By Joe Spier
CALGARY, Alberta, Canada — Isser Harel, head of Israel’s Mossad from 1953 to 1963 is remembered for his capture of Adolf Eichmann. Few remember Harel for his capture of Yossele Schumacher. The former was the notorious Nazi war criminal in charge of mass deportation of Jews to extermination camps while the latter was a 10-year-old Israeli boy.
Our story begins in 1958 when deeply religious Reb Nachman Shtarkes and his wife, Miriam, after years of suffering under Soviet Communism, emigrated from Russia to Israel. They settled in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem into the world of Neturei Karta, (Guardians of the City) the fanatically Orthodox sect that opposes the existence of the State of Israel because the Talmud, in their interpretation, teaches that force shall not be used to bring about the establishment of a Jewish State before the coming of the Moshiach. Three months later, their daughter Ida and her husband Alter Schumacher together with their 10-year-old daughter, Tzinah and 5-year-old son Yossele, followed.
Life in Israel at first was difficult for Ida and Alter and of necessity, they agreed that until their finances improved, the children would live with Ida’s parents. As the grandparents brought up Tzinah and Yossele in the strict Orthodox tradition, the children’s parents, Ida and Alter, drifted into secular Judaism. Reb Nachman was appalled.
By late 1959, things began to improve for the Shumachers. They bought an apartment in Tel Aviv and were now able to bring their children home. Ida collected her daughter from the religious boarding school where Reb Nachman had placed her, but when she went to her father’s house to get Yossele, he had disappeared. To Reb Nachman, non-orthodoxy was a flagrant departure from true Judaism and therefore his grandson must be protected from apostasy. Yossele’s soul would be in spiritual danger if he was returned to his parents. He could only be saved if brought up within the strict rules of life laid down by the Torah. So somewhere within the Heredi community, Reb Nachman hid Yossele.
After weeks of pleading with her parents, Ida went to the police. Reb Nachman told them nothing. Ida obtained a Court Order demanding the return of her son. Reb Nachman refused to obey. Reb Nachman was arrested and went to jail for disobeying the Order. He remained mute. The police plastered Yossele’s picture on posters all over Israel and for two years, they scoured the country, even entering yeshivot with search warrants, all to no avail. The Haredi community closed ranks behind Reb Nachman in a conspiracy of silence.
The disappearance of Yossele was tearing Israel apart. The always simmering tension between the devoutly religious and those who desired a modern secular state was boiling over. The battle cry of the secularists became “Eifoh Yossele” (“Where is Yossele”). They scribbled “Eifoh Yossele” on walls and screamed “Eifoh Yossele” as a derogatory epithet at the ultra-orthodox. In retaliation, young Haredim threw stones and sometimes poopy diapers at cars driving on Shabbat. The Yossele problem had become a national issue. The country was in danger of being driven to the edge of civil war.
Since the massive police hunt produced nothing, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had to act to protect the unity of his nation. In February 1962, he called in Isser Harel, head of the Mossad. “Eifoh Yossele.” Harel did not know. “Bring him to me,” Ben-Gurion ordered.
With instructions to infiltrate Haredi communities, not only in Israel but also in Europe, Harel dispatched his reluctant agents who were trained to fight the enemies of Israel and did not relish spying on their own. They were not successful, at times bringing comical “Keystone Kop” embarrassment upon themselves.
One agent infiltrated a group of Hassidic Jews going to bury one of their dead. He was quickly unmasked when he failed to recite the appropriate prayers.
A group of agents attended an Orthodox synagogue for morning prayers but was found out when their beards began to come unstuck. The agents dressed in traditional religious garb with fake peyot and beards falling off, were chased down the street by the truly pious, wearing their black frocks and shtreimels, yelling in Yiddish something about religious imposters.
An Orthodox rabbi was engaged to perform a circumcision. Instead, a hired prostitute sat on his lap while the agents quickly snapped Polaroid photographs. The blackmail attempt failed. As the rabbi was leaving he asked, “Do you still want me to do the bris”.
Finally after another five months perhaps a break came. A military censor reading the mail from a soldier to his mother in France, noticed a question in the letter, “And how is the boy?” Suspicious, the censor showed the letter to Harel. The soldier was Uriel Ben-David, the son of Ruth Ben-David.
Ruth Ben-David was a dual French-Israeli citizen. She was born Madeleine Ferraille, a French Catholic, educated at the Sorbonne and fought with the French Resistance during World War II. After the war, she married a fellow Catholic and gave birth to a son, Claude. Then Madeleine had a revelation, she divorced her husband, converted to Judaism in a strictly Halakhic orthodox ceremony and changed her name to Ruth Ben-David. Later her son Claude changed his name to Uriel Ben-David. Ruth divided her time between Israel and France. She became deeply religious, a Haredi Jew.
Could the Mossad have a lead? Harel thought so. He and his agents took off for France to confront Ruth. Noting that she was trying to sell her Paris apartment, two agents, posing as prospective buyers, went to her home. Once inside they held Ruth captive. For four days, the Mossad’s most experienced interrogator, nicknamed “the Spanish Inquisitor” questioned Ruth. She denied any involvement in the Yossele affair. He was convinced that they had the wrong person. Harel was not and he personally took over the grilling.
Harel questioned Ruth for hours to no avail. Then leafing through her passport, he noticed a picture of her daughter who Harel knew she did not have. Comparing the face in the picture to a photograph of Yossele, it was the same child. Harel had her but Ruth maintained her silence.
Now Harel falsely told Ruth that her son, Uriel turned her in; then he tried blackmail by threatening to tell her Haredi friends of her love life during her carefree student days; and finally he reminded her as a mother, that Yossele also had a mother who had not seen her son for three years. He found Ruth’s weak spot; she broke and revealed the full story of Yossele’s disappearance.
Reb Nachman at first hid his grandson with a Haredi family in Bnei Brak, a city whose inhabitants are mainly ultra-orthodox. As the police search intensified, it was decided that Yossele should be smuggled abroad. Ruth Ben-David, with her French Resistance background, was thought to be the ideal person to carry out the mission. She was approached and agreed.
Because Yossele’s face was so well known, Ruth devised a plan, which hinged on disguising Yossele as a girl. Ruth had to enter Israel with a daughter and leave Israel with a daughter. First in her French passport, she changed the name of her child from Claude to Claudine. Then she had a photograph of Yossele altered so that the face became that of a girl. With the altered passport and photograph, Ruth obtained a tourist visa from the Israeli consulate for herself and her daughter Claudine and Ruth then set sail for Israel. Aboard ship, Ruth befriended a family with seven children, one a girl about Yossele’s age. Helping the family, Ruth disembarked in Haifa with the girl beside her and the custom’s agent dutifully imprinted Ruth’s passport with an entry stamp for her and Claudine. In Israel, Ruth had Yossele’s hair dyed blond, dressed him in a skirt and the two of them flew out of Israel with Ruth’s passport marked by border control with an exit stamp for her and Claudine.
Ruth first placed Yossele in a religious school in Switzerland for one year and then in a yeshiva in France for seven months. When the Mossad intensified their search for Yossele in Europe, Ruth decided to move him once again. “Eifoh Yossele?” Harel asked. “He is at 126 Penn Street, Brooklyn”, responded Ruth. Three months earlier, she had flown with Yossele to America and hidden him in the Hassidic enclave of Williamsburg with the family of Rabbi Zanwill Gertner.
Within days, agents of the Mossad assisted by the FBI, arranged by Robert Kennedy, Attorney General of the United States at the request of his friend Isser Harel, rang the doorbell at the Gertner home. Inside Rabbi Gertner was praying and beside him stood a pale-faced boy with dark peyot and wearing a yarmulke. “Hello Yossele, we have come to take you home.”
On July 4, 1962, Yossele and his mother were reunited when Ida was flown to New York to confirm his identity. She flung her arms around him and he whispered that he missed her.
Yossele received a hero’s welcome upon his return to Israel. Thousands gathered at the airport to cheer his arrival; schoolchildren sang a special song; he was showered with gifts. A month later photographs of Yossele, shorn of his side-curls and religious garb, appeared in the media.
While the saga of Yossele had ended, there is a postscript to the story of Ruth Ben-David. In 1965, Ruth’s son Uriel, on a mission to find a husband for his mother, had a shadchan (matchmaker) arrange a properly chaperoned meeting between 45 year old Ruth, now living permanently in Mea Shearim and 67 year old Rabbi Amram Blau, a widower and revered founder of Neturei Karta. It was love at first sight for they decided to marry. To the Neturei Karta this was a shanda (scandal) because, even though Ruth had converted, in their eyes she was a shikse and in addition a divorcee. The Rabbinical Court of the Neturei Karta became involved. Rabbi Blau inventively argued that the Torah says, “No man who is crushed or maimed in his privy parts may marry a Jewess” and since his sexual organs were slightly injured by shrapnel in 1948, (very slightly as he was fifty times a grandfather) he could not marry within the congregation but there was no prohibition against marrying a convert. The Rabbinical Court rejected his argument and opposed the marriage. Rabbi Blau and Ruth wed anyway and moved from Mea Shearim to the relatively more tolerant Bnei Brak. Later they would move back. Ruth, born a Roman Catholic, was now the Haredi Rebbetzin Ruth Blau.
Yossele Schumacher, artillery officer, graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, business consultant continued to see Ruth until she passed away at the age of eighty. In 2007, he and his wife visited the Gertner family in Brooklyn.
The end of the Yossele affair did nothing to stem the schism between the secular and the religious. The two sides of Israel’s great cultural debate continue and remain unresolved.
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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history. You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com, or post your comment on this website provided that the rules below are observed.
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