Philippe Nathanson

Philippe Nathanson was born in 1932 in Alexandria

Nathanson was born in 1932 in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was a dentist who had moved there from Vienna. As a youth he attended a Catholic school and joined the HeHalutz movement with his friend Victor Levy.

In 1951 Levy brought him into a spy network set up in Egypt by Avraham Dar for Unit 131 of Israeli intelligence. Nathanson came to Israel in secret and trained in sabotage and covert photography.

In 1954 the network was ordered to attack American sites in Cairo in Operation Susannah, under Avri Elad. On 23 July Egyptian detectives stopped Nathanson and Levy at a cinema, and a bomb hidden in a glasses case went off and wounded him. He was tried in Cairo and in January 1955 was sentenced to life in prison with hard labor.

He was released in 1968 after 14 years in prison and reached Israel through a third country. He joined the IDF with the rank of major, learned Hebrew and met his wife Barbara. He worked briefly as a photographer for Bamahane and after the Yom Kippur War served in the Mossad.

He died in Israel on 15 May 2004 and was buried in Einat. In 2005 the state gave certificates of honor to the Cairo prisoners and their families.