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1947 Escape from Acre Prison in British Palestine Exposed as Inside Job
(Guardian-UK) Oliver Holmes - A decorated British civil servant who built Acre prison for the empire in Palestine - engineer and architect Peres Etkes, a Russian Jew and American citizen - leaked the building plans to the Zionist paramilitary Irgun, helping them to launch a legendary prison break in 1947. About 250 prisoners, Jews and Arabs, fled the jail. Etkes received the King's Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom for building a deep water port in the city of Haifa and for constructing a vast network of roads. Fifty years after his death, his great-nephew, Gil Margulis, found Etkes' half-written memoir while researching his life. In it, Etkes said he had also used his British connections in 1921 to transfer weapons from the British-run Jaffa armory, which he then "lent" to Jewish forces in Tel Aviv during Arab riots. Etkes told Margulis' mother, Aliza, in the 1950s that he had shared the plans of Acre prison "because the prison was like a fortress, and unless they had the map, there was no way to get out." The prison break has long been seen as a dramatic symbol of London's declining ability to maintain control in Mandatory Palestine, which ended a year later.