Crew members of the President Warfield (later the Exodus 1947) pose with friends on the deck of the ship before its departure for Europe.
Overview
- Caption
- Crew members of the President Warfield (later the Exodus 1947) pose with friends on the deck of the ship before its departure for Europe.
Pictured from left to right are: Sam Schulman, Eli Kalm, Itzhak (Ike) Aronowitz, Joe Gilden, unnamed visitor, Paul Yarin and an unnamed visitor. - Photographer
- Bernard Marks
- Date
-
1946 - 1947
- Locale
- Baltimore, MD United States ?
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Murray T. Aronoff
- Event History
- The Exodus 1947 was an illegal immigrant ship carrying 4500 Jewish displaced persons from Europe to Palestine during the final year of the British Mandate. It became the symbol of the struggle for the right of unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and the need for a Jewish national home. In November 1946 the Mosad le-Aliya Bet (the Agency for Illegal Immigration) acquired an American ship, the President Warfield, an old Chesapeake Bay pleasure steamer. During World War II, the vessel had been converted into a troop ship for the British navy. After taking part in the Allied landing at Normandy, the ship was taken out of service and anchored in the ships' graveyard in Baltimore. Immediately after the Mosad purchased the vessel, its interior was reconfigured in order to maximize the number of passengers it could hold. By the end of January 1947 the initial conversion was complete and a crew of nearly 40 American Jewish volunteers had been assembled in Baltimore. The crew was joined by a Methodist minister, John Stanley Grauel, who served as the official observer for the American Christian Palestine Committee. It was the Mosad's intention to mount a huge illegal immigration operation that would draw the attention of the international media and influence the members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), who would then be visiting Palestine on a fact-finding mission. In early July 1947, Jewish DPs were moved from camps in Germany to transit camps in the south of France. With the cooperation of several French Socialist cabinet ministers, they boarded the President Warfield at the old port of Sete, near Marseilles. Once it was out to sea, the vessel was renamed the Exodus 1947. The ship was intercepted by the British navy off the coast of Palestine. The sailors were able to board the vessel, tow it to Haifa, and unload its passengers only after an extended struggle, which left two passengers and one crew member dead and many injured. In the port of Haifa the illegal immigrants were transferred by force to three British vessels--the Ocean Vigour, Runnymede Park, and Empire Rival-- to be taken back to France. This marked a significant change in British policy from what had been the standard procedure since August 1946, namely, the deportation of all apprehended illegal immigrants to detention camps in Cyprus. When the ships arrived in France on July 28, most of the passengers chose to remain on board. The French refused to accede to the British demand to force them out. For a month the three ships remained anchored near Port-de-Bouc. The refugee passengers suffered under grueling conditions. Finally, after a hunger strike, the British decided to return the refugees to DP camps in Germany. The ships arrived in Hamburg on September 8 and their passengers were forcibly removed by British soldiers. From Hamburg, they were taken by prisoner trains with barred windows to the Poppendorf and Amstau DP camps in the British zone. Most of the Exodus refugees remained in the DP camps for over a year, reaching Israel only after the state was established in May 1948. In 1951 the Mayor of Haifa announced that the Exodus 1947 was to become "a floating museum, a symbol of the desperate attempts by Jewish refugees to find asylum in the Holy Land." The project was put on hold while attention was focused on issues of national security. However, on August 26, 1952, the ship caught fire and burned to the waterline. It was towed out of the shipping area and abandoned on Shemen beach. On August 23, 1964, an attempt was made to salvage the Exodus 1947 for scrap, but during the process, the hulk broke loose and sank. It remains on the bottom of Shemen beach near Haifa.
[Source: "Poppendorf statt Palastina" (The Haganah Ship Exodus 1947), an online exhibition by Henrik Jan Fahlbusch et al.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/exodus-1947.
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Murray T. AronoffSource Record ID: Collections: 1994.A.0232
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Samuel Schulman is the son of Harry Schulman (b. 1900) and Sarah Sobkowskab (b. 1899). He was born on July 8, 1928 in Terra Haute, Indiana where his parents had settled after immigrating to the United States from Warsaw, Poland. After her husband's death, in 1932 Sarah moved back Europe with Sam and settled in France to be near her family. They were living in Paris when Germany invaded France in May 1940. Sarah supported herself by sewing leather pocket books for a Jewish manufacturer; she also sold goods on the black market. She and Sam had to register as Jews in order to obtain ration cards. Sarah had to wear a Jewish star, but Sam, who was an American citizen, was exempt. In fact the American consulate gave him permission to return to the United States, but his mother who was officially stateless had to remain behind. As Sam was only 13 years old he stayed with his mother. In July 1942, the Gestapo conducted a major "raffle" (round-up) of Parisian Jews and knocked on the door of their apartment. Sarah had the presence of mind not to answer, and their concierge told the police that they were not at home. The next morning they packed bedding and sheets in potato sacks and shipped them to friends living in the free zone in a town near Limoges. They went to a hotel near the Eiffel Tower and remained there for 2 weeks until Sam found a freight train engineer, who agreed to smuggle them across the demarcation line to southern France for 1000 francs. Reaching the border the engineer put them up with a farmer for the night and told them to meet him the next day at the railroad embankment. When his train slowed down, he picked them up. Sarah and Sam first went to Limoges and then continued to La Creuse where their bedding had been sent. After gathering their belongings, they settled in an apartment in the village of Pionnat some 5 km away. There they grew their own vegetables and worked on the surrounding farms from 1942 until 1945.
Though Sam and his mother survived, most of his family in Poland, including his grandmother, aunts and uncles perished in Auschwitz. After the war Sam met with the Hehalutz group in Paris. He wanted to go to Palestine with them, but his mother prevailed on him to return to the United States with her. He and his mother came to United States with first repatriation, February 1946. Once in New York, Samuel maintained contact with the Labor Zionists and told them of his desire to immigrate to Palestine. They told him to come to Baltimore where he thought he would board a ship as a passenger. When he arrived he discovered that they intended for him to become a crew member on the President Warfield, soon to become the Exodus. After the ship was forced to return to Europe, Sam remained in France pretending to be ill. He was brought from the hospital to a Youth Aliyah center in Bandol. He then made is way to Marseilles and over the border to Italy where he joined the crew of the Pan Crescent and Pan York. On December 27, 1947, the boats sailed from Bulgaria with over 15,000 immigrants. Several days later they intercepted by British warships and forced to anchor at Famagusta. Sam, together with all the passengers, was interned in Cyprus. He remained there until The Haganah smuggled him out on the passenger liner the Kedmah under the alias of one of the immigrants approved by the monthly British quota. Sam joined Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'Negev founded by friends France and fought in Israel's War of Independence before returning to the United States in 1950.
- Record last modified:
- 2008-01-17 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1058688
