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On This Day: Holocaust refugees set sail to Palestine on Exodus 1947 – only for British to send them back

JULY 11, 1947: Holocaust survivors set sail to Palestine on board the SS Exodus on this day in 1947 – only to be turned back by the British and trigger global support for an Israeli state.

Around 4,500 people crammed on to the biggest ever Jewish refugee vessel, which was later described as the ‘ship that launched a nation’, at Seté, France.

They were defying a ban on immigration to the then British-controlled and largely Arab-populated Holy Land, which is also cherished by Muslims and Christians.

The Zionist organisation Hamossad LeAliyah Bet – Hebrew for Institution for Immigration B – hoped they could beat a Royal Navy blockade.

But as they approached the coast of Palestine on July 18, the Exodus 1947 – the biggest ever Jewish refugee ship – was rammed by a British destroyer HMS Cheviot.

Sailors then boarded the immigrant vessel – but were challenged by passengers, who came from all over Europe, and members of the Jewish militant group Haganah.

During the clash, one crew member and two refugees died and two Royal Navy servicemen suffered fracture skulls.

Around 4,500 people crammed on to the biggest ever Jewish refugee vessel in France (PA)
Around 4,500 people crammed on to the biggest ever Jewish refugee vessel in France (PA)


The passengers, who had all fled German and Austrian displaced persons camps where 850,000 Jews still languished in 1947, were then forcibly taken to Haifa.

Among them was a newborn baby, who would die three weeks later after his own mother had died in childbirth during the voyage.

A British Pathé newsreel shows British troops taking injured passengers off the boat while other illegal immigrants stood around in ragged clothes.

 

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The British, hoping to stem the tide of immigration, deported the Exodus’s passengers back to France, rather than Cyprus, where most of the others were being detained.

But the French authority said they would only allow voluntary disembarkation and the Jews resisted.

So, in a move that sparked widespread outrage, the Jews were taken to northern Germany, which had been occupied by British troops since the end of World War II.

Most people on board were eventually smuggled into the U.S. occupation zone in Germany (PA)
Most people on board were eventually smuggled into the U.S. occupation zone in Germany (PA)


Media coverage of their treatment triggered a tidal wave of Western support for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

And Jews continued to illegally emigrate to Palestine.

Most of the 4,500 on board the Exodus were eventually smuggled into the U.S. occupation zone in Germany, where Americans turned a blind eye to fleeing Jews.

 

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In November 1947, the UN voted to back partition of Palestine between an independent Jewish homeland and a separate Arab state, which Britain agreed to.

And by the time Israel declared independence from Britain on May 14, 1948, only 1,800 Exodus passengers remained in displaced persons’ camps.

But on May 15, the armies of the Arab nations of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq invaded determined to destroy Israel before it was a day old.

Americans protest against the actions of the British Navy in taking over the Exodus 1947 (Getty)
Americans protest against the actions of the British Navy in taking over the Exodus 1947 (Getty)


Yet within a year, the country, which had already been fighting a civil war since 1947, had defeated its neighbours and seized 60 per cent of UN-designated Palestinian land.

The remaining Arab territory was later mostly swallowed up by Jordan before being seized by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

 

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The Exodus was later described by Abba Koushi, the mayor of Haifa, as the ‘ship that launched a nation’.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, describe the destruction of their state as ‘al-Nakba’ (the catastrophe) and almost 5million officially remain refugees.