Recently declassified documents from Israeli archives have shockingly revealed further details about a Zionist militia’s persistent attempts to forge a relationship with Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 40s.
Reports from Haaretz, based on these documents, expose how Avraham Stern and his extremist Stern Gang repeatedly sought a partnership with Nazi Germany. This disturbing collaboration was reportedly rooted in a shared opposition to the British, who at the time occupied Palestine, a land where the Zionist movement harbored ambitions of establishing a Jewish state.
Naftali Lubenchik, a member of the Stern Gang, was dispatched to meet with German representatives. A 1951 document quotes him as believing that Nazi Germany and its allies did not aim for “the physical destruction of the Jewish people, but rather their expulsion from Europe and their concentration in one place…” This statement, in hindsight, is particularly chilling given the unfolding horrors of the Holocaust.
The documents further indicate that in May 1941, Eliyahu Golomb, the de facto commander of the Haganah – the primary Zionist paramilitary force in Mandatory Palestine – confided to a small group about “suspicion regarding a group of Jews who have connections with the enemy.” Golomb explicitly named “S” (Stern) as the man who had contacted the Germans.
Stern, the founder of the radical Zionist armed group known as the Stern Gang, had split from the Irgun militia, driven by an unwavering desire to continue fighting the British during World War Two. Golomb’s grave concerns were meticulously recorded in a Haganah intelligence document titled “Contacts with the Axis,” referring to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and their allies.
Stern, a Polish immigrant who arrived in Palestine in the 1920s, fiercely advocated for increased Jewish migration and the forceful expulsion of the “foreign” British presence from what he considered Jewish land. His intense animosity towards the British was so profound that he was prepared to negotiate an alliance with the very Nazis who were persecuting Jews across Europe, all in a bid to expel the British from the mandate.
While World War Two raged, Stern’s militia audaciously attacked both British forces and rival Jewish targets. This stood in stark contrast to the Irgun and Haganah, the other two major Zionist factions, which had declared a moratorium on attacks against the British while they were engaged in fighting the Nazis.
According to Haaretz, historical research documents detail several attempts by the Stern Gang to establish contact with German officials. One such attempt resulted in a document proposing an “active partnership” with Germany in the war, based on supposed “shared interests between German policy and Jewish national aspirations,” and even envisioning a future alliance between a Jewish state and the German Reich. Natan Friedman, later known as Natan Yellin-Mor and a future member of the Knesset, shockingly wrote in 1943: “Germany has not yet been defeated and may still become our ally.”
These audacious contacts with Nazi Germany ultimately failed, but the Haganah meticulously monitored them, Haaretz reported. Britain’s mandatory authorities eventually apprehended and killed Stern in 1942 at the age of 34, following a series of deadly bank robberies and shoot-outs.
At the time, Stern’s actions caused significant embarrassment to the broader Zionist movement, with the Haganah even resorting to hunting down members of his group.
One of the documents reported by Haaretz reveals Stern’s belief that Britain had “betrayed the Jewish people and will never allow the establishment of a Jewish state.” Conversely, he reportedly believed that “Germany has no special interest in Palestine, and since the Nazis want to cleanse Europe of Jews, nothing is simpler than transferring them to their own state.” This chilling insight into Stern’s ideology suggests a willingness to overlook the genocidal implications of Nazi policy for perceived political gain.
The document further states that Stern believed “it is possible to reach a practical agreement with the Germans… negotiations should be opened, and Jews of Europe should be recruited into a special army that would fight its way to Palestine and conquer it from the British.”
Additional documents cited by Haaretz confirm Stern’s aspiration “to seize control of all of Eretz Yisrael [Greater Israel] by force with the help of a foreign power,” explicitly meaning the Nazis.
Despite these damning revelations, Yair, Avraham Stern’s son, interviewed for Middle East Eye’s documentary ‘Stern’, downplayed his father’s overtures to the Nazis as an insignificant episode aimed merely at saving Jews in Europe. He controversially argued that his father could not have known about the Holocaust, as the Nazis had not formalized their mass killing of Europe’s Jews until shortly before Avraham’s death. Yair also dismissed confessions by Stern Gang members about their collaboration efforts with the Nazis, attributing them to possible duress during Haganah interrogations. These attempts to whitewash such a dark chapter in Zionist history continue to spark debate.
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