Exodus Ship Survivor Making Aliyah at Age 88

British perfidy and British war crimes, still unpunished to this day. Via INN:

Exodus ship survivor France Goldberg, 88, of Pittsburgh, will be one of 210 new immigrants to arrive in Israel on Tuesday. The Nefesh B'Nefesh (NBN) flight is scheduled to arrive at approximately 7 a.m., and dignitaries and the press will welcome the olim (new immigrant) at the old Terminal One facility at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Mrs. Goldberg tried to come on aliyah in 1947 after having survived the Holocaust by fleeing from Poland to Siberia. She left a displaced persons camp in the middle of the night and boarded the Exodus for Israel.

The British army torpedoed and tear-gassed the ship, killing several passengers.

The others, including Mrs. Greenberg, were forced to return to France and then to Germany rather than arrive in Israel and increase the Jewish presence in Palestine, which it occupied under a League of Nations mandate.

The Nazis had wiped out her family. After returning to Germany, she met and married her husband Isak. She survived a nearly fatal illness, and the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where her sister lived, in 1949. They have two children, and her desire to move to Israel grew after her daughter married and moved to Israel 36 years ago. She was widowed a year ago and decided to make arrangements to be close to her daughter and grandchildren in the Jewish state.

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Yossi Harel, Commander of 'Illegal' Pre-State Aliyah, Dies at 90

A great Jewish hero. Via INN:

Yossi Harel, who commanded four ships bringing Jews to Israel illegally, died at the age of 90 in Tel Aviv Saturday.

Harel assisted 24,000 Jews in reaching Israel aboard four ships, including the famed SS Exodus, between 1945 and 1948. Great Britain, which controlled the region at the time, banned Jewish immigration due to Arab pressure. The other three ships were called Knesset Yisrael (Gathering of Israel), Atzma'ut (Independence) and Kibbutz Galuyot (Ingathering of the Exiles).

The Exodus was made famous by a film of the same name.

Born in 1919, Harel was the sixth generation in his family born in Jerusalem. At the age of 15 he joined the pre-state Hagana defense force. By the age of 28 he oversaw the clandestine immigration operations bringing Jews, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, to the Holy Land.

Later on, Harel oversaw the IDF’s Unit 131, an intelligence unit that ran a spy ring in Egypt until the so-called Lavon Affair of 1954.

Harel will be buried at the Ceasaria-area kibbutz, Sdot Yam, at 5 PM Monday.

Survivors of Exodus 1947 Preserve Stories

From Survivors of Exodus 1947 Preserve Stories:

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in conjunction with several groups in Israel, is working on a project to find surviving passengers and crew members of the Exodus 1947. There never was an official passenger manifest, and so much time has passed that this is not an easy task, says Genya Markon, the museum's curator of collections. The museum has the names of about 2,300 people who were on the ship and has made contact with 270 passengers and four crew members. Most of the known survivors live in the United States or Israel.

Rafael Medoff, director of the Washington-based David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, says lessons of the Exodus 1947 still ring true today. "The important role of American volunteers on the Exodus is a reminder that the struggle to establish Israel was supported by a broad coalition of Americans of all faiths - and that support for Jewish statehood continues among Americans to this day," he says. "It is no surprise that many Americans sympathized with the Jewish immigration struggle, given its strong parallels to American history. Refugees from persecution were trying to build a country based on liberty and equality, only to be blocked."

For more information on the voyage, you can go to www.exodus1947.com to purchase a DVD documentary, "Exodus 1947," narrated by Morley Safer and broadcast on PBS.

The Battle of the "Exodus" Against the British Army

From OU:

Sixty years ago, on the eve of Rosh Chodesh Av 5707 (1947), an immigration ship by the name of "Leaving Europe 5707" (also known as "Exodus 1947") arrived in Eretz Yisrael. This was a fairly small ship that the Hagannah had bought from US Navy surplus, and 4,500 refugees from Europe had been packed into it. As soon as the ship left France, British warships began to follow it, with a fighter plane flying overhead at all times.

Any reasonable person could see that this was not going to be a fair fight. It was clear that the "illegal immigrants" would be able to use only hand weapons, in order to avoid giving the British an excuse to use live ammunition, which might have led to a terrible slaughter. Here is how the struggle was described by Aharon David Kurtz (Adar):

"We began our preparations for a 'battle' against seven British destroyers. Our small and creaky vessel, when compared to their warships, clearly demonstrated the great par between the forces, giving us the feeling that 'we were like grasshoppers... in their eyes' [Bamidbar 13:33]. But we still did not say, 'Let us find a leader and return to Egypt ' [14:4]. We continued to fortify our positions and to prepare to fight back, in order to show that the Jews were not willing to give up like sheep being taken to slaughter... This was a battle of cans and jars against jets of salt water, tear gas, and clubs in the hands of British soldiers. We realized that this would be a demonstration and not a battle, but it was still important because it showed our position and our mission, while it was also fraught with mortal danger. Some of the immigrants paid with their lives for their part in this event."

The struggle took place Thursday night, Rosh Chodesh Av (18 July), and it lasted several hours. Before the Exodus reached the territorial waters of the land, the British attacked it several times. Each time, they attached two destroyers to the ship and squeezed it, while British soldiers pounced on the passengers. It took a very long time to take control of the ship, because the people fought with dedication and perseverance. In the end, the order was given to surrender, because the attacks of the destroyers hadcracked the hull of the Exodus, and water began to leak in and was about to sink the ship. Two passengers and one Jewish crewman were killed and about thirty were injured. All the others were transferred from the damaged ship to expulsion boats, which immediately became floating prisons. The people at least had the privilege of seeing the land from afar, as Kurtz continues to relate:

"We saw Haifa , our eyes looked at the Carmel Mountains , and we couldn't stop looking. The verses in Melachim about Eliyahu opened up before me, and I imagined seeing him there, high up, on the top of the mountain, acting zealously to protect G-d's honor... We were given a few hours in which we could see the mountain and dream about redemption... Why does Eliyahu just sit there and not come down to rescue us? Is he busy trying to bring rain in the month of Av? ... At the end of our thoughts about the verses, Eliyahu disappeared from the Carmel , to be replaced by the 'kalaniot,' the British paratroopers with their red berets."

Everybody was sure that they would be sent to Cyprus , as usual. But then it turned out that they were being sent back to France, where they arrived on the fast day of Tisha B'Av. And the worst thing was that the depressing journey ended on German soil.

The world media concentrated on the plight of the Exodus and its struggle to bring the refugees of the Holocaust to their land. The pictures of the mighty British army fighting refugees who wanted a safe haven were published all over the world. This story had a tremendous impact, leading many to identify with the cause and with
the need to establish a Jewish state which would be able to absorb the refugees.

The Hagannah, which planned and executed the entire journey of the Exodus, was able in the end to bring the expelled refugees back to settle in Eretz Yisrael.

(Source: Aharon David Kurtz (Adar), "From Ashes to Renewal" and others)

New immigrants shape their identity around the Altalena story

It is hard to fathom, hard to comprehend, hard to accept. I still don't understand why this happened. From Ha'aretz:

On June 22, about 100 people climbed aboard the ship Sababa in Jaffa port, and sailed toward Tel Aviv. On board were veterans of the prestate Etzel underground and Russian-speaking new immigrants. They were sailing to the point where the arms-laden Altalena sank 59 years ago after being fired on by order of prime minister David Ben-Gurion. Etzel (the Irgun Zvai Leumi) had bought the arms and was led by Menachem Begin.

While Etzel veterans have learned to keep to their stories circulating among the their few thousand still-living members, the initiative for the voyage this June came from the Russian-speaking contingent: The new immigrants took upon themselves to widen the circle and even to create their identity as Israelis around the story.

The shipboard ceremony was beautiful, albeit a bit strange. In a heavy Russian accent, a member of the group invited his friends to cast a wreath of sunflowers into the water where the Altalena had sunk. Another proclaimed: "This is a memorial wreath to our brethren who were butchered by Cain."

The state is almost 60 years old, and still it is Cain and Abel.

Red, heart-shaped balloons were released. There was the sense of an elite unit not only preserving a memory of the past, but also seeking to shape the future.

A few days later, we met at the Etzel Museum on the Tel Aviv beach. Representing the veterans was Yoske Nahmias, 82, a sixth-generation Israeli and an Etzel company commander who was on board the Altalena; representing the immigrants was Dr. Mark Radotzky, 50, who came to Israel 17 years ago and thought up the idea of the commemoration voyages.

They explained the surprising alliance, filling both with new energies.The Etzel people say their new immigrant supporters are the fresh Zionists who have sprung from roots that have withered. The new immigrants say that like in a family, when one member is tired or busy, another straightens things out for him.

"My heart is still bleeding," Nahmias said as he remembered every second, every bullet fired, every order Menachem Begin gave not to return fire. "Sixteen of my friends were killed. The hate has gone down, but the wound has not healed. Then, I hated very much. If I would have met Ben-Gurion I would have strangled him with my bare hands. Today I am angry, but I don't hate."

Radotzky sees that day as the beginning of the destruction of civil society in Israel. He learned about it after he came to Israel. "History defined which political side I would take here," he said, explaining his rightist tendencies. "It I were looking for the brotherhood of nations, I would have stayed in Tashkent," he added. "I came to live in a Jewish state, and in the ideological search I came to [Ze'ev] Jabotinsky," he said, referring to the right-wing prestate leader.

When Radotzky went to buy the wreath for the Altalena ceremony, he said the florist challenged him: "But you weren't there." Radotzky answered: "Were you at the Exodus? But you mark that event every year."

It all began when Rabin was assassinated, Radotzky said, and he was put off by the collective response to the murder, which he said reminded him of the Former Soviet Union. Then he heard for the first time about the Altalena and Rabin's role in giving the order to open fire on the ship.

He experienced a moment of truth when he came across the monument on the Tel Aviv beach to those killed and it bothered Radotzky that the place was so neglected and forgotten.

"On the Altalena, not only people were killed, so was the Israeli democracy; Israeli civil society ended." Radotzky said. "We have not come to rebuild it again," he added.

The Real Exodus

From The Real Exodus:

Ike Aronowitz, 83, is former captain of the illegal immigrant ship Exodus. He is known to the world as the blond, blue-eyed Paul Newman, who played Aronowitz in Otto Preminger's 1960 film Exodus, based on Leon Uris' blockbuster novel. Both film and book tell the story of the postwar illegal immigration ships bearing a human cargo of Holocaust survivors who tried to break the British blockade of Palestine in the last days of the Mandate. But it was a fairy tale. In Uris' version, the Jewish refugees, stranded on Cyprus, are saved by a sympathetic British general who convinces the British government to allow the ship to land. In real life, the British army boarded, killed three people, loaded the passengers on to prison ships and took them back to Hamburg, Germany, where they were re-incarcerated in refugee camps. It was a PR catastrophe. "Back to the Reich," one U.S. newspaper put it. "Return to the death land," said another.

Israelis Laud Alaska Sailor for 1947 Exodus Mission

From Israelis Laud Alaska Sailor for 1947 Exodus Mission:

A young Alaskan named Jack Johnson sailed into history and an Israeli hero's stature in 1947, but never really realized it until he returned to the Mediterranean this winter at age 80. Johnson, who in December retired from piloting ships around Alaska, had a dizzying youth during World War II and then found himself at the right bar in Marseille when the Zionist group trying to slip Jewish refugees past a British blockade into Palestine asked him to join their crew. An Orthodox Russian Christian, he signed on to crew aboard the Exodus, a ship that attempted to move some 4,500 refugees and in so doing is widely credited with evoking the world's sympathy toward the formation of Israel.