Nazis.

Technically an illegal alien in New York City when World War II broke out, he was given a job with Collier Magazine as a photographer. He landed with the troops in North Africa before being fired by Collier’s. Recognizing that an amazing photographer was available, Life Magazine hired him and in 1943 he jumped with paratroopers from the 82^nd Airborne Division into Sicily as a part of Operation Husky. The pictures that he took in Sicily depicted the typical reactions of the local populace: the elation after Allied troops had liberated their country and the suffering they had endured while under German rule.

As the Allies advanced into Italy and into “the soft underbelly of the Axis” as British Prime Minister put it, so did Capa. He took pictures of the cities and was in Naples to take pictures of a post office being bombed. In 1944, he returned to England to prepare for the greatest seaborne invasion of the war (and according to many historians, the largest in history).

Robert Capa was always known for his daring and fearlessness in battle even though he was powerless to fight back and was only armed with a 35mm camera. One time he was with beloved writer Ernie Pyle, who was killed later in the war by a sniper on Japanese held island, and was invited to come along to see and photograph an assault on German positions. Pyle writes in his book Brave Men about the incident, “Capa was notorious for his daring”. That’s exactly what made his pictures so amazing; the fact that he was able to get so close to the action without the fear of being wounded or killed. He proved this when he waded ashore with members of the US infantry on the “Easy Red” part of Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day June 6, 1944. He took 106 pictures of the landings, but due to the eagerness of the photo lab technician back in England most of the pictures were damaged. However, eleven pictures were developed properly and these became known as the :magnificent eleven”. They depicted soldiers coming ashore and accurately told the story of the historic landings to the people back home.

Capa described his feelings coming ashore with the second wave of infantry troops on D-Day. “My beautiful France looked sordid and uninviting, and a German machine gun, spitting bullets around the barge, fully spoiled my return. The men from my barge waded in the water. Waist-deep, with rifles ready to shoot, with the invasion obstacles and the smoking beach in the background gangplank to take my first real picture of the invasion. The boatswain, who was in an understandable hurry to get the hell out of there, mistook my picture-taking attitude for explicable hesitation, and helped me make up my mind with a well-aimed kick in the rear. The water was cold, and the beach still more than a hundred yards away. The bullets tore holes in the water around me, and I made for the nearest steel obstacle. A soldier got there at the same time, and for a few minutes we shared its cover. He took the waterproofing off his rifle and began to shoot without much aiming at the smoke-hidden beach. The sound of his rifle gave him enough courage to move forward, and he left the obstacle to me. It was a foot larger now, and I felt safe enough to take pictures of the other guys hiding just like I was.”

After the war, he went on tour in Soviet Russia with author John Steinbeck and took pictures in Moscow, Kiev and the battle ruins of Stalingrad. In 1947, he cofounded Magnum Photos- an international cooperation that is still around today.

The founding of the State of Israel stirred the Jewish spark in Capa and in 1948 he traveled to Israel to photo document the War of Independence. He took pictures of General Mickey Marcus and the building of the Burma Road to Jerusalem. His work appeared in the United States and the New York Times wrote about him, “Warm and perceptive, Capa's camera has ranged over the faces of land and people, seeking the human qualities as well as historic milestones.” He returned to Israel in 1950 to make a film on recently arrived immigrants.

While in Japan on exhibition put on by Magnum Photos, Life Magazine asked him to go to Southeast Asia to photograph the First Indochina War (before the Americans were involved in Vietnam, the French had been there fighting the communists since the end of World War II). Despite his misgivings about photographing more war and destruction, he agreed. On May 25, 1954 he went ahead of his convoy near Thai Binh, Vietnam to photograph the advance. About five minutes later, two other journalists from Life Magazine heard an explosion and went to investigate. Capa had stepped on a landmine and by the time he reached a field hospital it was too late. He died with a camera in his hand.

In his memory the Overseas Press Club established the Robert Capa Award “for superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad.”

Being a front-line journalist is a very dangerous job and only the bravest and most determined of men decide to on it for a career path. Robert Capa did it not only because photography was his passion but because he wanted to show the world what war was like. He did it magnificently even though he paid the ultimate price. His life’s work still remains today as we all have reminder how brutal war is and how soldiers serve bravely on the battlefield. The photos are frozen in time as it transforms the viewer into the moment that he took the picture. 

The Brains of the Confederacy

Most of the Jews that lived in America during the Civil War (1861-1865) lived in the north and supported the Union cause wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, there were some living in the south, and even some owned slaves on plantations. One of these was Judah Benjamin.

Judah P. Benjamin was born in 1811 on the British colony of Saint Croix, in the Danish West Indies, now the U.S. Virgin Islands. His parents, Phillip Benjamin and Rebecca de Mendes, were of Sephardic descent that could trace their lineage back to the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. The Benjamin family soon moved to America and settled in New Orleans after a stint in Charleston, South Carolina. When he was fourteen years old he went to Yale Law School, but for reasons unknown to historians he left before he graduated. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar and became a commercial lawyer, and helped that area grow economically. He soon became a political advocate for banking, finance, and railroad interests, things that soon would propel him into the political circle. Soon he established a sugar cane plantation with 150 slaves in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. After a sour marriage, where his wife took his only child to Paris, he sold all of his slaves in 1850, never to own one again.

 In 1842, Benjamin was elected to the Louisiana legislator, and in 1852 became the first acknowledged Jew to be elected to the U.S. Senate. First elected as a member of the Whig party, in 1858 he was reelected as a Democrat. He was asked by President Millard Fillmore if he would like to serve on the Supreme Court. Benjamin declined to be nominated, even though he would probably be confirmed.

Soon after he became a senator, another congressman challenged him to a duel over a suspected insult. That senator, future Confederate President Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, apologized and soon they became close friends. There were some people who did not like the fact that there was a Jew supporting the confederate cause. Senator Ben Wade of Ohio likened him to an “Israelite with Egyptian principles.” Judah responded, "It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thunderings and lightnings of Mount Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forest of Great Britain." Most of the time, however, he just remained silent and smiled when anyone said an anti-Semitic comment.

After the South seceded and formed their new government in 1861, President Davis named Benjamin as his attorney general. Davis chose him because he “had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits, and capacity for labor”. In this capacity was when he first earned the nickname “the Brains of the Confederacy”.

Later that year Benjamin was appointed the Secretary of War. His appointment was scorned by Generals P.T. Beauregard and Stonewall Jackson, because it was his decision to give up Roanoke Island without a fight. In truth, the island had been defended with about 100 casualties, and reinforcements could not be sent because they were needed elsewhere. Nevertheless, the generals needed some to pin the blame on, and that person was Benjamin. He was cited in the confederate congress for messing up and resigned without protest. Jeff Davis did not want to publicly admit that the south had so few troops, but since he really liked Benjamin, he appointed him as Secretary of State.

In his new post, Benjamin tried hard to get the British to fight on the side of the Confederacy. The public opinion in England was opposed to slavery, so Benjamin made the announcement, “Let us say to every Negro who wishes to go into the ranks, 'Go and fight - you are free”. This would have also alleviated the shortage of troops. The great general of the south, Robert E. Lee, was a huge supporter of this plan, but it did not take effect until March 1865. By then the war was lost, and these troops would not have made any difference. Even with this declaration, the British were not persuaded to aid the South.

Five days after the Civil War had ended, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Soon the Northerners were calling it a confederate conspiracy to reignite the war, and Judah Benjamin was one of the leaders. There was sustainable evidence that Booth had met with confederate leaders, and was receiving funds from them. To escape these rumors he fled to Florida. He realized that he would have to leave America so he decided to go to England via the Bahamas. On the trip to the island of Nassau, his ship exploded and he and the three Negro crewmen had to be rescued by an English warship. If that was not enough on the trip from the Bahamas, his ship caught fire but was able to make port in England. Once there he was admitted to the bar to begin his career as a lawyer anew. He died on May 6, 1884 in Paris and was buried there under the name of Philippe Benjamin. 

The Iraqi pilot who stole a MiG-21 for the Mossad

            During the height of the Cold War, two countries, the U.S. and Russia, were the world’s superpowers. Countries around the world aligned themselves with either one of them and received financial and military aid from the mother country. One of the biggest exports was fighter aircraft and in the 1960s the Russian built MiG-21 was delivered to many communist friendly countries.

            The one catch was that the Russians would have their own advisers and security details on each aircraft delivered. Most countries despised this and the west (U.S., Britain and France etc.) devised schemes to steal the blueprints or even a jet itself. Many attempts ended in failure and in some cases, the spies were executed. The Israeli Mossad, who had been part of the undercover plans from the beginning, decided to try a novel idea. Convince a pilot to defect to Israel. An Iraqi pilot had been identified as a possible target. His name was Captain Munir Redfa.

            The story begins with an Iraqi Jew whose name was Joseph (his last name is unknown). Most Jews had left Iraq by the 1960s, but Joseph, who lived with a Maronite Christian family, stayed. One day he began to explore his roots, discovered the Jews and Israel and decided that his ultimate job was to help the Israelis in any way possible. There are many non-Muslim and non- Arabs living in the Middle East and the Israelis have made it a point to reach out to these minorities for intelligence. Maronite Christians for the most part were not given high-ranking jobs in the military, and Redfa, a 32 year old with a young family, was only one of a few Christian pilots in the air force. His family fled from Turkey (they were Assyrians) to Iraq before he was born. He was upset with the pressures and unfair treatment that he was receiving from the Iraqi high brass. He told Joseph that he would like to leave the country and Joseph in turn contacted the Israeli Embassy in Tehran (Iran was an ally until 1979) and told them that he would be able to put them in contact with a pilot in the Iraqi Air Force.

            Most of the supervisors in the Mossad dismissed the thought of pulling off the mission as too dangerous and unrealistic. However, the commander of the Mossad, Meir Amit, realized the potential of Joseph and assigned their top agent Joseph Shamash to the case. Shamash convinced him to fly to Italy to meet Zeev Liron. Liron met him as a fellow pilot and was the first to tell him that the Israelis wanted him to defect. When he heard this, he almost fainted and said, “My MiG? To Israel? Are you guys out of your minds?”

            An American woman, who was their top agent in Bagdad, was also assigned to draw out Redfa and his family and slowly convince him to defect to Israel. His squadron had been tasked with bombing the defenseless Kurds and he told her that he “found himself in violent disagreement with the current war being waged by his government against the minority Kurdish tribesmen in northern Iraq.” According to some reports he told her that he even had a secret admiration for the Israelis who fighting so many with so few. She convinced him to fly to Israel on a trip where he would meet people who could help him his problems.

            In Israel, he finally realized that the Israelis were serious in getting his MiG-21, but he agreed to go through with it because they were offering $1 million, Israeli citizenship and to recue his entire family from Iraq and bring them to Israel. He met with the commander of the Israeli Air Force, Mordecai Hod, who laid out the entire escape plan and all of the possible dangers that could possibly arise, including if the Iraqis discovered the plane missing and sent other fighters to shoot it down. He was also shown where he would land his MiG and other key points for the excursion. They went through the plan until Redfa knew it by heart and before departing, he told Hod that he would bring him the plane.

            There was only one person left to convince. The night before the escape Munir’s immediate family was in a Mossad safe house in France (they were told that they were going on vacation). Betty Redfa, Munir’s wife, had not been told of the plan and when Liron met her, she threatened to expose the plan to the Iraqi authorities. Eventually, Munir was able to calm her down and she was put on a flight to Tel Aviv.

            Redfa picked the date for his escape on August 16, 1966. He told his ground crew to fill up the fuel tanks. Normally he would have needed Russian approval to do so, but the crew was also annoyed with the communists and they happily obeyed their commander’s orders. After taking off he veered off course and the air traffic controllers tried frantically to reach him over the radio. They kept on calling for his plane to turn around. Redfa simply shut off the radio. As he got closer to Israel, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) picked his plane up on radar and sent Mirages to escort him to the Tel Nof air base in the Negev. After landing safely, the Israelis immediately started inspecting the plane.

            Newspapers worldwide carried the sensational story of the MiG pilot who defected to Israel. The Russians were furious, because the defection seriously diminished their credibility and prestige. Now the west would have the key to defeat the Russians in air battles and called upon Israel to return the plane. The Israelis ignored the request.

            The Israeli foreign office started to field many phone calls from western nations wanting to inspect the aircraft. However, so as not to infuriate the Russians even more, the IAF kept the plane for several months before loaning it to the Americans. The plane was sent to the Nevada Desert, where US Air Force pilots learned its secrets so that they could prepare to fight it over the battlefields in Vietnam.

            The Iraqis were even more embarrassed than the Russians because Redfa had been a star pilot- not a mental case they would have liked imagine. After the defection, no Christians were allowed to join the air force until the American invasion in 2003.  

            The secrets to fighting the MiG-21 in an aerial dogfight became essential for the IAF in the coming year. During a dogfight with Syrian MiGs in April 1967, the Israelis shot down six with no loss of their own. Less than a year after the defection, the secrets to fighting the plane were used during the Six Day War and thanks were handed to Redfa and his MiG.

            Joseph, the Iraqi Jew who had arranged the meeting between the Mossad and Redfa, chose to remain in Iraq, and because it took the Russians years to piece the whole story together, never discovered his part of the plan. The rest of the Redfa family was secretly transported from Iraq and moved to Israel. Munir died in 1998, leaving behind a story of how the Mossad stole the latest and best fighter aircraft in the Russian military during the height of the Cold War. 

The man who stole Khrushchev's speech

            On February 25, 1956, Soviet Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev gave a four-hour speech to the 20^th Congress of the Communist Party. Before the speech, he kicked out all reporters and foreign diplomats for security reasons. Western countries were more than curious to find out what he said during that secret speech. They knew that he denounced many of Joseph Stalin’s actions as barbarism. The West knew that if they could get the contents of the speech, they could let the world know the truth about communism. At that point in time, many people, including high-ranking Americans, tried to rationalize communism saying it was humanistic. They needed the speech badly, but the problem was that it remained a top-secret document, so the CIA put out a huge reward for a copy.

            The one security lapse in the Russian plan was that they had delivered copies of the speech to Eastern Bloc countries. Poland’s communist party leader, Edward Ochab, had his copy on the desk of his secretary, Lucia Baranowski, who was waiting to the end of the day to file the speech. Lucia’s boyfriend, Victor Grayevsky, came into to visit her, but she was too busy to leave. As he was about to leave he saw the red-bound speech marked with top-secret on her desk. He asked her if he could borrow it for an hour. She said fine and to be sure to return it at the end of the day.

            Before continuing, it is important to know about Victor Grayevsky’s background. He was born Victor Spielman in Krakow in 1925 and because he was journalist for the communist party he changed his name to Grayevsky so that he wouldn’t arouse suspicion because he was Jewish. His family had moved to Israel in 1949 and in 1955, he went there to visit his sick father. He was planning to move to Israel as soon as his visa was approved. Even though he had no formal spy training, he had Zionist sympathies and would do anything to help his future country.

            On the way back to his apartment, Grayevsky read the document and was shocked to read about all the atrocities that Stalin carried out. On the way back to return it, he stopped at the Israeli embassy to see his friend Yaakov Barmor, who was also a member of the Shin-Bet. Grayevsky later said that Barmor “ went pale, he went red, he went black, because he knew better than I what it was…that everyone throughout the world was looking for this speech.” Barmor asked to borrow it and within an hour and a half had copied the speech and Grayevsky was sent back to Lucia’s office.

            Barmor immediately flew to Vienna, Austria and handed the speech to Amos Manor who was the head of Shin-Bet. Manor than flew to Israel and showed it to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion who told Manor to give it to Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA. Within a few weeks, the speech was “leaked” to the New York Times and the world finally learned of the horrors done by the early communists.

            Grayevsky moved to Jerusalem in early 1957 and had a low paying job in the foreign ministry when the KGB recruited him to spy on Israel. After all, he was a communist living in enemy territory and was employed by the host government, so he seemed the perfect spy. He gave them sensitive information and other secrets and was even awarded a medal for his heroism to the motherland.

            He was so good that the Russians never suspected that they were being duped. In reality, Grayevsky was a double agent (a spy for one country but has allegiances to another) and as soon as the KGB recruited him, he went to the Shin-Bet and they gave him falsified information to pass on to the Russians.

            One of his major successes while working for Shin-Bet was when he passed on a copy of a meeting between Russian generals and Egyptian President Gamal Nasser. Many of his meetings with his KGB handler (the middle agent who would get the information from the spy and pass it on to the higher authorities) took place on the lawn of the Russian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem. There were many spies posing as priests and with Grayevsky’s information, Shin-Bet raided the church and arrested many KGB spies.

            The KGB handlers would sometimes give him money for his and Grayevsky would immediately turn it over to Shin-Bet. He said, “I was very proud and happy that KGB money was funding the Shin-Bet.” As for the medal that he was awarded, they told him that it was waiting for him in Moscow. Needless to say, he never picked it up.

            After 14 years working as a double agent, Grayevsky stopped working for Shin-Bet in 1971 to work full-time in radio broadcasting. Retiring in 2000, he wrote down his memoirs in a book but because he was unheard of (no one had reported that he was the one who had stolen Khrushchev’s speech) it went unpublished. He had assumed that many copies of the speech were sent to the CIA and Shin-Bet and only after he retired was he told of the impact his copy and it was the only one that they had received.  It was only after his death in 2007 at the age of 82 did some newspapers pick up the incredible story of how the Jewish journalist from Poland stole Khrushchev’s speech.