A few years ago, I made a video about Hitler’s Jewish soldiers, the men who were partly Jewish and who joined the German armed forces during World War II.

There were also some full Jews who obtained fake documents, stating that they were of course not and effectively hid from their hunters by enlisting in Hitler’s military.

You don’t hear too much about the Nazis who work postwar for Israel, but there were a few SS officers who found gainful employment helping Israel deal with threats to its national sovereignty posed by various surrounding Arab nations.

Most notoriously, of course, Hitler’s famed commando leader, SS Colonel Otto Scotsi, who worked for a time as a killer for the Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service.

On occasion, Israel even made use of men who were heavily implicated in the Holocaust.

Most notoriously former SS Colonel Valta Ralph, the man who created the mobile gas vans on the Eastern Front, who provided information to the Mossad when he was in Syria working for the dictatorship there.

Ralph was never brought to justice for his wartime crimes and died a free man in Santiago, Chile in 1984.

But what about an SS man actually serving in the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force? Sounds absolutely ridiculous, but in the case I’m going to outline to you today, completely true.

Born in Kernigburg, Germany, now Kalinengrad in Russia in 1923 to a single mother, Ulic Schnaf’s mother left him outside an orphanage from where he was adopted by another German family.

In 1941, he graduated from a vocational school as a mechanical technician and at the age of 17 joined the Vafan SS, serving initially in the fifth SS Puna division, Viking or Viking.

seeing lots of combat on the Eastern Front and in 1943 being wounded by a Soviet shell fragment, receiving the wound badge in black and being hospitalized in Germany.

On his release, Schnuff was sent to an antipartisan unit in Yugoslavia and later in Italy, where he was taken prisoner by the Americans near the Po River in late 1944.

He would remain in P camps until 1947 and was investigated along with all other SS men and found in his case not to be complicit in any war crimes.

Released, he went to Munich, sharing a room in the bombedout city with another young German man who turned out to be a Holocaust survivor.

Schnuff had very little money, whereas he noticed that his roommate was receiving financial assistance as a Holocaust survivor from a US charity.

Schnuff came to the conclusion that it paid to be a Jewish Holocaust survivor, so he decided to become one.

He had also heard that many Jews were immigrating to the British mandate of Palestine, and though not a Zionist, he decided to tag along and start a new life there.

He assumed the false name Gabriel Viceman and applied as a Holocaust survivor for financial assistance which he received.

Due to the huge displacements of millions of people and the destruction of much documentation, it was virtually impossible for any of these charities or authorities to check Schnuff’s new identity.

And with Holocaust aid money in his pocket, he set sail on an illegal ship that was transporting Jews to the Holy Land.

However, postwar the British government was severely limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine and Schnuff’s ship was intercepted by a Royal Navy cruiser and the passengers sent to an internment camp, the British island of Cyprus.

In the camp, Schnaft, of course, a former SS soldier and combat veteran, joined a militant Zionist group in the camp that was associated with the Hagana, a Jewish military organization in Palestine that was agitating violently for the creation of an Israeli state.

Schnaf was in Cyprus when Israel gained independence and was eventually released and allowed to go there.

He lived on a kabutz for a while, learning Hebrew, and then joined the IDF.

He served in the independence war, apparently very well, seeing plenty of combat, rising to the rank of sergeant.

Settling in a small town outside Jerusalem, Schnuff was active in Mpai, the political party of Prime Minister David Bengurian, and was promoted to become an officer in the IDF’s reserve artillery branch.

He would rise to the rank of captain.

Schnuft then sought a full-time commission in the IDF, but places were limited and Shinbet, Israel’s internal security organization, had some doubts about this officer.

And in 1952, they had opened a file on Captain Viceman, wondering who exactly this blondhaired, blue-eyed person really was.

Questions had arisen when Schnaf’s fellow officers had told Shinbet of his disturbing behavior during a somewhat rockous party when Schnaft had become very drunk.

He had shown them photographs of himself in a Vuffan SS uniform taken during the war.

Though Schnaf was able to laugh this off as a Purim costume, he was also suspected of stealing and selling ammunition from an army base where he worked.

And indeed, an investigation found quantities of ammunition in his quarters.

However, Shinbet at the time did not take seriously the idea that Captain Viceman might in fact be an SS veteran.

It seemed too far-fetched even for them.

So the IDF decided instead not to extend Shaft’s commission and he was discharged from the army and moved to Ashkalom into a rooming house run by a German Jewish couple.

Schnuff soon after began an affair with his landlord’s wife and he was told to leave, which he did in company with the landlord’s wife.

Hearing of the economic miracle taking place in West Germany, Schnuffed and his girlfriend decided to go there.

In 1954, they booked passage on a ship to Genoa in Italy and from there went to the West German consulate attempting to obtain permission to enter the country.

Schnuff, however, was denied entry because at the time Israel was boycotting West Germany, and Israeli passports were even marked with a declaration that they may not enter West Germany.

His girlfriend, however, still had a German passport, and she left him in Genoa, moving to West Germany, later returning herself to Israel to reconcile with her husband before the pair of them returned to West Germany to start a business.

abandoned by his girlfriend and virtually penniless, Schnuff went to