The Reckoning

by Patrick Bishop

  On 11 February, Dick Catling summed up for the benefit of Giles Bey the actions taken by the police since the Yael Street outrage. Two of the Stern group were dead. Eighty-five more were locked up; three were serving jail sentences, six were on remand and facing trial and the rest were being held under emergency regulations.15 That amounted to a clear majority of the known membership of the group. The organization was in smithereens, morale had evaporated and, of the old command echelon, only the leader remained at large.

  On 7 February, Hassia Shapira arrived early at the flat and announced that she thought she might have been followed. It was a feeling rather than a conviction. Stern told her she must from now on stay away from Mizrachi Bet Street. Their only trusted link with the outside world was, for the time being at least, severed. What were they to do for food? Tova decided to go down to the local grocer’s shop and ask the woman who owned it if she would deliver provisions as her helper had herself fallen ill. ‘“Don’t worry, Mrs Bloch,” the nice lady answered,’ wrote Tova some years afterwards.16 ‘“I can bring you the goods at home but only in the evening.”’ The following night the shopkeeper duly turned up. When she knocked on the door, ‘Yair went into the wardrobe and I closed the door on him. The weary shopkeeper sat for a minute that went on and on. She had many interesting stories about her customers …’ When the Good Samaritan finally left, Tova waited until her footsteps had faded from the stairwell and ‘hurried to open the wardrobe door so he could finally breathe air’.

  Tova admitted that she found such incidents very trying. Stern, by contrast, emerged from his confinement ‘wearing a pleasant smile and in a good mood’. He tried to calm her down but her nerves were fraying. Yitzhak Tselnik was still trying to find a refuge for Stern in Jerusalem. On the evening of 9 February he came to report on that and other matters. The procedure was for Tselnik to wait some way off for Tova to descend, walk to an alleyway up the street and, by showing herself, signal that it was safe for him to go up. That day, she related afterwards, as she emerged from the front door she noticed a man ‘wearing a hat and dressed in a black coat’ who followed her. The street was lined with stalls, illuminated by electric light bulbs, and after passing her the man turned back to examine her face. Whether or not he recognized her, she claimed that she recognized him: he was one of the detectives who had burst into their flat in Tel Aviv when Moshe had been arrested along with Yaacov Polani and Yehoshua Zettler the previous May. She had encountered him a second time after Polani and Zettler had escaped from the police station, when detectives paid another visit to the apartment believing they might be hiding there. She climbed back up the stairs, flustered and distressed, and told Stern what she had – or might have – seen. Was she positive the man was a policeman, he wanted to know? She was not. Perhaps it was her nerves making her imagine things.17

  Half a mile away from Stern and Tova’s claustrophobic hideaway, Geoffrey Morton was struggling to close the circle around his prey. This was no longer a straightforward police operation. The hunt for the perpetrators was now intensely personal. Svorai claimed that when he burst into the room at 30 Dizengoff Street, Morton had shouted Schiff’s name – demanding to know who had murdered him. There is no mention of this in Morton’s testimony as, perhaps, is to be expected. In the light of Morton’s record and writings, however, it does not seem altogether improbable.

  Morton brought to his police work a belief in the sanctity of authority that was in its way as hard and fierce as Stern’s nationalist zeal. It stretched back sixteen years, to the moment of revelation when a single burly constable had quelled a mob of rioters at the Elephant and Castle. Since then he had suffered many disappointments and some disillusionment. But he had kept faith, and been rewarded for his fidelity. To be a policeman was to be far more than a mere enforcer of the law. He saw himself and his colleagues as the custodians of a system that formed the foundation of civilized life. An attack on one policeman was an attack on all of them and, by extension, on society itself; or at least British society and therefore the best example of it.

  By declaring war on the British police Stern had established himself as an enemy of everything Morton held sacred. Morton had never met Avraham Stern but he had formed a strong opinion of who he was and what he stood for. Morton was well informed about his opponent’s background. He would have known about his academic record and his cultured tastes – enthusiasms that Morton, the music lover, shared. None of this mattered.

  Nor did the fact that Yair had merely overseen operations mitigate his guilt. He had come to represent all the bad that was done not just in his name but by the Jewish underground in general. It was this perception that had led Morton, against all his policeman’s training and instincts, to blame Stern for the death of his friend Wally Medler in Jaffa four years earlier, even though there was no evidence to connect him to the case.18

  Now Stern was alone, cornered and helpless. The mano a mano was reaching its end. It was time for the reckoning. But where was he? It seems that at this point neither the police, the Haganah nor, despite their earlier claim, the Irgun had any idea where Stern might be. His image was everywhere, offering the public the prospect of an easy thousand pounds. The eyes of every policeman in the land were peeled for Palestine’s number one gangster, and every informant was on the alert to pull off a lucrative coup. Yet it would not be a tip-off that led the police to the door of 8 Mizrachi Bet Street but an extraordinary sequence of events that began in the ward of the Government Hospital, just over a mile from the CID building near the Jaffa seafront, where Yaacov Levstein and Moshe Svorai were still being treated. What happened there, wrote Morton, would ‘provide us with the clue for which the whole police force was watching.’19

  ELEVEN

  ‘Avraham, Avraham’

  The two survivors of the raid on 30 Dizengoff Street were making a good recovery. Since their arrival, security at the hospital had been stepped up and guards were placed on all the entrances.1 The detention ward was on the ground floor and contained six beds. The prisoners were watched around the clock by two police sergeants, one of them an Irishman named Arthur Daly. Morton had known Daly since they were constables together at the Mount Scopus depot. Daly was the camp bugler and Morton recalled how ‘many a time I had watched with amusement when, on one elbow, he had blown perfectly the morning Reveille in the direction of the open window without getting out of bed’.2

  Daly had distinguished himself in other ways. In 1936 he was awarded the British Empire Medal for an act of exceptional selflessness. The citation read that while on duty at Tel Aviv railway station ‘he saved the life of a woman who fell on the line beneath a moving train by throwing himself on top of her and holding her in position until safe to rise’. He was known for his good grasp of Hebrew, and had a streak of cunning that would prove invaluable in closing the ring around Avraham Stern.

  According to Morton’s official report, the day after the prisoners were brought in from the Dizengoff Street shootings, ‘Sgt. Daly came to me and suggested that useful information might be forthcoming if he were to offer his services to the prisoners as a go-between, in order to take information to their friends and relatives outside.’ Morton told him to go ahead but emphasized he should make it clear that he expected to be paid for his trouble – this to allay suspicion that the sergeant was acting for any other motive than money.

  The arrangement began working immediately. That same day, Yaacov Levstein accepted an offer from Daly to deliver a note to his mother, who lived not far from the hospital in Rambam Street, in south Tel Aviv.3 He admitted that the genial Irishman soon charmed them. ‘Dailey [sic] did his best to befriend us and put us at our ease,’ he wrote.4 ‘He told us he was Irish and had Jewish friends.’ Given their admiration for the IRA, being Irish was a great advantage in winning the confidence of the Jewish underground. Yitzhak Shamir chose ‘Michael’ as his nom de guerre in homage to Michael Collins, the IRA leader. Irishmen, even those in British uniform, if they appeared sympathe
tic, might be regarded as fellow victims of imperialist oppression.

  Daly seems to have played the part to perfection. Levstein related how, when the Irishman asked if he wanted him to deliver a message to his parents, he ‘jumped at the opportunity’. His mother had pleaded with him to give up the underground life and lived in a state of perpetual anxiety. He ‘knew how worried’ his parents were and ‘how much better they would feel if they got a direct message from me’.

  Morton said that ‘subsequently several notes of an innocuous nature … were passed backwards and forwards between Levstein and his mother through the intermediary of Sergeant Daly’.5 He was a welcome visitor. Daly became ‘quite friendly with my parents’, wrote Levstein. ‘He would stop to see them, chat with them, enjoy my mother’s home-made cookies and even received a shaving kit in return for his good offices.’6

  On Wednesday, 11 February, the hospital’s medical officer examined Svorai and Levstein and found them in satisfactory health. He reported that they were now well enough to be discharged from hospital. This meant that very soon they would leave the comparative comfort of the ward for a cell, in the prison in the Russian Compound in Jerusalem, where they would await trial on what in Levstein’s case might be capital charges. Levstein says that the news was broken to him by Daly who suggested that he might like a visit from his mother before he left. He replied that he would be happy to see her.

  In his memoir Morton elaborated on Daly’s stratagem. The sergeant solicitously pointed out to both Svorai and Levstein that for the move ‘they would need some clean clothes – those in which they had been captured were caked with blood, and they would not want to don the uniform normally worn by convicted prisoners’.

  Until this point Svorai had not taken up Daly’s offer of help. Morton says that he had mentioned in casual conversation that he had a wife and child in Tel Aviv. However, he could hardly ask Daly to communicate with his family without bringing trouble down on Tova. He was about to relent. According to Morton, ‘after some hesitation, Yaacov Levstein wrote a note to his mother asking her to bring him some clean clothes down to the hospital the next morning’.7 Svorai ‘at first refused to take any similar steps, but eventually agreed to add a note for his wife to the bottom of the Levsteins’ letter to his mother’. Svorai told Daly ‘Mrs Levstein would know how to get in touch with his wife’.8

  This was an encouraging development. Up until now the translated notes had revealed nothing. The discovery of Tova Svorai’s address might provide more clues as to Stern’s whereabouts. There was nothing then to suggest that Tova might be harbouring him – though, given the couple’s closeness to Yair, it must have occurred to Morton that there was a chance that this was the case.

  Then, slowly, that chance began to seem a real possibility. As soon as he received the notes Daly hurried to Morton’s office. Svorai’s caution had not entirely deserted him. Morton said that his note to Tova had been ‘written in an obscure Russian dialect in Hebrew characters and it was very difficult to translate’.9 There was a delay as he ‘got an agent in Tel Aviv to do it for me’. He hesitated to ask one of his staff. The reason he gave for this was that he ‘felt this was not a matter in which to implicate my Jewish colleagues’.10 The inference is that he feared the contents of the letter might be leaked to Stern sympathizers.

  At 8.30 that evening he received back the translation from the unnamed ‘agent’. It was clumsily expressed but there could be no mistaking the import of two key phrases in Svorai’s letter. He started off ‘Shalom my Tova’, then proceeded to reassure her he was in good health. ‘I can imagine your worries and fears, especially after the other two died,’ he wrote. ‘I feel well and you know I always wish to tell you the truth.’ Far from being concerned about himself he was distressed at not having news of her, particularly as she had been ill. ‘I am worrying about your wellbeing as I know nothing of what is with you and of our guest,’ he declared. The word ‘guest’ gleamed from the typed page like neon. Just in case the police missed the clue, it was repeated again a few lines later: ‘I am worried because I have not seen or heard from you,’ he persisted. ‘There is no need to worry anyhow, consult with our guest.’

  The coy reluctance to name the ‘guest’ could not fail to arouse the interest of the CID. Perhaps it was Stern. Perhaps not. Whoever it was, it seemed highly likely they had something to hide. In order to find out, Morton had first to discover the whereabouts of Tova, and for that he needed the help of Mrs Levstein, who, Moshe Svorai had told Daly, would know how to reach her. It was now the middle of the evening. Sergeant Daly, changed out of his uniform and dressed less obtrusively in civvies, set off for the Levsteins’ home in one of the ornate turn-of-the-century Ottoman houses lining Rambam Street. He handed Mrs Levstein her son’s letter and mentioned that there was an attachment from Moshe Svorai who believed she would be able to pass it onto his wife. According to Morton’s report, ‘Mrs Levstein informed Sgt Daly that she was at a loss to know what to do with this note as she did not know the whereabouts of Mrs Svorai’.11 Nonetheless, after Daly left, a watch was kept on the house. Midnight came and went. No one arrived and no one left. It seemed that Mrs Levstein was telling the truth.

  There was heavy rain overnight. Up in the rooftop apartment at 8 Mizrachi Bet Street, it drummed on the windows and bounced off the flat, concrete roof. Inside the bed-sitting room Tova and Stern slept, she on the couch, he on a divan that slid out from underneath it. In the previous few days, Stern’s famous sang-froid had begun to melt. They lived in continual fear of discovery. The previous day the cistern in the tiny bathroom had flooded. The landlord had promptly sent round a plumber. When he arrived Stern once again had to climb into the wardrobe. He was forced to squat there for half an hour, in among Tova’s dresses, while the workman fixed the leak.12

  The flat felt like a prison. Stern paced the cramped space, smoking, talking and writing. He scribbled poetry incessantly, pouring out a torrent of rage and despair. One ran: ‘And all Tel Aviv became hell/and every house became [a] gallows/and everyone in it became a detective’. His words showed he was reaching the end of his endurance. ‘Mad pouring rain and ardent, bitter cold./Where to rest my tired head? Where to hide my shivering flesh?’ He cried out to ‘My God, the God of revenge/The God of the Fighters of Freedom’.13

  At other times he told Tova of the guilt he felt about the trouble he had caused his mother and Roni and the anguish they must experience as they pictured him jerking on the end of a British hangman’s rope. ‘When he said “neck” he would make a gesture with his hand to illustrate it,’ Tova remembered.14 He talked bitterly about those who had let him down over the years, among them David Raziel and Hanoch Strelitz, who had abandoned the struggle rather than stay and fight for their ideals. He found it hard to sleep. On Wednesday night when Tova went to bed he stayed at the table, writing and smoking, finally tiptoeing to his bed at four o’clock.

  Tova would describe the night of 11/12 February 1942 as bitterly cold, ‘freezing my bones in a way that hadn’t happened for years’. At six o’clock, an hour before dawn, she heard a scratching at the door. ‘I raised my head and opened my eyes and looked across at Yair’s bed,’ she wrote. ‘I could see he had woken too.’ Who could it be? Everyone from their immediate circle was either dead, locked up or had gone to ground. The scratching was familiar. It was the signal Hassia gave when she visited − but she had been told to keep away. The noise continued. Tova glanced nervously at Stern. He nodded and she rose and padded the few steps over the cold tiles to the entrance. Tova turned the lock and opened the door. A gust of cold air filled the hall. There, framed in the doorway, her glasses gleaming, was the thin, anxious figure of Hassia Shapira. Tova pulled her inside and shut the door.

  Hassia explained why she had disobeyed instructions and risked the visit. She was carrying an important message – potentially a life-saving one. It came from Nehemia Torenberg, an Irgunist of long standing from the Rosh Pinna community who had followed Stern afte
r the split. He was conveying an offer he had just received via an intermediary from the new Irgun leader, Yaacov Meridor. Apparently the Irgun’s attitude towards Stern had softened. Having told Captain Wybrow that they were willing to ‘liquidate’ their former comrade, they now wanted to offer him sanctuary, just as the Haganah had earlier. Stern’s mood seemed to lighten as he read the letter. He considerately told Hassia to climb into bed with Tova to warm herself up. Then he sat down at the small table in the hall to write his answer. Politely but firmly, he rejected the offer. ‘My answer of course is no,’ he replied. ‘I am not one of those who voluntarily give themselves up to the police or do the bidding of the left or the right.’ In a reference to the Haganah proposal he added, ‘the left is also willing to look after me if I hand myself over to them’. He was, however, prepared to cooperate with the Irgun if they were planning action against the British. If the Dizengoff Street shootings and the ongoing treatment of refugees in the camp at Athlit had ‘opened their eyes and revealed to them the true face of foreign rule’ then he would be willing to listen to their plans.15 The letter was the last Stern wrote. He could not have wished for a better last testament, proof for all who came after him of his tungsten-hard determination and unquenchable fighting spirit.

  Dawn came just after seven o’clock. By 7.30 there were people about on the streets and it seemed safe for Hassia to slip away to carry the reply back to Torenberg. Stern was anxious once more. He paced up and down, a few steps forward, a few steps back, a prowling, troubled figure. ‘Suddenly,’ Tova remembered, ‘I saw that Yair had stopped. He was holding onto the door that separates the hallway and the room. He pushed it backwards … I went over to him and he whispered: “Tova, they are watching us through the slats in the shutter.”’16 It was only eight o’clock. Could the landlord or his wife have decided to hang out their washing early? She prayed that they had not. The landlord was a friendly man who was in the habit of stopping to chat and ask after Herut, the Svorai’s little girl, now staying with her grandmother. She crept to the window. There was no one outside. The slats were half open to let in a little light. She pulled the lever to lower them. They both relaxed.