The Israeli star of Fiddler on the Roof was an operative for the Mossad spy agency, his family have revealed.
Chaim Topol, who died last month aged 87, worked for the Mossad branch in London as part of his intriguing double life, they said in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Topol played Tevye the milkman on Fiddler on the Roof. He was also James Bond’s wingman in For Your Eyes Only and a nutty professor in the 1980′s cult hit Flash Gordon. He was his country’s most famous Hollywood star long before Bar Refaeli, the supermodel, and Gal Gadot, the Wonder Woman actress, made their names internationally.
Topol in Tel Aviv in 2015. His son, Omer, said his father was involved in “secret missions”
Haaretz said that his daughter Adi was apprehensive about opening boxes in her father’s London apartment. She said: “Who knows what I’ll find there? Maybe secret listening devices and hidden cameras.”
His son, Omer, said: “I don’t know exactly what the appropriate definition is for the missions and duties he performed. But what is clear is that Dad was involved in secret missions on behalf of the Mossad.”
His children and his widow, Galia, recalled seeing him taking a small Minox camera and a tiny spool tape recorder on secretive trips abroad.
Galia said: “What always motivated Chaimkeh [Topol] were ants in his pants, adventure and courage. Therefore, no one was more suitable than him to be involved even in issues that are not discussed.”
Topol, who appeared in more than 30 movies, started his acting career in a theatrical troupe in the Israeli army in the 1950s, where he met his future wife. His first major breakthrough was the lead role in the groundbreaking 1964 Israeli film Sallah Shabati, about the hardships of Middle Eastern immigrants in Israel.
Two years later he made his English-language film debut alongside Kirk Douglas in Cast a Giant Shadow. He spent years playing Tevye on stage in London and Broadway.
His son told Haaretz that the actor was a frequent visitor to the Israeli embassy. Topol’s main contact for missions was his close friend, the Mossad officer Peter Zvi Malkin. The Israeli secret agent was one of the four agents who kidnapped the Nazi Adolf Eichmann from Argentina.
Topol “was a kind of cover for Tzvika’s [Malkin] operations”, according to Galia.
Topol and fellow Fiddler on the Roof cast members in London, where he was a frequent visitor to the Israeli embassy
Malkin would “come to London and live with us when he needed to”, said Adi, adding that her father would “help Zvika with all kinds of things he wanted to check — such as an access point, recording programmes and security arrangements”.
The family explained that this involved Topol creating a diversion, to enable Malkin to undertake missions.
Topol was born in 1935 in the Florentine district on the border of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, in what was then British-mandated Palestine, and grew up in a poor home without electricity or running water.
He devoted much of his later years to charity as chairman of the board of Jordan River Village, a camp serving Middle Eastern children with life-threatening diseases.
Source: The Times
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