After
World War II, millions of European Jews were living under guard and behind barbed wire fences and without adequate medical care and other services in
"displaced persons" camps within
Germany and
Austria. Jewish organizations then began organizing an underground network known as the
Brichah ("flight," in Hebrew), which moved thousands of Jews from the camps to ports on the
Mediterranean Sea, so they could then be sent to Palestine by ship. This was part of what was known as
Aliyah Bet or the "second immigration," which were a series of attempts by European Jews to immigrate illegally to Palestine before and after
World War II.
[2] Originally the European Jews arranged transport to Palestine themselves. Later, they requested and received financial and other support from sympathizers elsewhere in the world. The boats were largely staffed by volunteers from the United States, Canada and Latin America.
[3] Over 100,000 people tried to illegally immigrate to Palestine, as part of Aliyah Bet.
[4]
The British, who were then responsible for administering Palestine, vehemently opposed this kind of large-scale immigration. Displaced person camps run by American, French and Italian officials often turned a blind eye to the situation, with only British officials restricting movement in and out of their camps. In 1945, the British reaffirmed the pre-war policy restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine which had been put in place following the influx of a quarter of a million Jews fleeing the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and had been a major cause of the
Arab revolt of 1936–1939. The British then prepared a massive naval and military force to turn back the refugees. Over half of 142 voyages were stopped by British patrols, and most intercepted immigrants were sent to
internment camps in Cyprus, the
Atlit detention camp in Palestine, and to
Mauritius. About 50,000 people ended up in camps, more than 1,600 drowned at sea, and only a few thousand actually entered Palestine.
Of the 64 vessels that sailed in the Aliya Bet,
Exodus 1947 was the largest, carrying 4,515 passengers
[5] – the largest-ever number of
illegal immigrants to Palestine. Its name and story received a lot of international attention, thanks in no small part to dispatches from American journalist
Ruth Gruber. The incident took place near the end of Aliyah Bet and towards the end of the British mandate, after which Britain withdrew its forces and the state of Israel was established. Historians say
Exodus 1947helped unify the Jewish community of Palestine and the Holocaust-survivor refugees in Europe as well as significantly deepening international sympathy for the plight of Holocaust survivors and rallying support for the idea of a Jewish state.
[6][7] One called the story of the
Exodus 1947 a "spectacular publicity coup for the Zionists."
[8]
SS Exodus - Wikipedia
