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LEHI-published booklet titled "And We Didn't Return to Base: One Attack Incident." It recounts the massive coordinated LEHI attack on the British Railway Workshop in Haifa that occured on June 17, 1946. Of the 44 fighters, 11 were killed and 23 were captured. Nineteen were sentenced to death, but those sentences were later commuted to life in prison. The attack was one of a series of attacks on the British between June 16 and 17, including a Palmach attack on road and rail bridges and Irgun kidnapping of British officers. The British responded two weeks later with mass arrest of around 2,700 Jewish underground fighters. This booklet was written by Haim Appelboim, one of the participants in the action, while imprisoned by the British in the Acre Prison. He wrote this account on small pieces of toilet paper that were smuggled out of the prison. It was published in October 1946.
Collection
Part of
Jewish Underground Ephemera from Late British Mandate Palestine
These documents capture a fascinating moment in Jewish history, a turmoil-filled “interregnum” of sorts, between the destruction of European Jewry in World War II and the establishment of Israel: the violent fight against the British, efforts to rescue Jewish refugees in Europe and smuggle them into Eretz Israel, diplomatic maneuvering over the end of the British Mandate, the proposed partition of Palestine, and anticipation of a war with the Arab world. But this collection does more than merely capture this moment. It adds nuance and layers to a discourse that can suffer from overly simplified, ahistorical, and context-free narratives about the history of Zionism, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Metadata
- People
-
- Author
- Apelboim, Hayim, 1925-1947
- Related Name
- Loḥame ḥerut Yiśraʼel
- לוחמי חרות ישראל
- Language
- Hebrew
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