Yola the Mossad Amazon: the secrets of a high-flying spy


Under cover of a diving club in Sudan, she exfiltrated hundreds of Ethiopian Jews. A high-risk mission.

As a teenager, Yolanta Reitman did not dream of herself as Mata Hari but as Vasco de Gama, scouring the seas in search of new horizons. Her military service completed, she mortgaged her house to buy a yacht, moved to Eilat, a port city on the Gulf of Aqaba, and offered trips to tourists. Passionate about diving, the young woman passes her levels between two excursions, slipping without suspecting it towards an unexpected destiny. It was his instructor who, one fine morning, introduced him to the man named Daniel Limor. He is a Mossad agent, attached to Bitzur, the unit responsible for the security of Jews throughout the world.

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So far, Yolanta Reitman’s knowledge of the spy scene has been limited to the novels of John le Carré, which she devours, and the historical feats of the Mossad, known to all in Israel, such as the kidnapping in full street of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in Buenos Aires, in 1960. Over the course of their meetings, the man gauges her, letting nothing show of his growing interest; then he proposes to “Yola” a first secret operation. “In life, she believes, chance presents itself several times, but most people do not seize it, out of excess of caution or fear of the unexpected. Me, it’s the complete opposite. I am curious and I like surprises. At 32, Yola is taking the plunge. She already has good reflexes, asks no questions. “I knew he wouldn’t say more, I accepted without hesitation,” she explains. It was a unique opportunity to experience everything I wanted: adventure and serving my country. »

Yola when she was one of the first women to lead a Mossad operation in the field. © Courtesy: Yola Reitman/Sipa Press

Daughter of Holocaust survivors, arrived from Germany at the age of 2, Yola is a fervent patriot: “Since the creation of the State of Israel, we have been living in a permanent state of war. The army, the attacks are part of our daily life. Inevitably, we are more ready than other peoples to risk our lives for the defense of our country. For the person who will become his case officer, this dynamic young blond woman, German-speaking, is the ideal candidate for a high-risk infiltration mission. However, at the dawn of the 1980s, the Mossad was still reluctant to send women into hostile terrain. But “Danny”, as Yola calls him, is a free thinker, convinced that the use of female agents can cause a strategic shift in the very virile war between intelligence services. He will fight hard so that the high command authorizes the departure of his young recruit for Sudan, a Muslim nation classified as an enemy of Israel. “They quickly realized that a woman is capable of doing everything that men do, while the reverse is not necessarily true,” she summarizes, amused.

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Yolanta Reitman’s mission was to open a diving club that could serve as a cover for the exfiltration of Jews from neighboring Ethiopia, then in the grip of a terrible civil war. Code name: “Operation Brothers”, one of the most important carried out by the Hebrew secret services. To avoid a crossing of the desert that could not be more risky, the Mossad has bought a small abandoned tourist resort on the edge of the Red Sea. From there, candidates for aliyah could set sail for the Promised Land. Eight thousand of them will take this path. “Caring for our people around the world is the original vocation of the Mossad,” insists Yola proudly. The one, too, which signs one of its singularities…

Aerial view of the bungalows of the Arous Holiday Village, not far from Port-Sudan.

Aerial view of the bungalows of the Arous Holiday Village, not far from Port-Sudan. © Courtesy: Yola Reitman/Sipa Press

Yola underwent intensive training to become “lohemet”, an undercover warrior. She learned to break a spinning mill, to master her “legend”, her front character, and to exercise her memory. No weapons handling training: she has already done her military service. Either way, it wouldn’t help him. On the contrary. “When you are infiltrated, she explains, being arrested in possession of a weapon is like signing your death warrant. It is better to cultivate certain skills, which she recites like a little summary of the perfect spy: always be one step ahead, think outside the box, be constantly on the lookout without seeming to. Finally, the essential according to her: to be animated by a fierce motivation. “It’s not a job, it’s a priesthood. You have to believe in it more than anything. »

No weapon and no displayed seduction: “A woman who is too beautiful would attract attention. We melted into the crowd”

From one day to the next, Yola improvises herself as director of an improbable Club Med where tourists, Western diplomats and senior Sudanese officials flock while, in her parallel world, the Brothers operation is in full swing. Once a month, on moonless nights, while its guests savor refined dishes while dancing under the stars, a team rushes aboard 4 x 4s towards the capital, Khartoum, 500 kilometers away. The vehicles return loaded with Ethiopian refugees, up to 200 to 300 on each trip. They are deposited on the shores of an isolated cove before being transferred to a Tsahal ship, the Israeli army, stationed offshore. Yola remembers most of those Africans who, having never seen the sea, tried to drink it before spitting out the salt water, grimacing.

Sailing boat and deckchair… an idleness that hides a total commitment.

Sailing boat and deckchair… an idleness that hides a total commitment. © Courtesy: Yola Reitman/Sipa Press

The tourist season over, the young woman resumes the course of a seemingly normal existence. Diving, surveying the desert, she takes the opportunity to weave precious links with the local authorities, the Bedouin tribes. In exchange for bottles of whiskey, the chief of police grants passes. The French military attaché, accustomed to the place, innocently allows himself to be debriefed to the sound of the lapping of the waves. Yola becomes the queen of the desert. Nicknamed “Golda”, in homage to her golden curls, she knows everything. One day, through her vast network, she discovers that the Sudanese army is preparing to search the village. In extremis, she manages to remove all traces of compromising material: “We may live in a heavenly place, but I have never forgotten that my mission was to save lives and that I had no right to error. Her escape plan, in case she were unmasked, says a lot about the risks involved: jumping in a Zodiac and waiting for help… on the high seas. “I was just supposed to hope that our helicopters would find me before the Sudanese,” she comments soberly.

Throughout her three years in Sudan, Yolanta Reitman regularly returns to Israel for brief vacations. Without ever breathing a word of his clandestine activities. “Because of my permanent tan, those around me suspected me of having a rich lover who was taking me on a cruise to the end of the world,” she says. The infiltrator leads people to believe, gradually creating a vacuum around her, avoiding her friends to save herself from lying to them. At no time did this double life weigh on him: “I could have stayed there indefinitely. I had ended up becoming my legend, the real Yola. »

Today, at 74, she defends women victims of domestic violence

Until the day when, for reasons she will never know, she receives the order to evacuate. Yola flees into the night, rushes into the desert where a helicopter is waiting for her. Back in Israel, she decides to leave the Mossad: “I should have responded to orders, bowed to the hierarchy. In Sudan, I was independent, I carried out my mission as I saw fit. I preferred to remain free. Young retiree, she returns to her first love, crosses the ocean in a sailboat, resumes studies in biochemistry.
Now 74 years old, Yolanta Reitman lives in Kadima Zoran, a small town about thirty kilometers from Tel Aviv, surrounded by her companion, her adopted daughter, their three dogs and their six cats. When negotiating a photo shoot, the ex-spy jokes: “It all depends on the kind of photo, I’m out of age! The reputation that precedes the “amazons” like her, supposed to use their charms to achieve their ends, amuses her. “That, she giggles, is in the movies! In reality, a woman who is too beautiful attracts attention. What is expected of us as a priority is to blend in with the crowd. »

Yolanta Reitman (74) now lives in Kadima Zoran, near Tel Aviv.

Yolanta Reitman (74) now lives in Kadima Zoran, near Tel Aviv. © Heidi Levine/Sipa Press

Spies don’t like the light, but they know how to make an exception when it comes to restoring the image of an organization regularly singled out for its targeted assassinations. For three decades, Yola jealously guarded her secret. It was the Mossad, anxious to show a more human face, which decided to declassify some of the operations where women had played a leading role. For example, the spectacular theft of the Iranian nuclear archives or the bombing of a reactor in Syria. “These women have worked enormously for the survival of Israel”, underlines Michel Bar-Zohar, who reveals in “The amazons of the Mossad” the story of about thirty of these heroines torn from anonymity. “They started by serving coffee, then typing reports; today, they represent nearly half of the workforce and a third of the team leaders in covert operations. So much so that the Mossad would have become, he concludes, the most feminist institution in the country.

After hanging up the gloves, most of these warriors turn to education or get involved in favor of minorities, such as the Jews of Africa, these “brothers” for whom Yolanta Reitman risked her skin, often treated on their welcoming land like second-class citizens. She has chosen to devote herself to others left behind: foreign victims of domestic violence, without recourse or status in the face of all-powerful Israeli husbands before the law. Opération Soeurs is the name of the association she created in 2019. Proof that you never completely get rid of an extraordinary past.

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“The Amazons of the Mossad”, ed. Saint-Simon, 400 pages, 22.95 euros.

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