One of the places visited is Kocierz, about 10 kilometers south of the town of Andrychow.




In the mountains there, for almost three months in early 1939, 25 commanders of the Irgun in Eretz-Yisrael were being trained by Polish Army officers in guerrilla warfare (the Hagana's training area [shared by Betar, too] was in Rembertów, now a suburb of Warsaw and was much less intensive):


For those seeking more background and details, here are excerpts from a lecture I found:

The charismatic personality of Ze’ev Jabotinsky drew large crowds of Jews to his talks in Poland...“The style of Jabotinsky’s political Zionism, with the demand for Jewish independence in the Land of Israel and large-scale Aliyah, aroused the interest of groups in the Polish government, which increased and developed into true admiration, firstly for the resistance activities of the IZL against the Arabs during the Arab riots. The Poles, for their limitations, are a romantic people.... who understand and appreciate a revolt against a foreign conqueror. And when they first encountered a similar attitude amongst the Jews, that is from Jabotinsky and his disciples, it touched their heart-strings and inspired their imagination. And they showed their admiration for Jabotinsky himself. Count Lubienski, the Head of the Polish Foreign Office at the time, liked Jabotinsky in particular...

Count Lubienski also expressed his support in practical ways and organised many important meetings between Jabotinsky and the heads of the Polish government. Firstly, he organised a meeting with Count Lubiensky’s boss, the Polish Foreign Minister, Jozef Beck. Jabotinsky presented to Beck the ambitious plan for the “evacuation” from Europe of one and a half million Jews, 750,000 of them from Poland, to the Land of Israel, within ten years. Beck liked the plan and arranged for Jabotinsky to meet the other leaders of Poland.

Jabotinsky’s next meeting was with the Polish Prime Minister, General Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski. At that meeting Jabotisnky asked the Polish government to put pressure on the League of Nations to influence Britain to open the gates of the Land of Israel to mass immigration of Polish Jews. The Poles agreed, and at Poland’s request a discussion was held at the council of the League of Nations on the migration of Jews to the Land of Israel. However, the British, in fear of an Arab reaction, forcefully objected to opening the gates of Palestine for the Jews, and prevented the acceptance of any resolution on the subject.

The Polish attitude to the problem was clarified to the council by Foreign Minister Beck. The newspaper “Davar” reported about it in 21.9.37, as follows: Beck (Poland): …”The special interest of my government in the problem discussed here is a result of the fact that a large percentage of the Jews living now in the Land of Israel came from my country… Historical and sentimental reasons are responsible to the fact that the Jews are showing special interest in the The council of the League of Nations in session. (Photo: UN and LON Archives, Geneva) immigration to the Land of Israel. Moreover, during the lastyears a lot of technical experience accumulated in this field by the Histadrut workers union, who already showed its precious achievements in these matters… …”I am sure that the members of the council, primarily the Mandate Government of Palestine will be good enough to consider my government’s point of view… I must say, though, that my government’s main concern will be to insure that Palestine – whatever its regime – will have the maximum possibility to absorb immigration in the future. “The uncertainty among the Jews today about the future of the country, and the temporary immigration limitations by the Mandatory government are of course disturbing the constructive politics regarding immigration (to Palestine) which prove how much interest the Polish government and the Jews are showing in finding a swift solution to the problem.”

The pinnacle of the meetings that Jabotinsky had in Warsaw was with Field marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, then the de facto ruler of Poland. This meeting also ended in full understanding. The positive impression Jabotinsky and his plans made on the Polish rulers soon went from the planning stages to practical endeavours. The Poles began assisting the “Af Al Pi” illegal immigration network, which was organized by Jabotinsky’s New Zionist Organization. The supply of Polish arms to be smuggled to Palestine by the IZL was initiated at this time. Also, training members of the Betar Jewish youth movement and IZL fighters began. The Poles advised Jabotinsky that they were willing to supply the IZL considerable quantities of arms, for the price of 212,000 Zloty (then $40,000), that they will personally loan Jabotinsky in exchange for “an honourable understanding” that the money will be returned once the Jewish State is established. After a time the Poles gave the IZL a grant for an additional 100,000 Zloty. To this amount was added approximately 125,000 Zloty, a private donation from Markovic Klez – a Romanian Jewish millionaire, who was a “groupie” of Jabotinsky and who contributed a great deal to the Revisionist Movement and to the IZL (in 1938 he donated to the IZL an amount sufficient to cover the whole operational budget of the organization for six months). However, the Poles were so generous that the quantities of arms they gave to the IZL far exceeded what they had originally committed to.

Betarim in Ostrowa

While Jabotinsky was conducting high level talks in Warsaw, a new line of communication was opened in Jerusalem between the IZL and the Poles. Avraham (Yair) Stern, a senior commander of the IZL who spoke fluent Polish, made close contact with the Polish Consul in Jerusalem, Witold Hulanicki. and the two became close friends. [Tragically, a Lechi group in Jerusalem was influenced, seemingly by Communist agents, to kill him in 1948] Yair pointed out to the Consul the mutual interests between his organisation and the Polish government and expressed his belief that the more the IZL increased the reprisals against the Arab terror in Palestine the more the Arabs will be weakened, and thus mass Jewish immigration to the country will be possible. Thanks to Yair’s efforts, Hulanicki became an avid supporter of Zionism and of the IZL. The two even wrote a draft agreement between the IZL and the Polish government, according to which the IZL will undertake the tasks of organizing training camps for Jewish youth in Poland and once graduated, move them to Palestine. The Government of Poland, for its part, would provide the IZL arms and training camps and would even try, as much as the political government situation would allow, to put pressure on the British to allow the entrance of Polish Jews to the Land of Israel. For his part, Hulanicki transmitted the IZL’s requests to the Polish Foreign Office in Warsaw. The request was approved. So at the end of 1938, Yair set out to Warsaw, to organize the training camps. In the spring of 1939 the Poles opened a special military course for senior commanders of the IZL while concurrently the supply of Polish arms to the IZL continued.

Yair’s activities in Warsaw were aided a great deal by Dr. Henryk Strassman and his wife, Alicja (pronounced Alitsya). The two came from assimilated Jewish families. Henryk completed his Law studies at Warsaw University with honours. He received a doctorate in law, and in great part due to the strength of his personality, he was appointed to the Warsaw Judiciary – a very senior position, and a level which few Jews were able to reach in the Polish public service at the time. He also taught criminology at the university. In her youth, Alicja studied political science and literature in Paris, where she was drawn to cosmopolitan left-wing activities and drifted away from Judaism. On her return to Poland, she married Henryk. The rising Polish anti-Semitism in the first half of the 1930s did not miss the Strassmans and in reaction to it they became active in the Jewish political arena, preferring the Revisionists. When Yair arrived in Warsaw in 1938, he was invited to speak at a meeting in the home of the couple. The impression he left on those present was so great, that they established a political club named “Yordan” (Jordan), where they met regularly. The high level of the discussions in the club drew many and it became a most desirable place to be for many of the prominent Jews in Warsaw. 

Yair offered Alicja to publish for the IZL a bi-weekly in Polish and she agreed. The magazine, which later became a weekly, was called “Liberated Jerusalem” and contained highly intellectual articles on various Jewish topics, including information of the armed Jewish struggle in the Land of Israel. On the cover of issue 5 of the magazine appeared for the first time the drawing of the hand holding a rifle, with the map of an undivided Land of Israel in the background. Its caption was “Tylko Tak!” (Only Thus!) – the motto of the Polish Legion, which fought in WWI on the German side, for the liberation of Poland from the Russians. The logo was drawn by the magazine’s graphic artist, Dr Bauer, following a suggestion by Alicja. Soon after the IZL adopted it as its official logo and henceforth it appeared on all the publications of the organisation. The weekly had a circulation of 4,000 copies and was in great demand by prominent Jews in Warsaw and even senior Polish officials. The enthusiastic support of his influential readers and followers helped Yair greatly in his activities in Poland. At this time, Yair began drifting away from Jabotinsky, because he thought his policies towards the British were too compromising. He did not even report to him that he had agreed with the Poles on the special military course for the IZL commanders. This caused Jabotinsky a great deal of embarrassment when he was asked by the Poles for his views on the course while he knew nothing of it... 

True to their word to Jabotinsky the Poles started to supply the IZL large quantities of arms. At this time, 24 different types of old rifles were used by the Polish army, and a decision was made to discard all of them and use only a Polish copy of the German “Mauser 98” rifle. As a result, the depots of the army were filled with many thousands of French WWI rifles, which became available immediately to the IZL, together with hundreds of French Hotchkiss machine guns (which were also taken out of military service), millions of bullets and a large quantity of explosives. 

Polish Army training session:

The weapons were stored in a building that was rented by the Strassmans at 8 Ceglana Street, in a distant suburb of Warsaw. Yaacov Meridor, a senior commander of the IZL, dealt with smuggling the weapons to Palestine. In his memoirs, he stated that the weapons in the warehouse would have been sufficient to arm a complete Polish infantry division. However, the exact quantity of arms supplied by the Poles to the IZL is not known, as most of the Polish military archive was lost during WWII. According to Meridor, cached in Ceglana street were 20,000 rifles and about 500 machine guns, of which 200 were the Hotchkiss model. In a somewhat different version, Alicja Strassman relates in her memoirs that the Poles supplied the IZL with a number closer to 8,000 rifles and 1.2 million rounds of ammunition by the end of the summer of 1939. In fact they were both right: the Polish army indeed undertook to supply the IZL 20,000 rifles, but managed to supply only 8,000 before WWII broke out. 


Even if Strassman’s version is the more accurate one, the amount of arms supplied was enough to generate a great deal of excitement. Meridor relates that “when I first entered the warehouse I almost fainted. That narrow building stored hundreds of crates of weapons and ammunition - and I was ready to kiss every one of them”. Alicja Strassman relates in her memoirs, that the Poles supplied the arms in three deliveries. The first of them was in the autumn of 1938, the second in the spring of 1939 and the third, which was the largest, in the summer of the same year. She also relates that at some stage the Poles stopped supplying the old French rifles and instead delivered the new, Polish made version, of the “Mauser 98” rifles that were manufactured in Polish factories for the Polish military. According to her, the name of the factory and the serial number stamped on each rifle were erased before being handed third and final shipment ultimately remained in Warsaw. She also relates that at some stage the Poles the over to the IZL, to prevent the British intelligence from finding out their origin, in case they were seized on their way to Palestine. A Polish army document that survived the war states that one of the deliveries contained 500 rifles “without bayonets or straps and without factory markings, packed in regular boxes at a price of 125 Zloty per rifle” and one million rounds of ammunition, as well as 40 sub-machine guns, and 250,000 rounds of ammunition for them.

On the shoulders of Meridor lay the task of smuggling the Polish arms to Palestine. One way he devised was to hide it inside heavy machinery, such as the drums of industrial dry- cleaning machines (like the one below). The machines were transported overland to the port of Constanza in Romania or the port of Varna in Bulgaria where they were loaded on ships sailing to Haifa. This method turned out to be so efficient that the British did not discover any of the arms smuggled in this way. Alicja Strassman writes about one shipment of 15 Hotchkiss machine guns and 300 rifles, smuggled via Constanza. Of course there were other shipments which for reasons of secrecy, there is no record of them. The last of the “contraband” shipments was a crate containing two Hotchkiss machine guns and 130 French rifles, as well as a few hundred Polish pistols. The crate was sent to Merridor’s residence in Ramat Gan three weeks before the Nazi invasion and it arrived at its destination after the outbreak of war. Merridor hid this crate in his backyard. It should be noted that he Poles also supplied arms to the Haganah, but only as a normal commercial transaction, at full price. In total 2,250 rifles and 225 light machine guns were transferred to the Haganah. However, British intelligence discovered this trnsaction and the British Government demanded that the Poles cease the shipments immediately. The Poles had no choice but to comply – and this source of arms for the Haganah was blocked.

Along with the supply of arms, Polish officers also started training members of Jewish Betar youth movement in the use of guns and explosives. The trainees were members of IZL secret cells, who infiltrated the ranks of Betar in Poland with the encouragement of Yair. A Polish army officer (standing on the right) instructs Betar members how to shoot a rifle. 

Pre-military training was compulsory in all secondary schools in Poland, including Jewish secondary schools. Students who completed this training, and passed their matriculation examinations, were sent to officer’s training courses upon military induction, and were exempted from regular basic training. In the photo above, students of the Jewish secondary school “Klara Ehrlich” in Kovel (today in Ukraine) in a pre-military camp during their summer holidays in the mid 1930’s.


Military drill at a Polish secondary school in the 1930’s For members of Betar who were not part of the IZL secret cells, pre-military courses similar to those at the secondary schools were taught, instructed by Jewish veterans of the Polish army.

The jewel in the crown of the training that the Poles gave to the IZL was the advanced officers’ course, which lasted for four months in the summer of 1939. Twenty five senior IZL commanders attended this course. In order not to arouse suspicion, they left Palestine separately and gathered in Krakow, being warned not to be conspicuous. One of them, Eliahu Lankin, who was later to become the commander of the “Altalena”, related that “one morning we travelled by train to an obscure station, where horse-drawn carts waited for us... After a slow journey in snowy forests we arrived at the peak of a mountain to a three-storied building with a wide yard. All around it was dense forest. Not a living soul to be seen. This was the site of the course.” The mountainous area, where the senior commanders of the IZL passed an advanced officer’s course. 

The site was in the Beskid Mountains, in Southern Poland, about 15km south of Andrychow. This site was chosen for two reasons: the sparse population and the Judea and Galilee like scenery. The course was conducted very strictly by the “second division” (the Intelligence service of the Polish army), and two agents from the Polish Foreign Office: Polonius Zarychta and Viktor Drymmer. The course consisted of two parts: regular military training and guerrilla warfare. The first part included self-defence, individual, unit and divisional field training, lectures on the management of larger groups, military tactics and topography. The second part included explosives, methods of partisan fighting and the building of underground cells. Lenkin and others reported that “Every day we went into the forest for training. The area resounded of loud explosions, automatic gunfire and rifle shots. The program was very elaborate and as time was short, the training was very intensive. “We would set off on long excursions early in the morning and return to the base after nightfall, exhausted, freezing, filthy…but feeling extremely satisfied. Our spirit was lifted and the Polish officers were very surprised by our determination and our great desire to learn.” The Polish officers lectured in Polish, as expected, a language understood by most of the trainees, who then translated for the rest who didn’t understand Polish. 

The course ended In August [I think in April] 1939. Polish General Kazimierz Fabrycy and two colonels from the “second division” – Joseph Smolenski and Thaddeus Pełczyński – came over to watch over the final exam, which was followed by a parade and other festivities. Lankin recalls that “the General and Avraham Stern, who also came for the event, inspected the guard of honour. The General spoke with the cadets and to his surprise discovered that they came from all corners of the earth, from China to South America. (Eliahu Lankin himself was the head of Betar in China before he made Aliyah in 1933).” The exam went extraordinarily well and the Polish officers did not hide their amazement and appreciation for the cadets’ achievements. The head trainer said enthusiastically, that he taught many courses before to his countrymen, but never had he received as much satisfaction from the results, as from this course. “In the end it was Stern’s turn to speak. Beginning in Polish, he expressed appreciation of the course and compared the Jewish struggle in Palestine with the Poles’ war of independence. Turning to Hebrew he told the cadets of the plan to conquer the Land of Israel by armed and well trained Jewish youth… This was the first time the cadets heard about the acquisition of large quantities of arms for the IZL in Poland”.

...In the initial stages of the military operations against the British, the knowledge gained from the course was used to prepare electrically triggered landmines and pressure triggered landmines. Other areas of knowledge gained from the Poles included the preparation of hidden transmitters, delay tactics, and additional techniques related to underground activities.” Most of the cadets returned to Palestine immediately after the course ended. Only four of them remained in Poland to oversee the military courses for Betar members [and close to 1000 Betarim had undergone such training until mid-August]. But a few weeks later war broke out and they all had to escape back home. 

Another version, translated from the Polish:

In the spring of 1939 the Beskid forests in and around Andrychów were once again bursting with explosions and shooting. 25 young men were banned from keeping contact with the surrounding population. For four months, under the guidance of instructors of the Polish Army, they learned techniques of guerrilla and sabotage, trained in terrorist attacks and bomb attacks, and learned the basics of conspiracy. As he recalled one year after taking part in the training: "Poles treated the course of terrorism as a scientific discipline, we learned mathematical formulas to demolish structures of cement, iron, wood, bricks and earth."

The four-month course ended with a party involving the commander of the Carpathians army of General Kazimierz Fabryca and the colonels of Józef Smoleński and Tadeusz Pełczyński, who represented the famous Double, or II Corps General Staff, as pre-war military intelligence. When the officers had been drinking a little, General Fabry asked the commander of the training group where the participants came from. "From all over the world, this one is from China," the commander said, pointing to the young officer who was born in Harbin in Manchuria. "Somehow you do not look Chinese," said the general and they both laughed, because the course participants did not really have anything to do with China. 

The course in Andrychow was designed for the officers of Irgun, an underground army formed by the leader of the Zionist right-wing Vladimir Żabotyński to fight for the Jewish state in Palestine. They secretly entered Poland from Palestine in small groups, LOT aircraft, between Haifa and Warsaw, or Polonia liner, which linked Palestine with the Romanian port of Constanta, and from there by train to Krakow.

The course in Andrychów is the result of a contract concluded in 1936 between Jabotińsky and the Polish authorities. It assumed the help of the Polish army in the training of Jewish fighters fighting for the state of Israel in Palestine. The initial stage was paramilitary camps for Zionist youth organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Military Affairs in the summer of 1936 and 1937. The first group of about 40 Irgun soldiers [actually, members of the National Cells/Ta'im Leumiim] appeared in Poland in the summer of 1938 [in 1937], conducting regular military training in Zofiace in Volhynia and Podębin near Lodz. The course in Andrychów was supposed to be the culmination of cooperation. The training of a staff of experts who later shared their knowledge with hundreds of Jewish soldiers in Palestine was supervised by Abraham Stern, the commander-in-chief of Irgun, born in Suwalki.

^

LORD WEDGWOOD
My Lords, I beg to ask the first question standing in my name.

[The question was as follows: To ask His Majesty's Government when and under what circumstances a Palestinian Jew named Stein or Stern was killed while attempting to escape.]

LORD SNELL
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Cranborne has had to leave the House, and he has asked me to make the following statement on his behalf. Abraham Stern, to whom the noble Lord's question presumably refers, was the leader of a secret terrorist organization of Jewish extremists formed in Palestine about the middle of 1940. The Stern group included persons known to have been responsible for the murder of two British police inspectors in 1939, but against whom nothing could be proved, and others concerned in cases either of murder or robbery with violence who have subsequently been convicted.

Soon after the group was formed, its members entered upon a campaign of organized terrorism, primarily with the object of obtaining funds for the furtherance of their 69so-called political programme, which was Fascist in character. In the furtherance of their objectives, they sought to enlist the help of Italy after Italy had entered the war. Steps were taken by the authorities to round up the gang, and the activities of these Jewish terrorists reached their climax in the cold-blooded murder at Tel Aviv in January last of three police officers and the wounding of four others. Vigorous action has since been taken by the police in rounding up members of the gang, and this resulted in the death, while attempting to escape, of Stern himself and of two other terrorists in February last, and in the detention of the principal members of the gang.


LORD WEDGWOOD My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord realizes that the connotation of the words "killed while attempting to escape" is unfortunate. They have a very unfortunate background and, indeed, come from Germany. I hope that that sort of thing is not going to develop in Palestine.

Stern, Yair, was shot dead while his hands were manacled.

Did [Geoffrey Morton] or did he not shoot an unarmed Stern in cold blood? Morton maintained, for the rest of his life that he shot Stern dead because the latter had tried to escape through a window and might have triggered an ‘infernal device’ that would blow everybody in the room up. This version of events was called into question several times in subsequent years. The most damaging testimony came from a fellow policeman, Sergeant Bernard Stamp, who claimed to have been in the room when the shooting took place. According to Bishop, in a statement Morton gave immediately after the event, he acknowledged Stamp’s presence, but years later he denied the sergeant had ever been there. Not long before he died, Stamp said that Morton shot Stern without him having made any attempt to escape, and that any talk of there being an ‘infernal device’ was trumped up nonsense.

And this:

Another policeman, Bernard Stamp, later told Israel Radio that in his judgment, Stern was "killed by the police force, he was unarmed, no chance of escape."

^

Even more controversial than the robberies and bombs was his decision to contact the Germans.  This was 1940 and 1941; the “Final Solution” had not yet been decided upon. Stern said the Germans wanted the Jews out of Europe and any Jews who stayed were doomed. He offered to cut a deal with the Germans to transfer the Jews to Eretz Israel. He was pilloried by the British and Jews, considered a traitor. In a private conversation with one of his deputies he agreed to accept the epithet, if he might save the Jews by doing so. Ultimately, of course, the Germans were not interested.

A more negative portrayal is here:

Stern sought alliance with the Nazis, both because they shared an enemy in Britain and because Lehi shared Hitler’s totalitarian ideology. During the war Sternists openly celebrated Nazi victories on the battlefield.

An infamous document called the “Ankara Document”

because it was found in the German Embassy in Ankara after the war, detailed Avraham Stern’s ideas “concerning the solution of the Jewish question in Europe.” It was dated Jan. 11, 1941. At the time, Stern was still a member of the Irgun, which he called by its initials, NMO. Wrote Stern: “The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish People, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries....The NMO...is well acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities toward Zionist activity inside Germany and toward Zionist emigration plans....The NMO is closely related to the totalitarian movements in Europe in its ideology and structure.”

But history is also comparing persons, circumstances, developments and attitudes.

Consider this IRA history:

Claiming to be the legitimate government of the Irish Republic, in January 1939, the Army Council under [Sean] Russell's leadership declared war on the United Kingdom in alliance with Nazi Germany. The Sabotage Campaign commenced some days later with bombing attacks on a number of English cities. Russell was also involved in a meeting with German Intelligence (Abwehr) agent Oscar Pfaus...Once in Berlin [by May 1940], Russell was informed of Operation Mainau, the plan to parachute Hermann Görtz into Ireland. Russell was asked to brief Görtz on Ireland before his departure that night but missed his takeoff from the Kassel-Fritzlar airfield. Russell's liaison officer while in Nazi Germany was SS-Standartenfuhrer Edmund Veesenmayer.

...Russell had begun training with Abwehr in the use of the latest German explosive ordnance. This training was conducted at the Abwehr training school/lab at Quentzgut near Brandenburg which specialised in the design of explosives as everyday objects. Russell also visited the training area for the Brandenburg Regiment, the 'Quenzgut', where he observed trainees and instructors working with sabotage materials in a field environment. As he received explosives training, his return to Ireland with a definite sabotage objective was planned by German Army Intelligence. His total training time with German Intelligence was over 3 months.

More here:

Collaboration between the IRA and Abwehr during World War II ranged in intensity during the period 1937–1943 and ended permanently around 1944...Tom Barry, an IRA member who had fought during the Anglo-Irish War and was still active within the organisation. They met frequently with a view to fostering links between the IRA and Germany...In December 1938, the Abwehr II. Ast., located at Knochenhauerstraße, Hamburg, took an English-speaking agent on loan from the English section of the Fichte-Bund headquarters (HQ) in Hamburg. This agent was Oscar Pfaus...A meeting between Pfaus and IRA representatives took place on 13 February 1939...Seamus O'Donovan, a German speaker and former Director of Chemicals for the IRA, made three trips to Germany in 1939. The first meeting in February saw O'Donovan conduct discussions with the head of Office 1 West, Abwehr HQ – Friedrich Carl Marwede, codenamed "Dr. Pfalzgraf". O'Donovan and Marwede discussed the appropriate wartime role of the IRA as it concerned the German Government...By this stage of events, each IRA CS. from 1937 onwards had been involved in liaisons with the Germans to one degree or another. These liaisons were to continue into the tenure of Stephen Hayes and his overture to Nazi Germany via "Plan Kathleen" in 1940...

And here:  Mark M. Hull, Irish Secrets. German Espionage in Wartime Ireland 1939-1945, Dublin:Irish Academic Press, 2003.

And the point of all this?

What was with Lechi and its so-called German connection pales as regards what went on with the IRA but the Irish history is relatively unknown whereas any search of the Internet will bring you to raving anti-Lechi pages which attempt to negate the entire effort of Lechi to liberate Israel from the oppressive British Mandatory rule.

Another instance of a double-standard.

_____________________

Addition:

In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Casement and John Devoy arranged a meeting in New York with the western hemisphere's top-ranking German diplomat, Count Bernstorff, to propose a mutually beneficial plan: if Germany would sell guns to the Irish revolutionary and provide military leaders, the Irish would revolt against England, diverting troops and attention from the war on Germany. Bernstorff appeared sympathetic. Casement and Devoy sent an envoy, Clan na Gael president John Kenny, to present their plan personally. Kenny, unable to meet the German Emperor, received a warm reception from Flotow, the German ambassador to Italy, and from Prince von Bülow.

In October 1914 Casement sailed for Germany via Norway — traveling in disguise and seeing himself as an ambassador of the Irish nation. While the journey was his idea, Clan na Gael financed the expedition.

and this

...Casement was about to embark on a course of action which would cause him to be converted from hero to villain in the British mind. He joined the nationalist Irish Volunteers on their foundation in 1913, and on the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he supported Britain's enemy Germany, in the hope that it would assist the achievement of Irish independence. Casement travelled to Germany in 1914, where he endeavoured to secure significant military aid and to persuade Irish prisoners of war to desert the British Army for an Irish Brigade.

-   Patrick Bishop will be talking at the London Jewish Cultural Centre on March 19?

-   He will also be speaking to the chairman of Liberal Judaism, Lucian Hudson, at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 30.

He is the author of ‘The Reckoning: How the Killing of One Man Changed the Fate of the Promised Land’ 




a book described so:

...Bishop tells the story of [Avraham] Stern [leader of the militant Zionist group, the Stern Gang] and the middle-class Londoner, assistant superintendent Geoffrey Morton, sent to track him down. The spectacular and murderous crimes of the Stern Gang had caused outrage among both British and Jewish groups. Morton cornered Stern in Tel Aviv and shot him dead. The events of that day had a major impact on British rule in Palestine and on the events that shaped the birth of Israel.

Here is from the official blurb:

...the mesmerising true story of two ruthless adversaries and the wartime killing of Avraham Stern – an event that shook the modern world.

On a cold morning in February 1942, with the world plunged in the horrors of World War Two, Avraham Stern hid in an attic in Tel Aviv, a price on his head. He’d been on the run for weeks, his picture blazoned across newspapers all over Palestine. As leader of the Stern Gang, he had committed spectacular and murderous crimes, sparking outcry from both British and Jewish groups. An intellectual poet and mystic, Stern believed himself destined for greatness; the Jewish liberator of British Palestine. Drawn always to the margins – his writings were drenched in images of martyrdom and blood.

Assistant Superintendent Geoffrey Morton, a middle-class Londoner who had swopped milk deliveries for the dangers of colonial policing, was the man tasked with stopping Stern. Seemingly so different, in fact the men had much in common – ambition, dedication and conviction in his own righteousness. The incidents of that morning would be endlessly contested but two things were clear; Morton had cornered Stern and, minutes later, shot him dead.

The shots Morton fired that day would echo down the remaining years of British rule in Palestine and through the titanic events that shaped the birth of Israel.

Based on revelatory research, the private archive of Morton and interviews with witnesses, ‘The Reckoning’ is the first book to tell the tale of a rebel who terrorized Palestine, the lawman determined to stop him and the creation of a cult of martyrdom that destroyed any hope of compromise between Arab and Jew.

Here he is further on his book:

...Morton never denied killing him but always maintained he fired in self-defence after Stern made a sudden dash for what he feared was the trigger for a hidden bomb. Claims that he had been executed in cold blood were met with libel actions. Towards the end of Morton’s life, however, his story was challenged from an unexpected quarter when another British police officer who was in the room gave a very different version of events.

What seemed at the time to be a dramatic but ultimately inconsequential cops-and-robbers shoot-out was soon to take on a much greater significance. The murky circumstances of Stern’s death — combined with the continued policy of turning away refugees from Germany — helped turn moderate Jewish opinion against the British and increase support for radical action against them.  Six years later they would depart in ignominy bringing to an end one of the shabbiest and most painful episodes in the history of the empire.

A friend of mine published another good book a few years ago on the matter. And you'll recall the Farran Affair.

That Winterbottom film is still in abeyance but the subject of the Hebrew war for liberation against a foreign occupier will reach out still and the facts and truth will be available for all.



(with thanks to EG)

^

There's a Zhabotinsky Bar in Jerusalem, on Shimon Ben-Shetach Street, in the building where Ze'ev Jabotinsky lived between end of 1918 and 1920.

And in Tel Aviv's Florentine Nehighborheed, on Stern Street, formerly Mizrachi Bet, across the street and up from where Avraham Stern, Yair, was murdered by Geoffrey Morton, British police detective, on February 12, 1942, and where the Lechi Museum is, is another bar, Stern:




where you can imbibe beer and munch on frankfurters.

And don't forget my son's bar: HaGov - Lion's Den.


Photo credit: YMedad

Avraham Stern - Yair was the founder of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (FFI, or Lechi in Hebrew) and the Hebrew University conducted a conference dealing with him as a graduate of the university, MA in Classical Languages and Hebrew Literature, 1934.

The pictures:



Part of the crowd




Two cousins: Yair Stern, son of Avraham Stern - Yair and Amira Stern, daughter of David Stern, Avraham Stern's brother



Geula Cohen talking on Yair's poetry



The sons of the Lechi commanders: (l - r) Yair Stern, Yair Shamir, Aryeh Eldad, Elisha Yellin-Mor