EMMANUEL (WINGY) WEINSTEIN
(AKA LUKAS VONGARD)
Wingy in the Royal Canadian Navy
Manny Weinstein was four-years-old when his family emigrated from Poland to Canada. They settled in Montreal where Manny attended the Jewish People’s School (Yiddisheh Folk Shuleh) for several years before continuing through high school in the city’s public school system.
Manny changed his name to Lukas Vongard during a largely cloak-and-dagger sea-going career that began with his wartime service in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and continued well into the 1960s.
He joined the RCN in 1944 as soon as he was old enough and served on a corvette doing convoy escort and anti-submarine patrols in the North Atlantic. While in the RCN he acquired the nick-name “Wingy” by which he was known for the rest of his life. After the war he worked briefly as a stoker on a coal-burning Great Lakes freighter before becoming involved in Aliyah Bet.
Wingy’s Aliyah Bet career began in Baltimore, where he worked for a while with the team that helped prepare the “President Warfield” for her role as the Haganah ship “Exodus 1947.” Before long he was sent to Miami to join the crew of the “Tradewinds” (“Hatikvah”) on which he served through her entire Aliyah Bet career.
Wingy Weinstein while serving in Aliyah Bet
Following the interception and capture of “Hatikvah” by the British, he was detained in Cyprus with most of the ship’s passengers and crew. There he became involved in the successful plot to sabotage the vessel that would, after their release from Cyprus, bring them to Haifa. To achieve this end the team of conspirators had to dig a tunnel under the camp’s perimeter fence, smuggle in materials to make a bomb, get the bomb onto the vessel, the “Empire Lifeguard,” and detonate it in Haifa port just as the last of its passengers disembarked. Wingy was among the suspects rounded up for questioning. He was held at Atlit until November 1947 when he was released for lack of evidence.
When the troubles started following the UN’s adoption of its Partition Plan for Palestine on 29th November 1947, Wingy joined the Palmach. He initially served with its maritime sabotage unit, and then in its “Haportzim” unit as it fought towards besieged Jerusalem. He participated in the fighting at Bab el Wad, Katamon, and Sha’ar Etzion, where he was wounded.
In June 1948 Wingy was transferred to the nascent Israel Navy. Within its framework he did procurement work in Europe and at various times sailed on three of the rechesh ships that brought military supplies to Israel.
After his discharge from the navy, Wingy worked for a few years on ships of the Shoham Maritime Services Co., later the Zim Navigation Company, during which period he obtained his third mate and second mate certificates.
In 1952, Wingy was nominated to the Intelligence Corps, then a unit of the IDF’s Operations Division, which in due course became the Mossad. After completion of his training program, he was given an intelligence-gathering assignment. This necessitated a new identity. He visited Canada in April 1954 and officially changed his name to Lukas Vongard. For the next 10 years or so he sailed, first as deck officer and then as captain, on cargo ships of various foreign nationalities; this role frequently brought him into Arab seaports. He obtained a Canadian Master’s (Captain’s) Certificate in 1961.
Source: American Veterans of Israel Newsletter: Winter 2003