Prior to the creation of the State of Israel, two Jewish terrorist groups were working to cleanse Palestine of its Arab inhabitants and its British occupiers. The more brutal of these groups was Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) also known as the Stern Gang after its founder Avraham Stern.
Much of the financial support for these Jewish terrorists came from the United States. The Stern Gang received money collected under the more perfidious name, American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel. Mr. Shepard Rifkin was the executive director after the UN Partition of Palestine and prior to the creation of Israel in May 1948.
Against his better judgment Rifkin solicited Albert Einstein to help the Stern Gang raise American money for arms to drive out the Arabs and help create a Jewish state. On April 10th, the day after the infamous massacre of Arabs at Deir Yassin, Einstein replied calling the Stern Gang terrorists and misled criminals.
Einstein’s single-page letter on his embossed stationery was auctioned at Sotheby’s on June 21, 2007. It was purchased by Daniel McGowan, executive director of Deir Yassin Remembered, for $8,500 plus $1,700 commission and $175 shipping. It will become a part of the Deir Yassin Remembered Archives, which includes documents, photographs, and audio accounts of the massacre.
Deir Yassin Remembered is a not-for-profit organization of Jews and non-Jews working to build a truth and reconciliation center at Deir Yassin, 1,400 meters to the north of the most famous Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, on the west side of Jerusalem.
