Eric Graus

Eric Graus
Born	22 April 1927 Bratislava
Died	12 March 2018 London
Nationality	British
Occupation	Antique dealer; Revisionist organiser
Known for	Lehi mail drop in London, 1947–48; founder of British Herut

Eric Graus (22 April 1927 – 12 March 2018), Lehi alias Efraim, was a London antique dealer and Revisionist organiser. In 1947 he joined the Stern Gang cell that Yaakov Heruti built in Britain, and provided the address at which explosive material posted from the United States was received. He was never arrested. From 1970 he was the founder and later life president of the Herut Movement of Great Britain, and the man who brought Menachem Begin to London in 1972. He was buried on 13 March 2018 at Eretz Hahayim, near Beit Shemesh.

Family

He was the son of Marcel Graus, and was born in Bratislava. The family emigrated to England in 1939. In 1952 he married Suzy Adler, a refugee from Budapest. They had a son, Jeremy Graus, and two daughters, Aviva Graus and Nomy Graus. Suzy survived him. Jeremy later sat as a director of Tel Hai Fund Ltd.. No other children are named in the obituaries or on the Lehi roll.

Stern Gang cell in Britain

Nathan Yellin-Mor sent Heruti to Britain in 1947 to build a cell. Heruti arrived in October, enrolled in law at the University of London as cover, and recruited from Betar and from the Hebrew Legion, a circle sympathetic to the paramilitaries in Palestine. He later described the method as “a friend brings a friend,” and the aim as addresses and a place to store weapons. The leadership’s list was the foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, General Evelyn Barker, and Major Roy Farran, who had been tried and acquitted over the killing of the Lehi member Alexander Rubowitz. The order to kill Bevin was later withdrawn.

Graus was one of the recruits Heruti was willing to name. His job was the mail drop. Heruti told Spyer: “Eric Graus, for example, had a place where we could receive mail from abroad. And that was how we received explosive materials — quite poor explosives, by the way — dynamite.” The sender was Benjamin Gefner, a Lehi member in New York who had organised the American Friends of Lehi. The first consignment arrived inside the hollowed-out batteries of a radio set. Heruti, who had run Lehi’s technical department in Palestine and built the bomb that killed four Palestine Police officers at the Sarona compound on 26 April 1947, assembled the devices in Britain.

The Barker parcel was a letter bomb. His wife thought it smelt wrong and called the police, who defused it. The Farran parcel, a bomb hidden in a book of Shakespeare, was opened by his younger brother Rex Farran, who was killed. Heruti called it “a frustrating failure” and wrote that they had been looking for the murderer, not his brother. Heruti left Britain in May 1948 and sailed from France. Graus was not charged. The Lehi heritage association records him in procurement positions under Heruti, and as the recipient of the Lehi badge and the State of Israel Fighters Medal, which he later said he was proud of.

A Geoffrey Alderman obituary in the Jewish Chronicle says he had been an active member of Lehi in Mandate Palestine and formed friendships there with Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. The Lehi roll and Heruti’s account put the membership in London, in 1947, and the commanders as the men to whom the cell answered. The Palestine claim is the obituary’s.

Revisionist organiser

By 1952 he was in the London antiques trade. He later had a New Bond Street address and dealt as far as the Far East, under the name Graus Antiques. In 1970 he established the British Herut movement. In 1972 he invited Begin, then an opposition member of the Knesset, for a first visit to London. After Begin’s election victory in 1977 he relaunched Likud-Herut UK as a pressure group for the government. The Jewish Year Book for 1983 lists him as president of the Herut Movement of Great Britain, honorary secretary of the Zionist Federation, a member of the Jewish Agency national assembly and of the Board of Deputies foreign affairs committee, on the presidium of the actions committee of the World Zionist Organisation, and on the world executive of Herut-Hatzohar. He was also active in the Soviet Jewry campaign. He remained life president of Likud-Herut UK.

See also

• Jeremy Graus
• Yaakov Heruti
• Tel Hai Fund Ltd.
• Likud-Herut UK Ltd
• Herut Movement of Great Britain
• Stern Gang

Charity trusteeships

Charity trusteeships

Charity	Role	From	To	Source
Tel Hai Fund Ltd. (266913)	Director (trustee)	not published	12 March 2018

Companies

Companies House lists the following appointments for Eric Graus.

Appointments at Companies House

Company	Number	Role	Appointed	Resigned	Company status
Tel Hai Fund Ltd.	01151421	Director	before 1992	12 March 2018	Dissolved

Links to Israel and the IDF

Eric Graus is recorded as a trustee of Tel Hai Fund Ltd. (until 12 March 2018). Support relevant to the Israel Defense Forces documented in the charity's records: "IDF Widows"; "DPC Self Defence"; Yeshivot Shiloh (hesder); Keshet Yehuda (pre-military). Amounts and years: IDF Widows £2,015 + DPC Self Defence £8,500 (2024/25); Yeshivot Shiloh £24,478 (2024/25), £224,883 since 2009. Because no appointment date is published, the overlap between this funding and the trusteeship cannot be established from the register.

Notes on identity matching

The Companies House record is linked because the officer appears on the officer list of the charity's own company, under a matching name (born April 1927).