By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson
MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — During the Second World War British Intelligence secretly recorded conversations between German prisoners of war, including generals, held in various locations throughout England. The recording equipment was concealed in walls, floors and ceilings, as well as in light fittings, fireplaces and other hiding places. Thus, the unsuspecting prisoners talked among themselves quite freely, providing valuable information about the Nazi war machine among the subjects they discussed. All this took place in their native German language.
Hundreds of British military personnel who had signed the Official Secrets Act and knew German were given the task of listening to the audio recordings, typing them up and translating them into English. In order to find eavesdroppers, or ‘secret listeners’ as they were known, to be able to implement all these activities it was necessary to find a considerable number of German speakers. In war-time England this was no simple task.
Fortunately, England had taken in many German-Jewish refugees as well as about ten thousand unaccompanied Jewish children from Germany and other central European countries in the framework of the Kindertransport. Most of them had grown up speaking German and were now in the process of mastering the English language. Many of those who were of military age joined the British Army and were therefore able to work in the clandestine basement offices where the recordings of the conversations of German prisoners-of-war needed to be deciphered.
On consecutive Saturday nights, Israeli television showed a program describing the way the conversations were recorded and translated for the benefit of British Intelligence. Since the original recordings had not survived, actors read the German transcripts and other voices read out the English translation. At the time, the Intelligence Service had been expecting to hear German military secrets, and to some extent this was indeed achieved.
However, amidst the bragging and boasting by the prisoners about their military prowess were accounts of their actions in the countries they had invaded and the way they had rounded up and massacred the Jewish population there. As one of the editors of the program pointed out, the information was brought to the attention of the Allied leadership, including Churchill, but no action was taken to prevent the continuation of the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe.
The material is available in the British National Archives, and it is only as a result of the initiative of a handful of historians interested in the events of the Second World War that this program has been made. Historian Helen Fry was the first to expose the project in her book The Walls Have Ears, after the material was declassified in the 1990s.
It is worth noting that the program was produced by the Israel television channel that showed it, not by the BBC or any British company. It is to be hoped, however, that this important and well-made documentary will be taken up and broadcast by other television and movie companies and given the wider audience it deserves.
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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is an author and freelance writer based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, Israel.