Israelis Honor Memory of Stern, Terrorist Leader Slain by British

Many leading Israelis brushed aside memories of the bitterness of the struggle that preceded Israel’s liberation and joined comrades-in-arms, friends and followers of the late Abraham Stern, in observance of the 25th anniversary of the slaying of the Stern Group leader by British police.

Stern, who organized and led the dissident group which waged a campaign of terror and violence against the Mandate authorities, and rejected the leadership of the organized Jewish community in Palestine, was killed by the police who trapped him in an apartment in the southern part of Tel Aviv.

Yesterday, numbers of Israelis visited Stern’s grave and the house in which he was killed on a street which was renamed Abraham Stern Street. Rabbi Yedidya Fraenkel conducted memorial services and former Sternists sang the hymn, “Unknown Soldiers, ” — the song of the Stern Group, or Lehi, as it was known in Hebrew. In Jerusalem, Mayor Teddy Kollek gave the name of Yayir — Stern’s underground pseudonym — to a street in a quarter of the city inhabited by recent immigrants, most of whom had never heard of Stern or the Lehi.