The confession came out in a consulate office in Genoa, a strange echo of the war that had ended nearly a decade earlier. The man standing before the German diplomats was lean, blond, and blue-eyed, with a passport that identified him as an Israeli citizen named Gavriel Weissman. But the words he spoke were not those of a Jew. He told them he was Ulrich Schnaft, a former Waffen SS soldier, that his entire Israeli identity was a fabrication, and that he had nowhere else to go.
The diplomats listened, exchanged glances, and concluded that he was either insane or a con man. They turned him away. Schnaft had been born in Königsberg, a city that would later become Kaliningrad, in 1923. His mother had left him at an orphanage, and he had been adopted by another German family.
By the time he turned seventeen, he had finished vocational school as a mechanical technician and, in 1941, enlisted in the Waffen SS. He served with the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking on the Eastern Front, where he saw intense combat until a Soviet shell fragment wounded him in 1943. He received the Wound Badge in Black and was hospitalized in Germany. Upon recovery, he was assigned to an anti-partisan unit in Yugoslavia, and later served in Italy, where American forces captured him near the Po River in late 1944.
He spent the next years in prisoner of war camps, questioned along with all other SS personnel. In his case, the investigators found no evidence that he had been complicit in war crimes, and he was released in 1947. He made his way to Munich, still in ruins, and shared a cramped room with another young German. That roommate happened to be a Holocaust survivor, and Schnaft noticed something quickly: the man received financial assistance from an American charity because of his status.
Schnaft, who had very little money of his own, reached a practical conclusion. It paid to be a Jewish Holocaust survivor, so he decided he would become one. He had also heard that many Jews were emigrating to Palestine, and though he had no particular Zionist convictions, he decided to go there too. He took the false name Gavriel Weissman and applied for aid as a Holocaust survivor.
The money came through without difficulty. In the massive displacement of millions of people and the destruction of so much documentation, no one could verify his invented past. With charity money in his pocket, Schnaft boarded an illegal ship bound for the Holy Land. The British, still governing Palestine under mandate, were severely limiting Jewish immigration.
His ship was intercepted by a Royal Navy cruiser, and the passengers were taken to an internment camp on Cyprus. Inside the camp, Schnaft, the former SS combat veteran, joined a militant Zionist group associated with the Haganah, the Jewish military organization that was actively fighting for the creation of a state. He was still in Cyprus when Israel declared independence in 1948, and the authorities eventually released him and allowed him to enter the new country. He lived on a kibbutz for a time, learned Hebrew, and then joined the Israel Defense Forces.
He served in the War of Independence, and by all accounts served well, seeing plenty of fighting and rising to the rank of sergeant. After the war, he settled in a small town outside Jerusalem and became active in Mapai, the party of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. His political connections helped him gain a promotion to officer in the IDF’s reserve artillery branch, and he rose to captain. Then he applied for a full-time commission.
The IDF had limited positions, and Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, had quietly opened a file on Captain Weissman in 1952. The question on the table was simple: who, exactly, was this blond, blue-eyed officer? Doubts had started at a raucous party when Schnaft, very drunk, had shown fellow officers photographs of himself in a Waffen SS uniform taken during the war. He laughed it off, claiming it was a Purim costume, and the others accepted the explanation.
But there was also the matter of ammunition. Schnaft was suspected of stealing and selling military supplies from the base where he worked, and an inspection of his quarters had turned up a quantity of rounds. Even so, Shin Bet did not seriously consider the possibility that Captain Weissman was a former SS man. It seemed too far-fetched even for them.
The IDF simply declined to extend his commission, and Schnaft was discharged. He moved to Ashkelon and took a room in a boarding house run by a German Jewish couple, and soon began an affair with his landlord’s wife. When the husband discovered what was happening, he ordered Schnaft to leave, and Schnaft left in the company of the woman. Word had reached him of the economic miracle underway in West Germany, and he decided to go there with his new companion.
In 1954, they booked passage on a ship to Genoa. From there, they went to the West German consulate to request permission to enter the country. He was refused. Israel was boycotting West Germany at the time, and Israeli passports were marked with a declaration that they were not valid for travel to that country.
His girlfriend, however, still held a German passport, and she left him in Genoa, traveling on to West Germany without him. Later, she returned to Israel, reconciled with her husband, and the two of them moved to West Germany together to start a business. Abandoned, nearly penniless, and with no way to enter Germany, Schnaft returned to the West German consulate and told the truth. He explained that he was an SS veteran, that he was not Jewish, that his Israeli passport bore a false name, and that he was a German citizen by birth.
The diplomats were deeply suspicious and refused to believe him. Left with nothing else, Schnaft decided to sell the only thing he had of value: his knowledge of the IDF. He went to the Egyptian consulate in Genoa and offered Israeli military secrets in exchange for passage into West Germany and a payment. The Egyptians questioned him extensively, concluded that he was genuine, and informed President Nasser, who had a fierce hatred of Israel.
Schnaft was flown to Cairo and interrogated for two weeks. He told them what he knew about the IDF and its inner workings. But the Egyptians soon realized that a captain was relatively low in the hierarchy, and while the information was interesting, it was not particularly valuable to them. Still, they honored their agreement.
They gave him money and papers that allowed him to enter West Germany. Once back in Germany, he found work in his aunt’s pharmacy. For reasons he could not entirely explain, he decided to contact his former girlfriend and confess everything: that he was an SS veteran, that he was not Jewish, and that he had betrayed Israel to a foreign power. She was horrified.
She told her husband, who was delighted. Here was the ammunition he needed to take revenge on the man who had seduced his wife. The husband reported everything to Mossad. In Tel Aviv, the intelligence leadership was furious.
They decided to monitor Schnaft in Germany, with the likely objective of assassinating him. A team of agents was dispatched. Then a new plan emerged: lure him back to Israel and punish him through the legal system. To do that, they used a classic honey trap.
A female agent approached Schnaft and began a relationship with him. After several weeks, she introduced him to her friend, a man called Adnan bin Adnan, who was in fact another Mossad agent named Shmuel Moriah, posing as an Iraqi army officer. They met for lunch at a restaurant in Berlin. During the meal, Moriah accidentally on purpose let a forged Iraqi officer’s identity card fall to the floor.
Schnaft picked it up, looked at it, and understood exactly what it was. He launched into an anti-Semitic tirade, then came directly to the point: he asked Moriah if he could work as a spy for Iraq. Moriah agreed, delighted by the turn of events. Schnaft was briefed for a mission into Israel.
He was to photograph a sensitive site. He still carried his Israeli passport and had no idea that Mossad was fully aware of who he really was. When he landed at Tel Aviv Airport, he was arrested immediately. The trial was held in closed court.
Convicted of spying against Israel for Egypt, he was sentenced to seven years in prison. He served five years of the sentence, then was released and extradited from Israel with a firm order never to return. He married, started a family, and raised his children Jewish. When his daughter approached the age of her bat mitzvah, Schnaft contacted the Israeli government and asked permission to return to Israel for the celebration.
The Israelis said absolutely not. He lived quietly in Germany after that, and died in 2013. Ulrich Schnaft had gone from SS man to IDF officer to Egyptian spy, and nearly to becoming an Iraqi spy as well.
His story stands as one of the strangest in the history of Israel, and every word of it was true.
