Nathan Yellin-Mor in the words of Yitzhak Shamir

After a while, Nathan Yellin-Mor also turned up at Mezrah and, as he and I daily circled the yard, we came to know each other well, not dreaming, of course, that, along with one other man, Dr. Israel Scheib, we would all too soon be taking over from Yair as the ‘Troika’ of Lehi’s central committee.

Yellin-Mor (‘Gera,’ to use his code name) was an intellectual both by nature and by choice, an engineer by training and a proud Jew by faith.  He had joined the Revisionist Party and Betar in Poland in the 1930s and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Irgun.  I was to work very closely for years with him in the special intimacy and trust without which no conspiratorial society can hope to function, and came to respect, admire and depend upon his severe, practical and exceedingly logical mind.  He was a born editor and formulator, less effective as a speaker than a writer but a good conversationalist whenever he felt like talking.

Much was to befall him, but more was to evade him when the state came into being. 

In the early days of the state, he was imprisoned for complicity in the assassination of Count Bernadotte.

Largely in order to free him, we founded a short-lived political party which we called The Fighters; on its ticket, Gera was elected to the first Knesset. 

Even before that, he had begun to turn leftwards, becoming increasingly extreme in his attitudes towards the Soviet Union and towards the Arabs.  He told me once that a truly progressive man can only be judged by the way he feels about the Arabs, and he became preoccupied by the East-West clash and by the relationship of the US and the USSR. 

He was a man who had changed and yet remained the same; involved, sharp, dedicated but at home nowhere, hating the right-wing Herut, the political successor of the Irgun, and despising the Labour Party. 

In the last years of his life he was a marginal figure, possessing no influence.  I know all too well that life does not operate in accordance with what is fair or unfair, but I also know that Gera deserved better than he got – or chose.