Utolsó frissítés: 2026.05.23. — Szerző: Anti-Propaganda News Blog
Classified documents published by Haaretz shed further light on the relationship between the Stern Gang and Hitler's government
Recently released Israeli archival documents have shed further light on a Zionist militia’s attempts to establish ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
Documents published by Haaretz reveal that Avraham Stern and other members of Stern’s gang made repeated attempts to establish a partnership with Nazi Germany, partly based on joint resistance against the British, who were occupying Palestine at the time, where the Zionist movement hoped to establish a Jewish state.
Naftali Lubenchik, a member of the Stern Gang, was sent to meet with the German representatives. According to a document written in 1951, Nazi Germany and its allies did not seek „the physical extermination of the Jewish people, but rather their expulsion from Europe and their concentration in one place…”.
According to the documents, in May 1941, Eliyahu Golomb, the de facto commander of the Haganah—the main Zionist paramilitary organization operating in Mandatory Palestine—said the following to a small group: „I have information… regarding suspicions about a Jewish group that has ties to the enemy.”.
„According to the information we have, there is a man who has been in contact with the Germans. This man is known; his name is S,” Golomb said.
The man he was referring to was Stern, the founder of the Stern Gang, an extremist Zionist armed group that had split off from the Irgun militia and sought to continue the fight against the British during World War II.
Golomb’s remarks were recorded at the time in a Haganah intelligence document titled „Contacts with the Axis Powers,” which referred to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and their allies.
Stern and Nazi Germany
Stern, a Polish immigrant who moved to Palestine in the 1920s, advocated for increased Jewish migration and the expulsion of the „foreign” British presence from the territory he considered Jewish land.
His hatred of the British was so intense that he was willing to form an alliance with the Nazis in order to exclude them from the mandate.
Stern's militia attacked British and rival Jewish targets even while World War II was still raging. The Irgun and the Haganah, the other two main Zionist factions, imposed a moratorium on attacks against the British while they were fighting the Nazis.
According to Haaretz, historical research documents reveal numerous attempts by the Stern Gang to establish contact with German officials.
One of these attempts resulted in a document that proposed an „active partnership” with Germany during the war, based on „common interests between German policy and Jewish national aspirations,” as well as a future alliance between a Jewish state and the German Empire.
Natan Friedman, a member of the Stern Gang—later known as Natan Yellin-Mor and a future member of the Knesset—wrote the following in 1943: „Germany has not yet been defeated, and it could still become our ally.”
These ties with Nazi Germany were unsuccessful, but the Haganah kept a close eye on them, Haaretz reported.
After a series of deadly bank robberies and shootouts, British authorities tracked down Stern, captured him, and killed him in 1942 at the age of 34.
At that time, his actions brought shame upon the Zionist movement, and the Haganah went so far as to hunt down members of his group.
„Germany has no particular interests in Palestine”
According to one of the documents published by Haaretz, Stern believes that Great Britain „has betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state.”.
„On the other hand, Germany has no particular interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to rid Europe of the Jews, nothing could be simpler than relocating them to their own state,” Stern says of his ideology.
The document also stated that Stern believed „it is possible to reach a practical agreement with the Germans… negotiations must begin, and European Jews must be recruited into a special army that will fight its way into Palestine and conquer it from the British.”.
According to additional documents published by Haaretz, Stern „wanted to seize control of Eretz Yisrael [Greater Israel] by force,” and that he was prepared to collaborate with a „foreign power”—namely, the Nazis.
In an interview conducted by Middle East Eye reporter Hossam Sarhan for his documentary *Stern*, Yair, the son of Avraham Stern, downplayed his father’s efforts to appeal to the Nazis as insignificant and attributed the disparagement of these events—which were aimed at saving European Jews—to them.
He claimed that his father could not have known about the Holocaust, since the Nazis had only made the mass murder of European Jews official shortly before Avraham's death.
Yair rejected the statements made by members of the Stern Gang regarding their attempts to collaborate with the Nazis, which they had made during their interrogation by the Haganah, claiming they had been coerced.
