Moshe Egozi

Recently discovered documents about Moshe Egozi provide new details on the network of secret arms depots created in the Tel Aviv area by the pre-state Haganah militia.

The article below appeared in the Israel publication "Haaretz'" on January 21, 2010, it was written by Dr. Nir Mann a historian who specializes in Tel Aviv's history. The title of the article is "Cache As Cache Can" The article was added to Moshe Egozi's 'profile' on the Internet website Geni.com by Gary Goldberg (great nephew of Moshe Egozi) with the permission of Moshe Egozi's grandson, Yoav Egozi.

"Moshe Egozi worked very hard to convince Tel Aviv's municipal engineer to accede to his request. He wanted to enlist the engineer's help in planning a garage adjacent to a silicate-brick factory that existed at the time near Dizengoff Circle. The garage was eventually built, and cars came in and out, but its real function was secret: It was a cover for a secret weapons-storage facility located inside the factory. Also in the same structure was a warehouse in which were hidden hundreds of guns and pistols, dozens of Bren and Lewis machine guns, mortars, submachine guns, ammunition and explosives.

That cache was one of 12 secret arms depots established in Tel Aviv beginning in the mid-1930s, to be used to defend against attacks such as those launched during the Arab Revolt, from 1936-39. One cache existed even earlier - in the home of Habimah Theater actor Haim Amitai, on nearby Frug Street.

Egozi, who died in 1983, was responsible for all the stashes - or "slicks" as they were called - established by the pre-state Haganah militia in the Tel Aviv area. His son, Avihu, had been aware of the key role his father played during Israel's struggle for independence, but until a few weeks ago, he did not imagine how large a role it was. Only when the son came across his father's papers in the attic of his home in Ramat Gan did he realize that he held a key to understanding the city's secret "empire" of caches.

The information Moshe Egozi left behind is written in beautiful handwriting, extremely well organized and attests to his involvement in activities involving arms and other equipment in the Tel Aviv area over a period of some 20 years. The files contain envelopes with pictures of weapons, Haganah members, a panoramic photo of Deir Yassin (in one of the "Arab village files" the Haganah intelligence service compiled) and more. There were also lists of secret stashes in the Tel Aviv region, the names of the people responsible for them, a list of training sites, and a record of weapons, ammunitions and other ordnance such as binoculars and compasses.

The documents include a copy of an agreement signed by the Haganah and the Etzel (the pre-state underground led by Menachem Begin, also called the Irgun) in April 28, 1948, after the latter captured the Manshiya neighborhood in Jaffa's outskirts and was instructed to replace its fighters with Haganah members. The document said: "Wherever Etzel positions exist, they are under the control of the commander of the front, via the commander of Etzel's positions. The Etzel will only carry out orders for which it will obtain prior consent ... and will be ready to engage in operations ordered by S.C. [the Haganah's supreme command]."

Another document is a military order issued on July 1, 1948, in the wake of prime minister David Ben-Gurion's order to dismantle the Etzel following the Altalena affair (in which an Etzel weapons ship was sunk on orders of the nascent government of Israel): "Information: Etzel stores are dispersed in town and around it. Up to now we have not encountered any resistance while confiscating armored vehicles or ammunition. The shock that befell the Etzel during the past week led to disintegration in its ranks. Our forces: One company of the 44th battalion commanded by Yosef, with two armored vehicles for protection, will handle all the searches and confiscations. Method: ... All weapons or other items that will be confiscated will be handed over to the commander of Camp Yonah [where Tel Aviv's Independence Park is situated today), in return for a receipt and detailed lists; no one may handle or take anything from the warehouse without Yehezkel's written permission."

'Storeroom committee'

Moshe Egozi kept a private archive during the years in which relations were fraught between the Tel Aviv municipality and the Haganah's supreme command. These confrontations led, more than once, to the dismissal of the militia's commanders in the Tel Aviv district. Avraham Ikar was the first such commander who confronted the city's leaders and was eventually relieved of his duties.

Furthermore, the journal Alei Zayit Veherev recently published a story concerning the tumultuous dismissal of Elimelech Avner, who was the military governor in Tel Aviv in the summer of 1944 (after the Etzel almost seized control of the city.) Another district commander, Nahum Ziv-Av, also prematurely ended his tour of duty.

The Haganah began operating in Tel Aviv after Jaffa Arabs killed 47 Jews, including the author Yosef Haim Brenner and other writer colleagues, in rioting in 1921. The underground's activities included the establishment of a "storeroom committee" that prepared four hidden weapons caches.

In 1923 a certain Ziga Yavetz was appointed Tel Aviv district storekeeper on behalf of the Haganah, and the clandestine acquisition and hiding of weapons picked up steam. Fellow militia members Moshe Egozi, Yitzhak Barak and Shmuel Rosenberg worked with Yavetz and supervised the care and storage of the ammunition, among other places in a shack owned by the Weissman family, on Buki Ben Yogli Street in the city's center.

The residents of Jaffa, the biggest Arab city in the country at the time, led the Arab revolt that erupted in 1936. The Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) had, as mentioned, prepared the arms caches for that eventuality, and they were located in the Levinsky teachers seminary, in the city's Balfour High School and a number of other schools.

A particularly large stash was hidden in the basement of the Tachkemoni School basement, with the help of a janitor named Yaakov Merhav and without the principal's knowledge. During the curfew on Saturday, June 29, 1946 (which became known as the "Black Sabbath"), the British found the cache and confiscated its contents. The main Haganah depot was built in the municipal slaughterhouse on the Yarkon River's southern bank.

King Abdullah's palace

Moshe Egozi, the main figure involved in running the Haganah's secret arms depots, was born in 1903 in Poland, and served as an officer in the Polish army. He came to Palestine in 1923 and worked as a painter, embellishing the homes of local wealthy residents and even doing wall paintings for King Abdullah's palace in Amman. A file bursting with recommendations was found among his estate papers. Architect Joseph Berlin wrote that Egozi "undertook great painting jobs for me, both in terms of the quality of the work and in terms of time."

Yosef Chelouche, one of Tel Aviv's founders, and the owner of a large warehouse, wrote that Egozi and a co-worker were "especially expert and did all sorts of first-rate painting jobs and always to the satisfaction of the people who gave them the work, both in terms of the quality of the job and their complete dedication."

When the 1929 riots erupted, "Red Rosa" (Rosa Cohen, a Haganah commander whose son was Yitzhak Rabin) sent Egozi to organize the defense of Yesod Hama'ala, a farming community in the Galilee panhandle. When he returned to Tel Aviv, he organized a mounted company of 75 horsemen to defend the Sharon villages, and was its commander for some two years. In 1934, he joined the Haganah's permanent staff; while he was becoming a rising star in the arms-cache realm, he made a living by opening a wine store on Ha'aliyah Street.

"Egozi looked powerful and his appearance radiated authority. He managed his men with resoluteness, but at the same time was a pleasant person," recalls Israel Shoval, who was under his command.

Egozi, like other senior Haganah people involved in the same pursuits, personally stocked the caches with arms. There were agreed-upon signals and codes used to identify hiding places, weapons and people who worked with the stashes as well as the gunrunners. The gunrunning was sometimes accompanied by violence, prostitution, extortion and squealing to the British detectives who, for their part, planted traps to thwart Haganah activities.

Yehezkel Weinstein, who ran a nightclub on Nes Tziona Street, was Egozi's contact man - and later became known as Yehezkel Ish Kasit, the owner of the eponymous cafe on Dizengoff Street.

Yael Ron, who is today 73, is the oldest child of Moshe Egozi and his wife Claire. When she was a child, she recalls, "Father kept a cache in the basement of the building that faced my kindergarten. To this day I remember the special smell of the kerosene burners and Primus stoves on the shelves there, covered with canvas. Each cache had its own smell."

Asked why she would have visited the cache, Ron says: "To this day I don't know whether my father took me there as a cover for his underground activity. I was thrilled to go with him to his places, especially to the Ce De candy factory. We went up to the director's office and after moving a chest of drawers, Father and his accomplices descended to the cache and I went around the factory. I was the girl with more chocolate and cocoa than anyone else. I remember my elementary school vacations because of their association with the Haganah's courses and depots. I loved it very much, just as my mother hated all those activities."

For his part, Avihu Egozi, who is younger than Ron, fondly remembers Yehuda Shporn, the truck driver from Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, where he stayed as a boy: "There was a fish tank on the truck to carry the fish from the ponds in the valley to Tnuva, and underneath there was a hidden compartment for transporting arms to the caches."

As for what his father did after Israel's independence, Egozi says: "He continued handling arms as the senior ordnance officer at the police's national headquarters. Father loaned arms to the Haganah museum, to the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, to the Israel Opera (two handguns used in the musical 'Kiss Me Kate') and to the Ohel Theater. A picture of Eliyahu Golomb hung on his wall - not of Israel's president, or Ben-Gurion or the police inspector general. Just Eliyahu, the Haganah's uncrowned leader."