Stern, Avraham

(1907-42)

   Stern was born in Suvalki, Poland, to Mordecai and Leah Stern. At 18, he left Poland and went to Jerusalem to study at the Gymnasia High School. Subsequently, he enrolled at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the 1929 Arab riots, Stern took part in the defense of Jerusalem as a member of the Hagana Revisionist movement under the command of Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He then went on to help establish the Irgun Tz-vai Leumi (National Military Organization), and at this point, he took for himself the underground name "Yair" after Elazar Ben Yair, the zealot commander at Masada. He became the Irgun's theoretician and ideologue. As World War II began to engulf the globe, Jabotinsky instructed the Irgun to suspend all military actions against Great Britain. Stern believed that the British were the enemy of Israel no less than the Germans and that the British occupier would have to be driven out of Palestine.

   In 1940, Stern broke away from the Irgun and founded what would later become known as Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LEHI—Fighters for the Freedom of Israel). LEHI declared an all-out war against the British Empire in hopes of ejecting it from the land of Israel and establishing a Jewish state. Because of their small numbers and limited resources, Stern's followers engaged in personal acts of terror against key British colonial leaders and policemen. The British administration referred to them as the "Stern (Gang) Group" and promised a high reward to anyone assisting in their capture. In 1942, Stern was arrested by the British in a Tel Aviv apartment and was killed on 12 February 1942.