In the history of modern Israel, unlike the Torah, it is Exodus that comes first.
In 1947, a ship named Exodus left France bound for the promised land, carrying more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors. It was one of many ships delivering Jews seeking sanctuary after the cruelties of Nazi Germany. The British, still unsure what to do with their Mandate over the Palestine region, turned the Exodus back, sending the refugees to an old Nazi camp near Hamburg. Outraged by the move, international opinion was swayed toward giving Jews their homeland, leading to the UN partition of the land between Jews and Arabs in November 1947. Israel’s declaration of independence followed a few months later.
Dvora was a young passenger on the Exodus; this first-person account of her journey was recorded by Israeli historians.
That Thursday morning, July 17, 1947, I stood on deck and watched the British warship come close to us, to look us over I suppose. When the British got very close, the Americans who sailed out ship began to sing “The Yanks Are Coming” over the loudspeakers, to make fun of the British. Then they played the English song “Pomp and Circumstance.” Humor and songs were the only weapons we had.
That morning our ship’s name was not yet the Exodus, it was still the S.S. President Warfield, a battered old Chesapeake River boat. Late in the afternoon I saw a friend of mine, a Belgian boy, struggling with a long piece of cloth and some paint. He had explained he was going to paint the name of our ship on the sheer: “Haganah Ship Exodus 1947,” and hang it over the side. He said that he was going to paint it in English and someone else would paint another sheet in Hebrew and hang it over the other side of the ship.
The Exodus began her life as an excursion boat, an expendable decoy for German submarine attacks. She sailed with several ships that were sunk, and was narrowly missed by torpedoes, but luck kept her afloat until her time came to carry refugees to Israel. She had no guns and a rusty old engine. Every possible inch aboard was converted to sleeping space, but even so we slept five people on wooden shelves which were one on top of the other. It was so crowded that it was hardly possible to turn over when you were lying down.
I slept and ate with the group of girls and boys with whom I came from Poland. Despite the incredible intimate living conditions and the highly emotional conditions, there could not have been a group of people more moral in their behavior. Even later on the British prison ships, when the heat was so unbearable and people wore only their undergarments, the men respected the women’s privacy almost completely.
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TASTE
That night we were told that we were about 20 miles from Palestine’s shores. Because of the heat, my weakness, and the excitement I was not able to sleep on my “shelf” below deck. I lay down on the deck. Two of the British warships came alongside us and shouted a message on the loudspeaker. They were telling us to stop. The American crew shouted back that the British had no right to stop us because were far out on the high seas. Then the two British ships came closer and rammed the sides of our ship, so that we would have to stop.
They turned huge searchlights on the Exodus, blinding us and then firecrackers and tear gas aboard to create panic. Then British soldiers began to fight their way aboard. All of us had prepared ourselves days before with anything that could serve as a weapon. I had a hammer with a broken handle that I had found in a corner of our sleeping compartment.
The soldiers pushed me and thirty other refugees into a tiny cabin, crowding us so close together that we could hardly breathe. I was the last person pushed in, and after me came a British soldier, who bolted the door. I had my hammer in my hand and I knew that the soldier was the enemy, and I should hit him with it. I didn’t do it. Partly because I knew he would probably shoot me and my friends. But maybe because when I looked at him I saw his baby face and his blue eyes. He was a man, a human being. I started to cry because I could not hit him with the hammer.
I was still crying the British soldier received orders to let us out of the cabin. The British were in possession of the ship. I found a wooden box on the deck and sat down on it with my head on my knees because I still felt ill. I must have been there half an hour when a door opened just a crack behind me and someone whispered in Yiddish, “Any British out there?” I turned around and saw the face of one of one of our leaders. He said, “Turn around and stay there and if the British come close the door and lean on it.”
A little later a British soldier started coming down the deck, I leaned against the door to close it. A few minutes later the door opened a little again, and I got the same instructions. He also told me that inside was a radio transmitter that the British didn’t know about, and they were sending messages to Palestine.
Late that afternoon the men came out of the cabin. The radio was no longer working. I drank water and fell asleep. My memories of the next hours have a nightmarish quality. I know that we landed in Haifa and immediately transferred to three British ships. All during the transfer, as we were questioned, and searched, and prodded, I fell asleep every time the line of refugees stood still.
During the transfer, the British had passed out leaflets proclaiming that we would be taken to Cyprus aboard hospital ships. All too soon, however, we learned that were headed not for Cyprus, but back to France, back to Europe that for us meant only misery and horrible memories. After being within an inch of scaling the wall, we were going back to prison and a life sentence.
A BRAVE BEGINNING
The British took us to Port de Bouc, France, and ordered us to leave the ships, but we would not. In the weeks since we boarded Exodus our spirit had stiffened. We had been frightened before. But for now, at least, we were fiercely brave, even the old people who had wanted to get to Palestine only to be buried there. We struck and refused to eat, hoping that the world opinion would force the British to take us to Palestine. Instead, they only threatened to ship us to Germany But we could not believe the British would do that.
The hunger strikes failed, but the British also failed; they could not get us to leave the ship. So they announced our departure for Germany.
We still refused to believe, but we sailed west and through Gibraltar. When we reached Gibraltar the British soldiers and sailor were given liberty for the first time since we boarded at Haifa. In some ways they were prisoners as much as we were. They had to go ashore by boats. We looked over the rail with envy, when all of a sudden the men in one of the boats began to sing an Israeli song “Ale Halutz,” which is about Jews going to Israel. We had sung it so often on the ship that the British had learned it.
When they came back to the ship we prayed that they would turn around, but they did not. I was in charge of distributing the rations. The hardest part was having to deny motions who wanted more for their children to eat.
When we were put ashore on German soil, we went berserk in a strange way. We danced madly, and sang at the top of our lungs. We sang at the British that we would get to Palestine. Food was plentiful now. We stuffed our starved bodies. We could not stop eating. I gained 30 pounds in two weeks and was fat for the first time in my life.
That was how the voyage of the Exodus ended. Once again we were beaten people, or so it seemed. But in my heart, I knew we would try again to make a home in our own land. And still again should we fail.
I promised I would remember the Exodus only as a brave beginning, not a final failure.
Reprinted with permission from exodus1947.org