The Irgun:The Acre Prison Break
(May 4, 1947)
by Prof. Yehuda Lapidot
Irgun: Table of Contents | Background & Overview | Bombing King David Hotel
Acre was conquered by the Ottomans at the beginning of the 16th century. The governor of Galilee, Ahmed al-Jazzar, developed the town, building a fortress and markets and turning it into the 'main gateway' to Eretz Israel (Palestine). Under the British Mandate, the fortress served as a jail, where underground fighters were imprisoned and where eight Irgun fighters went to the gallows. Acre prison was the most highly-guarded fortress in the country; surrounded by walls and encircled to the east and north by a deep moat; the sea to the west. It was located in the heart of an Arab town with no Jewish inhabitants.
 Acre Prison |
Amichai Paglin (Gidi), chief operations officer, toured Acre disguised as an Arab, and after thorough scrutiny of the area, concluded that a break-in was indeed possible. After discussions at headquarters, Livni received a letter stating that it was possible to breach the wall from outside, but that the success of the operation depended on the ability of the prisoners to reach the south wall on their own. To that end, explosives, detonators and a fuse were smuggled into the jail by the parents of prisoners, who were permitted to bring their sons delicacies, such as jam, oil, and fruit. The explosives were smuggled in inside a can, under a thick layer of jam. A British sergeant opened the can and examined its contents. When he poked inside, he felt hard lumps (in fact gelignite), but accepted the story that the jam had not gelled properly. The detonators and the fuse were concealed in the false bottom of a container of oil, which was also thoroughly examined. The sergeant poked in a long stick to examine the level of the oil, but since the fuse and the detonators were less than one centimeter thick, he did not notice the false bottom.
At that time, 163 Jews were being held in Acre prison (60 of them Irgun members, 22 Lehi and 5 Haganah, the remainder felons) and 400 Arabs. The Irgun General Headquarters decided that only 41 could be freed (30 Irgun members and 11 Lehi members) because it was technically impossible to find hiding places for a larger number of fugitives. Eitan Livni was given the task of deciding who was to be freed and who would remain in jail (the Lehi prisoners chose their own candidates for escape).
 Irgun Fighters in British Uniform |
After the fighters had been assigned to their units, they were all given an 'English' haircut. The next day, they were taken to Shuni, a former Crusader fortress (between Binyamina and Zichron Yaakov), then serving as a settlement for the Irgun supporters. Twenty of them wore British Engineering Corps uniforms, while three were dressed as Arabs. After they had been briefed and armed, they set out in a convoy of vehicles including a 3-ton military truck, two military vans with British camouflage colors, and two civilian vans. The convoy was headed by the command jeep, and Shimshon, dressed as a be-medalled British captain, sat beside the driver.
When the convoy reached Acre, the two military vans entered the market, while the truck waited at the gate. Ladders were removed from one of the vehicles and the 'engineering unit' went into the Turkish bath-house in order to 'mend' the telephone lines. They climbed the ladders to the roof adjacent to the fortress wall, and Dov Salomon, the unit commander, helped his deputy, Yehuda Apiryon, to haul up the explosive charges and to hook them to the windows of the prison.
 Eitan Livni |  Dov Cohen (Shimshon) |  Avshalom Haviv |  Yaakov Weiss |  Meir Nakar |
An additional three-man squad, disguised as Arabs, was positioned north of Acre, and when the operation began they fired a mortar at the nearby army camp. The command jeep halted at the gas station at the entrance to the new town, laid anti-vehicle mines and set fire to the station.
 Afternoon walk of Acre prisoners |
While these units were taking up positions outside the fortress, the plan was being put into effect inside the prison. At 3 p.m., the doors of the cells were opened for afternoon exercise. Those prisoners who were not scheduled to escape went down to the courtyard to create a diversion, while the escapees remained in their cells. They were divided into three groups, each in a separate cell.
At 4:22 p.m., a loud explosion shook the entire area, as the wall of the fortress was blasted open.
The first group of escapees leapt out of their cell and ran down the corridor towards the breach in the wall. They had to push their way through a crowd of Arab prisoners who ran out of their cells in panic and blocked their path. The first escapee, Michael Ashbel, attached explosive charges to the locks barring the gate of the corridor, and lit the fuse. There was an explosion, and the gate blew open. The second gate was blown open in the same way, opening the route to freedom. At that moment, the second group went into action; they created an obstruction by igniting kerosene mixed with oil. The ensuing fire blocked the escape route, so that the guards could not reach it. The third group threw grenades at the guards on the roof, who fled. In the confusion created by the explosion, the gunfire and the fire, 41 prisoners made their way to freedom.
The first group of escapees boarded a van and drove off, but the driver mistakenly drove towards Haifa, instead of Mount Napoleon. On the shore, a group of British soldiers who had been bathing in the sea opened fire on them. The driver tried to turn back, but hit the wall of the cemetery and the van overturned. The escapees ran towards a gas station, the soldiers pursuing them. Dov Cohen fired his Bren at them, but was mowed down by a volley of 17 bullets. Zalman Lifshitz, at his side, was also killed. When the firing stopped, five of the first group of 13 escapees were dead, six injured and only two were unscathed. The survivors were returned to jail.
 Acre prison's wall after the explosion |
The remaining escapees and members of the strike force in the truck and the second van escaped safely. They reached Kibbutz Dalia, abandoned their vehicles, and made their way on foot to Binyamina. There they were given refuge in the Nahlat Jabotinsky quarter and the following morning were dispersed throughout the country to pre-designated hiding places.
Haim Appelbaum of Lehi, wounded during the retreat, succeeded in boarding the last van, but died soon after. His body was left in the vehicle, and members of Kibbutz Dalia conveyed it to the burial society in Haifa the following day.
To conclude, 27 inmates succeeded in escaping (20 from the Irgun and seven fromLehi). Nine fighters were killed in clashes with the British army; six escapees and three members of the Fighting Force. Eight escapees, some of them injured, were caught and returned to jail. Also arrested were five of the attackers who did not make it back to base. The Arab prisoners took advantage of the commotion, and 182 of them escaped as well.
Despite the heavy toll in human lives, the action was described by foreign journalists as "the greatest jail break in history." The London Ha'aretz correspondent wrote on May 5:
The New York Herald Tribune wrote that the underground had carried out "an ambitious mission, their most challenging so far, in perfect fashion."
In the House of Commons, Oliver Stanley asked what action His Majesty's Government was planning to take "in light of the events at Acre prison which had reduced British prestige to a nadir."
Shortly after the Acre jail break, Andrei Gromyko, USSR representative to the UN, caused a sensation when he informed the stunned delegates that his country took a favorable view of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Three weeks after the jail break, the five Irgun fighters who had been captured after the operation were put on trial. Three of the defendants - Avshalom Haviv, Yaakov Weiss and Meir Nakar - were carrying weapons when they were caught close to the jail wall. They challenged the authority of the court and, after making political statements, were all sentenced to death.
The other two, Michaeli and Ostrowicz, were captured, unarmed, at some distance from the jail. Since there was a chance of saving them from the death penalty, the Irgun General Headquarters decided to conduct a proper defense procedure. The counsel for the defense succeeded in producing documents proving that the two were minors, and the court sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Sources: Israeli Government National Photo Collection
1. Menachem Begin, The Revolt, (NY: Nash Publishing, 1977), p. 224.
2. J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out Of Zion, (NY: St. Martin's Press), p. 172.
3. Anne Sinai and I. Robert Sinai, Israel and the Arabs: Prelude to the Jewish State, (NY: Facts on File, 1972), p. 83.
4. Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., "International Terrorism: Challenge And Response," Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, July 25, 1979, (Jerusalem: The Jonathan Institute, 1980), p. 45.
1. Menachem Begin, The Revolt, (NY: Nash Publishing, 1977), p. 224.
2. J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out Of Zion, (NY: St. Martin's Press), p. 172.
3. Anne Sinai and I. Robert Sinai, Israel and the Arabs: Prelude to the Jewish State, (NY: Facts on File, 1972), p. 83.
4. Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., "International Terrorism: Challenge And Response," Proceedings of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, July 25, 1979, (Jerusalem: The Jonathan Institute, 1980), p. 45.
The Underground Prisoners Museum
The citadel of Acre was built during the Ottoman Period over the ruins of a 12th century Crusader fortress.
During the Ottoman Period, the citadel first served as a Saraya (government building) for Acre's rulers and then as a prison, army barracks and weapon warehouse for the local garrison.
Several members of the "Hashomer" organization were imprisoned in the Citadel of Acre under Turkish rule.
Several members of the "Hashomer" organization were imprisoned in the Citadel of Acre under Turkish rule.
During the British Mandate, the citadel served as the main prison for the north of Israel. Hundreds of members of the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi underground organizations were imprisoned here because of their struggle to defend the Yishuv (the body of Jewish residents in Palestine, before the establishment of the State of Israel), their war against mandatory rule and their fight for their right to establish a national home in the Land of Israel.
The first prisoner during British military rule was Zeev Jabotinsky, Commander of the Jewish defense of Jerusalem. Nineteen other members of the city's defense were imprisoned along with him during the 1920 Palestine riots.
In 1939, 43 members of the Haganah commander courses held in Yavniel – including Moshe Dayan and Moshe Carmel, ten Haganah members from Kibbutz Ginosar, as well as 38 members of the Etzel commander courses held in Mishmar Hayarden, were imprisoned in the Citadel of Acre.
On May 4, 1947, Etzel forces broke into the prison in a daring action coordinated with their imprisoned friends. Forty-one prisoners were freed, including thirty Etzel members and eleven Lehi members.
Three members of the attacking force and six released prisoners were killed in a battle that ensued outside of the prison walls against British police and military forces. Operation commander Dov Cohen, AKA "Gundar (District of Unit Commander) Shimshon", was among the casualties.
As the operation drew to its conclusion, it became evident that 27 prisoners had managed to escape; however, eight escapees were captured, along with five of the Etzel fighters. Three out of the five men captured were sentenced to death by a British military court.
Shlomo Ben-Yosef, Mordechai Schwarcz, Dov Gruner, Yechiel Dov Dresner, Eliezer Kashani, Mordechai Elkachi, Yaakov Weiss, Avshalom Haviv and Meir Nakar were hanged in the Citadel of Acre.
The Jewish Resistance Fighters Museum features an innovative display run by the Ministry of Defense describing the circumstances of the resistance fighters' imprisonment, their way of life in prison, the story of the Acre prison break and the story of Olei Hagardom (refers to the 12 members of the pre-state Jewish underground who were tried in British Mandate courts and sentenced to death by hanging).
The tour of the Museum highlights the main values guiding the resistance fighters, namely: Zionism and a the love of Eretz Yisrael, heroism and sacrifice.
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Acre Prison Break
“The first encounter with Acre Prison was terrifying. With your hands and feet shackled, you get off the truck next to a deep moat that reminds you of images of medieval castles that you may have seen in the movies. A fortress wall of seemingly infinite height towers before you. A narrow bridge leads to an opening in the wall. This is the bridge to a place that none has ever escaped from…”Mendel Malatzky, Irgun prisoner, 1947
The fortress was built by the Bedouin sheikh Daher el Omar in the mid 18th century on the ruins of the Crusader citadel and was further fortified by al Jazzar. Under the British mandate, the fortress served as a jail, where Jewish underground fighters were imprisoned and where 8 Irgun members went to their death on the gallows. Acre was the most secure prison in the country.
Despite this, the Irgun looked for a way to enable their escape. The break came when an Arab inmate mentioned that he had heard women’s voices while working in the oil storeroom (in the south wing of the prison). This was reported to Eitan Livni (father of Tzipi Livni), the most senior Irgun prisoner, who deduced that the south wall of the prison bordered on a street or alley of Old Akko. The information was conveyed to the Irgun general headquarters where they concocted a plan to exploit this weakness for a break-in.
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The logistic preparations were complicated: the Irgun had to purchase a truck, a jeep, two military pickup trucks and make them look like British army vehicles, British army uniforms were acquired and the men were given “English” haircuts. They set out in the convoy of vehicles for Akko to get into position, the two military vans entered the market, while the 3 ton military truck waited at the gate.
The jailbreak was planned for May 4th, 1947 when prisoners would be exercising in the yard to occupy the guards and the cells would be open, the same day the United Nations General Assembly convened to discuss the Palestine issue.
A military engineering unit of the Irgun made its way to the hamam, the Turkish bath house, and pretending to be telephone technicians used ladders to climb onto the roof with the explosives and placed them against the window bars. At 4:22 pm there was a loud explosion that blew off the windows and made a hole in the southern wall.
Forty-one prisoners ran from their cells and using explosives that had been smuggled into the prison blew off the iron gates closing the corridors to reach the place of the break-in. From there they went out onto the roof of the hamam and into the alleyways of Old Akko.
Some jumped into the van, others ran through the streets of the market to the Land Gate where the truck was waiting.
Of 41 escapees (30 Irgun, 11 Lehi), 27 inmates succeeded in escaping (20 Irgun,7 Lehi), 6 escapees and 3 fighters were killed and 8, some of them injured were caught and returned to jail; also arrested were five of the attackers. The Arab prisoners took advantage of the commotion and 182 of them escaped.
The action was described by foreign journalists as “the greatest jail break in history.” The New York Herald Tribune wrote that the underground had carried out “an ambitious mission, their most challenging so far, in perfect fashion”, while in the House of Commons, Oliver Stanley asked what action His Majesty’s Government was planning to take “in light of the events at Acre prison which had reduced British prestige to a nadir”.
Three out of the five men captured (Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar and Yaakov Weiss) were sentenced to death and died on the gallows in the Acre prison. In retaliation, the Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Mervyn Paice. When the British did not relent and executed the Irgun men, the Irgun hanged the two sergeants.
Today the Acre Prison is a museum where you can walk through the different cells, offices and workshops of the prison and through a series of dramatic videos experience what it was like. The tour ends at the room with the gallows.
From the prison you can visit the hamam and and learn about the tradition of the Turkish bath and some history of Akko. There is much to see and I’d be happy to take you exploring Akko.
1947: Three Jewish terrorists and two British hostages
On this date in 1947, three members of an Irgun commando team who had engineered a massive prison break of Zionist terrorists were hanged for the affair.
The Acre Prison Break was a meticulously coordinated operation by the Zionist underground in British Mandate Palestine that, a Conservative MP later charged, “reduced British prestige to a nadir.”
A team of guerrillas attacked the prison from the outside, coordinating with imprisoned Irgun and Stern Gang operatives who had explosives smuggled into their cells to help detonate their way through the walls. Hundreds of prisoners — most of them Arabs availing the opportunity — escaped.
According to the London Times (May 6, 1947), 16 escaping prisoners were slain in the affray, with eight British guards and police wounded.
More crucially for our purposes, five of the guerrillas who assailed the prison were captured. Three — Haviv Avshalom, Yaakov Weiss, and Meir Nakar — were taken armed, and sentenced to death by the British.
To browse the contemporaneous western press coverage is to visit a Holy Land very familiar to the present-day reader, filled with “terrorists” and “extremists” and “fanatics” and “murderers” abetted by “those who incite them from a safe distance and supply the funds and the weapons which they put to such deadly use.”* Except that this discourse was directed at Jews, not Arabs.
One good way to earn such an imprecation would be to kidnap two British soldiers and hold them hostage against the execution of the sentence. That’s exactly what the Irgun did.
The British searched for their men, but disdained to stoop the majesty of the law at the pleasure of some seditious blackmailer. So, early this morning at that same Acre Prison they had lately helped to liberate, Avshalom, Weiss, and Nakar went to the gallows.
Left to right: Avshalom, Weiss, and Nakar.
Palestine awaited with anxiety the expected discovery of two kidnaped British sergeants whom the Irgunists have vowed to kill in retaliation. The Mosaic law of vengeance applies and any show of clemency would be regarded by the extremists as evidence of cowardly submission.
The Irgun had already applied that Mosaic law of vengeance.
On the evening of that same July 29, it hanged its two hostages, intelligence corps sergeants Clifford Martin and Marvin Paice. The bodies were moved and strung up in a Eucalyptus grove near Netanya, to be discovered the next day, booby-trapped with a land mine. A scornful note announced their condemnation for “criminal anti-Hebrew activities.”
The bodies of Sgts. Clifford Martin and Marvin Paice, as discovered on July 31, 1947, hanging from Eucalyptus trees.
Moderate, mainline Zionists were horrified.
Of all the crimes that took place till this day on this land, this is the most grievous and disgusting one and will stain the purity of our peoples struggle for freedom. May this act of hanging remain as a sign of Cain on the doers of this disgraceful deed! The heavens and the earth are my witnesses that most of our population took desperate measures to free the hostages and prevent this shame.-Netanya Mayor Oved Ben Ami
Said disgraceful deed-doers were far from apologetic.
And you could say they had a point, since although the threat did not prevent the death sentences at hand from being carried into execution, its example proved to be a lively deterrent: Avshalom, Weiss, and Nakar were the last Zionists executed by the British. Then-Irgun leader, and later Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin made no bones about the trade.
The Brits were a little less sanguine about “the sergeants affair”.
A Times editorial for Friday, Aug. 1 fulminated against “the violent deeds of the Palestine terrorists [that] will not readily be effaced,” comparing them to “the bestialities practised by the Nazis themselves.”**
Over the ensuing long weekend’s summer bank holiday, racist riots against Jews shook Britain. Jewish businesses, cemeteries, and synagogues were smashed up and vandalized all over the island, to the horror this time of milquetoast liberals like the Manchester Guardian, with again-familiar lines like: “to answer terrorism in Palestine with terrorism in England is sheer Hitlerism. We must be desperately careful to see that we do not let ourselves be infected with the poison of the disease we had thought to eradicate.”
Fine points for debate in Britain, which within months was bugging out of the Levant as open war engulfed Palestine — the violent birth pangs of modern Israel and its embrace of its own subject populace with its own frustrated national ambitions pursued by its own violent extremists.
* London Times editorial, May 21, 1947.
** Irgun propaganda’s riposte: “We recognize no one-sided laws of war. If the British are determined that their way out of the country should be lined by an avenue of gallows and of weeping fathers, mothers, wives, and sweethearts, we shall see to it that in this there is no racial discrimination.”
Also on this date
- 1629: Louis Bertran, martyr in Japan
- 1938: Janis Berzins, Soviet military intelligence chief
- 1879: Kate Webster, of the Barnes Mystery
- 1969: Joseph Blösche, Der SS-Mann
- 1936: Aboune Petros, Ethiopian bishop
- 1600: The Pappenheimer Family
- 1747: Alexander Blackwell, who left them smiling
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Cycle of Violence,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,England,Execution,Hanged,History,Israel,Jews,Martyrs,Milestones,Murder,Occupation and Colonialism,Revolutionaries,Separatists,Terrorists
Tags: 1940s, 1947, acre prison, acre prison break, clifford martin, haviv avshalom, irgun, july 29, marvin paice, meir nakar, menachem begin, nationalism, nationalists, netanya, olei hagardom, oved ben ami, religion, sergeants affair, terrorism, yaakov weiss, zionism
Acre Prison break...
Item # 579923
MAY 5, 1947
THE TIMES-PICAYUNE, New Orleans, Louisiana, May 5, 1947
* Acre Prison break
* Irgun - Zionist paramilitary
* British Mandate of Palestine
This 32 page newspaper has a three column headline on the front page: "Underground Blasts Ancient Prison, Frees 251 Jews, Arabs" with subhead: "Hole Blown in Wall; 15 Persons Killed" which tells of the famous Acre Prison break by the Irgun in Palestine.
Other news of the day including various advertising. Light browning along central fold, minor spine wear, but otherwise in good condition.
wikipeida notes: On Sunday, May 4, 1947, at 14:00 a military engineering unit of the Irgun, under the command of Dov Salomon and Yehuda Apiryon, made its way to the nearby Turkish bath, disguised as telephone technicians and carrying ladders, TNT, ropes and other necessary incursion equipment. Meanwhile, other Irgun strike and escape teams spread around the prison, disguised as British military convoys.
The excursion occurred at 16:22 with a massive explosion that shook the prison. One of the prisoners, Michael Eshbal, blew up the grille at the corridor, while another group of prisoners delayed the British jailors with hand grenades and burning barricades.
34 Jewish guerilla fighters attacked the prison. In the course of the retreat, Dov Cohen and two other fighters from the attacking force were killed. Another five fighters from the attacking force were captured by the British, along with eight escapees. 28 Lehi and Irgun prisoners escaped, as did 182 Arab prisoners..
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