Gideon's Spies

The investigation continued to be enlivened with bizarre episodes. Ten Mossad agents joined a Saturday-morning service at a synagogue in the London suburb of Hendon. The furious congregation called the police to arrest the “religious impostors” after their false beards came unstuck during scuffles. The agents were quietly released after the Israeli ambassador intervened with the Home Office. A venerated Orthodox rabbi was invited to Paris on the pretext that a member of a wealthy family wished him to officiate at a circumcision. He was met at the airport by two men dressed in the severe black coats and hats of Orthodox Jews. They were Mossad agents. Their report had an element of black comedy.

“He was taken to a Pigalle brothel, having no idea what it was. Two prostitutes who had been paid by us suddenly appeared and were all over the rabbi. We took Polaroid photographs and showed them to him and said we would send them to his congregation unless he revealed where the boy was. The rabbi finally convinced us he had no idea and we destroyed the photographs in front of him.”

Another rabbi, Shai Freyer, surfaced in Isser Harel’s ever-expanding search through the world of Orthodox Jewry. The rabbi was picked up by Mossad agents as he traveled between Paris and Geneva. When they became convinced, after rigorous questioning, that once more this was another dead end, Harel ordered Freyer to be held a prisoner in a Mossad safe house in Switzerland until the search ended. He feared the rabbi would alert the Orthodox community.

Another promising lead appeared. She was Madeleine Frei, the daughter of an aristocratic French family and a heroine of the French Resistance in World War II. Madeleine had saved a large number of Jewish children from deportation to the Nazi death camps. After the war she had converted to Judaism.

Checks revealed she was a regular visitor to Israel, spending her time with members of the Neturei Karta sect, and on several occasions she had met Joselle’s grandfather. Her last visit to Israel had been around the time of the boy’s abduction. Madeleine had not returned to Israel since then.

In August 1962, Mossad agents tracked her to the outskirts of Paris. When they introduced themselves, she physically attacked them. One of the agents summoned Isser Harel.

He explained to Madeleine “the great wrong” done to Joselle’s parents. They had the moral right to bring up their son as they wished. No parents should be denied that right. Madeleine still insisted she knew nothing about Joselle. Harel saw his own men believed her.

He asked for Madeleine’s passport. Beneath her photograph was one of her daughter. He asked an agent to bring him a photograph of Joselle. The facial structures of the children in both photographs were almost identical. Harel called Tel Aviv. Within a couple of hours:

“I had everything I needed to know, from details of her love life during her student days to her decision to join the Orthodox movement after renouncing her Catholic faith. I went back to Madeleine and told her, as if I knew everything, that she had dyed Joselle’s hair to disguise him and smuggled the boy out of Israel. She flatly denied it. I said she must understand that the future of the country she loved was in grave danger, that in the streets of Jerusalem people she loved were throwing stones at each other. Still she refused to admit anything. I said the boy had a mother who loved him as much as she loved all those children she had helped in World War Two.”

The reminder worked. Suddenly Madeleine began to explain how she had traveled by sea to Haifa, a tourist come to see Israel. On the boat she made friends with a family of new immigrants who had a child about the age of Joselle. She had led the little girl down the gangplank at Haifa, and the immigration officer had taken the child as Madeleine’s own. He made a note of this in his records. A week later, under the very noses of Israeli police, she had boarded a flight to Zurich with her “daughter.” Madeleine had even persuaded Joselle to dress in girl’s clothing and have his hair dyed.