Meir succeeded in penetrating the circle of the rabbi’s followers and learned that during World War II they had acted as an anti-Nazi underground, and had saved many Jews from the Gestapo. After the war, the group continued using the same methods and experience they had acquired as an underground organization, to engage in business ventures throughout the world. The diamond merchants told Meir an extraordinary story about a blond, blue-eyed Frenchwoman, a Catholic, who had been part of their organization during the war, helping them to rescue Jews from Hitler’s grasp. The woman had been profoundly influenced by the rabbi’s charisma; she converted to Judaism and became devoutly Orthodox, and more so, a priceless asset for the group. Her years in the underground had taught her a lot; she was bright, daring, she knew how to cover her tracks, change disguises, and use her charm as a weapon. Besides, she had an instinct for business and a keen natural intelligence. She had traveled the world on missions for the Antwerp group with her French passport. “She’s a holy woman,” the Antwerp Jews told Meir. They also told him that she had visited Israel; her son from her first marriage, Claude, had also converted, and after studying in yeshivas in Switzerland and Aix-les-Bains, was now a student at a Talmudic school in Jerusalem. But even the Antwerp people didn’t know where the fabulous holy woman was now.
That story fired up Isser’s imagination. On the face of it, there was nothing in the report to connect the Frenchwoman to Yossele. But in Isser’s eyes, she appeared as a person with enormous potential, a woman with a thousand faces. She could be a real godsend for the Orthodox leaders, if they needed somebody to set out on secret missions concerning Yossele.
Isser decided to follow his intuition, abandon all other leads, and concentrate on the mysterious convert. He cabled to Israel all the details he knew, and instructed his service to find the son and his mother.
A few days later, the answer came. The son’s name was now Ariel and he was in Israel indeed. Yet nobody knew where his mother was. Her name was originally Madeleine Ferraille; in Israel, she was called Ruth Ben-David.
The reports streaming to Isser’s headquarters painted a more accurate picture of Madeleine Ferraille. The pretty young woman had studied history and geography at the Toulouse University and the Sorbonne in Paris. She had married her college sweetheart, Henri, and their son was born shortly after the outbreak of World War II. Madeleine had joined the Maquis Resistance during the war, and her underground activities had brought her into contact with French and Belgian Jews, among them the Antwerp group. At the war’s end, she even initiated joint import-export ventures with some of them.
In 1951 she divorced Henri, after falling in love with a young rabbi in a small Alsatian town. The rabbi, a fervent Zionist, wanted to emigrate to Israel, and the two lovers decided to marry there. Her conversion to Judaism, therefore, was not so much for love of the religion itself as for love of one of its adherents. The recently converted Ruth Ben-David tied a scarf on her blond hair, changed her elegant clothes for the shapeless vestments of an Orthodox Jewess, and followed her fiancé to the Holy Land. But in Israel the affair turned sour; the rabbi left her, and she remained alone, depressed and frustrated. Her personal crisis apparently motivated her to approach the most extremist circles in Jerusalem and their leader, Rabbi Meizish. She gained a lot of respect in the religious circles after using her French passport to cross into the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem and pray at the Wailing Wall.
In the early fifties, Ruth returned to France and started traveling extensively again. The Mossad agents found out that she often stayed in Aix-les-Bains, or in a religious women’s institution close to Paris. But she had no permanent address.
The immigration authorities informed Isser’s men that in the last few years Ruth had visited Israel twice. The second time, on June 21, 1960, she had left Israel with a little girl, who was recorded in her passport as her daughter. She had departed on an Alitalia flight, and her final destination was Zurich. But who was the small girl? Ben-David had no daughter. Isser felt that he was on the right track. “Find her!” he said to Yaacov Caroz.
Armed with a detailed description of the woman, Caroz and another agent set out for Aix-les-Bains. But as they drove into the small town, they saw something amazing: Ruth Ben-David—or, in this case, Madeleine Ferraille—elegantly dressed, stood by the road hitchhiking! They were startled. Elegant, refined Frenchwomen trying to thumb a ride on the roads of France were not a common sight, to say the least. The driver immediately made a U-turn and darted toward the lady, but another car stopped ahead of him and departed with the pretty woman.
The agents returned from Aix-les-Bains empty-handed; but from another source, they learned that Ruth Ben-David kept close ties with Joseph Domb, a rich London jewel merchant. She had been sighted sitting alone with Domb in an automobile, which was inappropriate for a Hassidic man. Isser knew of Domb; he was a staunch enemy of the State of Israel. He belonged to the Satmar Hassidic sect, was a close confidant of the Satmar rabbi in New York, and knew the major Satmar leaders in various communities in Europe. “If the Satmar rabbi in New York is the pope,” one expert told Isser, “then Domb is his archbishop.”
Isser realized that all the roads led to London. Here lived the two sons of old Shtarkes. Here was based an active community of the Satmar sect, led by Domb. Here he was seen with Ruth Ben-David, who might have smuggled Yossele out of Israel. Isser had no more doubts: it had to be the Satmar Hassidim in Israel and Europe who had orchestrated the kidnapping of the child. Domb had been in charge of the operation. Ruth Ben-David had been instrumental in the abduction, because of her talents, her experience, and her French passport; she might know where the child was hidden.
His suspicions were confirmed by a Shabak agent who intercepted several letters Ruth Ben-David had written to her son; they contained some veiled hints about Yossele Schuchmacher.
Yet Isser needed more information; he decided to penetrate the Satmar Hassidim. His men in London identified a mohel—a rabbi who specialized in the circumcision of newborn Jewish boys—named Freyer (not his real name). He was a chatterbox, a man with a taste for life’s pleasures under a cloak of righteousness, and—last but not least—a man who was close to Domb and claimed that he knew where Yossele was.
Isser launched a complicated operation, intended to bring Freyer to Paris: one of his men, posing as a Moroccan prince, came secretly to Freyer and told him he had fallen in love with a Jewish girl. They had married in secret, and kept the Jewish faith at home, in Morocco. Now his wife had given birth to a baby boy and he wanted him circumcised, but couldn’t do it in Morocco; his family would murder him if they only knew . . . His wife and child were in Paris, would Rabbi Freyer come to circumcise the baby? He would be handsomely rewarded.
Freyer readily agreed, and a few days later arrived in Paris. The moment he stepped into the apartment of “the Moroccan prince,” he was apprehended by Mossad agents. They escorted him to a bare room, where he was interrogated for hours by Victor Cohen, the head of the Shabak investigation department. The mohel was scared to death, offered no resistance, and was ready to talk. But when asked about Yossele, he raised his hands. “I am dreadfully sorry,” he said, “but I don’t know a thing.”
It turned out, indeed, that Freyer knew nothing about the abducted child, and all his braggadocio was just intended to impress his friends. Once again, Isser’s efforts hit a wall.
Surprisingly, another team of his men had struck gold. With the help of the French Secret Service, they had succeeded in intercepting several letters sent to Madeleine Ferraille, and in one of them they found the opportunity they were looking for. It was a reply to a newspaper ad offering for sale her country house in Orleans, a lovely city in “the Garden of France”—the Loire Valley. They dispatched a letter to the post office box given in the advertisement and offered Ferraille more than she was asking for her house; they claimed they were Austrian businessmen looking for a location for their vacations. Madeleine Ferraille answered, giving the add
ress of her house; soon after, they wrote to her again, saying they had visited it and it suited their needs. They fixed an appointment for closing the deal on June 21, 1962, in the lobby of a big hotel in Paris.
A few days before the appointment, Isser’s men arrived in Paris one by one and engaged in feverish activity. They rented cars and safe houses in Paris and its suburbs, established escape routes, prepared documents and equipment, and brought from Israel experts in surveillance and interrogation.
Isser also decided that the best means to make Ruth Ben-David spill her secrets was through her son. Ariel studied in a yeshiva in Israel and apparently knew a lot about Yossele. Isser decided to arrest him simultaneously with his mother’s abduction in France. Ariel was Orthodox, but less fanatical than his mother. Isser established a system of communication that would enable the Mossad agents to synchronize the questioning of Ruth with that of her son in Israel, so they could use the answers of the son for the questioning of the mother.
And indeed, on the morning of June 21, a tall, elegant, strikingly beautiful woman walked into the hotel lobby. This was Madeleine Ferraille.
The charming Frenchwoman introduced herself to the two Austrians who were waiting for her. One of them was Herr Furber, the other Herr Schmidt. She spoke excellent English, and also had a good command of German. She never suspected the identity of her two buyers. They quickly reached an agreement about the sale of the house, but their lawyer was late. Furber called him from one of the hotel phone booths; when he came back, he said that the lawyer had profusely apologized. He had been detained at home, he said, by several urgent matters. He had asked if they could come to his house in the town of Chantilly, close to the city, and gave Furber the address and detailed directions. He would receive them immediately and they would sign all the papers on the spot.
“Shall we go?” Furber asked
Madeleine agreed. They got into the two Austrians’ rental car and drove to the lawyer’s villa. But the Frenchwoman’s charm almost caused the failure of the entire operation. Furber, the agent at the wheel, was so entranced by Madeleine that he went through a red light. The strident shriek of a whistle brought him back to reality. A fat, angry police officer was running toward him, blowing his whistle and pointing to the red light.
Furber stopped the car, fraught by ominous premonitions. What should he do? He was in a foreign country, with phony papers, driving a rented car with a woman who was about to disappear. He would get a traffic ticket, a procedure against him would be initiated by the police, and . . . But Madeleine Ferraille, who had caused all his troubles, was also the one who came to his rescue. She stuck her head out of the window, and flashed a charming smile at the police officer. “Monsieur l’agent,” she said sweetly, “this man is a tourist. He is in a foreign country, travels with a woman, and tries to amuse her with his stories . . . You certainly can understand that. Please forgive him . . .” The police officer, too, was entranced by the lady’s charm, and let the panic-stricken agents off without even writing a ticket.
Presently the car entered the beautiful town of Chantilly, where the “lawyer” lived. They entered the villa’s driveway and stopped before the main entrance. The two businessmen politely helped their guest out of the car, escorted her to the house, the door opened, and she walked in.
She was led to the “lawyer’s office.”
The part of the lawyer was played by Yaacov Caroz. “Madame,” he said in French, “you are not here to discuss your house in Orleans but another matter.”
“What? What’s going on?”
“I want to talk to you about the child Yossele Schuchmacher.”
At that moment, two other men materialized at her side. When she turned back, she realized that the two “businessmen” had vanished without a trace. She was struck with fear.
“I’ve fallen into a trap!” she hoarsely whispered in French.
“You’ve fallen in the hands of the Israeli services, Madame,” Caroz said.
At that very moment, police officers arrested Ariel Ben-David, the Frenchwoman’s son, in the town of Be’er Yaacov, in Israel.
In Chantilly, Caroz turned to Ruth Ben-David. “Madame, you are involved in the abduction of Yossele Schuchmacher. We want the child!”
“I know nothing and I’ll say nothing,” she answered firmly. After the initial shock, she had recovered quickly. Caroz had brought over his sister-in-law, a trained nurse, to stand by in case of emergency.
The Israelis understood that Ruth was their last hope. But they also assumed that this iron lady would not break easily, and that might take quite a while. She was handed over to Yehudith Nissiyahu, who had arrived from London. Nissiyahu treated her well, and took care of her needs as a religious woman. She provided her with prayer books and candles for the Sabbath; she cooked kosher food for her. The wing where she was kept was out of bounds for men. The nurse occupied the room next to hers.
The interrogation started. The convert spent hours facing the agents, mostly Yaacov Caroz and Victor Cohen, who addressed her in French. She was amazed to discover that the Israelis knew all about her; but she stubbornly refused to reveal any information about Yossele. “I’ll say nothing,” she kept repeating. She called Victor Cohen “flic,” which in French slang means “cop.” She stubbornly denied any connection with the abduction. “So I started to talk to her about all kinds of subjects,” Victor Cohen recalled later, “just to soften her. I wanted to understand how a Christian girl had become a fanatical Orthodox. These are two different worlds. At first, when we spoke, she insisted that there had to be another woman in the room with us. Later she agreed to sit alone with me, but the door had to remain open.”
One of her interrogators was charged with the unpleasant duty of throwing insulting accusations in her face, in order to make her lose her calm. The Mossad men hoped that she would react impulsively, and blurt out things she didn’t mean to say; they could be used in the simultaneous interrogation of her son in Israel.
And indeed, the interrogation of Ariel Ben-David started bearing fruit. The chief investigator in Israel was Avraham Hadar, a tough guy incongruously code-named “Pashosh” (Thrush). He told the young man that his mother had capitulated. “Your mother has confessed to everything,” he said. “Your lies will get you nowhere. Tell the truth!”
And after a while Ariel broke down. He said he knew what had happened to the child, and would talk “only if my mother and I get immunity.”
Pashosh told him, “You got it!” He immediately brought Ariel to Amos Manor, the head of the Shabak. As they entered, Manor yelled at Ariel: “Whatever Pashosh promised you—I agree. Now, where is the child?!” Ariel was shaken. He finally admitted that his mother had smuggled Yossele out of Israel, disguised as a little girl. She had forged her passport, where he had been registered under his former name, Claude. She had changed the name to Claudine, and also changed the birth date, so it could fit Yossele’s age. He knew that the child had been taken to Switzerland.
Ariel’s confession was rushed to Chantilly, and Ruth Ben-David’s interrogators confronted her with the new facts. “Ariel is in our hands,” Victor Cohen told her. “He is facing stiff punishment. He has confessed everything. Don’t you care what will happen to your son?”
“He is not my son anymore,” she muttered. She remained unbreakable. The interrogators couldn’t help admiring the tremendous strength of that woman.
Gradually, the situation became untenable. The solution seemed so close, and yet the interrogators felt that everything might end in total failure.
Finally, Isser decided, the time had come for him to take over.
In the bare, dark room, Isser Harel and Ruth Ben-David faced each other across the table. Some Mossad agents stood behind them; Cohen and Caroz served as interpreters.
Isser firmly believed that this fiercely determined woman would not yield to any threats. The only way, he thought, was to convince her with moral arguments. She was religious, indeed, but she would listen to
logic. After all, she had not been an ultra-Orthodox Jewess all her life, and the fanaticism of former generations didn’t flow in her veins since her birth. She was an intelligent, shrewd woman, and she should be addressed as such.
“I represent the Israeli government,” Isser said, weighing every word. “Your son has told us everything, and we have a lot of other information about you. Most of your secrets are known to us. We are sorry that we had to bring you here by force. You converted to Judaism, and Judaism means Israel. Without Israel, Judaism would not survive. The abduction of Yossele has dealt a terrible blow to the religious community in Israel. It stirred feelings of fury against the Orthodox. You could be the cause of bloodshed and a civil war. If you don’t return the child, a blood libel may result. Just think what might happen to that child! He could get sick, even die. How could you and your accomplices face his parents then? That would haunt you for the rest of your lives. And you’ll never be absolved!
“You are a woman and a mother. If someone disapproved of the way you’re bringing up your son and took him away from you, how would you feel? Could you sleep at night?
“We are not fighting against religion. Our only purpose is to find the child. As soon as we have him in our hands, you’ll go free, your son will go free—and Israel will be united again.”
Isser watched as Ruth’s face began to show her inner conflict. She seemed torn by contradictory feelings. Ruth was in a state of high tension, fighting against herself as only a strong person can before an uncompromising dilemma.
The Mossad agents were motionless like statues. They, too, believed that the moment of truth had arrived.
Ruth raised her head. “How do I know that you are a genuine representative of the State of Israel? How can I trust you?”
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