SS Exodus

Exodus 1947 was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants from France to British Mandatory Palestine on July 11, 1947. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivors who had no legal immigration certificates for Palestine. Following wide media coverage, the British Royal Navy seized the ship and deported all its passengers back to Europe.

The ship was formerly the packet steamer SS President Warfield for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. From the ship's launch in 1928 until 1942, it carried passengers and freight between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. During World War II, it served both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy; for the latter as USS President Warfield (IX-169).

Background
After World War II, millions of Europeans 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. European Jews 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 "illegal immigration fleet," which were a series of attempts by European Jews to immigrate illegally to Palestine before and after World War II. 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. Over 100,000 people tried to illegally immigrate to Palestine, as part of Aliyah Bet.

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.

The Exodus 1947 was the largest Aliyah Bet ship carrying the largest-ever number of illegal immigrants to Palestine and its name and story received a lot of international attention. 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 1947 helped 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. One called the story of the Exodus 1947 a "spectacular publicity coup for the Zionists."

Early history
The 330-foot ship was built in 1927 by Pusey and Jones Corp., Wilmington, Delaware, for the Baltimore Steam Packet Company. Initially named President Warfield, for Baltimore Steam Packet Company president S. Davies Warfield (the uncle of the Duchess of Windsor), it carried passengers and freight on the Chesapeake Bay between Baltimore, Maryland and Norfolk, Virginia from 1928 until July 12, 1942, when the ship was acquired by the War Shipping Administration (WSA) and converted to a transport craft for the British Ministry of War Transport.

Manned by a British merchant crew led by Capt. J. R. Williams, it departed St. John’s, Newfoundland on September 21, 1942, along with other small passenger steamers bound for the United Kingdom. Attacked by a German submarine 800 nmi west of Ireland on September 25, the ship evaded one torpedo and reached Belfast, Northern Ireland after the scattering of its convoy. In Britain, it served as a barracks and training ship on the River Torridge at Instow.

Returned by Britain, it joined the U.S. Navy as President Warfield on May 21, 1944. In July it served as a station and accommodations ship at Omaha Beach at Normandy. Following duty in England and on the Seine River, it arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, July 25, 1945, and left active Navy service September 13. President Warfield was struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register on October 11 and returned to the War Shipping Administration on November 14.

Voyage preparations
On November 9, 1946, using the Potomac Shipwrecking Co. of Washington, D.C. as its agent, the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah bought President Warfield from the WSA and transferred control of it to Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet, the branch of the Haganah that organized Aliyah Bet activities.

The British had recently announced that they would begin deporting illegal immigrants to Cyprus rather than Atlit, whereupon Aliyah Bet organizers decided immigrants should begin resisting capture. The President Warfield was well-suited for that, because it was fast, sturdy enough to not easily overturn, made of steel which would help it withstand ramming, and was taller than the British destroyers which would be trying to board it.

The ship was also chosen because of its derelict condition. It was risky to put passengers on it and it was felt this would compel the British to let it pass blockade because of this danger or put the British in a bad light internationally.

All "illegal immigration" ships were renamed with Hebrew names designed to inspire and rally the Jews of Palestine and Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet renamed President Warfield to Exodus 1947 (and, in Hebrew, Yetz'iat (sic) Tasbaz, or Yetzi'at Eiropa Tashaz, "Flight from Europe 5707") after the biblical Jewish exodus from Egypt to Canaan. The name was proposed by Israeli politician and military figure Moshe Sneh, who at the time headed illegal immigration for the Jewish Agency, and was later described by Israel's second Prime Minister Moshe Sharett (then Shertok) as "a stroke of genius, a name which by itself, says more than anything which has ever been written about it."

For months, teams of Palestinians and Americans worked on the Exodus 1947 with the goal of making it harder for the British to take over the ship. Metal pipes, designed to spray out steam and boiling oil, were installed around the ship's perimeter. Lower decks were covered in nets and barbed wire. The machine room, steam room, wheel house and radio room were covered in wire and reinforced to prevent entry by British soldiers.

The President Warfield left Baltimore February 25, 1947 and headed for the Mediterranean.

Voyage to Palestine
According to Israeli historian Aviva Halamish, the Exodus 1947 was never meant to "sneak out toward the shores of Palestine," but rather "to burst openly through the blockade, by dodging and swiftly nipping through, beaching herself on a sand bank and letting off her cargo of immigrants at the beach." The ship was too large and unusual to go unnoticed.

Indeed, even as people began boarding the ship at the port of Sète near Marseilles, a British RAF plane was circling overhead and a British Royal Navy warship was waiting a short distance out at sea.

The Exodus 1947 left Sète sometime between two and four in the morning of July 11, flying a Honduran flag and claiming to be headed for Istanbul. It was carrying 4,515 passengers including 1,600 men, 1,282 women, and 1,672 children and teenagers. Palmach (Haganah's military wing) skipper Ike Aronowicz was its captain and Haganah commissioner Yossi Harel was commander.

As it left the port, the Exodus was shadowed by the sloop HMS Mermaid and by RAF aircraft. Later, the Mermaid was relieved by the destroyer HMS Cheviot.

On the first evening of its voyage, the Exodus reported that a destroyer had tried to communicate with it but that it had not replied. Through its journey, the ship was followed by between one and five British destroyers as well as an airplane and a cruiser.

During the journey, the people on the Exodus 1947 prepared to be intercepted. The ship was divided into sections staffed by different groups and each went through practice resistance sessions.

The ship was loaded with enough supplies to last two weeks. Passengers were given cooked meals, hot drinks, soup, and one liter of drinking water daily. They did their washing in salt water. The ship had only 13 lavatories. A British military doctor, inspecting the ship after the battle, said that it was badly over-crowded, but that hygiene was satisfactory and the ship appeared well prepared to cope with casualties. Several babies were born during the week-long journey. One woman, Paula Abramowitz, died in childbirth. Her infant son died a few weeks later, in Haifa.

The British finally boarded the ship on July 18, some 20 nmi from the Palestinian shore. Boarding it was difficult, and was challenged by the passengers and Haganah members on board. One crew member and two passengers died of gunshot wounds. Two British sailors were treated afterwards for fractured scapula, and one for a head injury and lacerated ear. About ten Exodus passengers and crew were treated for mild injuries resulting from the boarding, and about 200 were treated for illnesses and maladies unrelated to it.

Due to the high profile of the Exodus 1947 emigration ship it was decided by the British government that the emigrants were to be deported back to France. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin suggested this and the request was relayed to General Sir Alan Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine, who agreed with the plan after consulting the Navy. Before then, intercepted would-be immigrants were placed in internment camps on Cyprus, which was at the time a British colony. This new policy was meant to be a signal to both the Jewish community and the European countries which assisted immigration that whatever they sent to Palestine would be sent back to them. "Not only should it clearly establish the principle of REFOULEMENT as applies to a complete shipload of immigrants, but it will be most discouraging to the organisers of this traffic if the immigrants... end up by returning whence they came."



Return to France
The British sailed the commandeered ship into Haifa port, where its passengers were transferred to three more seaworthy deportation ships, Runnymede Park, Ocean Vigour and Empire Rival. The event was witnessed by members of UNSCOP. These ships left Haifa harbour on July 19 for Port-de-Bouc. Foreign Secretary Bevin insisted that the French get their ship back as well as its passengers.

When the ships arrived at Port-de-Bouc near Marseilles on August 2, the French Government said it would allow disembarkation of the passengers only if it was voluntary on their part. Haganah agents, both on board the ships and using launches with loudspeakers, encouraged the passengers not to disembark. Thus the emigrants refused to disembark and the French refused to cooperate with British attempts at forced disembarkation. This left the British with the best option of returning the passengers to Germany. Realizing that they were not bound for Cyprus, the emigrants conducted a 24-hour hunger strike and refused to cooperate with the British authorities.

Meier Schwarz managed to sneak into the Ocean Vigour as an Haganah officer.

But the British government had no intention of backing down or relaxing its policy.

During this time, Jewish representatives encouraged the passengers to resist the British and accuse them of perceived insults. Media coverage of the contest of wills put pressure on the British to find a solution. The matter also came to the attention of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) members who had been deliberating in Geneva. After three weeks, during which time the prisoners on the ships held steady in difficult conditions, rejecting offers of alternative destinations, the ships were sailed to Hamburg, Germany, which was then in the British occupation zone.

Operation Oasis
Documents released from the British archives show that after much soul-searching the British concluded that the only place they could send the Jews was to the British-controlled zone of post-war Germany, where the Jews could be placed in camps and screened for extremists. The decision to land the Jews in Germany had been made because it was the only suitable territory under British control that could handle so many people at short notice.

Britain's impossible position was later summed up by John Coulson, a diplomat at the British Embassy in Paris, by a coded warning to the Foreign Office in London in August 1947 in which he said:

“You will realize that an announcement of decision to send immigrants back to Germany will produce violent hostile outburst in the press.” He pointed out: "The pros and cons of keeping the Exodus immigrants in camps ... there is one point that should be kept in mind. Our opponents in France, and I dare say in other countries, have made great play with the fact that these immigrants were being kept behind barbed wire, in concentration camps and guarded by Germans."

"If we decide it is convenient not to keep them in camps any longer, I suggest that we should make some play that we are releasing them from all restraint of this kind in accordance with their wishes and that they were only put in such accommodation for the preliminary necessities of screening and maintenance."

Disembarkation
On August 22 a Foreign Office cable warned diplomats that they should be ready to emphatically deny that the Jews were to be housed in former concentration camps after they were offloaded in Germany and that German guards will not be used to keep the Jews in the refugee camps. It further added that British guards will be withdrawn once the Jews have been screened.

The Exodus 1947 passengers were successfully taken off the vessels in Germany. Relations between the British personnel on the ships and the passengers was afterwards said by the passengers to have been mostly amicable. Everyone realized there was going to be trouble at the forced disembarkation beforehand and some of the Jewish passengers even apologized in advance for this. A number were injured in confrontations with British troops that involved the use of batons and fire hoses. The would-be immigrants were sent back to DP camps in Am Stau near Lübeck and Pöppendorf. Although most of the women and children disembarked voluntarily, the men had to be carried off by force.

By the time they had docked at Hamburg, many of the refugees were in a defiant mood. When they first set out on their historic quest, they had believed they were days away from arriving at a Jewish homeland. The prospect of being sent to camps in Germany represented a pitiful failure of their original mission and for many of the Holocaust survivors, it was almost impossible to bear. The British had identified one of the ships, the Runnymede Park, as the vessel most likely to cause them trouble. A confidential report of the time noted:

"'It was known that the Jews on the Runnymede Park were under the leadership of a young, capable and energetic fanatic, Morenci Miry Rosman, and throughout the operation it had been realised that this ship might give trouble.'"

One hundred military police and 200 soldiers of the Sherwood Foresters were ordered to board the ship and eject the Jewish immigrants.

The officer in charge of the operation, Lt. Col. Gregson, later gave a very frank assessment of the success of the storming of the ship, which, according to a secret minute, left up to 33 Jews, including four women, injured in the fighting. Sixty-eight Jews were held in custody to be put on trial for unruly behaviour. Only three soldiers were hurt. Gregson later admitted that he had considered using tear gas against the immigrants. He concluded:

"'The Jew is liable to panic and 800-900 Jews fighting to get up a stairway to escape tear smoke could have produced a deplorable business.' He added: 'It is a very frightening thing to go into the hold full of yelling maniacs when outnumbered six or eight to one.' Describing the assault, the officer wrote to his superiors: 'After a very short pause, with a lot of yelling and female screams, every available weapon up to a biscuit and bulks of timber was hurled at the soldiers. They withstood it admirably and very stoically till the Jews assaulted and in the first rush several soldiers were downed with half a dozen Jews on top kicking and tearing ... No other troops could have done it as well and as humanely as these British ones did.' He concluded: 'It should be borne in mind that the guiding factor in most of the actions of the Jews is to gain the sympathy of the world press.'"

One of the official observers who witnessed the violence was Dr. Noah Barou, secretary of the British section of the World Jewish Congress, who had 35 years experience of reporting. He gave the Jewish side of the fighting.

He described young soldiers beating Holocaust survivors as a "terrible mental picture".

"They went into the operation as a football match ... and it seemed evident that they had not had it explained to them that they were dealing with people who had suffered a lot and who are resisting in accordance with their convictions." He noted: "People were usually hit in the stomach and this in my opinion explains that many people who did not show any signs of injury were staggering and moving very slowly along the staircase giving the impression that they were half-starved and beaten up."

"When the people walked off the ship, many of them, especially younger people, were shouting to the troops 'Hitler commandos', 'gentleman fascists', 'sadists'."

Dr Barou was "especially impressed" by one young girl who "came to the top of the stairs and shouted to the soldiers, 'I am from Dachau.' And when they did not react she shouted 'Hitler commandos'."

While the British could find no evidence of excessive force, they conceded that in one case a Jew "was dragged down the gangway by the feet with his head bumping on the wooden slats".

Security fears seemed justified after the Jews were removed when a homemade bomb with a timed fuse was found on the Empire Rival. It was apparently rigged to detonate after the Jews had been removed, the cables indicate.

Camp conditions
The treatment of the refugees at the camps caused an international outcry after it was claimed that the conditions could be likened to German concentration camps.

Dr Barou was once again on hand to witness events. He reported that conditions at Camp Poppendorf were poor and claimed that it was being run by a German camp commandant. That was denied by the British.

It turned out that Barou's reports had been only partially accurate. There was no German commandant or guards but there were German staff carrying out duties inside the camp, in accordance with the standard British military practice of using locally-employed civilians for non-security related duties.

But the Jewish allegations of cruel and insensitive treatment would not go away and on 6 October 1947 the Foreign Office sent a telegram to the British commanders in the region demanding to know whether the camps really were surrounded with barbed wire and guarded by German staff.

Final destination
A telegram written by Jewish leaders of the camps on 20 October 1947 makes clear the wishes and determination of the refugees to find a home in Palestine.

"Nothing will deter us from Palestine. Which jail we go to is up to you (the British). We did not ask you to reduce our rations; we did not ask you to put us in Poppendorf and Am Stau."

The would-be immigrants to Palestine were housed in Nissen huts and tents at Poppendorf and Am Stau (near Lübeck) but inclement weather made the tentage unsuitable. The DPs were then moved in November 1947 to Sengwarden near Wilhelmshaven and Emden. For many of the illegal immigrants this was only a transit point as the Brichah managed to smuggle most into the U.S. zone via which they reached Palestine before the Israeli declaration of independence. Of the 4,500 would-be immigrants to Palestine there were only 1,800 remaining in the two “Exodus” camps by April 1948.

Within a year, over half of the original Exodus 1947 passengers had made other attempts at emigrating to Palestine and were detained without trial in prison camps on Cyprus. Britain continued to hold the detainees in Cyprus until January 1949 when it formally recognized the State of Israel and all surviving passengers made aliyah.

Historical importance
The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine also covered the events. Some of its members were even present at Haifa port when the emigrants were removed from their ship onto the deportation ships and later commented that this strong image helped them press for an immediate solution for Jewish immigration and the question of Palestine.

The ship's ordeals were widely covered by international media, and caused the British government much public embarrassment, especially after the refugees were forced to disembark in Germany.

The resting place of the Exodus
After the historic voyage in 1947, the damaged former President Warfield aka Exodus, like many other Aliyah Bet ships, was moored to a breakwater in Haifa port as a derelict and forgotten. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 brought massive immigration of European Jewish refugees from displaced persons camps to Israel. Almost simultaneously, Arab countries expelled 600,000 Jews, who arrived in the new state. There was little time or money to focus on the meaning of the Exodus. Abba Koushi, the Mayor of Haifa, proposed in 1950 that the "Ship that Launched a Nation" should be restored and converted into a floating museum of the Aliyah Bet — the story of the clandestine or the illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine. During the process of restoring the ship that had been left decaying in the port, an unexplained accident occurred and the Exodus burned to the waterline August 26, 1952. Her hulk was towed and scuttled north of the Kishon River near Shemen Beach. It was raised in 1963 and scrapped by an Italian firm. In 1964 a salvage effort was made to raise her steel hull for scrap. The effort failed and she sank again. In 1974 another effort was made to raise her wreck for salvage. She was refloated and was being towed toward the Kishon River when she sank again. Parts of the Exodus's hull remained visible as a home for fish and destination for fishermen until the mid-2000s. Then the Port of Haifa unceremoniously built its modern container ship quay extensions on top of the wreck. The quay where the wreck is buried is a security zone and is not accessible today.

Historical markers or plaques exist for the Exodus in France, Germany, Italy and the United States. There are no memorials or markers specific to the Exodus in Israel.

Cultural impact

 * In 1958, the book Exodus by Leon Uris, based partly on the story of the ship, was published, though the ship Exodus in the book is not the same but a smaller one and the "real" Exodus has been renamed.
 * In 1960, the film Exodus directed by Otto Preminger and starring Paul Newman, based on the above novel, was released.
 * In 1997, the documentary film, Exodus 1947, directed by Elizabeth Rodgers and Robby Henson and narrated by Morley Safer, was broadcast nationally in the U.S. on PBS television.