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Acre Prison, also known as Akko Prison, is a former prison and current museum in Acre, Israel.
The citadel in the old city was built during the Ottoman period over the ruins of a 12th-century Crusader fortress. The Ottomans used it at various times as a government building, prison, army barracks, and arms warehouse. [1]
During the British Mandate it was used as a prison in which many Arabs were imprisoned as criminals or for participating in illegal protests. On June 17, 1930, Fuad Hijazi, ‘Ata Al-Zeer, and Mohammad Khaleel Jamjoum who participated in the incidents of 1929 were executed there by hanging by the British authorities. [2] [3] Many were imprisoned during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Around 140 prisoners were executed during the 1936 Palestinian general strike alone.
On April 16, 1947, Dov Gruner and the three men (Yechiel Dresner, Mordechai Alkahi and Eliezer Kashani) captured by the British 6th Airborne Division were hanged in Acre Prison to become the first post war ‘martyrs’ of the Irgun. Dov Gruner in a broadcast declared the British Army and Administration to be ‘criminal organizations’. Two weeks later, 4 May, the Irgun attacked the prison in the Acre Prison break, blowing a hole in the wall through which 27 Irgun prisoners escaped. 214 Arab prisoners also escaped. Three Irgun men who took part in that attack (Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss) were captured during that attack and imprisoned and executed there. The prison also contained Jewish prisoners, members of the Hagana, Lehi, and Irgun. One of those prisoners was Eitan Livni (father of Tzipi Livni), the Irgun operations officer. [4] In total, the prison contained 700 Arab prisoners and 90 Jewish prisoners.
A room in the prison was occupied for some months by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, and members of his family, who were exiled to Ottoman Syria in 1868. The cell is now a site of pilgrimage for Baháʼís making a wider pilgrimage to the Baháʼí shrines in Haifa and Bahji, outside Akko.
The Irgun, or Etzel, was a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandatory Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the older and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.
Acre, known locally as Akko and Akka, is a city in the coastal plain region of the Northern District of Israel.
Exodus is a 1960 American epic historical drama film about the founding of the State of Israel. Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, the screenplay was adapted by Dalton Trumbo from the 1958 novel of the same name by Leon Uris. The film stars an ensemble cast including Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Peter Lawford, Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo, John Derek and George Maharis. The film's soundtrack music was written by Ernest Gold.
Olei Hagardom refers to members of the two Jewish Revisionist pre-state underground organisations Irgun and Lehi, most of whom were tried in British Mandate military courts and sentenced to death by hanging. Most of the executions were carried out at Acre Prison. There were 12 Olei Hagardom.
Dov Béla Gruner was a Hungarian-born Zionist activist in Mandatory Palestine and a member of the pre-state Jewish underground Irgun. On April 16, 1947, Gruner was executed by the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine on charges of "firing on policemen and setting explosive charges with the intent of killing personnel on His Majesty's service." He is honored as one of the Olei Hagardom, the twelve Jewish pre-independence fighters who were executed by British and Egyptian authorities.
Museum of Underground Prisoners is a museum in Jerusalem, commemorating the activity of the Jewish underground—Haganah, Irgun and Lehi—during the period leading up the establishment of the State of Israel.
Misgav Dov is a moshav in south-central Israel. Located near Gedera in the coastal plain, it falls under the jurisdiction of Gederot Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 736.
The Sergeants affair was an incident that took place in Mandate Palestine in July 1947 during Jewish insurgency in Palestine, in which the Jewish underground group Irgun kidnapped two British Army Intelligence Corps NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to hang them if the death sentences passed on three Irgun militants—Avshalom Haviv, Meir Nakar, and Yaakov Weiss—were carried out. The three had been captured by the British during the Acre Prison break, tried, and convicted on charges of illegal possession of arms, and with 'intent to kill or cause other harm to a large number of people'. When the three men were executed by hanging, the Irgun killed the two sergeants and hung their booby-trapped bodies in a eucalyptus grove near Netanya.
Yeruham "Eitan" Livni was a Revisionist Zionist activist, Irgun commander and Israeli politician, father of Israeli politician Tzipi Livni.
The Acre Prison break was an operation undertaken by the Irgun on May 4, 1947, in the British Mandate of Palestine, in which its men broke through the walls of the Central Prison in Acre and freed 27 incarcerated Irgun and Lehi members.
A successful paramilitary campaign, sometimes referred to as the Palestine Emergency, was carried out by Zionist underground groups against British rule in Mandatory Palestine from 1944 to 1948. The tensions between the Zionist underground and the British mandatory authorities rose from 1938 and intensified with the publication of the White Paper of 1939. The Paper outlined new government policies to place further restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchases, and declared the intention of giving independence to Palestine, with an Arab majority, within ten years. Though World War II brought relative calm, tensions again escalated into an armed struggle towards the end of the war, when it became clear that the Axis powers were close to defeat.
Yehoshua Zettler was an Israeli who served as the Jerusalem commander of the Jewish paramilitary group Lehi, often called the Stern Gang. He conceived and planned the September 17, 1948, assassination of Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, who was representing the United Nations Security Council as a mediator in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
Events in the year 1947 in the British Mandate of Palestine.
This is a timeline of intercommunal conflict in Mandatory Palestine.
Yaakov Weiss was a Hungarian Jew born in Czechoslovakia and member of the Irgun, a Jewish guerrilla organization in Mandatory Palestine. After saving hundreds of Jews during Holocaust, in which his own mother died, he illegally immigrated to Palestine, joined the Irgun, and fought the British during the Jewish insurgency in Palestine. He was one of three Irgun members executed for their part in the Acre Prison break, which triggered the Irgun's retaliatory hanging of two British soldiers.
Mordechai Alkahi was a member of the Irgun Jewish guerrilla organization in pre-state Mandatory Palestine, and one of 12 Olei Hagardom.
Meir Nakar was an Irgun member in pre-state Mandatory Palestine and one of 12 Olei Hagardom.
Yehiel Dov Dresner was an Irgun member in pre-state Mandatory Palestine and one of 12 Olei Hagardom.