In my research of the Lithuanian KGB files at the Hoover Institution, I have paid particular attention to KGB archival documents on foreign intelligence agencies perceived by the KGB as adversarial. This is complicated by the fact that the files at Hoover do not contain the records of the First Department of the Lithuanian KGB, the branch of the Lithuanian KGB directly in charge of operations outside of the Soviet Union. However, Hoover has the files of the Second Department/Directorate of the Lithuanian KGB tasked with counterintelligence, which also participated in the operations beyond Soviet borders. For example, I have documented a foreign-oriented counterintelligence operation codenamed Operation HORIZON in an article I wrote for the Wilson Center’s Source and Methods blog.[1]
In this article, I want to address my findings concerning KGB reports on Israeli intelligence activities in the late 1950s. While examining the files of the Second Directorate of the Lithuanian KGB for the years 1959 and 1960, I came across a document marked top secret [совершенно секретно] titled “Information Summary [справка] on the Subversive Activities of Foreign Zionist Organizations against the USSR."[2]
This 16-page document was accompanied by a cover letter from General Yevgeny Pitovranov (1915-1999). Pitovranov, who under Stalin briefly headed the Soviet foreign intelligence service and was also imprisoned for a short time, remains one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of the KGB.[3] At the time of the document’s creation, on December 12, 1959, Pitovranov was the head of the Fourth Department of the KGB, the KGB version of the Chekist Secret-Political Department. The main task of the Fourth Department was to monitor and intercept the activities of individuals and groups perceived to be critical or, in the terminology preferred by the KGB, “subversive” of the Soviet regime. The so-called “Zionist” organizations were high on the Fourth Department’s list of priorities as reflected by this document (and numerous others still held indefinitely under the lock and key at the Central Archive of the FSB in Moscow).
Pitovranov’s cover letter was addressed to the chairmen of the KGBs of the Soviet Republics as well as to the heads of the regional KGB branches within Russia. Pitovranov recommended that the contents of the attached 16-page document be shared with those KGB operational officers who were tasked with targeting “Jewish bourgeois nationalists and clergy” in order to use them in their “practical work.”
While most of the document dealt with what KGB counterintelligence claimed to know about the meetings and activities of the Jewish international organizations, such as the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress, which it considered the enemies of the Soviet Union, there is a short section of the document that mentioned the Israeli foreign intelligence service.[4] That section will be the focus of my analysis here.
The section dealt with the allegations of Israeli intelligence activities in Vienna. Based on what it called “agent information” without, however, naming any agents or offering any documentary evidence, KGB claimed that Israeli intelligence had established a “special intelligence center” in Vienna directed against the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries in Eastern Europe. According to the KGB, the head of this center was a certain Karmil [Кармиль] described as the “former head of Israeli intelligence.” Furthermore, KGB alleged that Karmil’s first name was Moshe. It is unclear whether this was a reference to an Israeli politician and military commander Moshe Carmel (1911-2003).[5] There is nothing in Carmel’s publicly available biography to suggest that he was active as a coordinator of Israeli intelligence in Vienna at this time. Therefore, this is either a hitherto unknown fact from his life, or the person in question was another individual with the same name. Or it could be a case of mistaken identity by a KGB agent on the ground in Vienna.
KGB further claimed that in January 1959 “under the leadership of Shaika Dan [Шайка Дан] who came for this reason from Tel Aviv,” there had been a major meeting of Israeli intelligence officers held in Vienna. The focus of this meeting was the question of “legal and illegal” Jewish immigration from the Socialist Bloc countries to Israel. Those present at the meeting included two unnamed Israeli intelligence officers based in Hungary and Czechoslovakia as well as the alleged station chief [резидент] of Israeli intelligence in Warsaw named Netser [Нецер].[6] According to the KGB, Netser operated under the cover of a cultural and information officer at the Israeli diplomatic mission in Poland.
Netser was also mentioned in connection with his meetings with Soviet citizens acting as agents of the KGB during their visits to Poland.[7] As an illustration, the document provided the details of his meeting with a Soviet citizen who was an agent of the KGB branch in the Mogilev Region [today’s Belarus]. According to the document, Netser’s questions ranged from the living conditions of the Jews in the Soviet Union and their participation in the leadership of the Communist party and the industrial enterprises to the existence of Jewish theaters in Bobruisk [Belarus] and the attitudes of Soviet Jewish youth toward the state of Israel. The document also noted that Netser often met with other agents of the KGB visiting Poland. Presumably, Netser was unaware of their clandestine affiliation, but no evidence of that was provided.
Lastly, the document listed several locations in Vienna as allegedly frequented by Israeli intelligence officers and used for meetings with their sources.[8] The first on the list was the Hotel de France located at Schottenring 3. The hotel was described as a preferred place for debriefing Soviet and Eastern European citizens wanting to immigrate to Israel.[9] The second on the list, evidently a much smaller facility, was the Pension Cosmopolite located at 23 Alser Street. According to the document, the Pension was owned by a Jewish woman who knew several languages and was on the building’s second floor.[10]
Another hotel mentioned was the Hotel Pension Atlanta located in the Währing District of Vienna near the Vienna Woods. This hotel was described as the place of choice for the visiting Israeli diplomats and diplomatic couriers from other parts of Europe as well as for the officials of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs visiting Austria. According to the document, when Israeli diplomats and intelligence officers wanted to relax outside of Vienna, their preferred location was the old-fashioned aristocratic style hotel Grand Panhans, Semmering located in the mountains about 100 kilometers south of Vienna.[11]
The last but probably not the least important place on the list was Kazakov’s Cabaret, apparently a night club frequently visited by “Moshe Karmil and other intelligence officers.”[12] The repertoire of the Cabaret was unfortunately not included.
Postscript
After I published the article above, I was contacted by the intelligence historian Nati Cantorovich who provided me with additional biographical information regarding some individuals mentioned in the KGB document, for which I am very grateful. Cantorovich wrote: “This report deals with Nativ/Lishkat ha-Kesher (The Path, or The Liaison Bureau in Hebrew), a special Israeli governmental agency which managed and led the struggle for the Jews behind the Iron Curtain. Moshe Karmil (previously, Chervinskii) in 1958-1961 was indeed the head of Nativ front office in Viena responsible for communication with the East European Jews. Yeshaayahu Shayke Dan (previously, Trachtenberg), Karmil’s predecessor in Vienna, since 1958 was the director of operations in the Nativ’s Headquarters in Tel Aviv. Zvi Netzer (previously, Melnitzer) in 1957-1961 was Nativ’s envoy in Warsaw. Since the mid-1960s, he became the head of ‘Bar,’ Nativ’s division responsible for communication with the Western Jewish communities.”
[1] See Filip Kovacevic, “Operation HORIZON: A KGB
Counterintelligence Operation against the West,” Sources & Methods, June 30, 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/operation-horizon-kgb-counterintelligence-operation-against-west. Accessed on April 27, 2024. I have recently obtained more
archival materials dealing with this operation and plan to revisit it in one of
my future articles.
[2] Fond
K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 20-36. Lietuvos
TSR Valstybės Saugumo Komitetas [Lithuanian KGB] Selected Records, Hoover
Institution. I gratefully acknowledge the Hoover Institution Library &
Archives as an essential resource in the development of these materials. The
views expressed in this publication are entirely my own and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the fellows, staff, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover
Institution.
[3] There are, for instance, allegations from well-informed
sources that, after his official retirement from the KGB, Pitovranov ran a clandestine
Soviet intelligence branch within the Soviet Chamber of Commerce under the KGB
chairman Yuri Andropov’s direct supervision. See, for instance, a recent book
by a former KGB officer Vladimir Popov who immigrated to Canada in the 1990s
and has become a vocal critic of the Putin regime. Vladimir Popov. Заговор негодяев: записки бывшего подполковника КГБ [Conspiracy of Scoundrels: Notes of a Former KGB Lieutenant Colonel]. Kyiv: Gordonua.com, 2020.
[4] Fond
K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 28-29.
[5] See
Lawrence Joffe, “Moshe Carmel,” The
Guardian, October 16, 2003, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/oct/17/guardianobituaries.israel. Accessed on April 27, 2024.
[6] An Internet search in English and Russian language did not uncover any
publicly available information about the individuals named Dan Shaika and
Netser.
[7] Fond
K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 31-32.
[8] Fond
K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, pp. 28-29.
[9] Hotel
de France is still in business and the average room cost is about 200 dollars
per night. See “Hotel de France Wien,” https://de-france-hotel-vienna.hotel-ds.com/en/. Accessed on April 27, 2024.
[10] While
the Pension Cosmopolite appears to have shut its doors forever, today the same
building houses the University of Vienna’s Department of Nursing Science,
Department of Philosophy, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and
Institute Vienna Circle. See “University of Vienna Locations,” https://www.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/locations-maps/university-of-vienna-locations/. Accessed on April 27, 2024.
[11] See
“Hotel Grand Panhans Semmering,” https://book.austria.info/en/a-panhans. Accessed on April 27, 2024.
[12] Fond
K-1, Inv. 3, File 569, p. 29. I could find no publicly available information on
Kazakov’s Cabaret, but it must have been a very interesting place to spend an
evening, perhaps a bit like Rick’s Cafe Americain from the classic film Casablanca.
