Bela Gold

Bela Gold, also Bill Gold, (1915–2012), was a Hungarian-born American businessman and professor.

Biography

Bela Gold was born on 30 January 1915, in Kolozsvár (then in Austria-Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca, in Romania). His parents were Esther (born 1891) and Leo Gold (born 1890), a dry goods salesman. His brother was William Gold (born 1921). In 1920, the family emigrated to the United States.[1]

In the early 1940s, Gold began work at the Senate Subcommittee on War Mobilization, while his wife Sonya worked in government as well, for a time for Harry Dexter White.[2] The Golds were spied upon by J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation for a time in the 1940s.[3][4]

The Golds came to testify at the House Unamerican Activities Committee because of the accusations of Communist Party and Soviet intelligence defector Elizabeth Bentley. The Golds denied working with the Soviets and denied they were members of the Communist Party.[2] John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev wrote a book published in 2009 claiming that the Golds were recruited to give information to Soviet agents.[5] Some of their work has been debated by other historians.[6][7]

After the war, Bill Gold went to the University of Pittsburgh and became a professor. He later became a research director at Case Western Reserve University, and eventually a professor at Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont Graduate University). He also worked on the National Research Council and wrote several books.[2]

Personal and death

In 1938, Gold married Sonia Steinman Gold.

Gold died aged 96 on 14 April 2012.

References
  1. 1930 US Census for Bronx, New York
  2. John Earl Haynes; Harvey Klehr; Alexander Vassiliev (2009). Spies: the rise and fall of the KGB in America. Yale University Press. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-300-12390-6. Retrieved 20 March 2011.
  3. FBI (1940s). "The Education and Research Institute, FBI Silvermaster files". education-research.org. Archived from the original on 6 March 2013. Retrieved 20 March 2011. One of these volumes contains surveillance reports of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI on the Golds.
  4. FBI (21 October 1946). "Underground Soviet Espionage (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government". education-research.org. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 20 March 2011. This is a 350+ page file describing allegations against the Golds (and many other people) by Elizabeth Bentley (code name Gregory). It also contains FBI reports from their spying on the Golds. The two reports on the Golds were written by FBI agent Lambert G. Zander.
  5. Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev, "Spies...", 2009. Haynes et al cite two major sources, the Venona files (decrypted Soviet transmissions of the 1940s) as well as the notes taken by Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB agent, while examining old Soviet archives. Vassiliev's notebooks are available online at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars – Gold is mentioned in Yellow Notebook Number 2, page 63, White Notebook Number 1, page 6, and White Notebook Number 3, p. 78, and elsewhere within the notebooks.
  6. "Dossiers on Alexander Vassiliev's Notes". documentstalk.com. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  7. See also the article on Alger Hiss for a discussion of Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev's work.
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