Why The Lechi Bomb Didn't Kill Bevin

From:

Con artist: The true story of a master forger


A bomb for Bevin

 After many of his friends had been arrested, and as he continued to fulfill his many missions unwaveringly, [Adolfo] Kaminsky witnessed the liberation of Paris. He doesn’t know exactly how many documents he forged during the war, but estimates that there were thousands, maybe more...

...He wanted to be as useful as possible in the bleak period of the struggle for France’s soul. Nor did his work end with the liberation of France in August 1944. The war in Germany still raged “and I wanted to go and fight.”...

...His passion for abetting the work of underground organizations continued to burn bright, and he quickly found new and worthy clients for his abilities.

“In January 1946, I was in Germany and saw the DP camps,” he relates. “The situation was untenable. Those Jews, who wanted to get to Palestine, were mostly on the left side of the political map and had nowhere to go. They did not want to return to Germany or Poland and had no wish to settle in France. They needed help in leaving Europe, and I did everything I could.”

Thus did Adolfo Kaminsky become a forger of documents for the Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet − the organization of the Yishuv ‏(as the Jewish community in Palestine was known‏) that organized illegal immigration to Palestine. The person who served as his first liaison was Pierre Mushnik, nicknamed Pierrot; Kaminsky did not share his political views.
“I was not a Zionist,” he admits, “but I defended firmly the idea that every person, particularly if his life was in danger, has the right to move freely, cross borders and choose his place of exile.”

In the book he dwells at length on his ties with the Yishuv. One of his contacts was Avraham Polonsky, whose nom de guerre was Monsieur Paul. A leader of the Jewish underground in France, Polonsky was a key figure in the operation to smuggle Jews into Palestine under the nose of the British Mandate. The activity was intense. Once more, Kaminsky found himself secretly creating hundreds and thousands of documents for a cause he believed in wholeheartedly. In the heat of that activity, he decided to assist not only the illegal immigration project, but also members of the underground organization Lehi ‏(Israel Freedom Fighters‏), who were being persecuted by the Zionist establishment.

As a defender, then and now, of universal human rights, and firmly ensconced on the left of the political spectrum, the fact that Kaminsky became involved in the clandestine activity of the “Stern Gang” might seem surprising. “The sister of one of the underground activists in France introduced me to Lehi members, headed by a man who was code-named Walter. I did not consider them to be terrorists, but people who had been persecuted in Europe, and I helped them leave the country with false papers. In the first stage, at least, I did it without asking myself too many questions about their violent policy or their extremism.”

Even at a distance of 60 years, it is possible to understand that what drew Kaminsky to assist the Lehi group was its dual status: they were both refugees in devastated Europe and were cast out by their brethren in the Haganah, the defense organization of the organized Yishuv.
His assistance to the Stern Gang, as he calls them to this day, which he concealed from the Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet, reached its peak in an event which, if Kaminsky is right about the details, sheds light on an affair that has stirred debate among historians for some decades.

As Kaminsky tells it, one day a Lehi man, introduced to him as Avner Grushov, asked him to make a bomb for the group in order to assassinate Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary and the Yishuv’s greatest enemy.

“They wanted me to manufacture a bomb,” Kaminsky says. “From my experience in World War II, I knew how to do it. I said nothing, but I was against the idea. I realized that I would not be able to persuade them to drop the plan − that was a lost cause. The only solution was to agree to do it, because otherwise someone else would have done it, but to ensure that the bomb would be defective. I had no sympathy for Bevin, but his assassination would have hurt everyone.”

Sarah Kaminsky, who interviewed the person who served as her father’s liaison with Lehi at the time, named “Suzy,” relates that when the book came out in France, the former underground woman was surprised at this disclosure and called Kaminsky to ask why he had not refused the request. Kaminsky adds that the widow of “Avner,” at whose request he made the bomb, also called to ask whether her late husband had known that the device was defective.

Did Kaminsky, then, prevent Bevin’s assassination by Lehi? That question will be decided by historians, who have been wondering for years whether Lehi actually had an operative plan to do away with Churchill and Lord Bevin. In the meantime, it is interesting that Kaminsky, despite his involvement with two of the Jewish national liberation organizations in Palestine, does not describe himself as a Zionist. ‏(However, his sister, Pauline, immigrated to Israel and lives in Kibbutz Sdot Yam.‏)

“I was disappointed that Israel became a state based on religious affiliation,” Kaminsky explains. Indeed, he is still attached to the utopian, universalist vision of a world without borders. At the same time, he adds emphatically, “I do not regret having helped with Israel’s establishment, and if I were compelled to do it again I would do so willingly. Nor do I have anything against religion, only against the extremists who exploit it.”..

Avner's book.