Published: 14 December 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ON DECEMBER 15, 1927, a 22-year-old Jewish migrant from the Polish township of Krynica disembarked from the SS Moreton Bay in Melbourne. Hirsch Munz was an educated multilinguist with broad literary and scientific interests. The graduate of a Hebrew high school and Jewish seminary, Munz worked in Poland as a schoolteacher.
His new country, Australia, recovering from effects of World War I yet teetering towards the Great Depression, stood to gain much from this intelligent and capable new arrival.
The record shows Munz built a successful career as a wool scientist, businessmen, and a prolific writer for popular and literary publications. He co-founded both the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, and the Australian Jewish Historical Society, and was a leading light in the earliest years of Melbourne’s Kadimah Cultural Centre and Library.
For these, and other contributions to scientific, cultural and civic life, Munz has been accorded a place in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, a ‘Who’s Who’ publication of eminent Australians).
But now, nearly a century since his arrival, the story of Munz’s life in Australia has become the subject of extraordinary claims and conjecture.
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A new book Traitors and Spies: Espionage and corruption in high places in Australia, 1901-50, published in September by Allen and Unwin, alleges Munz was a spy for the Soviet Union.
In particular, the book’s author Dr John Fahey, a former intelligence officer and Honorary Fellow at Macquarie University’s Department of Criminology and Security Studies, alleges that Munz worked for the Soviet Army foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU.
Fahey says Munz moved around Australia, over several decades, in a dedicated, disciplined fashion, eluding detection by intelligence agencies.
According to Fahey’s book, Munz worked in collaboration with Melbourne Jewish businessmen Solomon Kosky and Jack Skolnik and a non-Jewish man David John Morris (the subject of recent SBS TV show Every Family Has a Secret) in a spy network called the “Melbourne cell”.
Fahey contends the Melbourne cell, led by Munz, were GRU spies working under the guise of fur traders for the Far Eastern Fur Trading Company, a front created by the Soviet Union in 1936 that enabled large sums of money, equipment and documentation to be passed legitimately to operatives around the world.
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The Melbourne cell used their deep political and business relationships to gather data, recruit other agents and feed high-level and sensitive information back to Moscow. Fahey cannot point to a specific outcome of these alleged clandestine activities.
However, he made the unsubstantiated claim to the Herald Sun’s ‘In Black and White’ podcast that during World War II the group were “definitely stealing Ultra intelligence (wartime signals intelligence obtained by the Allies) and information on Australian, British and American intelligence activity, as well as American and Australian military activity in the Pacific”.
Fahey is so convinced of the group’s effectiveness that he describes the Melbourne cell as “probably one of the most successful intelligence operations ever conducted inside Australia, by a foreign power”.
Fahey is so convinced of the group’s effectiveness that he describes the Melbourne cell as “probably one of the most successful intelligence operations ever conducted inside Australia, by a foreign power”.
It is a bold and unprecedented claim. One that publisher and author have both trumpeted in the book’s publicity.
But the idea of a Melbourne cell – led by Hirsch Munz – has been contested by two leading Australian historians and vigorously denied by Munz’s son, Martin.
At the centre of Fahey’s alleged discovery is a fragment of an intercepted ‘vocalisation’ (verbalised coded messages) by Galina Nikolaevina Nosova – the wife of NKGB agent Feodor Nosov in Australia – to Moscow.
In December 1949, Galina’s voice was captured by listening devices installed in the walls of a flat in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The couple had no idea their flat had been bugged by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). The recordings captured Galina reading aloud decoded messages; identifying a Soviet agent working for a secret division, who arrived in Australia as a Polish refugee in 20 years earlier.
In an interview with The Jewish Independent, Sydney-based Fahey explained how he connected Munz with the recordings.
“I went back and said, somewhere between 1927 and 1929, someone from Poland entered Australia. When you look at the immigration applications, there were 900. You go back and look up ‘Polish’ and you get 224 entries.
In December 1949, Galina’s voice was captured by listening devices in her Kings Cross flat, which captured her ... a Soviet agent working for a secret division, who arrived in Australia as a Polish refugee in 20 years earlier.
“I thought, ‘Got him’, December 1927 (Munz’s arrival into Australia). If Galina Nosova is undoing a message from Moscow and she’s reading that in 1949 – that fits with the timeframe.
“Hirsch Munz is in a perfect position to talent spot (recruit other spies) in the community and to talent spot in the industry.
“The job of an illegal (a Soviet term for spy without diplomatic immunity) is they have to get into the country, they have to acclimatise, they have to build a career and a profile. And they have to network. As they network, they talent spot.”
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Fahey says intelligence reports in the 1930s and 1940s, compiled by Commonwealth Investigation Service (CIS) – ASIO’s precursor organisation – confirmed his suspicions that Munz was a deep Soviet agent.
“The thing that makes you worry about Hirsch is the Poles’ reaction to him. The Polish community in 1939 wanted nothing to do with him. They made a formal effort to have him imprisoned by the Australian authorities.
“The real reason they wanted him locked up was because of his radical communist perspectives, that he was a dangerous communist and was working to have the Polish government replaced by the Soviet regime.”
Fahey also has little doubt about the involvement of Skolnik and Kosky – both successful businessmen and generous benefactors in Melbourne’s Jewish community.
“Jack Skolnik and Solomon Kosky – I don’t look at them and think they might have been [Soviet Agents]. They were. There’s hard, hard evidence in the intelligence world.”
Jack Skolnik and Solomon Kosky – I don’t look at them and think they might have been [Soviet Agents]. They were. There’s hard, hard evidence in the intelligence world. - John Fahey
In Traitors and Spies, Fahey cites several intelligence reports as evidence; Skolnik hiring his associate, David John Morris (a Communist Party member), to build a Faraday cage (an electro-magnetic enclosure used to block recording devices) at his Toorak home in 1955; ASIO tapping the switchboard of Skolnik’s Maroondah Lake Hotel in Healesville in an effort to trace his links to Moscow.
As for Kosky, who first came to the attention of the CIS in the 1940s, Fahey mentions several questionable meetings between him and Soviet embassy staff and attaches, as proof that he was a clandestine agent.
The first was a meeting with a suspected Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) agent in 1948, and the second, in 1952, with suspected GRU agents. Fahey also points out Kosky was outed as an RIS agent by Soviet defector Vladimir Petrov at the 1954 Royal Commission on Espionage Commission.
A former intelligence officer himself – employed by the Australian Signals Directorate in the 1990s – Fahey believes he makes connections in intelligence reports that other researchers have overlooked.
“If you’re an academic historian, you might be reading this and saying, ‘there’s not enough to go on.’ (But) If you’re an intelligence officer this would be screaming at you from the page.”
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FAHEY’S CLAIMS HAVE BEEN CONTESTED, however, by two leading historians, Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick of the Australian Catholic University, and Emeritus Professor Phillip Deery of Victoria University – both archival historians with decades of experience working on intelligence files.
Fitzpatrick refutes the idea that NKGB operatives (such the Nosovs) would have access to information on their rival intelligence agency the GRU (eg the Melbourne cell), as Traitors and Spies claims.
In a review published in the Australian Book Review, Fitzpatrick challenges Fahey’s reading of ASIO files, including notes on Solomon Kosky’s meetings with Soviet embassy officials and attaches; writing it “seems harsh to interpret these as treason”.
Fitzpatrick said Fahey’s discovery of the Melbourne cell “could also be viewed as his speculation or even fantasy.”
Deery, in a review published by Inside Story, wrote: “this reviewer, despite the publisher’s claim, could find no evidentiary trail of operational links between the members of this ‘professional’ cell or between it and the GRU”.
This reviewer, despite the publisher’s claim, could find no evidentiary trail of operational links between the members of this ‘professional’ cell or between it and the GRU - Phillip Deery
Deery told The Jewish Independent that Fahey’s “much-vaunted ‘discovery’ of the Melbourne cell by Fahey is dubious at best, egregious at worst.”
“The evidence he presents to support his central claim that three Melbourne businessmen, whom he gratuitously identifies as ‘Jewish’ and one open Communist Party member were deep-cover GRU (Soviet military intelligence) agents - is inconclusive, fragmentary and often dubious.
“Simply because an individual is named in an intelligence file or is given a codename by the Russian Intelligence Service, does not make that individual a spy.
“Such circumstantial markers may be used by the intelligence officers to form judgments about culpability, but historians require corroboration or triangulation of evidence to reach and publish their conclusions. Often, Fahey, a former intelligence officer, prefers the former approach.”
Simply because an individual is named in an intelligence file or is given a codename by the Russian Intelligence Service, does not make that individual a spy - Phillip Deery.
The Jewish Independent put these and other criticisms of Traitors and Spies to Fahey. In the book he wrote that Munz operated “a tiny fur trading company, H. Munz Wool Trading Company, out of 473-481 Bourke Street, Melbourne”.
Fur trading was the principal cover for clandestine Soviet agents operating around the world so the discrepancy in Fahey’s description – fur Vs wool – raises questions as to whether Munz was part of the cell. But Fahey told The Jewish Independent the distinction was inconsequential. “Fur and wool are the same game,” Fahey explained. “If you’re making fur coats, you’re looking for weather, for sheep skin, for goat skin, you’re looking for wool – high grade wool.”
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Arguably the most glaring inaccuracy concerns the Royal Commission featuring Soviet defector Vladimir Petrov.
The book says Munz, along with other members of the Melbourne cell, were publicly singled out at the 1954 Royal Commission on Espionage. In particular, the Commission “made adverse findings against them.”
But there was no mention of Munz at all in the Royal Commission, unlike Kosky and Skolnik, who were both named.
Fahey conceded: “If I was re-writing that, I’d rephrase it slightly. Munz was never a candidate before that Commission. His name was not up there. He had no adverse findings.”
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AFTER A LONG CAREER working in regimental and intelligence postings, John Fahey turned attention to his lifelong passion for military history. In 2004 he completed a PhD at the University of Sydney; a study of the economic cost of strategic bombing campaign during World War II.
In the early 2000s he encouraged a friend to develop the first comprehensive history of Australia’s early intelligence efforts. The book (which became two volumes) was meant to be a joint project. Instead, it became a solo endeavour that took Fahey seven years to research and write, and involved extensive archival research with MI5, CIA and ASIO files. He did so without a commission or advance, working on the manuscript in his spare time (he is managing director of a medical training company).
“I didn’t want to write a book on commission. I didn’t want anyone saying to me ‘you can’t write this, and you can’t write that.”
There was no mention of Munz at all in the Royal Commission, unlike Kosky and Skolnik, who were both named. Fahey conceded: “If I was re-writing that, I’d rephrase it slightly. Munz was never a candidate before that Commission. His name was not up there. He had no adverse findings.”
The first volume, Australia’s First Spies: The Remarkable Story of Australia’s Intelligence Operations, 1901–45 (also published by Allen and Unwin), enjoyed positive reviews on its release in 2018. The breadth and depth of the research impressed many reviewers.
It was praised by esteemed military historian and Emeritus Professor, David Horner, for filling a gap in Australian intelligence history. Political scientist Daniel Baldino from Notre Dame University also described it as a “momentarily important, insightful and well-informed book”.
But Australia’s First Spies was subjected to a stinging appraisal by another military and intelligence historian, Rhys Crawley, who co-authored ASIO’s authorised history The Secret Cold War: The Official History of ASIO, 1975-1989.
Crawley’s review criticised Fahey’s “troubling use of historical imagination.” In particular, the reviewer challenged Fahey’s tendency to lead to “definitive conclusions that are not substantiated by evidence.”
The review ends with a recommendation to potential readers: Fahey’s book be “read with caution and a keen eye for the evidential trail.”
HIRSCH MUNZ’S SOLE SURVIVING child, Martin, is aged in his 70s. The former lawyer- turned-artist lives in a quiet corner of rural northern New South Wales. When a friend alerted Munz to Traitors and Spies – and the allegations made about Hirsch – he was “flabbergasted. And I was also very sad,” he told The Jewish Independent.
Munz says the profile of his father doesn’t accord with his understanding of Hirsch’s life.
“He (Fahey) paints a picture of this master double agent who on the outside is supposed to be a significant academic but who is really a deep Soviet military intelligence plant.”
He says Hirsch (who died in 1979 after a suffering catastrophic stroke 14 years earlier) spent his final years paralysed, unable to speak and reliant on the full-time care of his wife, Esther.
He also rejects suggestions his father associated with the other men at the centre of Melbourne Cell allegations.
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“Kosky and Skolnik were not people I have any recollection or knowledge of, being part of my parents’ circle.”
Soon after reading the book, Munz launched a complaint with Allen and Unwin.
“I’d be interested to see any further information your author can provide to verify his conclusion about my father. Until that time, I remain profoundly concerned at the gratuitous slur to his reputation and that a reputable publisher such as Allen and Unwin would publish a libellous farrago about him,” Munz wrote in a letter to the publisher.
Fahey stands by his “Melbourne cell” discovery, although he has agreed to make some minor amendments to the book if it is reprinted.
“I think Hirsch Munz was a dedicated, committed man. I get a feeling of utter discipline. I find it admirable. That commitment. I would have loved to have met him,” Fahey tells The Jewish Independent.
Munz is not interested in Fahey’s praise for his father.
Soon after reading the book, Martin Munz launched a complaint with Allen and Unwin. “I’d be interested to see any further information your author can provide to verify his conclusion about my father," he wrote.
“Well, that’s all very well and good, but he’s accusing my father and these other guys of treason, war crimes. Capital offences. This is very serious stuff.”
Instead, Munz wants an erratum (correction of a published text) posted by the publisher and future copies of Traitors and Spies to “de-emphasis” the Jewish identity of the Melbourne cell. These requests have been rejected by Allen and Unwin (although they have agreed to redact Hirsch Munz’s photo from future editions).
Martin Munz accepts there is little else that can be done to rectify the record; Australia’s defamation law only protects the living.
In an article entitled ‘Slurring a good name’ for the Australian Book Review, Munz laments there is “no legal recourse for the heirs or estate of the deceased to protect his or her reputation, name, or image from defamation or unlicensed commercial exploitation”.
He says Australian law should recognise such a right. But until that time comes, he adds, “historians and their publishers need to meet a higher standard than was demonstrated in Traitors and Spies.”
Main image: Hirsch Munz (left), Jack Skolnik and Solomon Kosky
