So many remarkable stories of brave men and women working with Secret Service Agencies in Israel have been uncovered over time.
Given the expert services engineered and conducted by our Secret Service Agencies, numerous potential disasters have miraculously been averted.
The Victor Grayevskyi story is a classic case of bravery and intuition.
But first, the background.
Just before midnight, at the Soviet Communist Party’s Twentieth Congress on 25 February 1956 in Moscow, the Secretary General of the party, Nikita Khrushchev, asked all foreign guests and heads of foreign communist parties to leave the hall.
At midnight he took the podium to speak to the 1400 Soviet delegates to deliver his secret speech.
It was more than just a missive. Rather a monologue, four hours long and strictly secret.
The speech was said to be a surprise, but rather came as a terrible shock to everyone present.
It was a far-reaching campaign to destroy the image of the late dictator Joseph Stalin as an infallible leader and to describe the tyranny he brought to the country.
Khrushchev claimed it was essential for the welfare of the Soviet Union to revert the official policy of the Communist Party to an idealized Leninist model.
Speechless and in Shock
Victor Grayevskyi was a senior editor at the Polish News Agency in charge of Soviet and Eastern European affairs.
In April 1956 Victor was visiting his girlfriend Lucia in her office. Lucia was secretary to the Secretary General of the Polish Communist Party.
On her desk he spotted a brochure bound in a red cover, numbered and stamped TOP SECRET.
“What’s this?” he asked her.
“Oh, that’s just Khrushchev’s speech,” she answered just casually.
Grayevskyi was well aware of the speech which had been read at the Congress two months earlier, but had never met anybody who had either heard or read a single sentence from it. It w one of the best-kept secrets of the Communist bloc.
He twigged right away and asked Lucia if could he borrow it for a couple of hours.
“You can take it. But you must bring it back today. I have to lock it in the safe,” she replied.
Once back at home, Grayevskyi read the speech. It was literally a bombshell.
In just four hours, Khrushchev had shattered the image of Joseph Stalin who executed, tortured and imprisoned millions of people, many of whom were loyal party members.
He blamed Stalin for foreign policy errors, the failure of Russian agriculture and through mistakes during WW2, the appalling loss of life on the battlefield.
He also reminded the delegates that Lenin, father of the Bolshevik Revolution, had warned the party against Stalin.
After reading the brochure, Grayevski rushed down to the Israel Embassy where he met with the First Secretary of the Embassy, but in reality the Shabak representative in Poland.
The Secretary perused the document, slipped out of the room, had it photocopied and then handed it back to Grayevskyi, who promptly returned it to Julia for safekeeping.
It wasn’t long before Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, was reading the document.
Ben Gurion spoke Russian and could easily read the speech.
“This is an historic document and all but proves that in the future, Russia will become a democratic nation,” said Ben Gurion.
They Were Stunned
Through the agency of the Mossad, the speech was swiftly delivered directly to Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, in Washington.
Later that day it was on President Eisenhower’s desk.
The American intelligence experts were stunned.
Israel’s tiny spy service had obtained what the giant, sophisticated services of the United States, Britain and France had failed to get.
When published in the New York Times on 5 June 1956, it caused something of an earthquake in the Communist world, prompting millions to turn their backs on the Soviet Union.
A Major Breakthrough
The major coup led to a significant breakthrough in the Mossad’s relationship with its American counterpart.
This modest, red brochure which Lucia loaned to her boyfriend Victor Grayevski and who, with bravery and intuition instigated a legendary episode in the history of the Mossad.
Grayevski was warmly rewarded and when he made aliyah in January 1957, was offered a job in the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Later, he was also hired as an editor and a reporter in the Polish section of Kol Israel, the state-owned radio network.
He also landed a third job, but that’s another story.
