Bidspirit auction | ”To liberate Zion, even at

”To liberate Zion, even at the cost of life” – a forceful proclamation by the Irgun organization, warning ahead of the British police’s incursion into the Western Wall plaza - ”Announcement” – a forceful proclamation by the Irgun organization ahead of the Yom Kippur prayers at the Western Wall. In the proclamation, the Irgun warns that if British police break in during the Yom Kippur prayers to carry out arrests at the Western Wall, ”we will not pass over this barbaric abuse in silence.” Eretz Israel [1946]. The proclamation also alludes to the British policy that prevented Jews from entering the gates of the country, thereby indirectly causing their destruction by Nazi Germany: ”We find it our duty to inform and declare that if this atrocity is carried out again this year, at a time when the masses of the people unite in their grief and mourning with the souls of their brethren, who were handed over to destruction by the Nazis as a result of the British betrayal, we will not pass over this barbaric abuse in silence.” The struggle at the Western Wall plaza in the 1940s became one of the most prominent symbols of the Irgun’s resistance against the British Mandate, as the safeguarding of the sanctity of Yom Kippur merged with the struggle for national sovereignty. The British, who strictly enforced the ”White Paper” regulations prohibiting the sounding of the shofar at the Wall at the conclusion of the fast, stationed armed police forces in the plaza to prevent the act, which they regarded as a breach of public order. Members of the Irgun, and especially activists of the Betar movement, resolved to defy this decree anew each year, smuggling shofars beneath their clothing and blending into the crowd of worshippers (”the Wall Company”). The climactic moments came at the end of the fast, when, upon the conclusion of the Ne’ilah prayer, the blasts of the shofar resounded through the plaza, provoking a violent charge by British police who attempted to break through the worshippers to arrest those sounding the shofar. The struggle was not merely over a religious ritual, but a battle for the honor of the people; the organization’s activists formed a living wall to protect the shofar blowers and prevent the police from reaching them, often leading to severe physical clashes in the narrow plaza. The sounding of the shofar in the face of the British police became an act of political defiance that conveyed a clear message: Jews could not be forbidden from observing their commandments at their holiest site in their land. Newspapers such as ”HaTzofeh”, ”Haaretz”, as well as Jewish press abroad (such as The Sentinel in Chicago), reported in real time on the arrests of the shofar blowers. In 1947, for example, it was reported that seven youths who sounded the shofar at the Wall were arrested and sent to detention in Latrun after refusing to provide fingerprints to the British. [1] Leaf. 21x15 cm. Very good condition.