His song Unknown Soldiers was adopted first by the Irgun and later by the Lehi as an underground anthem.

Stern's poetry was heavily influenced by Russian and Polish poetry, especially works by Vladimir Mayakovsky. One analyst referred to the poems as expressing the eroticism of death together with de-eroticism of women. Stern joined the Irgun and completed an officer's course in 1932.ĭuring his life, Stern wrote dozens of poems embodying a physical, almost sensual, love for the Jewish homeland and a similar attitude towards martyrdom on its behalf. Hoping to create an independent army, and also to take a more active and less defensive military position, Tehomi founded the Irgun Zvai Leumi ('National Military Organization' known for short as the 'Organization'). Stern's commander and friend Avraham Tehomi quit the Haganah because it was under the authority of the local labor movement and union. His first political involvement was to found a student organization called 'Hulda', whose regulations stated it was dedicated 'solely to the revival of the Hebrew nation in a new state.' During the 1929 riots in Palestine, Jewish communities came under attack by local Arabs, and Stern served with the Haganah, doing guard duty on a synagogue rooftop in Jerusalem's Old City. He specialized in Classical languages and literature (Greek and Latin). Stern studied at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. At the age of 18, in 1925, Stern emigrated on his own to Mandatory Palestine.

Petersburg before walking home to Poland. Eventually, he stayed with an uncle in St. When he was separated from his mother the 13-year-old Avraham earned his keep by carrying river water in Siberia. They found refuge with her sister in Russia. During the First World War his mother fled the Germans with him and his brother David. Stern was born in Suwałki, present-day Poland (then part of the Russian Empire). The group referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks. In September 1940, he founded a breakaway militant Zionist group named Lehi, called the 'Stern Gang' by the British authorities and by the mainstream in the Yishuv Jewish establishment. Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery, Givatayim, Israel 32.072°N 34.804☎Īvraham Stern ( Hebrew: אברהם שטרן, Avraham Shtern Decem– February 12, 1942), alias Yair ( Hebrew: יאיר), was one of the leaders of the Jewish paramilitary organization Irgun.

Stern by Zev Golan