Prologue
1. See Chapter 11 for source notes of this account.
Chapter 1
1. M. W. Daly, ‘Sir Harold Alfred MacMichael’, Dictionary of National Biography.
2. Papers of Sir Harold MacMichael [hereafter MacMichael Papers], Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College, Oxford University.
3. Ibid.
4. Palestine Post, 4 March 1938.
5. MacMichael Papers.
6. M. W. Daly. Empire on the Nile, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, p. 273.
7. Papers of Sir William Battershill [hereafter Battershill Papers], Rhodes House Library, Oxford University.
8. Palestine Post, 4 March 1938.
9. Ibid., 6 March 1938.
10. Ibid., 4 March 1938.
Chapter 2
1. Geoffrey Morton, Just the Job, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1957, pp. 48−52.
2. G. J. Morton Private Papers [hereafter Morton Papers].
3. Class reports, St Olave’s Grammar School Library.
4. The Olavian, vol. XXI, no. 1, p. 114.
5. Class reports, St Olave’s Grammar School Library.
6. Imperial War Museum [hereafter IWM] Sound Archive 12960.
7. Ibid.
8. Morton, op. cit., pp. 14−16.
9. Ibid., p. 17.
10. IWM Sound Archive 12960.
11. Morton, op. cit., p. 19.
12. Ibid., p. 20.
13. Palestine Post, 12 April 1938.
14. Morton Papers.
15. Morton, op. cit., p. 61.
16. Eastern Evening News, 13 April 1938.
17. Palestine Post, 14 April 1938.
18. Morton, op. cit., p. 63.
19. Ibid., p. 2.
20. David Ben-Gurion, Recollections, edited by Thomas R. Bransten, Macdonald, 1970, p. 36.
21. Howard Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to our Time, pp. 25−266.
22. The National Archives [herafter TNA] FO 1093/330.
23. Ibid.
24. Palestine Post, 15 November 1937.
25. Morton, op. cit., p. 62.
26. Morton, op. cit., p. 62.
27. Morton Papers.
28. ‘The Irgun’, Wikipedia, p. 5.
Chapter 3
1. Avraham Stern, Letters to Roni, edited by Aharon Amir, Yair, Tel Aviv, 2000, p. 182 (in Hebrew).
2. But then there are few plaques or monuments relating to any aspect of Suwalki’s twentieth-century history. Perhaps it is too painful and contentious for anyone to want to remember.
3. Interview with Yair Stern, Jerusalem, 14 October 2012.
4. Leslie Sherer, Memories of Suwalk, Independent Suwalk and Vicinity Benevolent Association Yearbook, 1990.
5. Shmuel Abramsky, Study of Suwalk Jewry, Jewish Community Book – Suwalk and Vicinity, Yair-Avraham Stern Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 1989, p. 15.
6. Quoted in Abramsky, ibid., p. 19.
7. Interview with Yair Stern, Jerusalem, 14 October 2012.
8. Interview with Amira Stern, Tel Aviv, 28 February 2013.
9. This and many other details of Stern’s early life in the following passage can be found in Ada Amichal-Yevin’s exhaustively researched In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, Hadar, Tel Aviv, 1986, p. 13 (translated from the Hebrew by Ben Lynfield).
10. Interview with Yair Stern, Jerusalem, 14 October 2012.
11. In My Blood Live Forever: Letters of Avraham Stern, Yair, Tel Aviv, 1979, p. 228 (translated from the Hebrew by Zev Golan).
12. Complete Poetic Works of Hayyim Nachman Bialik, vol. I, edited by Israel Efos, New York, 1948, pp. 129−43.
13. Interview with Yair Stern, Jerusalem, 14 October 2012.
14. Quoted in Zev Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, Yair, Tel Aviv, 2011, p. 15.
15. Ibid., p. 16.
16. Ibid., p. 17.
17. Quoted in Golan, op. cit., p. 29.
18. Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang, Ideology, Politics and Terror 1940−49, Frank Cass, London, 1995, p. 19.
19. Amichal-Yevin, op cit., p. 87.
20. Ibid., p. 91.
21. Yair Stern interview, Jerusalem, 14 October 2012. The detail of wild flowers blooming late in January seems to suggest some sentimental myth-making is at work here but in fact spring can come that early in Israel.
22. Amichal-Yevin, op cit., p. 120.
23. Ibid., p. 91.
24. Eliav, Wanted, pp. 62−4.
25. Haganah Archives, Tel Aviv [hereafter HA] 47/7.
Chapter 4
1. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 150.
2. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Sir Richard Catling, late 1970s.
3. Ibid.
5. Details of the affair are taken from Ram Oren, Red Days, Keshet, 2006 (in Hebrew), a fictionalized account of Wilkin and Borochov’s romance.
6. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Sir Richard Catling, Lehi Museum Archives [hereafter LMA], Tel Aviv.
7. Eliav, Wanted, p. 41.
8. Quoted in Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 28.
9. HA 47/77.
10. Manchester Guardian, 24 May 1939.
11. Palestine Post, 18 May 1939.
12. Palestine Post, 19 May 1939.
13. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 141.
14. HA 47/7.
15. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., pp. 151−4.
16. Ehud Ein-Gil, ‘Punish Those Responsible’, Ha’aretz, 13 January 2009. The article is based on The Birth of an Underground Organization by Professor Yehuda Lapidot.
17. HA 47/59.
18. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 154.
19. Eliav, op. cit., p. 72.
20. HA 47/59. Levstein/Eliav would later claim that the attack was aimed equally at British officials and Arab dignitaries who frequented the Rex. Eliav, op. cit., p. 67.
21. Translation attached to CID weekly intelligence report, HA 47/88.
22. Translation attached to CID weekly intelligence report, HA 47/87.
23. HA 47/89.
24. HA 47/77.
25. Ibid.
26. Eliav, op. cit., p. 77.
27. Ibid., p. 78.
28. Battershill Papers.
29. HA 47/59.
30. Interview with Uri Avnery, Tel Aviv, 28 February 2013.
31. Morris Gilbert, ‘Jewish IRA Fights for Sovereign Palestine’, 13 July 1939.
32. HA 47/59.
33. Eliav, op. cit., pp. 87−94.
34. Telephone interview with Edward Horne, 2 June 2013.
35. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Sir Richard Catling, LMA.
36. Telephone interview with Edward Horne, 2 June 2013.
37. According to Levstein’s son, Danny Eliav, Zeroni held his father at least partly responsible for his sufferings. Shortly before the arrest, Levstein had borrowed Zeroni’s car for a raid on a British arms dump and had not covered the number plates. The vehicle had been seen and the registration circulated. ‘Zeroni came over to my father and he blamed him for all the torture he had from Cairns’, he told me in Jerusalem in October 2012.
38. Eliav, op. cit., pp. 95−7.
39. Palestine Post, 27 August 1939.
40. Ibid., 28 August 1939.
Chapter 5
1. The Colonial Police Medal for Gallantry and the first ever awarded, according to Morton.
2. Morton, Just the Job, p. 110.
3. Ibid., p. 108
4. Private Papers of Alice Morton.
5. Morton, op. cit., p. 108.
6. Morton Papers.
7. Interview with Dan Stamp, London, 28 September 2013.
8. Morton, op. cit., p. 118
9. Nicholas Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, André Deutsch, London, 1979, pp. 72−4.
10. Ibid., p. 99.
11. Morton Papers.
12. TNA FO 1093/330.
13. Morton, op. cit., p. 121.
14. Eliav, Wanted, p. 112.
15. Ibid., p. 113.
16. Ibid., p. 114.
17. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, p. 217.
18. Stern, Letters to Roni, ed. Amir, p. 126.
19. Quoted in Heller, The Stern Gang, Ideology, Politics and Terror 1940−49, pp. 70−75.
20. Interview with Uri Avnery, Tel Aviv, 28 February 2013.
21. See Heller, op cit., p. 75, for a fuller expression of this philosophy.
22. Quoted in Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 33.
Chapter 6
1. HA 47/7.
2. Baruch Nadel, interview with Nelly Langsfelder, Tel Aviv, 31 March 1976, Jabotinsky Institute Archives, Tel Aviv [hereafter JIA].
3. Quoted in Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, Abacus, London, 2012, p. 442.
4. He may have been acting in response to pressure from the Jewish Agency and the Haganah following a long-running dispute resulting from a raid on an arms dump in Herzliya earlier in the year, for which IZL members were blamed.
5. HA 47/7.
6. Eliav, Wanted, p. 129.
7. Weekly Police Report, Morton Papers.
8. Palestine Post, 10 September 1940.
9. Eliav, op cit., pp. 130−33.
10. Palestine Post, 17 September 1940.
11. Weekly Police Report, Morton Papers.
12. HA 47/2 for this and subsequent quotes pp. 102–104.
13. Soffer, though, persisted with his enquiries, as is clear from his report cited above. Despite Wilkin’s reluctance to cooperate, Soffer managed to renew his acquaintance with Ilin and pressed him for information about the robbery. Ilin stalled at first, then suddenly invited him to dinner and then lunch at the San Remo restaurant in Tel Aviv. Bluff came high on the menu, with both men prodding and pushing for a weak spot. Ilin did not mind admitting that Stern and Zeroni had organized the robbery as he was sure that the police had no solid evidence against them. Soffer countered that, on the contrary, the police had a lot. He claimed – untruthfully – that he had ‘brought 20 detectives with me from Jerusalem and that they will not return until they arrest every one of the persons wanted’.
On Tuesday, 1 October, five days after the lunch, Soffer met Ilin and Rosenthal in Jerusalem where, despite his earlier bluster, he had returned. Ilin took Soffer to one side. He had a proposition for him from the perpetrators of the robbery. He ‘hinted that to avoid trouble and fear of being constantly followed … they would rather pay a good sum of money to the police to put the file aside and not to extend the investigations to other corners’. Soffer decided it was time to up the ante. ‘I told [Ilin] that I don’t believe a word of what he said and that I am convinced he cannot get in touch with these persons as they do not trust him or David any more who are known spies of the police.’ This challenge ‘excited him very much and he protested. Then he said: “All right Mr Soffer, we shall be in your house on Saturday and you can see whether they have confidence in me or not.”’
In fact they turned up on Friday, just as the Soffers were about to sit down to their Shabbat supper. The hospitable policeman offered his guests a glass of wine and ‘after receiving some refreshment [Ilin] requested to speak to me alone’. They moved into another room where Ilin told him that ‘the offenders’ would never surrender and it would be a ‘dangerous undertaking’ for Soffer to persist with his investigation. He suggested that it was his duty as a Jew to ‘close the case like other hundreds of cases and be with my family in Jerusalem’.
Ilin now got down to business. ‘He told me that he got in touch with the persons responsible for the robbery (would not mention names) and that they have offered and have given him 150 pounds to give it to me to close the case.’ At this point he ‘pulled out some notes from his pocket and said I have brought 50 pounds for you now’. Another fifty would come later. Ilin proposed to keep the rest for himself to pay doctors’ bills following a bad car smash in Haifa.
Soffer joked that the money had perhaps come from the Anglo-Palestine Bank. He then confessed himself surprised and somewhat shocked by the approach. He had assumed that Ilin had come to ‘give him a good report on the case’ or to offer to ‘persuade the offenders to surrender to the police and stand trial if they are really national heroes’. Ilin merely repeated the offer. The detective felt it was time to change tack.
‘I then decided for the sake of progress of my case to adopt a different attitude and I told him that one should expect a better sum of money for dropping such a case and that I will reconsider.’ Ilin took back the fifty pounds and said he would try to increase the offer. They agreed to meet again in Tel Aviv. Before he left Ilin indulged in a little indiscreet bragging, designed, it seems, to undermine his host’s loyalty to his employers. He informed Soffer that the IZL had paid agents inside the police force and as a result ‘received copies of all secret reports’. Their left-wing rivals in the Histadrut (the powerful Jewish workers’ federation) also spent a lot of money on spying and had gone so far as to ‘compel a Jewish girl to sleep with an army captain to get his secrets’. Among the beneficiaries of the Histadrut slush fund was the late Inspector Cairns. Indeed, one of the reasons for his assassination was that ‘he was bribed by the Histadrut and delivered many police secrets to them and as such he was fighting the Revisionists’.
The implication was that Soffer had better decide which side he was on. David Rosenthal had already delivered a similar message during the chance meeting in Jerusalem when he had told him, ‘they know those officers who assist the Histadrut and that their time will come, and those officers who assist the IZL … will be specially considered’. Immediately after the Shabbat eve encounter Soffer faithfully set off for police headquarters in the Russian Compound and gave a verbal report to Giles Bey, who requested the full written version which is quoted in the text.
14. HA 47/60.
15. HA 47/1.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
Chapter 7
1. HA 47/10.
2. Eliav, Wanted, p. 145.
3. Ibid., p. 142.
4. Werner Otto von Hentig, Mein Leben Eine Dienstreise, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1962, pp. 338−9.
5. ‘Seven Days’ section, Yedioth Ahronoth, 15 July 1983.
6. See Heller, The Stern Gang, Ideology, Politics and Terror 1940−49, ch. 4, for a full study.
7. Ibid., p. 86.
8. Eliav, op cit., p. 147.
9. Lubentchik’s role in the story ended there. He decided to stay on in Lebanon and, when British forces swept in to drive out the Vichyites in the early summer of 1941, he was picked up and packed off to Mazra’a. Later he was moved to a detention camp in Africa where he fell ill and died.
10. Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, pp. 224−5. The friend was Yitzhak Tselnik.
11. Quoted in Heller, op cit., p. 87.
12. Interview with Yair Stern, Jerusalem, 14 October 2012.
13. Dr Kasriel Eilender, ‘A Brief History of the Jews in Suwalki’, www.kehilalinks.jewishgen.org. About 1700 Jews were murdered in a forest near Łomazy in August 1942 by the SS, abetted by Police Battalion 101, a formation of ‘ordinary men’ from Hamburg whose activities helped give the lie to the notion that only dedicated Nazis were involved in mass killings of Jews.
14. US Holocaust Museum Encyclopedia article ‘Polish Refugees in Lithuania – Unexpected Rescue 1940−1941’, www.ushmm.org
15. Yair Stern says she entered Palestine on forged documents arranged by his father’s contacts in Kovno.
16. Quoted in Heller, op cit., p. 83.
17. HA 47/11.
18. HA 47/3.
19. Memorandum from unnamed ‘British Inspector’ at Tulkarm, 2 July 1941, HA 47/4.
20. HA 47/11.
21. HA 47/7.
22. ‘Life in the Lehi’: interview with Moshe Svorai, www.eretzisraelforever.net
23. Testimony of Moshe Svorai, quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 193.
24. HA 47/7.
25. HA 47/3.
26. HA 47/2.
27. HA 47/11.
28. Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 33.
29. Heller, op. cit, pp. 87−8.
30. Papers of Alec Bowden Stuart, Imperial War Museum Documents Department 19259. This report is dated 10 December 1942 but it seems clear that these sentiments were already widespread a year earlier.
31. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 236.
32. Quoted in Golan, op. cit., p. 34.
33. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 273.
34. HA 47/4.
35. Eliav, op. cit., p. 147.
36. Ibid., pp. 246−50.
37. Eliav, op. cit., p. 149.
Chapter 8
1. The Attorney General v Nissim Reuven and Yehoshua Becker, 6 March 1942, Morton Papers.
2. Palestine Post, 11 January 1942.
3. Eliav, Wanted, p. 150.
4. Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, pp. 266−7.
5. Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994, p. 35.
6. Eliav, op. cit., p. 15. When Levstein made these allegations in 1984, Morton was still alive. He did not challenge them, but given his proven determination to defend his reputation in the courts it seems unlikely the book, published in New York, ever came to his attention and there is no mention of it in his papers.
7. Morton Papers.
8. Morton, Just the Job, p. 136.
9. Palestine Post, 26 January 1942.
10. Quoted in Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 265.
11. Ibid., p 253.
12. Ibid., p. 261.
13. Interview with Uri Avnery, Tel Aviv, 28 February 2013.
14. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., pp. 264−5.
15. Ibid., p. 258.
16. Ibid., p. 259.
17. Shamir, op. cit., p. 51.
18. Eliav, op. cit., pp. 152−3.
19. See Palestine Post, 12 February 1942, p. 3.
20. Eliav, op. cit., p. 154.
21. Ibid.
22. TNA HO 334/228.
23. Morton, op. cit., p. 137.
24. Ibid., p. 139.
25. Eliav, op. cit., p. 158.
26. Palestine Post, 21 January 1942.
27. Palestine Post, 22 January 1942.
28. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Ternent, late 1970s.
29. Palestine Post, 22 January 1942.
30. Efrem Dekel, SHAI: The Exploits of Hagana Intelligence, Thomas Yoselof, 1959, p. 30.
Chapter 9
1. HA 47/3.
2. ‘Operations at 30 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’, Morton Papers.
3. Morton, Just the Job, p. 142.
4. The identity of the informant is unclear, but Morton reported to Giles that the gang assumed it was the owner of the flat (HA 47/3).
5. Morton, op. cit., p. 142.
6. ‘Operations at 30 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’, Morton Papers.
7. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Ternent, late 1970s.
8. ‘Operations at 30 Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv’, Morton Papers.
9. Binyamin Gepner interview with Alec Ternent.
10. It can be read on p. 162 of Eliav’s Wanted. It starts with the police bursting in and opening fire with cries of ‘Bloody Jews! Filthy Jews!’ and ends with Levstein delivering a stirring oration from his stretcher.
11. Baruch Nadel, telephone interview with Moshe Svorai, Haifa, 9 March 1976, JIA.
12. Exchange reproduced in ‘The Murder at No. 30 Dizengoff Street: How Four Freedom Fighters Fell’ (Lehi pamphlet), Morton Papers.
13. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Ternent, LMA.
14. TNA FO 1093/330.
15. Ibid.
16. Eldad Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Story of the CID of the Palestine Police Force, 1929−1946, 2011, p. 221, translated from the Hebrew by Murray Rosovsky (unpublished).
17. Moshe Svorai interview with Ada Amichal-Yevin, JIA.
18. HA 47/9.
19. Ibid.
20. Morton Papers.
Chapter 10
1. Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, p. 278.
2. Ibid., p. 282, testimony of Roni Stern.
3. Palestine Post, 6 February 1942.
4. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 281.
5. Ibid., p. 276.
6. Eliav, Wanted, p. 166. Zak is transliterated as ‘Jacques’ throughout.
7. Another man was mentioned − ‘Abraham Maeri’ – but by the time the notice appeared the police had established that this was an alias of Avraham Amper, now dead.
8. HA 47/3, Alan Saunders, Report to the Chief Secretary, 20 February 1942, ‘The Stern Group’, p. 5.
9. Ibid., p. 4.
10. Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Story of the CID of the Palestine Police Force, 1929−1946, p. 225.
11. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942, p. 4.
12. HA 47/3.
13. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 273, testimony of Binyamin Zeroni.
14. Ibid., p. 276, testimony of Yitzhak Tselnik.
15. HA 47/3.
16. Tova Svorai, The Last Days of Yair-Avraham Stern, Shaked (undated).
17. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 284.
18. Morton might have been better directing his anger at Binyamin Zeroni. According to Professor Eldad Harouvi in his study of the PPF CID, the Haifa bomb was ‘prepared by Binyamin Zeroni and his men’. Harouvi, op. cit., p. 227. This work has not yet been published in English, depriving non-Hebrew-speaking scholars of a valuable source, an omission I hope will soon be rectified.
19. Morton, Just the Job, p. 143.
Chapter 11
1. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Shand, late 1970s, LMA.
2. Morton, Just the Job, p. 144.
3. Levstein’s testimony differs from the official account in some respects – he says that there was an Arab policeman guarding them initially and Daly did not appear until after Amper and Zak’s death.
4. Eliav, Wanted, p. 119.
5. Morton’s report ‘Avraham Stern’, 13 February 1942, in Stuart Papers, IWM 19259.
6. Ibid., p. 168.
7. Morton, op. cit., p. 144.
8. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
9. Levstein claimed that his communications had been written in the same fashion though Morton’s staff do not seem to have experienced much difficulty cracking the code. He also alleged that Svorai wrote his note in plain Hebrew. In the letter Svorai mentions other attempts to contact Tova from hospital, though he does not say through whom.
10. Morton, op. cit., p. 144.
11. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
12. Tova Svorai, The Last Days of Yair-Avraham Stern.
13. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942, Appendix D.
14. Amichal-Yevin, In Purple: The Life of Yair – Abraham Stern, p. 286.
15. Tova Svorai, op. cit.
16. Ibid.
17. Tova Svorai also claimed that he was wearing a grey suit, but this would be contradicted by the testimony of the policeman who found him, Bernard Stamp, who said he was clad in his underwear.
18. Many of the staff were Arabs, a fact that had alarmed Svorai when he was first brought in. He was reassured by an Arab doctor who ‘spoke to me in English and said you have nothing to worry about, we won’t harm you’. Moshe Svorai, interview with Ada Amichal-Yevin, JIA.
19. Eliav, op. cit., pp. 168−9.
20. Ada Amichal-Yevin, interview with Moshe Svorai, JIA. Svorai remained very sensitive on the subject. In 1993 he won a libel action against Anshel Spielman, director of the Lehi Museum and a former member of the group, for saying in his memoirs that Svorai’s slip had led the police to Yair. In a convoluted judgement, the president of the Tel Aviv District Court Eliyahu Winograd found that Stern had been captured as a result of a routine search and that ‘based on the evidence placed before me, the British did not arrive at the apartment on the basis of information emanating from the slip of the tongue of the plaintiff’.
21. Svorai, op. cit.
22. Morton, op. cit., p. 145.
23. Svorai, op. cit.
24. Tova claimed that among his entourage was a Jewish detective, the same man she had seen in the street three nights earlier. He looked for a while at Stern then left the room ‘as restrained and quiet as when he entered’. The significance of this figure is that his presence lends credence to the idea that it was a police surveillance operation rather than Moshe’s indiscretion that led Morton to Stern. See The Last Days of Yair – Abraham Stern.
25. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
26. It was turned up by James Barr while researching his brilliant account of Middle Eastern Anglo-French rivalries in the period, A Line in the Sand. I tracked it down after noting the reference and owe him a debt of gratitude.
27. The latter point would be disputed by Stern’s supporters.
28. Svorai, op. cit.
29. Amichal-Yevin, op. cit., p. 290.
30. Ibid., pp. 289−90.
31. Ibid., p. 292.
Chapter 12
1. TNA KV 5/29.
2. Ibid.
3. Morton Papers.
4. Ibid.
5. JIA 3/112.
6. Jerusalem Post, 13 February 1942.
7. HA 47/3.
8. JIA 3/112.
9. TNA KV5/29
10. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
11. HA 47/8.
12. HA 47/3, Saunders Report, 20 February 1942.
13. Morton, Just the Job, p. 147.
14. An honourable exception was Eden’s private secretary, Oliver Harvey, who pleaded for the refugees to be given sanctuary.
15. Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 117. In October 1941 a German Jew called Paul Falkenheim, who had been released from Dachau, was caught after being parachuted into Palestine. He was equipped with a wireless set and had instructions to ‘find out as much as possible about troop movements and concentrations, the location of aircraft and their markings, new aerodromes and camp sites, shipping and the feeling among Palestinian Arabs and the possibility of their revolting’. He was warned that failure to obey orders would result in reprisals against his family. British intelligence were unimpressed by this operation and attempts to infiltrate two Armenians into the area and came to the conclusion that either the enemy espionage set up in the Middle East was ‘inefficient’ or it was intended that the agents should be caught to distract attention from ‘more important parachutists and seaborne agents’. See the file KV5/29 in the National Archives for more detail.
16. Quoted in Bethell, op. cit., p. 114.
17. Ibid., pp. 119−20.
Chapter 13
1. Palestine Post, 24 April 1942.
2. Morton, Just the Job, p. 149. Morton says that a watch was kept on the spot and ‘before long a young Jew – a member of the Stern gang – was caught making his way towards the entrance to the orange grove, carrying a sub-machine gun in a parcel’. However, there is no mention of any arrest in police records or in the memoirs of any of the Stern group.
3. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alex Shand, LMA.
4. Morton, Just the Job, p. 149.
5. Gepner, interview with Shand.
6. Papers of Alec Bowden Stuart, IWM 93/58/1.
7. Ibid.
8. IWM 93/58/1. Reznitsky claimed that ‘opposition was raised to the attempt on the life of Mr Morton as apparently Government had taken no steps against the Group for the April 22 bombs [in Jerusalem]’. The shooting of Ezra Sharoni in Jerusalem on 20 April ‘once more angered the Group and the bomb was exploded, happily without effect’.
9. Yaacov Banai, Anonymous Soldiers, Elisha Printing Press, Tel Aviv, 1958, p. 112 (in Hebrew).
10. Quoted in Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 91.
11. Yellin-Mor, Freedom Fighter for Israel, p. 86.
12. Morton Papers.
13. Ibid.
14. IWM 93/58/1.
15. TNA KV 5/29.
16. TNA KV 5/29.
17. Morton Papers. Morton described it as a ‘secret document’ which he retained for his personal files.
18. Morton, op. cit., p. 147.
19. The Palestine Post reported on 21 April 1942 that Becker’s sentence had been reduced to life imprisonment.
20. KV 5/29.
21. According to Colin Imray, a Palestine policeman, there was an officer called Richard Ballantine who had spent much of his career in the Nigerian Police. Ballantine made it clear in his report of the encounter that he was a new arrival in Palestine so it could be that he was serving on secondment for a short period. C. Imray, A Policeman’s Story (unpublished MS, 1983), Rhodes House Library, Oxford University.
22. HA 47/12.
23. Shamir, Summing Up, pp. 39−40.
24. Morton, op. cit., p. 155.
25. Police report: ‘Seizure of Ammunition at Givat Brenner’, Morton Papers.
26. Morton Papers.
27. Morton, op. cit., p. 157.
28. Ibid., p. 172.
29. Morton Papers.
30. Ibid.
31. Morton, op. cit., p. 157.
32. Diary of Alice Morton.
Chapter 14
1. Morton Papers.
2. Diary of Alice Morton.
3. Morton, Just the Job, p. 164.
4. Shamir, Summing Up, p. 46.
5. Quotations from leaflets and poster are taken from CID translations in the Haganah Archive the Morton Papers.
6. It was assumed to have been the work of Yaacov Levstein and his star pupil, Moshe Bar Giora, who had escaped from Jerusalem Central Prison less than two months before. In fact, Levstein, with Shamir’s approval, had disappeared on an extended sabbatical, teaching Haganah men how to build bombs in various kibbutzim. Eliav, Wanted, pp. 207−18.
7. IWM 19259.
8. Golan, Stern: The Man and His Gang, p. 105.
9. Quoted in J. Bowyer Bell, Terror out of Zion, Transaction Publishers, Piscataway, New Jersey, 1996, p. 112.
10. Ibid., p. 91.
11. Morton Papers.
12. Morton, op. cit., p. 173.
13. TNA WO 216/121.
14. Quoted in Bethell, The Palestine Triangle, p. 172.
15. Ben Lynfield, interview with David Shomron, 1 May 2013.
16. Segev, One Palestine, Complete, p. 7.
Chapter 15
1. Morton, Just the Job, p. 225.
2. Reported in The Times, 15 February 1967.
3. TNA FO 1093/330.
4. Morton, op. cit., p. 227.
5. Daily Mail, 4 February 1972.
6. Morton, op. cit., p. 314.
7. Ibid., p. 292.
8. Opinion of Helenus Milmo, 16 April 1952, Morton Papers.
9. The High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division 1952 M, No. 2157.
10. Morton, op. cit., p. 145.
11. Daily Telegraph, 3 February 1972.
12. Morton Papers.
13. Morton’s counsel, Patrick Milmo, was the son of his first libel lawyer.
14. Morton Papers.
15. Ibid.
16. Gepner Tapes, LMA.
Chapter 16
1. Telephone interview with Ilana Tsur, 4 October 2013.
2. Interview with Dan Stamp, 28 September 2013.
3. Ilana Tsur, interview with Bernard Stamp.
4. Morton Papers.
5. Ibid.
6. Ilana Tsur, interview with Bernard Stamp.
7. Morton Papers.
8. Morton appears to have passed this on to his solicitor. Several copies were left in written and typed form in his papers.
9. Morton Papers.
Chapter 17
1. Binyamin Gepner, interview with Alec Stuart, LMA.
2. Translation from the Hebrew by Ben Lynfield.
3. In Alan Saunders’s report, written eight days later, he writes that Stern ‘was shot by two of the three policemen in the room’. HA 47/3.
4. Harouvi, Palestine Investigated: The Story of the CID of the Palestine Police Force, 1929−1946, p. 226.
5. My thanks are due to James Barr for this information.
6. Morton, Just the Job, p. 105.
7. Ilana Tsur , interview with Bernard Stamp.
8. Maariv, 10 November 1963, translated by Ben Lynfield.
9. Interview with Penny Brook, Hitchin, 21 October 2012.
10. Spectator, 28 January 1989.
11. Spectator, 11 February 1989.
12. Morton Papers.
13. Interview with Penny Brook, Hitchin, 21 October 2102.