Yossele Schumacher affair

Yossele Schumacher (Hebrew: יוסל'ה שוחמכר‎‎; born 1952) is a Soviet-born Israeli whose abduction as a child in 1960 became a cause célèbre in Israel. Schumacher's abduction by his Haredi Jewish grandparents, to prevent him from returning to the Soviet Union with his parents, led to a division in Israeli society between Orthodox Jews, who largely supported the abduction, and Secular Jews, who largely opposed it. After an international search, including Mossad director Isser Harel, Schumacher was found in the United States and returned to his parents in Israel.

Abduction

Yossele Schumacher was born in 1952 in the Soviet Union, and in 1958 the family immigrated to Israel. Due to financial difficulties, Schumacher's parents requested that his Haredi Jewish maternal grandparents, Nachman and Miriam Straks, take care of him. After a few months in Israel, Schumacher's father decided that he wanted to return to the Soviet Union, however his grandparents were aghast, and were determined that he would not go back. Fearing that he might end up back in the Soviet Union, the Orthodox Jewish community of Jerusalem took Schumacher from his grandparents and hid the boy in 1960, and was hidden in various places in Israel, including Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Safed, Rishon LeZion, and Komemiyut.

A court order from the Israeli Supreme Court demanding Schumacher's return was issued, and after a police search, the rabbis of the Jerusalem Orthodox community disguised Schumacher as a girl and placed him in the care of Ruth Blau (also known as Ruth Ben David), a French convert to Judaism in 1950, who initially was Zionist but later on adopted Haredi anti-Zionist views and in 1965 married Amram Blau, founder of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta. Blau took Schumacher with her to Europe using the identity of her son "Claude", falsifying documents and crossing with the child through several European countries.[1] Schumacher would spend two years total in France and Switzerland under her care.[2] By this time, authorities in Israel had increased their search efforts, leading Ruth Blau to again disguise Schumacher as a girl with new name "Claudine", then "Menahen Levy", and smuggle him into the United States in March 1962. Schumacher was hidden in the apartment of a Haredi woman named Mrs. Gertner at 126 Penn Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn in New York City. Subsequently the family changed Schumacher's name to Yankele Frenkel and kept him indoors, holding him from the time he arrived in March until August 1962.[2]

Investigation

Following Schumacher's disappearance from Israel, Nachman Straks was imprisoned, and police arrested the couple who had hidden the boy in Bnei Brak. Sometime later on, Ruth Blau still in France, decided to sell her house and met a potential real estate agent named Mr. Faber in an attorney's office. The real estate agent was in fact Isser Harel, director of the Israeli foreign intelligence agency Mossad, who placed Blau under arrest and interrogated her. Though uncooperative at first, Blau began to talk after she was told her that Schumacher was cooperating with them.[3] By this point it was July 1962, and with Schumacher's location identified, two officials from Shin Bet, the Israel internal intelligence agency, came to the door of the Gertners' home in Brooklyn and requested the immigration papers of Yankele Frenkel.[4] No papers were presented, and the boy was removed from the house until his mother came to retrieve him several days later.[2]

Controversy

The abduction of Schumacher caused enormous controversy within Israel between many Haredi Jews — who supported the grandparents and claimed that Schumacher's parents were communists — and the secular population, some of whom reportedly yelled Epho Yossele? ("Where is Yossele?") in Jerusalem.[2] The phrase had previously been used by Haredi Jews that supported Schumacher's grandparents to taunt police searching for Schumacher both in Israel and internationally.

The search itself was also an object of controversy, as Harel was criticized for his focus on this case at the expense of manhunts for Nazi officials, notably from then Aman director Major General Meir Amit and even from the Israeli spy Peter Malkin.[5]

References

  1. ↑ page 109. BLAU (Ruth) Les Gardiens de la cité. Histoire d'une guerre sainte Paris Flammarion 1978
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lando, Michal (2007-06-07). "Israeli reunites with NY woman who helped in his abduction". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 2008-12-15.
  3. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20010119125400/www02.jpost.com/Editions/2000/03/05/Features/Features.3576.html
  4. ↑ Yossele Schumacher, Reunited with Parents, Called As Court Witness
  5. ↑ Black, Ian; Morris, Benny (1991). Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services. Grove Press. p. 193. ISBN 0-8021-3286-3.

Other

Goldman, Shalom. "'Where is Yossele?' Trust Me, You Want to Know"' Tablet Magazine, Sept. 30, 2015.

Shlomo. "The Kidnapping of Yossele Schumacher -- A Domestic Quarrel that Divided Israel in the 1960s", Israeldocuments.blogspot, July 22, 2015.

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