Hitlers Jewish Spy

Baron von Rolland, a spy for Germany in both World Wars, wasnt a
Baron or a von Rolland. He was a Saloniki Jew named Isaac Ezratty.
By Asgeir Ueland
May 5, 2016 10:00 PM

On Feb. 6, 1937 the SIS, the British Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as
MI6, wrote a report headlined Nazi activities in Northern Africa. Part of the report
was forwarded to the British internal security organization MI5 some two weeks later. The
information from SIS came from a German informant in Paris who claimed to be working
for a German emigrant organization sending volunteers to Spain, which was at the time
engulfed in a bloody civil war. According to the informant, the Nazis had set up
headquarters in the city of Ceuta, a Spanish plot of land in North Africa bordering
Morocco. The chief Nazi agent in Morocco, was, according to the same source, a
certain von Roland (sic), whom the informant claimed worked closely with the Nazi
organization in Seville and Lisbon and also with an Italian Fascist group in Tunis
responsible for anti-French agitation in that territory.

It had been 11 years since MI5 had last heard about Baron von Rolland. The man had
first appeared in the British security files at the end of World War I, where he had
been a German agent for the Abteilung IIIb, the Imperial German military
intelligence. What the MI5 already knew was that the Baron who allegedly had reappeared
in North Africa, was neither a baron, nor a von, nor a Rolland, but a Salonikian Jew with
the name of Isaac Mizrachi, or in some instances, Ezratty. Viewing his file, which runs
from 1918 until 1947, there is no doubt that he served the Germans loyally in both
World Wars and that from the 1930s almost until the end of the war, he worked for
the military intelligence of Nazi-Germany, the Abwehr.

The fake baron was born in Salonika, or in its modern form Thessaloniki, April 15, 1893.
His father Eliaou Ezratty, was according to his sons file a highly successful merchant.
When little Isaac was born, the Jewish community in the city consisted of some 60,000
souls. Salonika at the time was an integrated part of the Ottoman Empire, and thus he was
born a Turkish subject.

Although the Jewish presence in Salonika can be traced back to antiquity, via St. Pauls
Epistle to the Thessalonians in the New Testament, the modern Jewish community was a
direct result of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492. Indeed, the Ottoman census of
the city a mere 14 years earlier did not record any Jews in the city at all. Among the
Sephardic community then remnant of the Iberian Peninsula lingered on in the Jewish
tongue of Ladino, which was far less removed in time from contemporary Spanish
than its Ashkenazi equivalent, Yiddish, was from German. Both communities had a
presence in the city, though the Sephardic community was dominant.

The Ezrattys belonged to the upper echelons of that community, but they were among the
happy few, as a substantial part of the community was poor. The Jews were, of course, just
a part of the cosmopolitan population of the city. In his book about the city, the historian
Mark Mazower quotes a newspaper article from 1911, a year that would change the life of
young Isaac Erzatty, that said: Salonica is not one city. It is a juxtaposition of tiny villages.
Jews, Turks, Donmehs [crypto-Jews], Greeks, Bulgarians, Westerners, Gypsies, where each
of these groups which one today calls Nations, keeps well away from the others.

Like the Austro-Hungarian empire to its north, the Ottoman Empire was seeing an
increased growth in nationalism among the nations, which for centuries had been humble
servants. In October 1912 the First Balkan war started. It was followed by the second
Balkan war in June 1913, which eventually led to the Greek control of the city.

The Jewish community in the city felt the rise of nationalism, but they did not seek
salvation in Zionism. For the majority, the effect of Balkan nationalism led them into the
ill-fated Ottomanist movement and later to side with the Young Turks.

The von Rolland file echoes some of these developments. The young man left his
native town for studies in Germany in 1911. In a statement made much later he recalled
that he left with a Turkish passport, but when I returned to Saloniki it was occupied by
Greece. His new masters offered him a choice between Greek or Turkish nationality.
He chose the latter, but his choice had implications. The Greeks told him that he had to
leave the city within eight days. By the end of 1913 he was back in Germany. By August
1914 Europe was at war. The optimists said it would be over by Christmas, but instead the
carnage had just begun.

Sometime in 1915, the man born under the name Isaac Ezratty in Saloniki relocated
to Barcelona, Spain, under the name Baron Ino von Rolland. He had been sent there
by Abteilung IIIb, the German military intelligence. The circumstances around his
recruitment, and mission, remain covered in the fog of war, as do most of his first years in
service of the kaiser. He took up residence, at least eventually, on 29 Ronda San Pedro
in Barcelona. The fake baron was not a towering figure. He was a mere 54-5 (1.63-
1.65m). Reports suggested him being around 30, whereas in fact he was in his early
20s. He was very dark, pale and clean shaven, with small gray-brown eyes and a large
mouth. He also wore rings and tie-pins. Though this description stems form 1918, it would
seem that his appearance was more or less the same during the first years in Spain.

Little is known about the barons first years in Spain, save for a chance meeting with a
young naval officer, who was to become his friend and acquire his services in another
war, under a very different regime. The name of the young officer was Wilhelm
Canaris, who in 1935 became the head of the German military intelligencethe
Abwehr. Canaris had been sent to neutral Spain in late 1915 to handle supplies for
German U-boats, which docked in Spain, while operating in the Western
Mediterranean. The fact that the two men met indicates that the baron also had a hand in
this business. There are also signs from his file that he was involved in pro-German
propaganda.

From what we know from his file, the British interest in Baron von Rolland did not
start until the last months of the war. The first scrap of information there stems from
intelligence shared by the Italians in early July of 1918. It is followed up by similar
information shared by the French, and most of it concerns other agents working for von
Rolland. By Oct. 1, the British had reason to believe that he was about 30, used the alias of
Boyal, but that his real name was Isaac Ezratty or Ezrati.

A week after the war ended, on Nov. 11, 1918, the Brits had a fuller picture. An MI5 report
dated Nov. 18, 1918, gives a pretty accurate picture of the baron and his family
background, though it states that he was a Syrian, with family in Upper Egypt. By the time
the war was over, the British believed that he had been the chief of German espionage
in Barcelona.

As far as WWI is concerned the story of the Jewish spy from Saloniki is a mere curiosity,
as Jews fought on many fronts for many nations during the mass slaughter. His file,
however, tells an interesting story of some of his movements in the interlude of the wars as
well. There is a recording of an arrest when he entered France from Spain. Released from
the French jail, he soon after boarded the S.S. Dunabis and sailed for the city of his birth.
The Greeks were not pleased to see him, and he left for Germany again soon after. By April
1920 he was back in Spain, allegedly being involved in espionage for the Germans again.

Apart from a brief interlude from 1925, when there were false indications that the baron
had turned up in the United Kingdom, the file falls silent about his movements until 1937,
when a Mrs. Cathryn Young called at the Foreign Office. The woman stated that she
was intent on going to Spain, which was engulfed in the bloody civil war, with the
purpose of getting to Madrid as soon as Franco captured it. The reason for the
journey was to get to her Madrid flat because she was anxious about some dogs she had
left in it. What caught the eye of the MI5 were not the dogs, but the information that
during her last journey to the country she had been accompanied by a notorious
German spy, whose name she would not give. It turned out to be von Rolland.
Shortly after this sighting the report of the Nazi spy-network in Morocco appeared.

To what extent von Rolland really was involved in the spy network in North Africa remains
an open question. The informant in Paris might have fed the British old information, or
mere rumors, at least if his movements during the 1930s are to be believed. According to a
postwar statement he was in Spain in 1931-33 and 1934-35, before he headed north to
Denmark in 1936. The following two years he spent traveling in South and Central-
America, before he left Europe for good in 1939, to what was to become his final
destination for the duration of the war. The British meanwhile were in the dark about
his movements, and the last prewar report on him contained conflicting information
that he had either returned to Spain or gone to South America. Apart from an
attempt to trace him in Spain in 1941, the file remains silent until September 1943.

Although the MI5 kept him on the watch list, they did not manage to find out very much
about what he was up to during the 1930s. Yet there is no doubt that von Rolland was on
the pay books of the Abwehr more or less from the day that Canaris became head of
the organization. Canaris had not forgotten the young man he met in Barcelona 20
years earlier. According to the fake baron, Canaris was also the only man in
Germany who knew I came from Hebraic origin. The task of Carnaris Jewish spy was
to send confidential reports that went directly to the head of the Abwehr about the political
situation in the countries where I was sojourning. He also reported on political parties and
what military equipment could be sold. His main task was to establish front companies
who could serve the Abwehr financial transactions.

One of these front companies, Transmare, was founded in late 1935 or early 1936 and
had many branches both in Europe and in the Americas. A second one, Scandinavian
Overseas Trading Company, set up during his stay in Denmark, was entirely his, but
it also had an Abwehr connection, although the local director, a Mr. Whal, did not know
that it was a front company for German intelligence.

By the outbreak of WWII in September 1939, von Rolland had moved to Argentina.
Here he kept working with Transmare, although he later claimed to have known little of
the inner workings of the company in Europe. Under the guidance of von Rolland,
Transmare dealt both in imports and exports. The exports consisted mainly of copper and
bronze in bulk, which was sent to Germany. All contact with Canaris went through
the German Embassy in Buenos Aires. After the war he would claim that his contact
with the company faded around 1943, just around the time that the British got another
lead on the Barons whereabouts.

In September 1943 the British established that he lived in a house in Calle Diagonal in
the Argentinean capital. However, the interest in their old WWI acquaintance increased
two months later, in November, when the notorious Yugoslav triple agent Duan
Popov, codenamed Tricycle, provided the British with information that von Rolland
was a personal friend of Canaris. A Spanish agent working for the Gestapo, Perez
Garcia, confirmed that von Rolland was a German spy, after he was captured
onboard a ship and brought for interrogation to MI5s secret Camp 020.
At the end of 1943 the MI6 managed to trace von Rolland in Buenos Aires. He was now
living in Mersina del Plata and spending at least 10,000 pesos a month entertaining
Argentine society people. He does not mix with leading members of the German
community, the report stated. A few months later, in March 1944, the MI6 reported
that he was in close touch with von Meynen, the German charg dAffaires. His
address remained the same, but according to MI6: he devotes most of his time to
heavy gambling. By now the Saloniki-born Jewish agent seemed unhappy. His brother
Solomon Ezratty, who had been the Spanish vice-council, had escaped their native city
when the Germans staring to round up the Jews. He had managed to save a few of his
friends and eventually went to Spain, before he moved to Tel Aviv in late 1944. The
British thought for a while that his agent brother was on his way to Palestine when they
intercepted a letter that his brother sent to the Spanish Consul General in Athens. However,
that was not the case, and von Rolland remained in Argentina for the duration of the
war, until the Nazis were finally defeated.

After the war the Allies put pressure on Argentina to extradite von Rolland and other
German agents. Toward the end of 1946 he and 12 other deported persons were sent
on the Argentina ship Pampa to Hamburg. Von Rolland was taken to Camp 74 in
Ludwigsburg, which was in the U.S. Zone. He was interrogated by the American
military first, in mid January 1947, but their interest was mainly connected to the state of
Communism in Argentina, a clear indication that the Cold War was starting to take priority.

When the British started their interrogation on May 5, 1947, von Rolland gave a long
written statement about his work for the Germans in both wars. He also told the
British what they wanted to know about German agents in Argentina and contacts he
had had in the Transmare system. The statement is rather straightforward. The
Holocaust was never mentioned by Ezratty or by his interrogators. He had been a German
agent for nearly 30 years but provided no motive whatsoever for his actions. In the end the
file leaves more questions than answers. What drove him? Money? Greed? Action? A
safe conduct out of Europe? His friendship with Canaris? All these questions remain
hidden in the fog of war, unless his Abwehr file someday appears.

What became of Isaac Ezratty is also a mystery. But the Internet does provide a few
clues. In 1948, when the State of Israel gained its independence, he appears to have
moved to Francos Spain, where one can imagine him walking the streets of
Barcelona, the city where he started his carrier as a German spy. Perhaps he hoped that his
conduct would be forgotten. And so it has been, until now. Isaac Ezratty has come alive
again thanks to his file, but he is still surrounded by mystery. How could he serve a
country that murdered 98 percent of all the Jews of his hometown?