A ceremony will be held Sunday evening in partial rectification of a historic wrong in which some victims of an important Zionist battle were remembered and some were not.
The ceremony will commemorate one of the three stages of a mission executed by the Jewish populace against the British Mandate in 1946.
It was a year after the Holocaust had ended, and the British were still refusing to issue entry permits to the Land of Israel for 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe. The Haganah, Lechi and Etzel - the three Jewish military groups in pre-State Israel - responded by conductiong nearly simultaneous military actions against the railway infrastructures of the British Mandate in Palestine.
The Haganah blew up eight British Railway bridges, Etzel demolished trains after passengers disembarked, and Lechi destroyed a host of railway workshops near Haifa. However, while the lone casualty of the Haganah operation, Yechiam Weitz, was buried with full honors in Jerusalem, the 11 victims of the Lechi operation were all but ignored; no official representatives attended the mass funeral. Only when the Likud was elected to power in 1977 were they officially recognized.
The Lechi offensive was its largest anti-British operation - and the one which cost the most casualties. Eleven were killed, and 22 others were wounded, arrested and sentenced to death by hanging - until pressure and Lechi threats caused the British to commute their sentences to life in prison.
The Haganah's bridge offensive occurred on June 16, 1946, and was followed the next day by the Lechi's attack on railway workshops. The latter was meticulously planned and involved 45 fighters, including four women. It relied heavily on the inside work of a railway employee, Lechi member Jacques Alkalai.
Offensive Was a Success, but the Retreat Was Not
When the force made its way by truck into the British target compound, the element of surprise was lost when the suspicious Arab guards opened fire, killing two Lechi members. Despite this, the Lechi force continued with the mission, moving from target to target - train cars, cranes, and more - and planting explosives. The ensuing explosions alerted the British, who finally caught up with the force and killed nine of the fighters and took 22 captives. Six Lechi fighters managed to escape.
The nine dead were buried in Haifa following a modest funeral ceremony. The 22 were sentenced to death in a rushed, two-day trial, during which the High Commissioner passed a new law allowing a military court not to bring defendants to their trial if they disturb the proceedings.
Two weeks later, after Lechi threatened severe retribution if the 22 would be hanged, their sentence was commuted to life in prison.
For years, the Labor party refused to commemorate the Lechi operation or its fighters, and only in 1977 was a monument built in their memory. It stands on a highway outside Kiryat Ata, at the site where the British attacked the Lechi force. This year's annual memorial ceremony will be held at the site at 6 PM, preceded by a memorial to the fallen fighters at the Haifa Cemetery at 4 PM.
Funds are currently being raised for an exhibit in the Israel Railway Museum in Haifa to commemorate the Lechi train operation and its victims of the British Mandate forces. An old train car has been designated for the purpose, and half of the necessary 200,000 shekels has been raised thus far. For more information, contact Adina at 052-8722467.