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George Blake
Life Time
14 July 1917 - 7 October 1955
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George Blake is a former British intelligence officer recruited by Soviet intelligence. After exposure, he was sentenced in the UK to forty-two years in prison, escaped from prison. He lives in Moscow. He was born in 1922 in Rotterdam. His mother was Dutch and his father was Jewish. During the German occupation, his family fled to England, and he remained in his homeland. He took part in the resistance movement and carried anti-fascist leaflets from city to city. As Blake recalls, My youth was connected
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George Blake is a former British intelligence officer recruited by Soviet intelligence. After exposure, he was sentenced in the UK to forty-two years in prison, escaped from prison. He lives in Moscow.
He was born in 1922 in Rotterdam. His mother was Dutch and his father was Jewish. During the German occupation, his family fled to England, and he remained in his homeland. He took part in the resistance movement and carried anti-fascist leaflets from city to city. As Blake recalls, My youth was connected with World War II, with the horrors of occupation. On May 10, 1940, the German air force bombarded Rotterdam. The city burned and smoked. Thirty-one thousand houses were destroyed.
In 1942, George decided to move to England. With a false passport, he crosses into occupied France and is arrested at the Spanish border. In England, he changed his name to "Blake", entered the naval school, and was sent to the submarine fleet. But his health was weak, so he was found unfit for service in submarines. In August 1944, Blake returned to Holland.
After the war, he went to Hamburg, studied Russian and collected information about Soviet troops. In the autumn of 1948 he was appointed resident of SIS in Seoul. In 1951, he sent a message to the Soviet Embassy and offered his cooperation. Blake later served as Deputy Head of Technical Operations.
Based on George’s information, an operation was carried out in 1956 to open a tunnel in Berlin and Austria.
A Polish intelligence officer extradited Blake and sentenced him to forty-two years in prison. But there he spent only four years, and then fled and settled in Moscow. He later wrote a book of memoirs, “There is no other choice.” And for his services in ensuring the national security of our country, Blake was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Red Banner. /