Mossad veterans have claimed a former senior Nazi SS officer worked for Israel as an assassin after the war.

One of Adolf Hitler’s favourite soldiers and a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, Otto Skorzeny was allegedly recruited by Israel.

Insiders said Skorzeny, who once rescued Benito Mussolini from a group of Italians trying to kill him, realised he could only save himself from being tracked down by Mossad by defecting to work for the Israeli secret service.

One of his victims is thought to have been Heinz Krug, a Nazi scientist who aided Egypt’s missile programme in the 1960s.

Former Mossad agents told Haaretz that Krug had met Skorzeny – who he knew and trusted – on the same day that he went missing in September 1962.

Rafi Eitan, now aged 89, said he had been responsible for “running” Skorzeny as a Mossad agent.

The Vienna-born Nazi had worked in Hitler’s bodyguard division, fought in the special forces and was picked by senior officers to rescue Mussolini from a ski resort in 1943