(Author: Glenda Woolf, Vol. 77, #3, Spring 2022)
Between November 1945 and until July 1946 the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi coordinated their operations against the British regime in the Palestine Mandate. It was during this time that the Lehi embarked on an operation against the Kishon railway workshop in Haifa. Caught in the retreat by the British army, eleven were killed and 19 men and four women taken prisoner. One young man, Chayim Apelboim, and his wife Sarah were part of the attacking force. Both were captured, though Sarah later managed to escape.
Apelboim kept a diary while in prison, which reconstructed events from 17 June to August 1946. He wrote daily and was able to smuggle his writing out. They were first published by the Lehi in July 1947 under the (Hebrew) title ‘And We Did Not Return to Base’.[1] All references in this article are from the 1991 book, With all their might: a human document of a Jewish freedom fighter.[2]
Who was this young man that the British described and imprisoned as a terrorist?
At the age of one, Chayim arrived in Tel Aviv with his parents, immigrants from Russia. He attended religious schools and youth movements and in 1940 made the decision that only force could result in the expulsion of the British.
Though written secretly while under sentence of death by hanging, using prison toilet paper, the published diary covers more than one hundred pages. It is a moving testament to a brave young man who gave his life to try and obtain a country free of foreign rule, a place where the long-suffering Jewish refugees, who had somehow managed to evade the Nazi armies, could be brought, since they were desperately seeking refuge and being callously turned away worldwide.
The hope had been to “break into the workshops without a struggle” (p13), to set off explosives that would cause damage but no loss of human life. However, Arab guards were there, fighting ensued, and though the explosives succeeded in their destruction the attackers were caught. (pp13-28)
So begins their time in Acre prison. As they await trial, (pp33-47):
The heavy iron gates open to let the cars in. Our trucks are closed I look out the window of the driver’s compartment “The Fortress of Acre!” we say to ourselves……where the first Hebrew was hung under British rule!
…We’re led into a small room. Here stands Major Grant, the prison warden. He is short of stature, lame in one leg; his face is cruel…. They remove the chains from our hands and feet and order us to strip. We are to be searched……
The guards hustle into our room…. number 28. It is about fifteen meters long and 8 meters wide……We ask permission to go out into the yard and wash up. Our clothes, which we have had on for two days, are saturated with the blood of our comrades. (pp33-4)
Sabbath, we got up early. They were taken to room 28, which served as a synagogue and there met the other Jewish prisoners. We say kaddish in memory of our fallen comrades……Eleven comrades lost! Can it be true?
Evening. …. A new week is about to begin……A comrade takes up a sound and soon we are all singing…” Though the road is strewn with thorns…the scion of the Maccabees will never bend the knee… (pp38-9)
On Thursday 28 Sivan 5705 (9 June 1945) ……the prisoners heard ……about the raid on the Jewish Agency offices. The English broke in, wrecked, plundered, and destroyed this seat of the “government-to-be.” Will those who claim to be its army know how to answer war with war?…….Talk, talk and more talk about armed resistance. But no action. (p41)
Days pass, gray prison days. We try to busy ourselves with reading, but to no avail. Our minds simply refuse to concentrate. We look calm enough – outwardly. Inside we are deeply troubled. It is hard to put out of our inner sight and hearing, the blood drenched lorry, the figures of the dead, the groans and cries of the wounded. (p43)
As the days pass and they await trial, it looks now as if our hanging is a certainty (p45)
The Trial (pp48–63)
Monday 15th of Ab 5706 (12 August 1946)
Today is the day of our trial.
From the dawn hour we have been getting ready for the trial, washing, shaving, tidying ourselves up. Physically as well as morally, we are ready for the test of strength to come in a few hours…. we are paired off in chains…
We are curious to see how the sounded will be transported. Surely by ambulance we think. But no, here they are in the doorway of the fortress, each leaning on two prisoners. (p48)
A moment later our thoughts take a different turn. Maybe our parents, our relatives will be present at the trial. It will be our first meeting with them since our arrest. (p.50)
Suddenly we hear a burst of sound from the outside “We have brought a Shalom Aleichem” There they are, our Hebrew daughters, our women comrade, stepping out of an armoured police truck. Two of them are supported by policewomen; apparently, they have not yet recovered from their wounds. (p52)
The judges enter. There are three of them, headed by Colonel Pell. The same Colonel Pell who advised his countrymen in private to do with the Jews in his country what the Germans did with theirs – exterminate them! Welcome Colonel Pell, our righteous judge! (p54)
——-
It is later in the prison yard that they hear the verdict, death by hanging for all eighteen men,
Is this then how my life is to end? My twenty-one years of life. I am still young. The will to live is still strong within me…….and now, to have to wait, wait for a slow death.…. the death of little men…the death of the hangman/s noose…. I have always wanted to die on the field of battle, giving blow for blow. And now, to have to wait helpless, impotent, for a British trooper to throw a rope around my neck!
Two weeks later they hear that their death sentence has been commuted (p80). They hear it first from an Arab prisoner who cleans their cells, then from an Irish policeman, but only when they see it late on Friday in a Hebrew newspaper, do they believe it.
After a visit from his wife, he writes to her.
24 Tevet 5707 (16 January 1947)
Until now – from the end of one visit. I would look forward to the next visit. Now I am looking forward to that happy event, the birth of our baby. Sarah! How happy I am to see you thriving and strong in spite of the condition you are in. (p100).
The birth of his daughter is greeted with great joy.
…. a daughter is born to us…. how happy I am with this information. You have given me limitless joy. (p104)
He drew a picture and wrote a poem to celebrate the birth, and his fellow prisoners inscribed their good wishes in a little booklet. (See photos)
This was on the 8th of Nisan 5707 (29 March 1947)
Just a short time later, the last letter he ever wrote, on 9 Iyar (29 April 1947) he tells of swollen arms due to typhoid injections and encloses a letter that he asks Sarah to deliver to his parents.
On 14 May 1947, during the prison breakout, 41 Irgun and Lehi prisoners escaped. However, during the flight Chayim Apelboim was killed as they were pursued by the British. The men managed to get away, and when they reached Kibbutz Dalia, they met a Jewish shepherd who saw that Chayim was given a Jewish burial. The other seven Lehi prisoners carried on to Benyamina and remained free. Two men were wounded and recaptured.
So ends the break-out from prison and the life of a brave young man, and the only memory left of Chaim Apelboim are the words that he wrote in his final months. Perhaps somewhere today, there is a woman, seventy-five years old, the daughter of Chaim Apelboim, living in the free and independent land Israel.
Glenda Woolf, a frequent contributor to Jewish Affairs, is a novelist and essayist whose articles and stories on Jewish themes have appeared in Jewish publications worldwide. Her novels, published under the name Gita Gordon, include South African Journeys (2002), Flashback (2007), Mystery in the Amazon and Scattered Blossoms (both 2008) and Guest House (2012). Her latest novel, Full Circle, is reviewed by Angela Miller-Rothbart in the current latest issue of Jewish Affairs.
NOTES
[1] An English translation was published in New York several months later by the American Committee for the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, under the title ‘They Came Up from Blood’.
[2] Apelboim, Chayim, With all their might – a human document of a Jewish freedom fighter, English editor, Yisrael Medad, translated by Abraham Regelson. Yair Publishers Tel Aviv, 1991,
