So, the Irgun Did Have a Role With the "Exodus"

U.K. papers shed light on plan to return Jews to postwar Germany in '47

Newly released documents at the British national archives show how the government tried to send thousands of Palestine-bound Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide back to postwar Germany, where the "final solution" had been hatched, without inflaming world opinion.

Could it be done? The answer was no. The British decision to turn away more than 4,500 Jews on board the refugee ship Exodus turned into a humanitarian and public relations debacle.

...The story detailed in more than 400 pages of formerly secret documents made available to the public Monday concerns Jewish refugees who were on board the Exodus and trying to enter Palestine illegally during the tumultuous months before the United Nations voted in 1947 to create a Jewish homeland on part of Palestine.

Britain was governing Palestine and the British government felt that it had to keep the would-be immigrants out to help preserve the demographic balance between Arabs and Jews. British forces turned away dozens of leaky immigrant ships carrying desperate refugees. But it did not have a safe place to send the Jews from the Exodus, who were placed on three smaller British steamers.

After much agonizing, the British concluded that the only place they could send them was to the British-controlled zone of postwar Germany, where they could be placed in camps and screened for extremists.

It made sound military sense. But the documents show that diplomats and military officers knew perfectly well that sending Jews back to Germany and putting them in camps would set off a firestorm.

"These documents show the British perspective for the first time," said Mark Dunton, a contemporary-history specialist at the archives...

The first rumblings came from a British diplomat in France who sent a coded warning to the Foreign Office in London in August 1947. The diplomat said bluntly that a public relations scandal lay ahead.

"You will realize that an announcement of decision to send immigrants back to Germany will produce violent hostile outburst in the press," he wrote.

An unsigned cable from the Foreign Office on Aug. 19, 1947, stated that 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 on short notice.

Three days later, a Foreign Office cable warned diplomats that they should be ready to "emphatically" deny that the refugees would be housed in former concentration camps after they reached Germany.

The Aug. 22 cable stated that German guards would not be used to keep the Jews in the "refugee camps" and added that British guards would be withdrawn once the refugees had been screened.

But security concerns were heightened on Aug. 30 when a secret telegram from the British Embassy in Washington warned of a possible terrorist attack by the Irgun and Stern gangs, two Zionist extremist groups determined to prevent the forced landing of the Jewish refugees in Germany. (*)

They were taken off the vessels, though a number were injured in confrontations with British troops

..."It is a very frightening thing to go into a hold full of yelling maniacs when outnumbered 6 or 8 to 1," he said in the report. Gregson said he had considered using tear gas to subdue the refugees but decided not to risk inflaming the situation. "The Jew is liable to panic," he said.

Security fears seemed justified after the refugees were removed when a large, crudely made bomb with a timed fuse was found on one of the three British ships. It was apparently rigged to detonate after the refugees had been removed, cable messages indicated...

(*) And this aspect they couldn't work into the Hollywood version? After all, having Paul Newman and the Hagana take all the credit for the Acre jailbreak, this would have been fair.

(Sheitel tip: RA)

A Smart Egyptian

Well, the archeologists have come to a conclusion, albeit temporary:-

Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say

On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt’s chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency’s latest discovery.

...That prompted a reporter to ask about the Exodus, and if the new evidence was linked in any way to the story of Passover. The archaeological discoveries roughly coincided with the timing of the Israelites’ biblical flight from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land.

“Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom.

...Recently, diggers found evidence of lava from a volcano in the Mediterranean Sea that erupted in 1500 B.C. and is believed to have killed 35,000 people and wiped out villages in Egypt, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula, officials here said. The same diggers found evidence of a military fort with four rectangular towers, now considered the oldest fort on the Horus military road.

But nothing was showing up that might help prove the Old Testament story of Moses and the Israelites fleeing Egypt, or wandering in the desert. Dr. Hawass said he was not surprised, given the lack of archaeological evidence to date. But even scientists can find room to hold on to beliefs.

But thanks to Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, the head of the excavation, we still have hope:-

...(he) seemed to sense that such a conclusion might disappoint some. People always have doubts until something is discovered to confirm it, he noted.

Then he offered another theory, one that he said he drew from modern Egypt.

“A pharaoh drowned and a whole army was killed,” he said recounting the portion of the story that holds that God parted the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to escape, then closed the waters on the pursuing army.

“This is a crisis for Egypt, and Egyptians do not document their crises.”