Woman of Many Faces: Story of Yehudit Nessyahu

Yehudit Nessyahu, who took part in the Eichmann kidnapping and other secret Mossad operations, kept silent about her intelligence work until her dying day. Now, five years after her death, her relatives have finally agreed to publicize her writings

Uri Blau Oct 02, 2008

"When I left Israel, I didn't know what I was headed into. I was told that Isser Harel, the

Mossad chief at the time, had asked that I be sent to South America for an operation that he himself was responsible for there. You didn't ask questions, and when I was told that Isser wanted me to come, I just asked when I had to leave."

Yehudit Nessyahu, the former Mossad agent who wrote those words, died five years ago at age 78. The plane she boarded in 1960 took her not just to Argentina, but into the history books, as the only woman to take part in one of the Mossad's most famous and most important operations: finding and kidnapping Adolf Eichmann to bring him to Israel to stand trial.

Nessyahu, whose final years were shrouded by personal tragedy, maintained a silence about her intelligence work until her dying day. She turned down numerous requests for interviews, never spoke publicly about the operations in which she participated and would not allow her picture to be published as long as she was alive. This is the first publication of the account she wrote 14 years ago. It is the only direct testimony left by the Mossad agent who cooked kosher food for Eichmann and, in another operation, blended into the Satmar community in Antwerp to help locate the kidnapped child Yossele Schumacher.

She was a woman of many faces who lived in a shadowy male world. Religious and Zionist, she believed in the concept of Greater Israel and was a founder of the Tehiya Party. But she married a thoroughly secular man who was one of the authors of the Labor-Mapam platform. She was also the mother of an only son who died young. "

(....) Read more

and,

Judith Nessyahu (1924-2003)