Page 255 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

The fact that this was an old letter and that most of its claims had been dismissed at the time was not mentioned in the publication of "HaYarden." The date of its launch was also hidden in the fine print. The trend was clear: Proving the discrimination and on a full-page in the newspaper, no less.
Over the following days, the attacks continued and would eventually bring about an explosion. This came on February 14, 1937. About sixty or seventy Beitar people marched to the National Institutions Building and stormed right into the offices of the Aliya Department. Most of the newspapers, in their afternoon editions that day and on the following day, wrote about the storming with great severity, which ended in injuries and arrests by the police.
"Davar" wrote: "Ten Beitar people launched a pogrom on the Agency Building [...] some were armed with iron gloves, one held a knife and others threw rocks. They seemed to have recruited thugs from all over the Land of Israel." The news item further reported that the Beitarists stormed into the rooms of the Aliya Department and one room of the Organization Department. They broke windows, knocked down a closet on some poor clerk they ran into, shattered typewriters and telephone tore up and scattered files. When they tried to storm Dobkin's room, they were blocked by employees of the building. The Department's archive also remained intact.
"Haaretz" added that those who broke in marched in ranks and entered through the main entrance. They turned left and went to the rooms of the Aliya Department "and immediately began breaking the tables, telephones, windows, tearing up papers and throwing them out [...] many held stones. They say some were calling out: give us certificates!" The English-language "Palestine Post" newspaper wrote along a similar vein. By contrast, the right-wing newspaper "HaBoker" wrote with a more balanced tone and its headline read: "A Bloody Fracas in the Jewish Agency Building." The news item in this newspaper wrote that those who came, were protesting against "the theft of certificates from Beitar" and demanded from Ben-Gurion a clear answer for their demand to receive Aliya certificates.
Dobkin continued to deal with the issue of certificates for years. His children remembered well men, women and even all sorts of lobbyists that waited near their house in Rehavia to have a word with him. Attempts to apply pressure to him indirectly happened more than once. His daughter Nechama remembers that when she was a girl, people would often approach "Grandma Malka," the mother of Eliyahu Dobkin, so that she would speak with her son regarding certificates.
The Aliya Department did not just deal with the "legal" Aliya, via the certificates that British placed at the disposal of the Jewish Agency. Issues of "illegal immigration" and the "Bricha" ("escape") constantly concerned Dobkin – on the eve of World War II and during the war, and with greater intensity in the years of struggle on the eve of the establishment of the state. It is no wonder that when he passed away in 1976 and a funeral ceremony that was held for him in the courtyard of the National Institutions Building, many of the activists of the "illegal immigration" and the "escape" came to pay their final respects on his final journey.
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