The adventures of 'Milton' - Nazi spy in Eretz Israel

Twelve years ago, a friend handed an envelope to Gad Shimron. At the time, Shimron was the Israeli daily Ma'ariv's correspondent in Germany, and he was occupied with tying up loose ends as the end of his stint in Germany loomed. He didn't bother looking at the contents of the envelope.

It was only a few years ago that Shimron finally got around to looking inside the envelope, when he moved from one apartment to another. In the envelope, shimron discovered a historical treasure, which he incorporated into his new novel "The Templer's Lover from Emek Refa'im" (Matar) - which tells the story of a love affair between a Hadassah nursing school student and a Jerusalem German Colony native, which sparked uproar in the thirties and forties.

The book combines fictional details with historical fact as Shimron exposes a historical event that has never before been published: the story of a spy for the Abwehr - a Nazi intelligence organization - who operated in Palestine while it was under a British mandate during World War II. The documents in the fateful envelope were apparently from this spy's operations dossier. The spy's code name was Milton.

Shimron says that as far as he knows Milton was the only German intelligence agent working as a spy in the country during that time. (However, the Germans did parachute several agents into Wadi Kelt in order to provoke the Arab population into rebelling against the British rule. Some of them were caught.)

Milton operated out of his room in the "Yarkon" hotel. He was equipped with a Morse code machine which he used to transmit his reports. He also handed over information to the Nazis in coded letters addressed to his handlers who were stationed in neutral countries like Turkey.

Among the documents obtained by Shimron there was a map, written in German and dated September 22, 1941, which was apparently drawn based on information relayed by Milton. The map was distributed by a group called "Theobald" which was apparently a distribution body within the Abwher, which was headquartered in occupied Belgrade. The distributor wrote on the map that "R509" (probably Milton's code name within the organization) was a "source with excellent access." The map includes in great detail the coastline of Eretz Israel, and indicates the exact location of "gasoline containers, Jewish settlements, and the airport."

Another document was as synopsis of a report filed by Milton in the summer of 1942 (as the German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel arrived in El Alamein in Egypt), and included the following points:

From his vantage point at the Yarkon hotel, Milton observed the naval activity of three large convoys, escorted by aircraft, which sailed north.

Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were flooded with Jewish refugees from Egypt. Many casualties from the western desert front were hospitalized in Jerusalem. The headquarters of the British forces was in the mountains, not far from Jerusalem, and the city was full of British officers. The Nazi spy speculated that some quarter million ally soldiers were stationed in Palestine, under the command of General Wilson. His estimate was most likely an exaggeration.

The report made several mentions of units belonging to the Greek army, who fought under British command, and their low morale.

Traveling from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem took about 70 minutes. Along the way one could see several large police stations and military bases.

At least 2,000 American air force personnel had arrived in Palestine. The Lod region saw heightened American aircraft activity and the area was a closed military zone.

The spy also wrote that he had befriended a young American pilot, and the young man boasted about terrific salaries earned by Americans.

Milton added that basic food staples were not being sold, with the one exception of sugar.

The spy also reported a phenomenon that appeared unusual to him ? young Jews in British army uniforms were checking the papers of youngsters at Tel Aviv hangouts, and were trying to recruit them to the army or to Jewish organizations, instead of having fun with other young people.

Who was "Milton"? Gad Shimron admits that he wasn't able to uncover the spy's true identity. He tried to find information about the man in the Wehrmacht archives but turned up nothing.

Shimron, who in his past served in a Mossad operations unit, knows a thing or two about secret missions. He believes that Milton's personal file, which included his real identity, was destroyed during the war. The documents that made their way into his hands were, he believes, from the spy's operations file. Shimron also thinks that Milton may have been a German-born Jew who was blackmailed into working as a Nazi agent as his family was held hostage in Germany.

Another possibility is that Milton may have been from South Africa, of Boer descent, and he hated the British, or perhaps he was Greek (which would explain the frequent mentions of the Greek army in his report.)