The Arabs … as fickle as the British … noted that the winds of war were turning in favor of the British and against the Germans. The Germans were no longer their liberators. Haj Amim el Husseini ran off to Hitler’s Germany. The Arabs now declared war on Germany … how else to get a vote at the peace conferences, to block the Zionists in Palestine. As for the Zionists, their only vote was the number of their dead. Their only hope … to try to prove to the world that they had made a great contribution, that they deserved a long-promised homeland.
But an ill wind began to blow for the Yishuv—its name was Ernest Bevin, the new Labour government’s foreign minister. It had been hoped that Britain’s Labour party would be sympathetic to the Yishuv’s plight, but Bevin was especially ill-suited to deal with the imponderable tangle of Palestine and the remnants of the Nazi Holocaust. When the world was finally compelled to face up to the horrors of the concentration camps, Bevins’s comment, in answer to the clamor of the displaced persons to be sent to Palestine, was: “If the Jews for all their suffering want so badly to get to the head of the queue, I believe that it presents a danger of another anti-Semitic reaction through it all. Were the British government to be allowed into Palestine, and resettle even in detention camps for the time being, you understand it would be at the expense of British taxpayers. That, of course, could constitute a minimum of two million pounds. And those are pounds that war-torn Britain can scarcely afford.”
Following the bitter disillusionment with the Labour party, in September of 1945, President Harry S. Truman received from Clement Attlee, the new British prime minister, a negative reply to his request to allow the immigration of one hundred thousand Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. A few days later the Labour government ruled that Jewish immigration to Palestine would not exceed eighteen thousand a year. The whole western part of the land of Israel would become a country with an Arab majority. The Jewish Yishuv was to be frozen into a minority of one third. To enforce the White Paper restricting immigration, a flotilla of the British navy month after month prevented Jewish refugees from Europe from reaching the country.
For the Yishuv the White Paper spelled an end to the Zionist adventure. It also spelled an end to the restraint the Haganah had used. It stirred up the already explosive tensions in the more aggressive factions in the country—among which was the Irgun Zvai Leumi, which now came more and more to prominence.
In April, 1939, three refugee ships full of half-dead Jews who had somehow escaped from Germany and Roumania reached the shores of Palestine, and were turned back by the British. In November two battered tramp steamers, the Pacific and the Milos, arrived in Haifa with eighteen hundred Jews, and once again the passengers were not allowed to disembark. The British surrounded them, announced that they would be sent to the island of Mauritius for the duration of the war. They were transferred to the British steamer Patria. On the day the Patria was scheduled to sail there was an explosion aboard and more than two hundred people were blown to bits or drowned within the safe haven of Haifa port while their relatives and much of the population of Haifa watched with horrified eyes … among them Joshua Landau, who, standing on Mount Carmel, high above the panorama of Haifa, observed thrashing bodies drowning in the water, dead being dragged into boats by fishhooks.
The press of such events had brought the two factions of the Yishuv closer—the Haganah and the Irgun. Passiveness was no longer tolerable.
Joshua sat in the meetings and was impressed that, at long last, the Yishuv was beginning to take the initiative. The memory of the Patria and those dismembered victims was seared in his brain.
He went to headquarters to see Binya Yariv, Reuven and his father and announced, “I’ve an idea that I think might work.”
Dovid thought of Chavala. She, too, usually had a plan.
“So, what’s the plan?” Yariv asked.
“Usually the passengers on illegal ships coming out of Europe during the war carried only about two hundred or so people. How about a ship large enough to carry ten thousand people, or more?”
“And where are you going to get such a ship?” Reuven pressed him.
“In America.”
“America?” Yariv looked at Dovid.
“Yes … you meet a lot of people in Jerusalem. The other evening I just happened to be sitting in a café and, well, who do I meet but a great big bruiser … bigger and much fatter than Reuven. But, anyway, it turns out he’s a Jew and his name is Harvey Rosen, and can you guess what business he’s in?”
“A shipbuilder?” Reuven said.
“Close. He owns ships, and just the kind we need. He’s got a tramp steamer, perfect condition, weighs about eleven thousand tons, about five hundred feet long. It can take on about ten thousand, stripped clean except for bunks.”
Dovid said, “I always get a little nervous when I hear about things being too perfect. All right … suppose this ship is everything your friend Harvey Rosen says, how do you expect to get that size ship into any harbor in Palestine with the British on your tail?”
“Got it all worked out. First, of course, before he gets any money I want to see the merchandise, which of course means going to New Jersey where his docks are—”
“Sounds nice. You get a ship and a vacation at the same time,” Reuven said. “But, you didn’t answer abba, how are you going to get a ship that size into Palestine?”
“I was getting to that. The ship will sail under American colors, owned by an American company, operated by an American crew, carrying some civilians just dying to see the Holy Land.”
Nobody laughed.
Yariv said, “So far, some of this makes sense, but you have to pick these civilians up going to see the Holy Land at Marseilles. The minute those refugees come aboard, and you hit the high seas, you’ll have the British following you all the way, and you’ll get stopped the minute you hit Palestinian waters.”
“You’re a pessimist, Yariv,” Joshua said, “Let’s take it a day at a time. I know, I know, you’ve been handling the Haganah for a long time without my help, but now I’d like to try to contribute…”
There was silence in the room. Yariv looked at Dovid, a look that seemed to say, When you’re young you have dreams, and if you try hard enough, some of them come true…
“All right,” Yariv said. “Go to America, get your boat, and we’ll, as you say, play it a day at a time. …”
That same night Joshua met the family at Lydda Airport. He kissed Pnina and Aunt Dvora, shook hands with Ari and Zvi, held his father close, then said, “I’m going to do it, abba.”
“I believe you are, Joshua. Now, good luck, and give your mother my love. I’ll tell her you’re coming when I call her later this evening.”
The next day Joshua’s American family greeted him at La Guardia. Chavala, delighted to see him, said, “So, it took a ship to get you to pay your mother a visit?” She smiled when she said it.
“That sounds like I should have a little Jewish guilt, and if you think I should, you’re right. But please remember, mama, I couldn’t make a visit while Der Führer was having his party. So it’s really been the first time, mama, that I’ve had the chance to say hello and that I love you. By the way, I do.”
She smiled. “Enough excuses. Now, come home. The whole family will be together. Wait till you see Chia’s twins.”
The next morning Joshua and Chavala drove out to New Jersey to see Mr. Harvey Rosen. When Joshua took a look at Harvey Rosen’s “perfect” ship, he found a stinking hulk rusting and listing to port. “This is what you were telling me about that night in Jerusalem? … my God, this thing wouldn’t make it out of New York harbor, past that lady in the bay.”
“You don’t know a good ship when you see it. The only thing it needs is a little paint, a few repairs. I tell you what I’ll do, give me half down and the rest I get only when I deliver her. And one other thing, remember I happen to be the captain on this little trip … if anything happens it’s my tail as much as yours. Excuse me, ma�
�am. But I feel strong about this. She may not be pretty but she’s seaworthy, and that’s a lot more than I can say about some prettier ladies.”
Chavala smiled. “He’s got a point, Joshua.”
“Could be. I haven’t had too much time for ladies these days, not even for the beauty right here.”
Chavala smiled appropriately. She was very proud of Joshua. The pain of separation was forgotten, seeing the man he’d grown into.
Now the most pressing question of all was asked by Joshua. “How long is it going to take to strip this ship, put in bunks, a mess hall, separate heads for men and women, and a dispensary?”
“Six weeks at the latest,” Rosen said.
“Make it four and you’ve got a deal.”
Chavala spoke for the first time. “In my business, the diamond business, when a deal is made, two people shake hands and wish one another mazel and broche.”
Rosen looked at Chavala. “That’s sensible, a piece of paper don’t mean a thing.”
“You’re right… Tonight I’m giving a party for just you, Mr. Rosen, and my family, that we should live to see the day that the Holocaust is over and may I, please God, find out what happened to my poor sister from whom I haven’t gotten a letter back for years. I’ll see you at seven o’clock tonight in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Rosen.”
Although she saw a little of Joshua during the month he was in the United States, still, having him with her in his old room … she was up every morning, making breakfast for him, fussing over him even more than when he was a little boy….
The month, of course, ended all too soon. And too soon she was again standing and watching a ship take off a loved one … the newly renovated Star of Liberty, enlisted to save Jewish lives, slowly disappearing beyond the horizon.
As promised by Harvey Rosen the ship was sound, and in a week she was docking at Marseilles. The crew of the Aliyah Bet directed some ten thousand that came aboard to their quarters. Liberty lay at anchor that night, waiting for the tide. Next morning she weighed anchor in a calm sea and headed out beyond the three-mile limit to international waters. But cruising along, she was spotted by a British destroyer. In spite of American colors and the vessel being registered in the United States, with an American crew and captain, the Liberty had still picked up ten thousand refugees in Marseilles. Well, this was peacetime and at least she couldn’t be waved aside to be boarded … all the British could do was wait until she got within the three-mile limit of Palestine. But then they would move …
Rosen and Joshua kept an eye on the British ship with their binoculars. “I said we’ve got to play it a day at a time, and that’s what we’ve done up till now. But in two days we’re going to be close to Palestine, so I’ve got to start thinking about a little more than a day at a time. Now how are we going to get rid of that British bastard behind us?”
“The only way we can land is with a diversion in Haifa,” Joshua said. “I’ll get a message to my father.”
He gave the encoded message to the wireless operator, asking for some action between Haifa and Jaffa, or any other place, so long as it helped them get free to land at Athlit. The landing date was given. Dovid was informed that they were being trailed, and asked to use whatever influence he still had with the British.
Next morning, the British vessel was apparently no longer following them. Dovid had received the message, called on one of his few remaining contacts in the British command, who was really a Zionist agent, and had sent new counter-orders to the captain of the destroyer….
Now that they were finally in the Mediterranean, Joshua walked down from the bridge to the deck, stood against the rail … someone was close by … he turned around … and was startled to see a beautiful young woman next to him, her arms on the rail. Her looks were as improbable to encounter on this trip as anything he could imagine … in fact, she was, at first glance anyway, too good to be true. To be there.
His first words were less than suave. “Oh, hello … my God, you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“How is it I haven’t seen you before?”
“Maybe because there are, as I understand it, some ten thousand other people on board.”
“Oh … yes … well, I just feel it’s my loss, I mean being on this ship all this time and meeting you only a few days away from Palestine…”
“I’ve noticed you. You’ve been very busy.”
“Well, I’m not so busy now … my name is Joshua Landau.”
“I know. Most everyone on board does. My name is Simone Blum.”
“Simone Blum? That’s French. But you speak perfect Hebrew?”
“I learned while I was in the underground. I knew that one day I was going to live in Eretz Yisroel. Somehow I convinced myself I wasn’t going to die.”
A considerable woman, obviously …he pressed her for more … She was born a Parisian, as were her mother and father, both doctors, and she was, in fact, in her second year of medical school when Hitler did his obscene jig at the Arc de Triomphe. After that she was secretly rushed off to live in Provence with a Catholic family that gave her love and treated her as though she were one of their own, at the same time encouraging her to continue being the dedicated Zionist she already was.
When the war was over, Simone joined a Zionist organization that had, once again, sprung up in Paris, and there it was that she became a member of the Mossad Aliyah Bet … “And that, Captain Landau, is how I happen to be on this cruise.”
“And I’m very glad for that… when we get to Palestine I’d like to be in touch with you …”
Simone Blum nodded, and said that would be fine with her….
The next day was taken up with landing and getting ten thousand people, crew, and members of the Aliyah Bet ashore. For all of Joshua’s bravado he knew there were always hitches. Once again he sat in the radio room and sent a coded message, to Reuven this time. The coded message came back quickly: T-H-E B-R-E-A-D I-S B-A-K-E-D A-N-D M-A-M-A’-S W-A-I-T-I-N-G. Watches were synchronized, motors were slowed, the Aliyah Bet were instructed about their passengers, the crew was ready. Rosen and Joshua kept their eyes fixed on their watches.
First diversion: 250 Palmach members raided Athlit with the British in hot pursuit.
Second diversion: Two Haganah units attacked three observation posts of the coastal guard.
Third diversion: Shortly before midnight the station in Giveat Olga was destroyed by explosive charges.
Fourth diversion: The Sidney Ali station was blown up and the garrison stationed there was attacked with automatic fire.
Under cover of all of this, the Liberty sailed in, just beyond the shoals of Athlit. Dovid was waiting there, and saw Joshua taking things firmly in hand. The operation was swift, efficient. As soon as people hit the beach they were met by the Palmach, and instantly transformed into Palestinians … their clothes were discarded for white shorts and blue tops. They were rushed into waiting trucks that drove them to the kibbutzim. The young people looked like any youth group, and quickly fitted in with the settlers. The men and women were dressed as farmers, and seeing them along the road in trucks, one would naturally assume they were going to their moshav or kibbutz.
The operation was a success—up to the last ten people, among whom was Joshua, two Palmachniks and Rosen. Joshua was furious when he saw the British truck driving up. Still, ten out of ten thousand was not so bad … except it wasn’t easy to be philosophical.
Especially not when he was arrested and taken off to Jerusalem Prison. The interrogation was long and tough for the prisoners—especially for Captain Joshua Landau.
“You’ve been a very busy man,” said the British interrogation officer Dudley Spencer. “What were you doing at Athlit tonight?”
“Taking the night air, sir.”
“Forget the sarcasm, Landau. I repeat, why were you at Athlit tonight?”
“Saving lives, sir. Now, I believe I have reservations here, I
wouldn’t want to lose my room—”
Spencer called two guards to take him away. Tomorrow he’d lose his sense of humor …
The next morning Joshua was again led into the interrogation room. Once again he was told to acknowledge his reasons for being at Athlit. And once again he refused. This time he was stripped, his hands were tied, he was suspended from the ceiling and flogged unconscious. Afterward he was dragged back to his cell, thrown on the floor.
The two Palmachniks received the same.
Rosen did better. He was an American, which caused some pause to the captors. He challenged the British to create an international incident. As he was being released, he suggested that they be so kind as to pay back their war debts to Uncle Sam.
The other six were of different nationalities, German, Polish, Roumanian, and none spoke English. By the time interpreters, except for the Germans, could be found, arrangements were made for them to be taken off to the dreaded internment camp on Cyprus.
When Joshua forced open his swollen eyes he looked across the cell and barely made out a young man, dark hair … he had the strangest, most improbable feeling that he knew him. But if so, from where? His muttering seemed to be in German. Maybe he’d seen him during the voyage … but the thought persisted that it was more than that … that he knew this person …
Finally he said, in the little German he knew, “Where did you come from?”
The young man’s eyes were cold, angry. No answer.
Understandable, Joshua thought. Concentration camps tended to make a person less than sociable. Nonetheless, he persisted, asked the same question in German again.
Almost hissing, the man said, “Don’t talk to me in German. I speak English. And don’t ask me questions, it’s none of your damned business. I don’t owe you anything. I hear you are a big hero … congratulations, you saved the world—”
No Time for Tears Page 46
