Abraham Stern

1907 - 1942

Jewish underground leader during the British mandate of Palestine.

Abraham Stern (nicknamed Yaʿir) was born in Poland but spent many of his formative years in Russia. He moved to Palestine in 1924 where he studied Latin and Greek at Hebrew University and later began to study for his doctorate in Florence, Italy. Stern served in the Haganah starting in 1929 but broke off in 1931 to form the Irgun Zvaʾi Leʾumi (IZL), through which he smuggled weapons into Palestine and established contacts with the Polish military. In 1934 he gave up his academic interests to devote himself fully to the underground.

Stern returned to Palestine in 1939, following the publication of the British White Paper, to organize resistance to the British. He was detained by the British for ten months, until his friends in the Revisionist movement arranged for his release. In 1940 he broke with the Irgun and its leader, David Raziel, and formed a new group, Lohamei Herut Yisrael, also known as Lehi, or the Stern Gang, because he did not feel the Irgun was militaristic enough. His ideological manifesto, "Eighteen Principles of Renaissance," included many controversial ideas, including that the new Zionist goals should be a land of Israel extending from the Nile to the Euphrates Rivers.

During World War II, unaware of the realities of the Holocaust, Stern sought links with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, although they did not result in anything. Stern, who appeared on British "wanted" posters for bank robbery and murder, was found and killed by British policemen in 1942.

Bibliography

Heller, Joseph. The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror. London and Portland, OR: F. Cass, 1995.

— JULIE ZUCKERMAN