Marcus Klingberg

Abraham Marcus ( Marek ) Klingberg ( born 1918 in Warsaw, Poland ) is the highest-ranking KGB spy who has ever been discovered and arrested in Israel. The case of Klingberg is regarded as one of the biggest espionage scandals in Israel.

Life

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

In 1948 he emigrated to Israel. He served in the medical corps of the Israeli army in 1950 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was appointed Head of Department of Preventive Medicine, founded and also directed the central research laboratories of Military Medicine in Israel. In 1957, he was then in the top-secret military research center for biological research, ( IIBR ) Ness Ziona ( near Tel Aviv) is called, where he was deputy director. In addition, he was Director of the Department of Epidemiology.

Academic career

Klingberg was a professor of epidemiology and director of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, 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 ). He was also president until 1984 of the International Steering Committee for the Seveso Accident ( Italy). In 1981 he co-founded the International Federation of Teratology Societies and was elected during the 1982 Congress of the International Epidemiologenvereinigung in Edinburgh, Scotland to the Board.

He taught from 1962 to 1964 at the Henry Phipps Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA ( 1962-1964 ), 1972 at the National Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway, at the Department of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK (1973 ) and 1978 at the Department of Social and Community Medicine, University of Oxford acted as a visiting professor at Wolfson College, Oxford ( 1978).

Working for the KGB and detention

Kling Mountain contacts with the KGB dating back to 1950, after which he began his espionage activities. The Israeli foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet, suspected him since the sixties, but all inquiries and shading did not provide evidence for spying. Klingberg completed successfully even a lie detector test.

In January 1983, informed Shin Bet agents Klingberg, that he had to travel as an expert to a chemical spill to Singapore. Klingberg was taken to a secluded apartment, where he was interrogated for days. After ten days, confessed Klingberg. Subsequently, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He spent the first ten years under an assumed name and with a fictional legend in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison.

1988/89, the Israeli attorney Amnon Zichroni worked out a trade with the Soviet Union, under which Klingberg should be replaced with the Israeli fighter pilot Ron Arad, who was imprisoned presumably in Lebanon. The Stasi was involved in this trade. The exchange did not materialize.

1997 Amnesty International called on to dismiss Klingberg on medical parole. After several heart attacks, he was transferred to house arrest in 1998. His guards had to pay out of pocket Klingberg, his home was constantly under video surveillance.

In January 2003, Klingberg was released after 20 years in prison. He left Israel in promptly and now lives in Paris.

Publications

Klingberg published his memoirs Hameragel Ha'akharon ( "The Last Spy " ), which he co-authored with his attorney Michael Sfard, 2007. In his prison time served Klingberg as editor of scientific publications, the " Contributions to Epidemiology and Biostatistics ." S. Karger - Basel -Paris- London-New York, and as co-editor of the journal Public Health Reviews ( International Quarterly of International Scientific Publications, Tel Aviv, Israel..

Honors

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

Credentials

• Yossi Melman: Double agent enabled Israel 's capture of top-ranked Soviet spy Klingberg
• Marcus Klingberg and Michael Sfard: Hameragel Ha'akharon ( " Marcus Klingberg - The Last Spy " .. Maariv Books, 2007.
• Marcus Klingberg, Michael Sfard: The last spy. Übers vpon Wiebke Ehrenstein. Münster, Prospero -Verl. 2012 ISBN. 978-3-941688-14-8.
• Marcus Klingberg, last KGB Spy to be Released in Israel
• East Side Story: On Being an Epidemiologist in the former USSR. An Interview with Marcus Klingberg by Alfredo Morabia. In: Epidemiology. Vol 17, No 1, January 2006.
• An Epidemiologist 's Journey from typhus to thalidomide, and from the Soviet Union to Seveso. by Marcus Klingberg. Journal R.Soc.Med. 2010: 103: 418-423. DOI 10 1258/jrsm. , 2010.