Exodus 1947: The ship that sank the British mandate

By Joe Spier

Joe Spier
Joe Spier

CALGARY, Alberta, Canada — In the early part of the movie Exodus, blondish, blue-eyed Paul Newman, miscast as Haganah operative Ari Ben Canaan, leads a band of Holocaust survivors aboard the Cyprus docked sea vessel, Exodus, intent upon breaking the British blockade and making the illegal run to Palestine. The British discover the plot and prevent the ship from sailing. Announcing that they would rather die than return to war ravaged Europe, the passengers and crew refuse to leave the ship and embark upon a hunger strike causing the British to relent. The ship sails and the happy refugees disembark in Haifa to begin their new life in what will become the Jewish State. Too bad that these heartwarming scenes are pure fiction.

The real story of the Haganah ship, Exodus, is even more riveting than the fictional version; did not have a happy outcome for its passengers, but would change history.

Following World War I, the League of Nations established the British Mandate by granting Britain responsibility for the administration of Palestine, an area formerly under Ottoman control. In 1939, as war was breaking out in Europe, Britain, bowing to Arab pressure, issued its infamous White Paper, which severely limited the number of Jews permitted to immigrate to Palestine. There were those in Britain who opposed the White Paper calling it an act of perfidy and a death sentence for tens of thousands of European Jews. Little did they know the true extent of the Holocaust that was about to befall European Jewry. Notwithstanding the protestations, the provisions of the White Paper were rigidly enforced.

In order to combat the White Paper, the Jewish underground paramilitary organization, Haganah (later to become the core of the Israeli Defense Forces) created a branch named Mossad Le’Aliyah Bet to conduct clandestine illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine in violation of the British restrictions. The Mossad, formed in 1939, had some early successes, however to smuggle Jews out of Nazi occupied Europe proved almost insurmountable. Its activities accelerated following World War II when over 200,000 homeless, stateless Holocaust survivors, penned up in displaced persons camps with no where to go, were clamoring for a home in Palestine while Britain unrelentingly continued to enforce its White Paper.

In November 1946, the Weston Trading Company of New York purchased the steamer, President Warfield, originally built as a coastal passenger ship, later used to ferry troops but now a rusting hulk berthed at a naval shipyard in Virginia and being sold for scrap. The Weston Trading Company was in fact a dummy corporation set up by the Haganah to purchase ships in America for the ‘illegal immigrant’ run to Palestine.  The funds for the purchase were secretly raised by the so-called “Sonneborn Institute” a group of rich American Zionists brought together by wealthy New York industrialist, Rudolf Sonneborn. No receipts were given, no one knew the specific use to which the funds were to be made; each gave based on the integrity of their leader.

From November to late February, Warfield was repaired and refitted. At the same time, an all-volunteer, mostly American crew, with varying degrees of seamanship, was assembled.  The forty-two member crew included amongst them, its captain, Yitzak ‘Ike’ Aronowitz, who was born in Poland, moved to Palestine at age 11 and later joined the British Merchant Marine; its second mate, Bill Bernstein, from San Francisco, a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and American war veteran; and its galley boy, John Grauel, a Methodist minister with no sea experience.

The Warfield’s first attempted Atlantic crossing was a disaster. Two days at sea a fierce gale engulfed her, she began to take on water, her superstructure seemed ready to collapse and all but six of her crew either were injured or became seasick. With no alternative, she limped back to port escorted by the Coast Guard.

On March 29, 1947 the Warfield, repaired and re-stocked, again set sail for Europe, this time successfully making the crossing. However, the British were watching. After docking in several European ports, always dogged by the British who were convinced of the ship’s true mission and were determined to stop her, Warfield finally tied up at the harbour in the French coastal town of Sete.

While Warfield was making her way to Sete, Haganah agents on land, who had chartered 160 trucks, were moving Holocaust survivors from displaced persons camps in Germany and Eastern Europe to Southern France where they were secreted in rented coastal villas awaiting the arrival of the ship.

On July 9, the refugees began to board Warfield. Trucks moved to the villas, loaded their passengers, drove to the port and repeated the cycle. As they arrived at the dock, each refugee displayed a forged Colombian visa to the French Customs officials. Since there were insufficient visas, they were collected from each group once aboard, returned to shore and distributed to the next group. Sympathetic French officers, who had no real desire to aid the British, gave each Visa only a cursory glance. By the end of the day, about half of the refugees had boarded.

The next day the balance of the refugees embarked, 4,515 including 655 children on a ship originally built to accommodate 400. In addition to the passengers and crew, on board were some 30 Haganah agents, (most ‘wanted’ by the British), returning to Palestine from Europe.

That same day, British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin was meeting in Paris with Georges Bidault, the French Foreign Minister. During the meeting, Bevin received word that Warfield was getting ready to sail. He implored Bidault to prevent the departure and Bidault reluctantly agreed. A French secretary left the room and made a telephone call. Within minutes, Ike Aronowitz knew that his ship must sail before the entrance to the harbour was blockaded.

Under cover of darkness, with no lights showing and without the aid of a pilot or tug, Ike steered his ship out of the harbour and into the Mediterranean. As Warfield reached open water and turned east toward Palestine a British destroyer trailed her. In the following days, the British flotilla shadowing the ship grew to five destroyers and one cruiser.

Believing that the British would not attempt to seize the ship in international waters, an act of piracy during peacetime, the Haganah’s plan was to approach the three-mile limit of Palestinian territorial waters at night with no lights, at full speed and dash for a sandy area near Tel Aviv. The ship would be beached with the passengers fleeing into the countryside, helped by shore-based operatives.

The Haganah was wrong. The British with fanatical determination would never let a puny tub best the might of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. The Admiralty issued orders to the British warships; “Stop Warfield at all costs”.

Some 20 miles from the coast of Palestine, in international waters, the British acted. Searchlights blinded the Warfield. Two destroyers pulled alongside to port and to starboard. As British marines began to board, the blue and white Magen David was raised fore and aft and the wooden planks carrying the name President Warfield were flipped over to reveal the ship’s new name, Haganah Ship – Exodus 1947. The uneven battle, the British with pistols, steel tipped truncheons and tear gas and the passengers and crew with bare fists and whatever they could find to throw (fire extinguishers, tins of corn beef, fruit), lasted for over two hours before Exodus surrendered. Under British control, she proceeded to Haifa. During the battle second mate, Bill Bernstein, defending the wheelhouse, was bludgeoned to death, two refugees died of gunshot wounds and over 150 were injured.

Upon approaching the ‘Promised Land’, the refugees, crowding the decks of Exodus, sang the Yiddish resistance song of the partisans, “Never say that you have reached the final road”.

On July 18, 1947, Exodus was towed into Haifa harbour.

The journey of the Exodus was over but not that of the refugees. Slowly, surrounded by armed British soldiers, they made their way off the ship, the infirm, the elderly, pregnant women, children, frightened, disoriented, disheartened. Herded into stockades, they were callously sprayed with a delousing agent and after barely touching land, transferred to three navy transports converted to caged prison ships. The loading completed, the ships headed out to sea.

Prior to docking, the Haganah agents and some of the crew aboard Exodus, subject to arrest by the British, secreted themselves in hiding places built for that purpose. Once the ship was empty, a Jewish cleaning crew boarded the ship. The British never noticed that more cleaners left Exodus than entered.

On July 20, the body of Bill Bernstein, wrapped in an American flag, was laid to rest in Martyr’s Row, Haifa. Five days later, attended by over 20,000, a tribute service was held in New York City. The banner above the platform read, “Fought for his country, died for his people”.

The British were determined to return the refugees to their point of embarkation and dump them in France and so the prison ships with their sorry load of inmates returned offshore Sete. The refugees refused to leave the ships and the French refused to use force to put them on French soil. All sympathy was with the Holocaust survivors. And then the British made a shocking move. In cold disregard for the imagery of returning Holocaust survivors to the land of the murderers, they took the refugees to the British occupied zone of Germany where they were transported by train to two internment camps. There they languished.

Widely reported by the press, the Exodus saga caught the imagination of the world. What began as compassion for the mass of humanity off-loaded in Haifa grew to revulsion for the British as the spectacle of Jewish victims of the Nazi regime thrown onto German soil was reported.  Whatever sympathy there remained for the British handling of their Palestine Mandate evaporated.

In all 68 ships participated in rescue efforts during the British Mandate. Many voyages, like that of the Exodus failed, however during the Mandate over 60,000 illegal immigrants were successfully transported to Palestine.

Following the creation of the State, most of the Exodus refugees made their way to Israel. As for the Exodus, she remained moored in Haifa harbour. Originally intended to be turned into a floating museum, she caught fire in 1952 and was towed out of the shipping area where she sank, an ignoble end to a noble ship.

The Exodus saga was a watershed moment. Standing on the pier in Haifa, part of the throng emotionally watching the plight of the thwarted Exodus passengers as the ship docked, were the Chairman and two representatives of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine set up by the United Nations to investigate and recommend a solution to the governance of Palestine. They were pale with shock at the brutal treatment that they witnessed. The members of UNSCOP actively followed the fate of the refugees as they were deported to Germany. If that was how Britain was operating its Mandate, better to have no Mandate. Weighing heavily on the members, the fate of the Exodus refugees greatly influenced the decision reached by UNSCOP who in a majority report recommended termination of the British Mandate and the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State. The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the UNSCOP report.  On May 14, 1948 the last British troops left Palestine and the British Mandate ended. That same day in Tel Aviv, his voice amplified by a microphone, David Ben Gurion declared, “The establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel to be known as the State of Israel”.

What began as a defeat for the Exodus, ended in the greatest victory for the Jewish people.

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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history.  You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com, or post your comment on this website provided that the rules below are observed.

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