Olei HaGardom

ʿOlei haGardom ( Hebrew עוֹלֵי הַגַּרְדּוֹם ʿŌlej ha-Gardōm , German for 'going up to the gallows ' in the plural, singular: ʿOleh haGardom ) is a name for twelve members of the Zionist underground organizations Lechi and Etzel , who were sentenced to death by British authorities and executed or who anticipated their execution by suicide . Since they did not recognize the authority of the British Court, which rejected 'Olei haGardom an appeal for clemency from, even if they were signaling that this could bring a lighter sentence. Most of ʿOlei HaGardom died in Akko Prison , which is now the National Memorial Museum of Prisoners of the Underground . The list was subsequently expanded to include additional people.

people

	Surname	born	deceased	Remarks
	Shlomo Ben-Josef (Tabacznik)	May 7, 1913 Lutsk	June 29, 1938 Akko	Convicted of a retaliatory attack by the local Betar group on an Arab bus on the road from Safed to Rosh Pina (21 April 1937). This was preceded by acts of violence against Jews in connection with the Arab uprising . As the hand grenade thrown by Ben-Josef did not explode and the shots failed, the bus passengers suffered no damage. The accomplices Shalom Zurabin and Avraham Schein received prison terms. The British authorities made an example of Ben-Josef that also shocked the Jewish establishment in the Yishuv and radicalized the later ʿOlei haGardom Dresner and Gruner.
	Elijahu Chakim	January 2, 1925 Beirut	March 22, 1945 Cairo	Convicted for assassinating Lord Moyne (November 6, 1944). Chakim and Tzuri had been commissioned with this attack by Yitzchak Shamir . Shamir later stressed that it was not a suicide squad, that there had been an escape plan for Chakim and Tzuri, but it failed. The attackers were tried in Cairo and sentenced to death by hanging. Years later, Shamir negotiated the extradition of their bodies in a prisoner exchange with Egypt. The corpses were handed over from Egypt to the State of Israel in 1975 and then buried on Mount Herzl.
	Elijahu Bet Tzuri	February 11, 1922 Tel Aviv	March 22, 1945 Cairo
	Dov Béla Gruner	December 6, 1912 Kisvárda	April 16, 1947 Akko	Sentenced for a raid on the police station in Ramat Gan , in which Etzel probably wanted to steal weapons. Gruner was gunned down and spent almost a year in prison while various Zionist organizations around the world tried to avert the death penalty. Before his execution he wrote a farewell letter to his commander Menachem Begin as a "loyal soldier" .
	Mordechai Alkachi	March 10, 1925 Petach Tikva	April 16, 1947 Akko	Sentenced for carrying whips and investigators believed they were trying to whip a British military man. The so-called "Night of the Beatings" (December 29, 1946) was a reaction to the fact that a young Etzel fighter had been sentenced to flogging and subsequent imprisonment for participating in a bank robbery. Etzel regarded this punishment as dishonorable and had announced that British soldiers would be punished in the same way in response. Other Etzel groups successfully carried out the retaliation, but were not caught.
	Jechiʾel Dov Dresner	October 13, 1922 Poland	April 16, 1947 Akko
	Eliezer Kaschani	March 13, 1926 Petach Tikva	April 16, 1947 Akko
	Meʾir Feinstein	October 5, 1927 Jerusalem	April 21, 1947 Jerusalem	Sentenced for his involvement in an attack on Jerusalem-Malcha train station in which he sustained a serious arm injury. Feinstein committed suicide (with Moshe Barazani) before he was executed.
	Barazani Mosque	June 14, 1926 Baghdad	April 21, 1947 Jerusalem	Sentenced for being found with a hand grenade in his pocket and for investigators believe he was planning an attack on the military commander in Jerusalem. Barazani committed suicide (with Meir Feinstein) prior to his execution.
	Avshalom Chaviv	June 18, 1926 Haifa	July 29, 1947 Akko	Chaviv, Nakar and Weiss were supposed to secure the withdrawal of the Etzel fighters when the prisoners were successfully freed from the heavily secured military prison in Akko (May 4, 1947), but they did not hear the withdrawal signal and were caught. Sentenced for their involvement in the attack on the military prison.
	Meʾir Nakar	July 26, 1926 Jerusalem	July 29, 1947 Akko
	Jaʿakov Weiss	July 15, 1924 Nové Zámky	July 29, 1947 Akko

Reactions to the executions

The actions of the Lechi and Etzel fighters were viewed as controversial in the Jewish community in Palestine. It was controversial whether terrorist attacks were justified. In response to the deaths of Feinstein and Barazani, Nathan Alterman wrote the poem Lail Hitabdut ("Night of Suicide"). It praised the courage of Feinstein and Barazani and concluded with criticism of their commanders.

Press report on the Sergeants affair

Etzel had captured two sergeants of British military intelligence, Mervyn Paice and Clifford Martin, four days after the death sentences for Chaviv, Nakar and Weiss in Netanya . After the execution of the three Etzel fighters, Paice and Martin were hanged in an abandoned factory area and then hung from trees in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya; the ground below was mined. During the recovery of the dead, there were explosions. The photos of the press representatives present made the act internationally known ( The Sergeants affair ) and resulted in anti-Semitic riots in British cities. Menachem Begin wrote to the bereaved and declared Etzel's actions a bitter necessity; they should see Clement Attlee as the murderer of their sons.

Commemoration in the State of Israel

Under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion , the Israeli government tried to suppress the memory of ʿOlei HaGardom . The prison of Acre was converted into a hospital for the mentally ill, so it could not become a memorial. In 1963 Chajim Hasas published the novel Bekolar echad ("In the Same Snare"), which had the suicide of Feinstein and Barazani on the subject. Since the 1970s, the ʿOlei haGardom have been publicly honored by naming streets after them; Particularly prominent is ardOlei haGardom Street in the East Jerusalem district of haArmon haNatziv, near the former office of the British High Commissioner . During the reign of Menachem Begin, the prisons in Jerusalem and Akko were converted into national memorials. He added more people to the list:

• Naʾaman Belkind and Josef Lischansky, who belonged to the underground organization NILI and were executed by the Turkish authorities on December 16, 1917 for their support for the British in World War I ;
• Eli Cohen , who was executed as a spy in Damascus on May 18, 1965 ;
• Hagana member Mordechai Schwartz, a police officer who was executed in Akko on August 16, 1938 for shooting his sleeping Arab colleague Mustafa Khoury in a summer camp in Atlit on September 1, 1937 . Witnesses testified that while drunk, Khoury boasted that he killed Jews and intended to kill others. Schwartz's motives, however, are unclear; possibly the shot was an act of affect because he was threatened and harassed by Khoury.

The management of the Hagana contradicted Schwartz's designation as ʿOleh HaGardom and only accepted in 1987 that a photo of Schwartz was shown in a museum of ʿOlei haGardom . On the part of Begin, Schwartz's honor was a provocation of the Labor Party . His sympathy for this group of underground fighters culminated in his testamentary will to be buried together with his wife in the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives next to the graves of Feinstein and Barazani.

In 2009, the Israeli Minister of Education, Gideon Saʿar, introduced a teaching unit on ʿOlei HaGardom for grades 8 and 9, combined with a nationwide student competition (essays, drawings or poems) on topics such as: fictional conversation with a ʿOleh HaGardom before his execution, or: farewell letter of a convict to his family. In an accompanying letter, Saʿar expressed his wish that this lesson would strengthen the ties of the students to their national heritage and that the dedication of ʿOlei HaGardom would be an ideological example for the youth. A named historian from Tel Aviv University criticized the fact that the teaching unit removed the people from the context of the struggle against the mandate authority and focused on martyrdom.

In 2010, three-day commemorative events for the twelve ʿOlei haGardom took place, with a special session of the Knesset as the central event. On the occasion, Mordechai Schwartz was added to the list as the thirteenth martyr.

literature

• Amir Goldstein: Olei Hagardom: Between official and popular memory . In: Journal of Israeli History 34 (2015), pp. 159–180.
• Menahem Begin, Commander of the Irgun, Describes the Dov Gruner Tragedy . In: Levi Soshuk, Azriel Louis Eisenberg (eds.): Momentous Century: Personal and Eyewitness Accounts of the Rise of the Jewish Homeland and State 1878–1978 , Herzl Press, New York et al. 1984, pp. 191–201.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Zev Golan: Free Jerusalem: Heroes, Heroines and Rogues who Created the State of Israel . Devora Publishing, Israel 2003, p. 94.
2. ^ Colin Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron . Cambridge University Press, New York 2015, p. 185.
3. ↑ Yitzhak Shamir: Why we killed Lord Moyne . In: The Times of Israel, July 5, 2012.
4. ^ Colin Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron . Cambridge University Press, New York 2015, p. 204.
5. ^ Zev Golan: Free Jerusalem: Heroes, Heroines and Rogues who Created the State of Israel . Devora Publishing, Israel 2003, p. 293.
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Arutz Sheva : Knesset to Remember the Hanged , March 8, 2010.
7. ^ ^{A b} Colin Shindler: The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron . Cambridge University Press, New York 2015, p. 230.
8. ^ László Bernát Veszprémy: Dov Gruner: From Kisvárda Yeshiva Student to “Lion of Judah” . The Times of Israel (blog), April 8, 2017.
9. ^ Zev Golan: Free Jerusalem: Heroes, Heroines and Rogues who Created the State of Israel . Devora Publishing, Israel 2003, p. 293 f.
10. ↑ ^{a b c d} Yair Sheleg: The Good Jailer . In: Haaretz, April 7, 2007.
11. ↑ Encyclopaedia Judaica: Haviv, Avshalom
12. ↑ Caoimhe Nic Dhábhéid: Terrorist Histories: Individuals and Political Violence since the 19th Century . Routledge, New York 2017., p. 100.
13. ^ Colin Shindler, The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron . Cambridge University Press, New York 2015, p. 231.
14. ^ Ofer Aderet: The Only Jew the British Executed for Killing an Arab . In: Haaretz, May 16, 2016.
15. ↑ ^{a b} Yossi Melman: What Happened to the 13th Militant? In: Haaretz, March 9, 2010.
16. ↑ Or Kashti: New Study Unit on Pre-state Fighters Proves Controversial . In: Haaretz, December 22, 2009.