The Secret Museum, or Museum of Secrets

Photos by David Jacques and Susan Lurie

At the beginning of June, ESRA Rehovot made a visit to the Israel Intelligence Commemoration Center (IICC), known in Hebrew as

מרכז המורשת המודעין (מל"מ).

The visit began somewhat inauspiciously, because it was hard to find. As if it was a secret museum. The bus driver arrived at the street in Ramat HaSharon (there is not street number given by the museum) to find nothing there. A phone call to the center informed us that we should look for Mahane Hertzog, and when we backtracked to that address, the woman met us at the curb. Mahane Hertzog is a large camp devoted to the intelligence services and the center is right at the beginning of the camp, but with no evident sign indicating its presence.

We were hosted by one of the many volunteers at the center, all of whom are veterans of one of the three branches of the intelligence service - the Intelligence Division (army, AMN), Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad) and the General Security Service (Shabak). Our volunteer, Nina, was from the Mossad and gave us a history of the establishment of the center. It was inaugurated in 1985 to highlight the achievements of the intelligence services, after it was noticed that many other branches of the military had their own commemorative centers. The purpose of the center is to tell the many stories of the men and women who have served in one of the intelligence branches. Mossad operates all over the world. The operatives in other countries are generally but not always known to the host country. Shabak operates inside Israel, but also in Israeli centers around the world, such as embassies. And the Army Intelligence Division deals with gathering information about the organizations and countries that are active enemies of Israel. There is obviously overlap among the objectives of the three services, and the data collected. When the system functions smoothly there is cooperation among the three branches. Over five million pieces of information are collected daily from open and from secret sources. Analyzing and assessing the information is the work of the people in the services. We were not given any insight into how this is done, which disappointed some on the tour. However, instead our guide told us about the outreach efforts of the center.

Intelligence services and other organizations from many countries visit Israel for exchange of information, and training, and the center hosts them. In addition, from the time of its inception, the center bussed in high school students from the periphery for a six-hour visit where they are educated in the role of the intelligence services and given some training in methods. The objective is to give them more possibilities for their army service. We were given a three-hour tour, and therefore received no training. Nina was also very proud of the fact that the intelligence services have been able to help special needs youths to serve. She said that there are units of autistic people who do amazing work in the various units.

Following a coffee break we were to have a tour of the 'labyrinth', a series of winding paths between walls with the names and dates of service members who have died. However, it was very hot outside so Nina gave us a slide show of a number of the walls with names, and told us vignettes about some of the people listed. There was a story on Eli Cohen, of course, but also she told about her boss in the Shabak, and some of his methods of obtaining information from suspects. After the slide show we did walk through the labyrinth and stopped at various places to hear other stories of agents of the different services.

The labyrinth ends at a building which houses both a memorial room with a book for each agent that the family can add too when they want, a research library for scholars in the field of intelligence, and a small synagogue. The synagogue has a number of Torah scrolls, one of which has a personal connection to Nina. She was born in Syria to a family who had a factory producing uniforms for the French in Syria, and also for the Syrian army after it was established in 1945. Her father helped the Jewish underground (before the state was established) and after 1948 he helped the intelligence service regarding the Syrian army. He insisted in delivering the uniforms himself to the army bases and in that way could pass on information concerning location, type of unit, and numbers of soldiers.

Nina's family came to Israel in the early 1950s. There was another push to allow Jews to leave Syria and Lebanon in the late 1970s and it was during this period that a Torah scroll from Damascus was brought to Israel.

After this visit, we convened again in the auditorium to hear an interesting lecture about 'Operation Enema', as told by Moshe, a retiree from the Shabak. Operation Enema involved a German soldier from the Waffen SS, Ulrich Schnaft, who came to Israel as a Holocaust survivor, enlisted in the IDF, tried to go back to Germany, and ended up as a spy in Egypt. Israel in its early years was not happy with anyone passing information on to Arab countries, and devised a ploy to get him to Israel voluntarily. Once he arrived he was arrested, tried and imprisoned for some years. Moshe told the story with great verve, fleshing out the persons involved. A shorter version can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Schnaft.

Moshe has done research on Ulrich Schnaft. After Ulrich finished his prison term in Israel he was allowed to return to Germany and married there. Moshe located his daughter and met her in 2022. She was sure that her father was a Holocaust survivor and didn't believe that he had served in the Waffen SS in World War II. With this story we concluded our tour, which everyone agreed was an excellent and informative day.

For more information visit: www.intelligence.org.il