Robert Vaughan sailed on Empire Rival
Exodus 1947 The Ship That Launched a Nation (Hardcover) by Ruth Gruber;
Richard Holbrooke Published by Crown House Publishing Inc, October 1999 ISBN
www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/exodus1947.html
"Operation Oasis"
The Exodus was the largest
of a 34-strong armada of illegal ships. One of them, the Struma, sank in the
Black Sea after being refused entry to Palestine. Not one of the 769 people
aboard survived..
The Jewish migrants on the Exodus had travelled from Displaced Persons camps
in the hope of reaching the 'Promised Land'. The Exodus was stopped by the
Royal Navy as it approached Palestine and the battered ship was towed into Haifa on July 18.
The embittered
passengers, exhausted, from the sea journey and the battle, were transferred to three transport ships.
The next day, the three caged prison ships, the Ocean Vigour (containing 1,464
jews), the Runnymede Park (1,409 Jews), and the Empire
Rival (1,526 Jews), departed Haifa.
The refugees initially assumed they would be interned in camps
on the island of Cyprus. But instead the
three prison ships sailed towards Port-de-Bouc, near Marseilles, France.
Conditions on board were cramped.
Noah Klieger remembers his impressions of the conditions on the Empire Rival:
We slept, squeezed
together, on the bare boards of the ship.
|
On all three ships groups were formed who, under Haganah
command, began to build an organisation. It was resolved that all
passengers were to remain on board, and not disembark, on arriving in
France. The refugees were repeatedly encouraged to keep resisting. The
success of these tactics was made more complicated in that communication
between the three prison ships was not possible.
In Port de Bouc, Haganah members in small boats gave advice and
information via megaphone. (Keystone Pressedienst,
Hamburg). |
 |
 |
 |
| As in the cartoon above , British policy
regarding the Exodus passengers was criticized. The largest protest
demonstration took place on 24th July 1947 in New York, with 20,000
participants. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington
D.C.). As is shown in the photograph on the right conditions on
board the 3 ships were very basic... |
The French government decided not to allow the refugees to be
forcibly landed in France and hence they were taken to Hamburg. Back to
Germany the country where the holocaust had occurred.
Most of the Exodus
refugees later sailed in other illegal immigrant ships to Cyprus and then to
Israel when the new state was born on May 14, 1948.
http://www.geocities.com/henry_diamond/exodus.htm
Return to Vaughan Family History
Return to Social/Political Events