July 18 1947 – 1 Av 5707
The illegal immigration ship Exodus reached the shores of Mandate Palestine. The ship had set sail from southern France a week earlier, with 4,515 Holocaust survivors on board. Its symbolic name emphasized its passengers absolute determination to leave slavery and persecution behind them for the Promised Land. Underground militia members of the Hagana and the Zionist leadership in Palestine knew there was a good chance the ship would be intercepted by British naval personnel, and were prepared. The vessel’s sides were protected with barbed wire, to stop soldiers climbing up to the decks, and metal pipes were attached at intervals to spray steam and boiling oil at intruders. There were special stores of food-cans, potatoes and iron bars ready for throwing at the “enemy.” A British air-bomber and up to five naval destroyers tracked the Exodus from the moment it left port until its arrival off the coast of Palestine. The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was right in the middle of its mission to determine what practical solutions should replace the British Mandate government in Palestine, and the Jewish underground used the ship and its wretched passengers’ plight to rally popular support for the Jewish state, as a solution for the homeless Holocaust refugees.
At 2:30 am on July 18 1947 (1 Av 5707), two British destroyers rammed the Exodus from both sides. British soldiers swarmed aboard, and responded with live fire to the iron bars and tin cans showered on them by the refugees. Three survivors were killed in the struggle – including a boy who was shot in the head – as well as second officer Bill Bernstein, and dozens were injured, before ship’s commander, Yossi Harel, gave the order to surrender. As Exodus sailed into Haifa harbor escorted by the British fleet, the thousands on board began to sing the melody soon to become the Jewish national anthem, Ha-Tikva, (the Hope). Then they were forcibly taken off and transferred to other vessels for deportation.
Having witnessed the refugees being dragged from the ship, the members of the UNSCOP mission altered some of their initial assumptions. Newspapers world-wide reported extensively, and sympathetically on the humanitarian tragedy. In a further error of judgement, the British sent the Exodus refugees not to closed deportation camps in Cypress, but back to Europe, to the French port they’d left. When the ships arrived, the French government refused to accept British demands that the refugees be off-loaded by force, announcing that they would only allow the passengers to disembark if they did so of their own free will. The refugees refused to do so, and the media went wild.
The next British mistake was to send the ship on, to Hamburg, Germany, where the refugees were forcibly taken off the boat and onto German soil. Bringing Holocaust survivors back to Germany was the last straw. The world press denounced British insensitivity, turning the government’s actions into a public embarrassment. That helped tip the scales toward the British decision to hand over the thorny question of Palestine and the Jewish refugee problem to the United Nations.
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