Stern, Avraham (Yair)

Son of Leah Hadassah and Mordechai. He was born on November 23, 1907, in Sobelk, a town in the north-eastern part of Poland, to a dentist and a midwife. At the beginning of the summer of 1915, with the withdrawal of the Russian army from the areas of its control of Poland, the German occupation authorities exiled the Jews from the city and the mother wandered with her two sons to Russia. They spent three and a half years in Ural and there they went through the Bolshevik Revolution. The father stayed in Russia for medical treatment at Konigsberg in East Prussia and later in a detention camp in Germany. Avraham studied at a Russian high school and continued his studies even after his mother and brother returned to Sobalk in October 1918. At the age of 14, after many hardships, he also returned to the local Hebrew Gymnasium. He excelled in his studies, was outstanding in his knowledge of languages, edited the school newspaper and was also active in the Hebrew Scouts Organization Hashomer Hatzair, which was established in his city in 1922. He also showed special interest in theater, music and poetry. In December 1925 he was sent by his parents to Eretz Israel and he graduated from the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem, where he specialized in Hebrew literature, Jewish history and Greek and Roman culture. In the 1929 riots he enlisted with the rest of the students to protect the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem, after which he also temporarily left for Mishmar Hayarden, where he criticized the policy of the Mandate government and for the organization of the Haganah in the Yishuv. When the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization) was established in April 1931, most of the members of the Haganah branch of the Haganah were members of the Irgun. His underground alias was Yair. That same year he wrote and composed the song “Unknown Soldiers” which was accepted as the anthem of the new organization. His other songs at the time were dedicated to national themes in the same spirit. On 25 Shvat, 12.2.1942, he was discovered in a room in southern Tel Aviv and was shot and killed by a British police officer. He was buried in the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery in Tel Aviv. He left an expectant wife and five months later a son was born and named after him. Yair’s memory has been immortalized in many books, among them “The Blood of Bassef” and “Bergman”. A settlement in the Shomron is called “Kochav Yair”, and there are many streets in his name in dozens of settlements in the State of Israel and in Beit Yair – where he was murdered. For full memorial, see Hebrew biography.