Marcus Klingberg

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Abraham Marcus (Marek) Klingberg (born October 7, 1918 in Warsaw , Poland ; † November 30, 2015 in Paris ) was the highest-ranking KGB spy who was ever exposed and arrested in Israel . The Klingberg case is considered to be one of the largest espionage scandals in Israel.

Life

After the outbreak of World War II , the then medical student fled from the Nazis to the USSR , where he finished his studies in Minsk . Until he was wounded, he then served in the Red Army as a field doctor. He then began his epidemiological research in Perm / Urals. In 1943 he completed his advanced training in epidemiology in Moscow with distinction . Towards the end of 1943, after the liberation of the first parts of Belarus , Klingberg was appointed chief epidemiologist of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic . Immediately after the liberation of Poland, he returned to his homeland. There he found out that both his parents and his brother had been murdered by the Nazis in Treblinka in August 1942 . In Poland he worked as the chief epidemiologist in the Polish Ministry of Health.

In 1948 he emigrated to Israel. He served in the medical corps of the Israeli army, from 1950 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was appointed head of the preventive medicine department, and founded and directed the central research laboratories for military medicine in Israel. In 1957 he was appointed to the top secret Israeli State Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Nes Ziona near Tel Aviv, where he became deputy director. He also became director of the epidemiology department.

Academic career

Klingberg was Professor of Epidemiology and Head of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the Medical Faculty of Tel Aviv University . He was President of the European Teratology Society (1980–1982) and co-founder and chairman (1979–1981) of the International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Monitoring Systems (ICBDMS). In addition, he was President of the International Steering Committee for the Seveso Accident (Italy) until 1984 . In 1981 he co-founded the International Federation of Teratology Societies and was elected to the board of directors at the Congress of the International Association of Epidemiologists in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1982.

He taught at the Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania from 1962 to 1964 , in 1972 at the National Institute of Health in Oslo, Norway, in the Department of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London (1973) and in 1978 at the Department of Social and Community Medicine from the University of Oxford and served as visiting professor at Wolfson College (Oxford) in 1978 .

Activity for the KGB and imprisonment

Klingberg's contacts with the KGB date back to 1950, after which he began his espionage activities. Israeli foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet , had suspected him since the 1960s, but all investigations and shadowing did not reveal any evidence of the espionage. Klingberg even successfully passed a lie detector test .

In January 1983, Shin Bet agents informed Klingberg that he had to travel to Singapore as an expert on a chemical accident. Klingberg was taken to a remote apartment where he was interrogated for days. After ten days, he made a confession. He was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison. He spent the first ten years in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison under a false name and résumé.

In 1988/89 the Israeli prosecutor Amnon Zichroni worked out a deal with the Soviet Union, under which Klingberg was to be exchanged for the Israeli fighter pilot Ron Arad , who was presumably held prisoner in Lebanon. The Stasi was also involved in this trade. The exchange did not take place.

In 1997, Amnesty International requested that Klingberg be released from custody on medical grounds. After several heart attacks, he was transferred to house arrest in 1998. Klingberg had to pay his guards out of his own pocket, and his apartment was under permanent video surveillance.

In January 2003, Klingberg was released after 20 years in prison. He left Israel immediately and then lived in Paris.

Publications

Klingberg published his memoirs, which he wrote together with his lawyer Michael Sfard in 2007, under the title Hameragel Ha'akharon ("The Last Spy"). During his imprisonment, too, Klingberg acted as editor of scientific publications, such as the Contributions to Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and as co-editor of the journal Public Health Reviews .

Honors

Around 1950, Klingberg was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor for his services to the USSR.

credentials

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yaakov Levi: Israel's 'Last Spy,' Marcus Klingberg, passes away at 97 . Arutz Scheva , November 30, 2015.
  2. ^ Contributions to Epidemiology and Biostatistics . S. Karger, Basel / Paris / London / New York, ISSN  0377-3574
  3. ^ Public Health Reviews: An International Quarterly . International Scientific Publications, Tel Aviv, Israel.
personal data
SURNAME Klingberg, Marcus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Klingberg, Abraham Marcus; Klingberg, Marek
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-Israeli medic and KGB agent
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw , Poland
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 2015
Place of death Paris , France