Dov Gruner

Dov Béla Gruner (Hebrew: דב בלה גרונר; December 6, 1912 – April 16, 1947) 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.

Gruner was born on December 6, 1912, to a religious Jewish family in Kisvárda, Hungary. In 1938, after studying engineering in Brno, he joined the Zionist youth movement Betar, which arranged his passage to Palestine in 1940 aboard the immigrant ship S.S. Skaria. After spending six months in the Atlit detainee camp, he settled in Rosh Pina. In 1941, he joined the British Army to fight the Nazis, and together with his comrades in the Jewish Brigade came to the aid of Holocaust survivors in Europe.

After Gruner's demobilization from the army, in March 1946, he took part in an Irgun arms raid against a British army depot near Netanya. Ten days later, he participated in his second and final operation on behalf of the Irgun—an arms raid against a Ramat Gan police station. Gruner headed a team of "porters", who took weapons from the armory to a waiting truck. When a gunfight in which two Irgun men and an Arab constable were killed broke out, Gruner and his team continued working under fire. Gruner was hit and wounded during the firefight. The remaining Irgun members boarded the truck and escaped together with the weapons.

Gruner, who had been severely wounded by a gunshot to the face, was taken to hospital and operated on. His health slowly began to improve, and he was transferred to prison. On January 1, 1947, his trial before a Jerusalem military court began. When brought before the court and asked whether he admitted guilt, he replied that he did not recognize the authority of the court.

"This court has no legal foundation, since it was appointed by a regime without legal foundation. You came to Palestine because of the commitment you undertook at the behest of all the nations of the world to rectify the greatest wrong caused to any nation in the history of mankind, namely the expulsion of Israel from their land, which transformed them into victims of persecution and incessant slaughter throughout the world. It was this commitment—and this commitment alone—which constituted the legal and moral basis for your presence in this country. But you betrayed it wilfully, brutally and with satanic cunning. You turned your commitment into a mere scrap of paper...When the prevailing government in any country is not legal, when it becomes a regime of oppression and tyranny, it is the right of its citizens—more than that, it is their duty—to fight this regime and to topple it. This is what Jewish youth are doing and will continue to do until you quit this land, and hand it over to its rightful owners: the Jewish people. For you should know this: there is no power in the world which can sever the tie between the Jewish people and their one and only land. Whosoever tries to sever it—his hand will be cut off and the curse of God will rest on him for ever."

Refusing to partake in his own defense and refusing to co-operate with counsel, Gruner was said to have been offered a commutation on the condition that he admit guilt. He refused to do so and was sentenced to death.

Despite the maximum security of his prison situation, Gruner maintained an irregular correspondence with Irgun headquarters. Among the correspondence between Gruner and headquarters were: His refusal of Irgun assistance with legal counsel (owing to his principled stand regarding non-cooperation with the British court system in Eretz Yisrael), his query whether he should commit suicide in order to make a political statement (the Irgun leadership quickly responded against the initiative) and his final letter, written shortly before he was hanged. Addressed to the Commander in Chief of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, it read:

Sir,