Triumph on the Gallows

A fascinating story of an Israeli freedom fighter who held firm to his beliefs under the cruel British rule of Palestine at the time of the rebirth of the Israeli state.

“NO one but Itzhak Gurion could have written this book. It took the sensitivity of a poet to describe the martyrdom of those who died so heroically to wrest back the ancient land of Israel from the unclean hands that have held it. Here are the images of these men and the fortitude of their souls. Here also is the picture of the henchmen and the weak-kneed lackeys of the British Government and the whole sordid business of holding a people in thraldom.

“In fluent language that seems almost effortless, Gurion describes the last days of his fighting comrades in the death cells of British prisons in Israel, and I, for one, shall never again hear the HATIKVAH without thinking of the men who sang it on the way to the gallows—on which they died to make Israel live.

“Here is irrefutable proof that the land of Israel would still be a dependence of its former usurpers were it not for the farsightedness and the heroism of those who realized that it could be won back by force, force of character and blood. Two thousand years of cruel oppression died at the end of the rope on which dangled the bodies of Dov Gruner and his fighting friends. If anyone can read Mr. Gurion’s book without feeling proud of belonging to the people he describes let him remove himself as far as he can from them; let him never again say that he is of the same ancestry.”—KONRAD BERCOVICI