On a Friday night in 1946, British guards serving their sentence took 16-year-old Benjamin Kimchi from his cell in Jerusalem Central Prison and flogged him 18 times. But instead of whipping him in the exercise yard in front of the other inmates, the prison authorities beat him in private. This in the vain hope that they could keep it a secret: the Jews of Palestine were already enraged that the young Kimchi had been sentenced to 18 long years in prison for carrying a gun.
Menachem Begin, leader of the Etzel underground (Irgun Tzvai Leumi), was furious when he learned of the incident. Jews had been continually shamed and demeaned in the diaspora, and he was not about to allow the same kind of humiliation in the Jewish homeland! Previously, the Irgun had issued a warning resulting in “whiplash for whiplash”, but the British ignored it. After the Kimchi beating, Etzel fighters kidnapped an officer and three sergeants, flogged them 18 times, and released them. Flogging was never again carried out under the British Mandate.
For decades after the founding of the state, its history forgotten, the prison served as office and storage space for different institutions. Later, former inmates transformed the building into a shrine for Haganah fighters, Etzel and Lehi hanged by the British and named it Hechal Hagevura (Hall of Heroism). Finally, recognizing the significant part of secrecy in the establishment of the State, the Ministry of Defense restored the prison. Today, as the Underground Prisoners Museum, it tells the fascinating story of the ceaseless underground struggle to drive out the British and help create a Jewish state.
At the entrance to the museum is the original sign announcing in three languages (English, Arabic and Hebrew) that it is the British Central Prison. Nearby are large cement cones. Although the British used them to fortify their secure areas in Jerusalem, the cones first appeared during World War II and were scattered throughout the country to protect British installations against German attack. The armored car on the lawn was used by the British when they patrolled the streets of Jerusalem.
What looks like a double tomb is actually a monument to famous prisoners Moshe Barazani and Meir Feinstein. The headstones, which once crowned their graves on the Mount of Olives, are engraved with their subterranean affiliations.
Interestingly, there is a Russian symbol above the entrance and the words (in Russian) “Mary’s Courtyard”. In 1860, the Russian Orthodox Church purchased a large piece of land in this area and occupied it with a church, pilgrim hostels, and a hospital. This particular building, built in 1864, housed female pilgrims.
At the beginning of the Mandate, the British converted the lodge into a jail where thieves and murderers were imprisoned. It was only later that the Jews were thrown into prison for defending themselves, bearing arms, going underground, and terrorizing the British.
The holes in the outer walls were made by shells. On May 14, 1948, two weeks after the British emptied the prison, Haganah soldiers took over this entire area. Although the big battles took place closer to the Old City walls, there was also a lot of fighting here!
Today’s Museum Reception was once the nazara- where the new inmate had his handcuffs removed and his head shaved. Further inside, there are four separate security doors.
Room 34 is a reconstructed cell, still featuring beautiful Russian-built arches. Most of the prisoners slept on mats, with the exception of the “boss”, who kept order in the cell. Not only did he have his own bed, but his prison uniform was blue instead of the regulation brown. The toilet bucket was the only bathroom facility available after 4pm.
Another room is a restored bakery, once used by Russian pilgrims and later the place where prisoners baked pita. The cell that is room 32 was different: it had real beds! In pronouncing his sentence, the judge could decide whether his prison time would be harsh, or much less austere. The bakery stove was under this room, heating it in winter.
Another former cell contains items made by members of the underground, ranging from a plum seed that, when rubbed, turns into something beautiful, to objects expressing a yearning for a Jewish homeland. Among them: a beautiful image of the Tomb of Mother Rachel, “illegal” immigration boats and a commemorative album in which the Land of Israel is locked inside.
Hopes and Disappointments, across the hall, is a fascinating exhibit on the Mandate Period. Another exhibit teaches about the women’s prison in Bethlehem, where women were imprisoned after the mid-1930s.
Former inmates say that he only really understood that he was a prisoner when he entered the warehouse. Because here you handed over your civilian clothes and they gave you prison clothes: brown for common prisoners, blue for the “chief” and red for those condemned to hang. (If you tried to escape and failed, you dressed in black.)
Room 23 has two “attractions”: the prisoners’ names, mottos, and inscriptions chiseled into the floor, and the open hatch under one of the beds. Because this cell was located near the perimeter fence, the underground inmates decided to use it for an escape attempt. With the help of Shevah Erlich, the Jewish municipal engineer in charge of local maintenance, they learned that there was a sewer tunnel and culvert on the other side of the fence. All they needed was a connecting tunnel. And they began to dig.
But how to remove dirt and stones? Fortunately, a step leads up to this particular cell, and water spilled from the hallway when the prison floors were washed. So when the inmates volunteered to build a cesspool, the warden graciously agreed. He even provided them with a wheelbarrow and bags of cement!
But the finished tunnel was too narrow. Erlich suggested they block off the entire prison sewage system, and when he was called in for repairs, he opened a more accessible manhole. On February 20, 1948, dressed in smuggled municipal workers’ uniforms, 12 prisoners desperate to renew the fight for a Jewish homeland managed to escape.
On Saturday, the cell in room 29 was transformed into a kind of synagogue; Mats were rolled up and the prisoners were supplied with an ark and a Torah scroll. They were joined weekly by the holy rabbi, Reb Arye Levin.
Beyond the service yard is an open shower area built by the British. The prisoners sentenced to hang were isolated from their companions, but here they could collect notes hidden near the hole in the ground that served as a primitive toilet.
The restored workshops include a replica of the loom that produced rugs for prison cells. It is used today, with the same techniques, to weave museum mats!
The exercise yard, now empty of course, is where prisoners about to be flogged were tied to a wooden frame in the corner. Fortunately, the clinic was close! Inside were two bottles, one green and one red. If his complaint was in the area from the head to the navel, he received the green liquid; red diseases “cured” from the stomach to the feet.
The warden’s quarters feature items smuggled into the prison, including a hollow club. Not far away is the tzinok, or “lonely.” Former inmates say it was hell on earth, riddled with lice and bedbugs. This was the guards’ chance to get revenge on the prisoners who had caused them trouble. They poured buckets of water, or worse, into the cells, in which the prisoners had to stand all day.
In the Hall of Heroism you can see photographs of Jews executed during the Mandate and later in Arab countries. Across from the Hall of Heroism are the cells for death row prisoners. On display are the red uniforms they wore and the gallows.
The British caught Meir Feinstein, 19, after the Irgun blew up the Jerusalem train station, and Moshe Barazani, 20, with a hand grenade on his way to an assassination. Until that time, they had executed Jews only in the Acre prison, because they feared Jewish unrest in the Holy City. Now, however, worried that the transport would be attacked on its way to Acre, the British decided to hang Jerusalem. Since Feinstein had lost a hand in the rail attack and needed help, the two were locked up together.
But Barazani and Feinstein had no intention of giving the British authorities the pleasure of seeing them hanged, and were eager to carry out a plan hatched together with other inmates. Outsiders brought explosives inside a hollow club (the one in the warden’s rooms). An inmate constructed two hand grenades, one for the executioner and warden, a second for the children, and smuggled them into his cell inside two hollowed-out oranges.
On the eve of the scheduled execution, on April 21, 1947, Reb Arye was temporarily replaced by Rabbi Yaakov Goldman, in charge of all prisons in Israel. Immensely moved by the dedication and spirit of the boys, he insisted on the unusual step of being present so that the last face they saw would be that of a Jew. Nothing would change his mind and he remained in prison, ready to return early the next morning.
Obviously, the two young men could not fire the grenades at the execution, because the rabbi would be injured. Instead, they handed their guard a Bible and asked him to come out and pray for them. Almost immediately, an explosion rocked the prison: the brave young men had blown themselves up! Although they had been eager to take a British guard with them to the other world, this one, Thomas Goodwin, had been kind and they had decided they should forgive him.
Last year, Goodwin’s son met with members of Meir Feinstein’s family in Israel and returned the Bible to them. It contained a message, written by Meir 60 years earlier on behalf of both young men. Part of it read, in Hebrew: “Remember that we stood with dignity and marched with honor. Better to die with a gun in your hands than with your hands raised in surrender.”