Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Idith Zertal cites: Zvi Yehieli was "a senior operative in the Mossad when it was still an embryonic group of Kibbutz members, is one of those ordinary people seen by Namier as makers of history. With all that was special about him, he was a prototype of the Mossad operative. He was born in Romania (Bukovina) in 1905 to a family of merchants. He graduated high school, immigrated to Palestine in 1925, and joined a kibbutz, where he worked with the cows. By the time he was first drafted into the clandestine immigration in early 1938 he was a father and family man.79 Yehieli was a member of the Haganah and spoke Hebrew, Romanian, Yiddish, German, and Englishprerequisites for working in the Mossad."

I.C. Butnaru cites: "At 48 Istikal Street in Istanbul, Zvi Yehieli was the first who opened the so-called Office, and the idea of organizing illegal immigration, was again on track."
Idith Zertal cites: "A short time later he joined the agents in Athens who were trying to expand immigration from there.80 On the eve of World War II Yehieli worked with Braginsky and Schind, moving between Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, France, and England, involved primarily in matters regarding ships and money. From then on he served almost exclusively with the Mossad. On 20 November 1939 he went to Geneva after the main operatives left Europe at the outbreak of the war, and never ceased in his efforts to save Jews not just through immigration to Palestine, but by transferring money to Jewish communities, maintaining contact with them, and negotiating with Nazi agents to extricate Jews from the occupied countries. After his return to Palestine in late 1940, Yehieli alternated between Istanbul and Mossad headquarters in Palestine."

Idith Zertal cites: "Zvi Yehieli wandered between Palestine and Istanbul and then went to Egypt to manage the operation of parachuting into occupied Europe."
Amos Ettinger cites: "Zvi Yehieli did all he could to escort us to the airfield."

In September, 1941, Zvi Yehieli was sent to Istanbul, and a month later, he was joined by Zeev Shind, to search for a ship to save Romanian Jews after the pogroms that followed Operation Barbarossa.
He acquired a small yacht from the Danish envoy in Turkey, and renamed her Lilly Ayala.
The Portuguese consul in Turkey, who had served as go-between for the purchase of the boat, tried to obtain Portuguese registry for Lilly Ayala, but the government of Portugal refused.

Lilly-Ayala was sitting in Istanbul harbor at the same time as Struma.
Zeev Shind defended the decision not to use Lilly-Ayala to help Struma;
Zeev Shind cites: that "the larger ship was not seaworthy and that itsengine could not be fixed. The primary effort, he said, was to persuadethe Turks to allow the passengers off the ship so that they could pro-ceed to Palestine by train."

Zvi Yehieli served in the 5th Battalion Sha'ar Hagai, and in Vav Company and D Company.

Zvi Grubshtein Yehieli served as convoy commander of the Fifth Battalion of the Harel Brigade.