Meir Max Bineth

Meir Max Bineth was born in 1917 in Szombathely

Bineth was born in Szombathely, Hungary, in 1917. His grandfather was the scholar Jacob Obermeyer. He grew up in Cologne from 1919 and attended a Jewish high school there.

After the Nazis came to power, he and his parents moved to Palestine in 1935 and settled in Tel Aviv. In 1936 he trained in agriculture at Kfar Hasidim and joined the Haganah. In 1942 he went to Abadan, Iran, to work at oil refineries, and taught Hebrew to young local Jews.

In Italy he built radio sets for immigrant ships. In 1948 he joined the IDF Intelligence Corps. In 1950 he married Jane Davidov, who came from South Africa, and their daughter Michal was born later.

In 1952 he went to Egypt posing as a German businessman named Max Bennett. He met General Muhammad Naguib and built ties with German advisers there. He was asked to pass money to an Israeli network, and after the failure of Operation Susannah he was arrested.

After months of interrogation, he took his own life in his cell on the day before his trial in 1954. His body was reburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in 1959.