Klieger Aliav Ruth
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Klieger Aliav Ruth, born Klieger Aliav Polishuk (1914—1979), was a Jewish Zionist activist, assisting in the Aliya Beth before and after World War II, and later a figure in the Mossad. Born in Chernivtsi (then in Romania, nowadays in Ukraine), she was a graduate from the University of Vienna who could speak nine languages.
[edit] Early activities
Ruth went to Palestine after her marriage in 1936 and joined the Mossad later on, being sent on missions to Romania. The head of operations in Romania sent the "Tiger Hill" September 1939 and the "Hilda" January 1940. After Romania became an Axis Power, she escaped to Istanbul, Turkey and there together with other Mossad agents organized the dispatch of the Darien II in March 1941. A full account of these deeds is in her autobiography The Last Escape, which was a best seller in 1974.
She was the Mossad agent in Cairo from 1941 to 1944. In 1944, with Charles de Gaulle's help, she arrived in a liberated Paris and was the first Mossad agent to contact survivors of the Holocaust.
[edit] 1945
In October 1945, Ruth acquired a troopship, the Ascania, from an United States colonel on Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff. It was planned for the vessel to take orphans to Palestine and was soon crammed with 2,600 Holocaust survivors. On arriving in Haifa, the British government of Palestine had no choice but to let them in. The colonel wanted to repeat the passage, but Eisenhower vetoed that on account of British pressures.
In October 1945, David Ben-Gurion arrived in Paris, and to avoid eavesdroppers he and Ruth went for a 4 hour walk in the Bois de Boulogne. Ben Gurion wanted to know if the Holocaust survivors would be ready to sail in the cramped Mossad "nutshell" ships. Ruth convinced him that after the Holocaust the refugees would be ready for any hardship in order to reach the new homeland.
[edit] Later career
Paris then became the headquarters of Mossad; soon afterwards Ruth left for South America and the United States, raising money and buying ships. After 1948 Israeli independence in 1948 she was public relations manager at ZIM, the Israeli shipping company.
Ruth divorced in 1940. There is an urban legend that she was Ben Gurion's lover, but this has never been proven. Ben Gurion suggested to Ruth a new Hebrew surname: Aliav (V and B are the same Hebrew letter).
