Wolfgang Lotz
Wolfgang Lotz (6 January 1921 – 13 May 1993), who later adopted the Hebrew name Ze'ev Gur-Arie, was an Israeli spy in Egypt during the 1960s providing intelligence and conducting operations against Egyptian military scientists.Wolfgang Lotz was born in Mannheim, Germany on January 6, 1921 to a Jewish mother, Helene, and a non-Jewish German father, Hans.[2] During the Sinai War in 1956, when Israel, the United Kingdom, and France attacked Egypt, Lotz rose to the rank of Major and commanded an Infantry brigade.[2] Lotz was sent to Germany in 1959 in order to establish his cover story as a German businessman and ex-Wehrmacht officer who had served in North Africa, and was a former member of the Nazi Party.[2] After purportedly living for 11 years in Australia where he had bred horses, in his "legend" (cover story) Lotz had come back to Egypt in order to establish a riding club.[2] Lotz traveled to Paris in June 1961 for a meeting with his operators (he was in the meantime transferred to the responsibility of the Mossad), where he received large amounts of money and a transponder for sending secret messages.[4] Inspired by the Syrian example, the Egyptians had purchased new radio direction-finding equipment from the Soviet Union, which promptly picked up Lotz's transmissions.[5] The most recent account, reported that the Egyptians aided by Soviet experts in radio detection tracked Lotz down to his Cairo home and arrested him.[3] Lotz was called in 1980 to Munich by Egon Flörchinger, general manager of book publisher Moewig Verlag, for whom he wrote a number of paperbacks.