The site of Chaim Arlosoroff's assassination has a memorial in his memory. The memorial is both a plaque and later a sculpture was added. It resides along the path along the beach.
Plaque:
Dr. Chaim Arlozorov was assissinated in the evening of Tuesday, June 16, 1953 (23 Sion 1953) while he was the director of the political department of the Jewish Agency, the countries foreign minister, only 34 years old at the time of his murder.
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On 16 June 1933, just two days after his return from negotiations in Germany, Haim Arlosoroff was murdered. He was killed while walking with his wife, Sima, on a beach in Tel Aviv. Arlosoroff's funeral was the largest in the history of Mandatory Palestine, with an estimated assemblage of 70,000 to 100,000 mourners. The death of Arlosoroff greatly aggravated political relations within the Zionist movement.
Abba Ahimeir, the head of an activist group with fascist tendencies,[39] the Brit HaBirionim, was charged by the Palestine Police Force with plotting the assassination. Ahimeir was also a leader of the nationalist Zionist Revisionist faction whose publication, "Hazit HaAm"[40] continuously attacked the Labor movement and Zionist leaders, including Arlosoroff, calling him names and stating that the Jewish people "will know how to react to such villains". Two rank-and-file Revisionists, Abraham Stavsky and Ze'evi Rosenblatt, were arrested as the actual murderers and were identified by Arlosoroff's widow. All three vehemently denied the accusation.
The district court acquitted Ahimeir and Rosenblatt but convicted Stavsky, who, however, was eventually acquitted by the Supreme Court for lack of corroborating evidence, as the law then required. The defense accused the police of manipulating the widow's testimony and other evidence for political reasons, and expounded the theory that the murder was connected to an intended sexual attack on Sima Arlosoroff by two young Arabs. Stavsky later rose within Irgun ranks and was responsible for the procurement of the Irgun arms vessel known as the "Altalena." He was killed in the attack on the ship by the newly established Israel Defense Forces on the Beach of Tel Aviv.
Arlosoroff's grave in Trumpeldor Cemetery, Tel Aviv
In addition to theories that people connected to the revisionist movement were the perpetrators of the murder, or that it was an intended sexual attack by two Arabs, there are theories connecting it to the Soviet and Nazi regimes. The Soviet theory was promoted by Shmuel Dothan in 1991 to counter what the Russians considered as a global military plot against them. The Nazi theory involves Joseph Goebbels, who supposedly sent two agents, Theo Korth and Heinz Geronda, to kill Arlosoroff. During her school days, Magda Ritschel, who later became Joseph Goebbels' wife, met and became close friends with Lisa Arlosoroff, Haim's sister. Magda met Haim at university; they became lovers, and she became involved with him in Zionist affairs. According to Lisa's diary, Magda fervently participated in the debates of the group "Tikwath Zion" on the future of Palestine and learned Hebrew. She wore a necklace with the Star of David that he gave her as a love token, and they even planned to emigrate to Palestine together.
However, the relationship ended with Haim's departure, as Magda did not follow. In 1921, Magda married Günther Quandt, a rich German industrialist twice her age. In 1929, Günther discovered that Magda was having an affair, so he separated from her. He went on to divorce Magda that same year but was generous with the divorce settlement. Magda was having the affair with her old Jewish boyfriend Viktor (Haim) Arlosoroff, a 30-year-old law student.
In 1931, she began to date Joseph Goebbels. After he began going out with Magda, he learned of her Jewish stepfather, Richard Friedländer. For days at a time, she did not visit him. After a while, she stopped answering the phone or keeping dates. Eventually, Joseph found out he had a rival: Haim Arlosoroff, who was equally enraged to learn Magda was two-timing him with the Nazi gauleiter of Berlin. Haim was so enraged, in fact, that during one meeting with Magda, he pulled out a revolver, and, in a jealous, dramatic scene, fired at her, deliberately missing. The bullet buried itself in the wall near Magda, and she permanently broke off her relationship with Haim, despite his pleas and apologies. Magda wed Joseph on 19 December 1931, with Adolf Hitler as his best man. When Haim visited Berlin in 1933, he discovered his old flame arm-in-arm with Joseph. He even came across an opposition newspaper with the headline "Nazi Chief weds Jewess".
Once the shock had subsided, Haim, so the theory went, began to view Magda as his conduit to Joseph to secure the Ha'avarah agreement. Their old relationship proved to be an embarrassment to the Goebbels, who were, at that point, very much part of the Nazi leadership. Joseph allegedly took notice of his wife's former Jewish boyfriend, which is why he was "terminated". Magda's former Jewish stepfather was later arrested on Joseph's orders on 15 June 1938 and sent to Buchenwald, where he died on 18 February 1939.
For years, right-wing figures claimed to have been wrongfully accused by Mapai of responsibility for Arlosoroff's assassination. Some 50 years after the murder, following the publication of a book on the assassination by Shabtai Teveth in 1982, the Israeli government, now led by Menachem Begin, established a formal investigative committee. As the first Israeli Prime Minister elected from the Revisionist movement, Begin had taken offense at a suggestion in Teveth's book that a Revisionist acquitted in court for Arlosoroff's murder may have actually been responsible after all.
The Judicial Commission of Enquiry was led by the former High court of Justice Judge David Bachor. Its purpose was to decide whether Rosenblatt and Stavsky were responsible for assassinating Arlosoroff, or not. The committee decided unanimously that Rosenblatt and Stavsky had nothing to do with the murder. The committee was inconclusive about the identity of the real murderers, or whether or not the murder was politically motivated.