Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 100, No. 23, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 11, 2008 Page: 6 of 36
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Page 6
Jewish Herald-Voice
September 11, 2008
Israel ^
How sailors helped Jewish refugees reach pre-state Palestine
Harold Katz, center, and Murray Greenfield, right, with a group of American
sailors on Cyprus in 1947, after their ship headed to Palestine was captured by
the British.
By DINA KRAFT
TEL AVIV (JTA) - One by one,
until they numbered more than a
thousand, they clambered up the
bobbing rope and twine that sailors
centuries ago dubbed Jacob’s Ladder.
It was Italy, May 1947. A bottomless
sea lay below, a dark night sky above.
The Jewish refugees finally were
leaving Europe and the ashes of the
Holocaust. They only had the bags
on their backs and the will to climb,
rung by rung.
“Don’t lose your footing! Don’t get
blown off!” They climbed higher and
higher.
Out of the darkness came pairs
of hands and shouts of “Kumarofl” -
“Come on!” in Yiddish. Jewish sailors
from America - “Imagine, Jewish
sailors from America!” the refugees
marveled - were reaching down and
pulling them up over the sides of a
ship called Hope, “Hatikvah.”
“It was like a miracle,” said Irit
Avriel, one of those refugees, her
face lighting up with the memory six
decades later. “For us they were not
just sailors; they were angels.”
More than 32,000 Jewish refugees
from Europe, just over half of the
total 60,000 who came to prestate
Palestine, were brought over by
North American sailors - most of
them young Jewish men who served
at sea during World War II. They
were part of a clandestine operation
known as Aliyah Bet, which included
the famed Exodus ship.
At a gathering last year for
passengers of Hatikvah, hosted by
one of those Jewish sailors, the young
people who had climbed the rope ladder
to freedom so many years ago were full
of questions for the two former sailors
who came to share their stories.
“How were you recruited? Why did
you leave America to do this? When
did you know about the camps?” they
asked. The Jewish ex-sailors spoke
about their own European relatives
and the obligation they felt to help
after the Holocaust.
A new documentary film about
North American Jewish sailors from
the Aliyah Bet operation, “Waves of
Freedom,” which was shown at the
Jerusalem Film Festival this summer,
is scheduled to come soon to Jewish
film festivals in the United States.
In late 1946, word had gone out in
the streets of U.S. cities, such as New
York and Chicago, that young Jewish
men with sailing experience were
needed to help smuggle Holocaust
survivors across the Mediterranean
to Palestine. The mission was to be
top secret, because the British had
declared such immigration illegal and
created a blockade to stop the effort.
Murray Greenfield - “Greeny,”
as the survivors would quickly
nickname him — had just been
discharged from three years in the
U.S. Merchant Marines. Others had
finished tours of duty in the Navy,
fighting in Europe or against the
Japanese in the Pacific.
“What an idea,” Greenfield, 82, a
native of Long Island, N.Y., said he
remembered thinking. “I was just
discharged, and here they were looking
for guys who knew how to sail.”
Greenfield, who hosted the reunion
in Israel last year, went on to co-author
a book on the subject titled “The Jews’
Secret Fleet.” He told his mother that
he would not be going to college as
planned that fall, but was going to do
something for the Jewish people.
It was a secret; he could not say
where he was going or for how long.
The news of the Nazi genocide was
still fresh - horrible reports of death
camps and gassings. Greenfield’s
mother stroked the arm of her son
and gave her blessing.
Harold Katz, a former U.S. Navy
officer, who spent three years in
the Pacific, also decided to join the
effort. A first-year student at Harvard
Law School at the time, he was so
enthusiastic about the journey that
he managed to convince a classmate
who was Irish Catholic to join him.
Katz went on to become an
established trial lawyer in Boston,
but the memories of the Hatikvah and
his part in history eventually brought
him back to Israel as an immigrant
in the early 1970s. “You don’t always
know what will be a turning point
in your life. You realize it only later
on,” said Katz, 86. “When you do,
you see how it fits in with the rest
of your life. This was a watershed, a
transformative experience.”
Katz and Greenfield would sail
on a hulking and aging Canadian
icebreaker, one of 10 ships a group
of American Jews bought for the
operation to bring Jewish refugees to
Palestine from Europe. Details of the
operation were worked out through
a thick cloud of cigarette smoke on
the top floor of a building on East
60th Street in Manhattan, high above
the din of music at the famous club
below, the Copacabana.
A mix of businesspeople, Zionist
activists and representatives of
the Jewish community in Palestine
hunkered down to figure out how to
buy and fix up old ships and recruit
sailing crews.
There was the wealthy industri-
alist to sign the checks, the New
Orleans Jew with connections in the
Central American shipping industry
who managed to bribe the right peo-
ple in Honduras and Panama to get
permission to fly ships with their
country’s flags, and the Jewish vol-
unteers who agreed to work only for
pocket money to buy cigarettes.
Most of these young men had some
experience at sea, but others had been
infantrymen, paratroopers and pilots.
Veterans of the Pacific theater and the
Battle of the Bulge, again they were
heading into uncertain waters.
Greenfield pulled out a map and
traced the route from which the
Hatikvah came - all 13 stops. It set
sail in Miami, went to places such as
Charleston and Baltimore for repairs,
and eventually refueled in the Azores
Islands off the coast of Portugal. From
there the ship sailed to Italy, where
the passengers secretly boarded.
The ship never did reach
the shores of Palestine. A British
destroyer pulled up alongside about a
week into its journey and issued the
standard warning: “Your voyage is
illegal, your ship is unseaworthy. In
the name of humanity, surrender.”
Passengers in the next 14 months
would live in Cyprus at a hot and
crowded displaced-persons camp.
Those who had been locked away
in concentration camps again found
themselves behind barbed wire.
But in Cyprus, at least there
were moments of joy - and many
marriages. Among the newlyweds
were Reuven and Hedva Gil, survivors
from Poland, who had met in Italy
awaiting the Hatikvah. They shared
their first kiss on its deck. “We
could not resist,” said Reuven, 81, a
sheepish smile creeping across his
face. “Maybe it was the moonlight,
the sea or maybe our youth.”
By the time Hatikvah’s passengers
finally landed in Haifa, the Jewish
state had been declared and Israel’s
War of Independence was raging.
Greenfield never went back to live
in New York. He settled in Israel,
where he worked in business and
publishing. He also established
the Association for Americans and
Canadians in Israel.
Greenfield smiled as he listened
to Fela Shapira, one of the survivors
he helped bring to Israel, recount
her memories. “We were proud to
have Jewish sailors,” said Shapira, 81.
“We did not know such a thing even
existed.” □
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Samuels, Jeanne F. Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 100, No. 23, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 11, 2008, newspaper, September 11, 2008; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth544306/m1/6/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .