How the Romanians Exhumed Three Bodies in Search of a Spy The Mystery in which the Life and Death of Arthur Albert Tester Is Shrouded

The life, but especially the death of the spy Arthur Albert Tester, are shrouded in mystery After his disappearance from Romania, after August 23, 1944, the authorities exhumed three bodies in the hope of finding him.

Arthur Albert Tester was born on August 23, 1895, Stuttgart A summary of documents found at the German Foreign Ministry and microfilmed on August 3, 1946 by the FO/State Documents Field Team says that Tester entered Romania probably in 1939, coming from Greece.

Oberleutnant Rudolf Pander, who worked in the Abwehr in Bucharest, said that "German penetration of the British intelligence services was achieved through the use of an English banker called Tester", writes Dennis Deletant, the British historian specializing in the history of Romania, in the book "British clandestine activities in Romania during the Second World War" The spy Arthur Albert Tester left Bucharest after 23 August 1944.

Brigadier ER Greer, Deputy Director of the British Military Mission in Bucharest, reported on 17 September 1945 to MI 5 that the general impression was that Tester was no longer alive and that "probably no one bothered to mark the graves correctly in Arad during the coup of August 24, 1944" Greer was referring to the exhumation of a body from the Pomenirea cemetery in Arad, marked as Tester's.

In the same report he writes: "After comparing the data from the dental record with the exhumation report I came to the conclusion that it was not Tester's body "More than that, I followed every rumor that he was still alive, but I didn't come across anything concrete.

" A review of the evidence surrounding Tester's death was drawn up by an official who stated that on 26 September 1944 the Daily Express quoted a report at British United in Bucharest as saying that Tester had been "killed in Transylvania by a frontiersman while attempting to flee to Hungary On October 6, 1944, the same newspaper published an account signed by his Bucharest correspondent Cedric Salter, according to which Tester had "staged his own death" a step away from the Transylvanian border after the anti-German coup of August 23 while he was fleeing to Hungary.

"A guard shot at his car and was slightly wounded in the leg He arranged as an unrecognizable corpse, of the same stature as himself, wearing the remains of his clothes, his clothes and with his wristwatch and snuffbox, to be found near his burnt car" He then arrived at his farm near Hunedoara, in Transylvania, and from there he left for Budapest.

As a result of rumors that his death was faked, the Romanian authorities twice exhumed a body from what was supposed to be the tester's grave in the Pomenirea Cemetery in Arad When these exhumations were carried out is not known, but before 8 February 1945 a third exhumation took place in the presence of a member of the British Consular Advisory Office.

It is not known whether the grave from which this body was exhumed was undoubtedly the one in which Tester was buried, as there was nothing on the tall wooden cross marking the grave to suggest that it was Tester On the other hand, no evidence has ever emerged that Tester survived his attempt to cross the Romanian-Hungarian border when challenged by Romanian border guards, concludes renowned historian Dennis Deletant.

Mystery of birth and death About the life and death of the spy Tester we find new information, extracted from the archives, on the blog https://josefjakobs info/.

"I came across Tester's name while doing research on people associated with the black passport market in Berlin in the late 1930s Tester's name came up as an associate of Josef Emil Roos and it piqued my interest.

A British banker who infiltrated the British Secret Service? That sounds fascinating When the National Archives at Kew offered all their digitized files for free, I took the opportunity to download Tester's files.

Tester was a complex individual who was a professional liar, scoundrel and con artist However, he always seemed to manage to stay one step ahead of the law, until he finally met his end at the hands of a Romanian border policeman in 1944.

Or not?'', the author writes The author has shown that mystery hangs over not only Tester's death, but even his birth.

"Tester always claimed he was born in Britain as his father, Fred Tester, was a British citizen and was born on 7 September 1864 in Leicester (MI5 reports have a copy of the birth certificate) While this may be true, it should be noted that according to a report dated 5 December 1938 to MI5, Tester's birth was never registered with the British authorities in Stuttgart, which should have happened if he wanted to claim British citizenship," according to the document posted on the blog.

The author reveals that he has searched the birth register of persons born in Stuttgart, Germany from 1893 to 1897 inclusive, and "there is no trace of a person named Arthur Albert Tester" After the war began, in early September 1939, Tester boarded his yacht SY Lucinda with his family and left Italy, sailing for Greece, where the children and the spy's wife disembarked.

Tester then sailed to Port Said, where the vessel was handed over to the Royal Navy While in Egypt, Tester managed to arouse the suspicion of the Egyptian authorities and was arrested for frequenting drug dealers and espousing fascist ideals.

An investigation absolved him of any charge other than obtaining drugs for his own use, and the Egyptian authorities decided to deport him to England, where MI5 and the police reportedly welcomed him with open arms and handcuffs Somehow, says the author who consulted the archives, this deportation plan was changed and Tester was deported only from Egypt, boarding a plane bound for Greece on October 4, 1939.

British authorities were able to rummage through his trunk and personal belongings, but found no evidence of espionage However, on 1 November 1939, Tester was placed on the war blacklist of Britain's Central Security.

Regarding his yacht, the SY Lucinda makes an appearance in an article dated 23 February 1945 in the Chelmsford Chronicle A military wedding reception with 100 guests was reportedly held aboard the yacht Lucinda in Alexandria, Egypt.

Business with the Germans By December 1940, Tester had moved his base of operations from Greece to Romania, and MI6 was informed that Tester was doing business with the Germans At the same time he did not refrain from asking for assistance from the British, whose passport he still had on him.

He presented himself at the British Consulate in Bucharest in December 1940, requesting assistance Two of his children were still in Greece and needed help to reach Romania.

At the time, Tester told consular staff that he was an intermediary, which bought Jewish businesses and sold them to third parties for a profit Finally, in February 1941, Tester managed to get his children out of Greece, and after that, information about him becomes rather sketchy, at least from a British perspective.

After the war, the Allies seized German documents and interviewed several former Abwehr officers In October 1940, German troops began to enter Romania, and in November of the same year, Romania joined the Axis forces.

As a British citizen, Tester would naturally have been suspected by the German authorities And indeed, Joachim Rohleder, head of the Abwehr IIIF in Berlin, believed that Tester had worked for British intelligence before the war and ordered him arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

The head of the Abwehr IIIF in Romania, Kurt von Rohrscheidt, disagreed and stated that Tester was pro-German and was willing to work for the Abwehr without pay Rohleder agreed to allow Rohrscheidt to use Tester as an Abwehr agent.

First Abwehr Assignment According to Rohrscheidt, Tester's first assignment with the Abwehr IIIF was in Sofia, Bulgaria Tester, posing as a British or American officer, infiltrated a clandestine movement of Macedonians who wanted to overthrow the Axis-friendly government.

Tester obtained a full list of figures within the movement and details of the plan to overthrow the Bulgarian government That same year, Tester gained access to the bank records in Athens and was able to examine checks and other documents signed by British intelligence officers.

With the help of these names, Tester was able to infiltrate among the Greek resistance fighters and learn the names of British agents in Romania Tester and the Gestapo uniform As an Abwehr agent, Tester traveled quite a bit, working in Romania, Bulgaria and Greece on counterintelligence activities.

One of the British sources in Greece stated that a Greek banker told him that he saw Tester working in one of the Nazi offices in Athens "shining in his Gestapo uniform" In fact, Tester confessed to a British newspaper reporter in March 1938: "If war came with Germany, I would be among the first to go into the trenches.

" On 15 May 1944, a brief note in German documents stated that both the Abwehr and the SIPO had agreed that Tester should be sent to Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia) for an interrogation The results of this interrogation are unknown, but it can be assumed that Tester managed to escape this time as well and returned to Romania, as it was definitely in August 1944.

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