Mossad Releases Testimonies of Former Agents Who Survived Holocaust

Hamodia Staff

YERUSHALAYIM – On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Mossad released testimonies from two of its former agents who described their harrowing experiences during World War II, prior to coming to Israel and joining the espionage agency.

The two Holocaust survivors, Chaim Victor Tayar and Sylvia (whose full identity cannot be disclosed), served in the operational branch of the Mossad, which published their accounts in a tribute to their terrible suffering and extraordinary service to the Jewish people.

Sylvia, a former senior operations commander, was born in Bialystok in 1940, and survived to be a mother of three children and grandmother of six grandchildren.

“When the Russians entered Bialystok, my mother fled with me to Warsaw and we lived there in the ghetto,” she recounted.  “When I was two years old, my mother, realizing that there was no chance we would survive the atrocities, wanted to at least save me and spoke with a Polish guy she knew would be waiting on the other side of the ghetto wall. My mother wrapped me in rags and threw me over the ghetto wall. The same Pole handed me over to his parents.”

But, she said, she had “a bad time there” as the family sent her to beg on the street. So at a “very young age…I ran away. I ran like crazy.”

She ended up at an orphanage in Krakow and was later adopted by a childless couple who raised her as a Christian. Both of her parents Hy”d were murdered in the Holocaust and after the war, her aunt, who survived the war, found her and they both immigrated to Israel in 1950.

“No one at the Mossad knew I was a Holocaust survivor. I wanted to be like everyone else. I loved the country. The operational activity at the Mossad is the fulfillment of a dream and a sense of true strength and resilience,” she said.

Chaim Victor Tayar was born in 1935, in Tripoli, Libya. He is married and has two children and five grandchildren.

His family was deported along with another 1,500 Jews from all over Libya, and other foreign citizens to a detention camp in Tunisia, of whom about 660 were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

“In Tunisia, which was under the control of the Vichy administration and the Gestapo at the time, the men were sent to labor camps,” Tayar recounted. 

“After a few months, we were transferred to Algeria where our French citizenship was revoked, and we were sent to the Laghouat concentration camp in the Sahara desert where we lived in unbearable conditions with a lot of illness and severe hunger. Mom wanted us to stay around her, not letting us go. She was afraid of the cruel soldiers.”

He eventually emigrated to Israel in 1947, served in the IDF and enlisted in the Mossad where he worked in several key positions in the Operations technology division.

“As a child who was persecuted by the Holocaust and experienced firsthand the terrible atrocities, for me, serving in the Mossad and contributing to the security of the State of Israel is a huge personal achievement and it is with great pride to be part of the Mossad family,” Tayar said in his testimony.

Speaking after the testimonies, seen by video link in 20 different Mossad centers, agency head Dedi Barnea, said that even after 80 years what survivors experienced is “still shocking, almost unbelievable, inconceivable.”

“Your heroism began then, but it continues to this day. It is difficult to describe the mental strength and courage required just to continue living. And you have done much more than that,” Barnea said. “The witnesses who spoke to us today are not young, but their eyes are shining and their energy is inspiring.”