DPs riding on the back of a truck leave the Belsen displaced persons camp for France, where they will sail aboard the Exodus 1947 to Palestine.
Overview
- Caption
- DPs riding on the back of a truck leave the Belsen displaced persons camp for France, where they will sail aboard the Exodus 1947 to Palestine.
Szaja Aron Knobler (now Alex Knobler) is the son of Moszek and Jocheta Knobler. He was born in 1921 in Bedzin, Poland. Szaja had three older sisters, Ita, Esther and Leah. In 1931 the family moved to Chorzow near the German border. There Szaja became active in the Akiba Zionist youth movement. In 1938 he joined the Akiba hachshara [agricultural training farm] in Bielsko and made plans to immigrate to Palestine. His plans were thwarted, however, by the start of World War II. In the first months of the war Szaja fled to the Soviet sector of Poland, where he explored possible exit routes to Palestine via Romania for the nascent Zionist underground. During a visit home in 1940 Szaja was caught up in the forced resettlement of his family to the Sosnowiec ghetto. From Sosnowiec Szaja was deported to the Blechhammer labor camp, where he remained until the camp was evacuated in January 1945. During the forced march out of the camp Szaja ran away with two friends. German guards shot and killed his friends but Szaja escaped. Posing as a Polish laborer, Szaja found refuge with a German farmer in Gleiwitz until liberation. After the war Szaja, who was the sole survivor of his immediate family, took a leading role in the setting up of Zionist collectives in Poland. He also was active in the Bricha and Aliyah Bet [illegal immigration to Palestine] movement. This activity led to his arrest in Sosnowiec by the NKVD. Following his release from prison, Szaja left Poland for Germany. During the summer of 1945 Szaja organized Zionist activities at the Foehrenwald displaced persons camp. In October he moved on to the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, where he joined a group of 400 would-be immigrants to Palestine. The group sailed aboard the Tel Hai from Marseilles in March 1946. When the ship reached Palestine, it was intercepted by the British and its passengers interned for three weeks in Athlit. Following his release Szaja settled in Kibbutz Masada, but by December 1946 he was back in Germany. Serving as an emissary for NOHAM (Noar Halutzi Meuchad), a Zionist youth umbrella group, Szaja distributed immigration certificates and organized Youth Aliyah groups in the DP camps. While working at the Belsen DP camp Szaja met Pola Blicblum, a survivor from Lodz. They were married in the Landsberg DP camp on July 30, 1947. Soon after they settled in Palestine. - Date
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February 1947 - April 1947
- Locale
- Bergen-Belsen, [Prussian Hanover; Lower Saxony] Germany
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Alex Knobler
- 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: Alex Knobler
Keywords & Subjects
- Record last modified:
- 2000-03-06 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1118986
