Gregory Wallance is author of the upcoming book The Woman Who Fought an Empire: Sarah Aaronsohn and Her Nili Spy Ring. In this podcast I interview Mr. Wallance about the details of the book and how he went about researching it. Mr. Wallance has written books on historic legal issues and how the State Department responded to the Holocaust. He has been an Assistant United States Attorney and is currently a lawyer focused on white collar crime.

 

1:56 – Mr. Wallance begins by discussing his previous work on a book about the criminal justice system in the 1970s. He wrote about the Dred Scott case as well as the State Department’s response to the Holocaust.

2:38 – Mr. Wallance talks about his interest in writing about espionage and WWI and his studies on undercover techniques. His work led him to Sarah’s story.

3:05 – Mr. Wallance discusses the focus of the book. Sarah’s parents were from Romania and were part of the first modern wave of settlers to Israel. Her life resembled that of a pioneer child. She learned to ride horses, shoot and work in the fields. She was highly intelligent and well-educated woman.

4:15 – Sarah’s parents were part of a wave of hundreds of Romanians who went to Palestine without the needed farming skills. Sarah married a Constantinople businessman and moved there but the war broke out and she became homesick. She took a train back to her settlement to see her family. Her thousand-mile train trip went through the area of the Armenian genocide as it was occurring. Sarah witnessed this and feared this same thing could happen to her Jewish people in Palestine. She saw horrible atrocities against Armenians as she traveled. She decided that Great Britain must be the Ottoman Empire to avoid this. Her brother joined her in her new plan.

8:18 – Mr. Wallace says the book is a celebration of Sarah’s courage. Her first shock was what she witnessed. The second was the death of a close friend who was leading the spy ring. Sarah took over the ring after his death. She did so under very dangerous conditions behind enemy lines. The British collected her intelligence one a month by ship. Most of the ring was made up of unruly male Jews, many who loved her. But she was committed to her spying. She saw it as a sacred duty. Her brother was in Cairo working with British intelligence and he begged her to go to Cairo but she refused. The British officers she dealt with admired her commitment to the cause and her courage.

12:08 – The British used some Arab agents but didn’t have many spies in the area. They found Sarah’s ring to have been the only worthwhile one. It might have been the best British spy system of the war. Some of her agents were Jewish men in the Ottoman Army. One of her best coups was finding out about new planes the Ottomans were sending to the Sinai. The information informed the British they would lose air superiority in the Sinai and they were able to respond to this threat and regained air superiority and won the third battle of Gaza thought they lost the first two. They were then able to conquer Jerusalem.

15:22 – Sarah would travel through the countryside and clandestinely meet with the troops who gave her the information they had collected. She didn’t look like a spy. However, she was eventually found it. Only Sarah and her brother knew that the leader of the spy ring had died in the desert. He was charismatic and inspiring and they didn’t want the others to lose morale by finding out he was died. Sarah cold-bloodedly told her spies he had gone to Britain to train. One member of the ring didn’t believe her and went off to Cairo to learn the truth. The Ottomans caught him and tortured him until he gave them information on Sarah and others. Sarah ended up being captured in October 1917. She was tortured for four days in her village. Sarah refused to give information and even taunted her captors. She wanted to be remembered as a warrior who h...