Glueck, Nelson. Hayarden [The Jordan]

(ZIONISM)

Jerusalem

1946

FIRST EDITION. Illustrated. Inscribed and signed on front free-endpaper to Ben-Zion Keizman: “On your good fellowship during our shared internment. Latrun, Cheshvan, 1946.” Signed (among others) by: Y. Kreinberg; M.D. Remez, M. Shertok (Sharett); Bernard (Dov) Yosef; Mordechai Stend and D. Schonbrun.

Ben-Zion Keizman was a Jewish officer in the British Army who facilitated arms acquisitions for the Resistance. The defiance by the leaders of the Yishuv of the British Mandatory authorities led to the arrrest of members of the Jewish Agency Executive, along with other leading figures of the Vaad Leumi who were in Palestine at the time - (Ben-Gurion was overseas). Among those arrested were Moshe Shertok (Sharett) and Bernard Joseph (Dov Yosef) of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, and David Remez, chairman of the Vaad Le'umi. They were detained for some four months in a special VIP camp built for them at Latrun. The action against the organized Yishuv, which had been planned carefully and in great secrecy, began in the early hours of Saturday, June 29, 1946. A countrywide curfew was proclaimed, and 17,000 soldiers entered institutions and settlements in order to confiscate weapons and documents, and to arrest leaders of the Yishuv and Haganah activists. Operation Agatha, as the British called it, took the Yishuv by surprise, and achieved most of its objectives. In Jerusalem, British troops entered the Jewish Agency buildings and, after ransacking the offices and in particular the archives, confiscated a large number of documents. The day became known to the Yishuv as “Shabbat haShehorah” (Black Saturday).