The Jerusalem Underground Prisoners Museum

by Annabella Kliman,     11^th grade,     Sacramento CA

We entered the Jerusalem Underground Prisoners Museum and were told to leave our belongings behind. Passing hundreds of IDF soldiers who were there for a seminar, we walked through the halls of the former British jail for members of the resistance organizations who saw themselves as freedom fighters.

During the time of the British Mandate, Arab and Jewish prisoners would be kept here for a number of reasons.  Not surprisingly, Jews and Arabs were held in different quarters of the building.  Even though the members of the Hagana, Etzel, and Lehi fought with each other on the outside, to the British, all the Jewsh resistance fighters are the same, so the three groups of defense organizations were placed together in one cell.

In the 1920s, there were waves of mass Aliyah. This demographic change led to Arab riots because of disagreements over land and ownership. After this came British commissions of inquiry, and then the white papers. The white papers, or hasefer halevan הספר הלבן in Hebrew, limited Aliyah, and Jewish land purchase. This would anger the Jewish community even more and ultimately cause more mass Aliyah and the cycle would start over again. 

David Ben Gurion’s standpoint on the situation at the outbreak of World War II is clearly stated in one quote, “We will fight Hitler as if there were no white paper, and we will fight the white paper as if there is no Hitler.”

An example of a response to the white papers is that there was an illegal Aliyah called Aliyah Bet, where people came to Israel on the Exodus ship.  However, the main forms of resistance were the three underground movements.

The main underground movements in the Yishuv during the British mandate were the Haganah, Etzel, and the Lehi.  Each of these had their own mindset.  The first defense organization was the Haganah.  The Haganah was created for Jewish defense against the Arab atacks in 1920.  Nine years later, in 1929, the Hebron massacre happened, and 60 Jews were murdered in a pogrom, leading to the founding of Etzel by Zev Jabotinsky.  The aim of the Etzel was to be more proactive than the Haganah.  Etzel was led by Menachem Begin and it was a part of the Revisionist Zionist movement.  In 1939, the Lehi, also known as the freedom fighters for Israel came into existence.  It was the most extreme underground movement, as they saw the British as the enemy.  In fact, the British even called them the “Stern Gang.”

If I were a part of one of these groups at this time, I would probably classify myself as a part of Etzel because, after the 1929 Hebron massacre, I would strongly believe that we would need more than just a defense organization, but also some sort of organized armed force.  However, I don't think that I would go as extreme as the Lehi believed.

I found that the museum portrayed the struggle for the establishment of a Jewish state extremely well.  We saw how they imprisoned Jews for all sorts of reasons and put them in the cells.  I thought that the exhibit that showed this best was called the shadows of the gallows.  This exhibit showed the story of two young men Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani who were sentenced to hanging because of their attempts to sabotage the British.  However, as a form of resistance, they fit a grenade into an orange peel and killed themselves as they recited the Shma.  Across from this room was one with pictures of those who were killed in their acts in this time of heroism.