An Israeli scientist died, 30 years spying in favor of the USSR

On Monday, November 30, Markus Klingberg, an Israeli scientist convicted in 97 for spying for the USSR, died at the age of 80 in France.

Abraham Markus Klingberg was born in 1918 in Warsaw to a religious Jewish family. Already in his youth, he became interested in science, but his studies at the Medical Faculty of the University of Warsaw were interrupted by the war. Klingberg fled to the USSR, continued his studies in Minsk, began working as an epidemiologist. In 1941, he joined the Red Army and most of the war was held in medical units. Toward the end of the war, he was sent to Moscow for advanced training. According to one version, already during this period he came into contact with the Soviet special services.

At the end of the war, Klingberg returned to Poland and learned that his entire family and relatives had died in Treblinka. In 1949, Klingberg, after a short stay in Sweden, came to Israel with his wife, Vanda, a microbiology specialist.

In Israel, Marcus and Wanda joined the IDF, and Marcus, who had experience in military service, rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, after which he went to work at the Institute of Biology in Ness Zion, where protection against chemical and biological weapons was developed.

According to the official version, Klingberg was recruited after appealing to the Soviet authorities to provide him with a certificate of higher medical education, however, apparently, in his book he will publish the true history of his recruitment.

During the Cold War, the USSR collaborated with Arab states. The Israeli authorities decided that information about vaccines had fallen into the hands of Arab intelligence services, which deprived the country of the ability to effectively defend itself.

In 2008, Israeli military censorship, at the request of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, allowed for publication new secret information about the capture of Marcus Klingberg, which had been kept in deep secrecy for more than 30 years.

According to the information published then, in the 1972, the KGB of the USSR succeeded in introducing its spy into the Israeli elite, who became a double agent and eventually led to the capture of Marcus Klingberg, an employee of the biological institute in Ness Zion.

Then three people were sent to Israel at once. The first of them is Shabtai Kalmanovich, who led the Shin Bet by the nose for a long time and was arrested only in 1988. Two more agents, later given the code names “Jupiter” and “Shomroni” (“Samaritan”), were summoned for questioning by the Shin Bet shortly after repatriation, like everyone else who came from the USSR in those years.

Their data aroused the suspicion of investigators, and former lead Shin Bet investigator Yossi Ginosar managed to split them. Both were asked to become double agents. Very soon, Samaritan became the leading KGB agent in Israel, supplying the Soviet Union with a huge amount of information processed by Shin Bet specialists.

In 1977, when Klingberg cut off contact with his handlers, the KGB decided to turn to Samaritan to try to contact him. "Samaritan" left a postcard with a code in the mailbox of Klingberg's house, asking for a meeting. It was this meeting, documented by Shin Bet officers, that became the reason for Klingberg’s arrest. Samaritan's name and any other details remain banned from publication, but according to one of those who worked with him, the man owes his career to the Shin Bet, and if not for his work as a double agent, he would not has reached even a tenth of what he has.

Israeli intelligence agencies suspected Klingberg was a spy, but he was only arrested in 1983. In a closed trial, Klingberg was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment for treason and espionage, but up to 1991, the fact of his arrest was kept in the strictest confidence. The Klingberg family kept silent.

After his release from prison in 1998 (for health reasons), Klingberg was transferred to house arrest. At the end of his sentence, he left for Paris, to his daughter.

He lived in Paris in a one-room 35-meter apartment, on the left bank of the Seine. He visited his daughter once a day, once a week he saw his grandchildren. Klingberg received from Israel a pension of more than two thousand euros as a lieutenant colonel of the Israel Defense Forces, but complained that this was barely enough to pay for a rented apartment, food, medical insurance, medications and frequent hospitalizations.

Marcus Klingberg's wife, Wanda, died in 1990 year. In recent years, Marcus said that he was not afraid of death and considered himself an Israeli.

Markus Klingberg insisted that he collaborated with the USSR not because of money, but in gratitude for salvation from the Nazis.

Forum previously reported that in the USA released on the freedom of the American spy Jonathan Pollard and what he spied.