ALIYA BET SHIPS

The following lines will be devoted to the story of a brief but significant chapter in the history of American Habonim, which, I believe, has not been told so far. Much of the story will, unfortunately, never be known, since it has gone into oblivion with the premature departure from among the living of two of its principal actors: Ari Lashner, who fell in Kfar Blum during the War of Independence of 1948, and Ze'ev Shind, who died in Haifa in 1953.

It all began late in 1945. A bloody war had just ended, leaving behind it the graveyard of Europe's Jewish millions. Some hundreds of thousands of survivors—rather heartlessly referred to as displaced persons, or D.P's, for short—were the half-living reminders of the recent horrors. But the end of the war brought with it hope as well: hope of a better world to come—the United Nations had been founded earlier the same year—of a better future for the war's victims, of a final realization of the long-hoped-for Jewish independence.

One late autumn day that year a small group arrived in New York from Palestine and established a modest headquarters for an operation which was to affect the course of Jewish history in the coming years. Included in the group were Yaakov Dostrovski, one of the chiefs of the Hagana, the Palestine Jews' defense organization (later Yaakov Dori, the first chief of staff of the Defense Army of Israel), and Ze'ev Shind, better known to his friends and co-workers as Dani, a rather retiring, reticent fellow, who had for some years been among the prime movers of Aliya Bet, the immigration into Palestine in defiance of the Mandatory government's prohibitions (the so-called "illegal immigration," a term used by others but never by the Aliya Bet people themselves, since they denied in principle the legality of the British immigration laws).

The mission from Palestine set a number of aims for itself, all connected with the imminent fight for independence: to raise funds and procure equipment for the Hagana; to tell the Jews of America, in a non-public manner, what could be told of the operations of the Jewish underground in Palestine; to purchase ships for the Aliya Bet fleet, to equip them, and to find personnel to man them. It is with the last phase of the program, the phase presided over by Dani, that the balance of this narrative will concern itself.

The job to be done required co-workers. Their only qualifications at this stage were: a willingness to do work, any kind of work, at any time of day or night; a readiness to run some personal risks, if need be; and a pair of tight lips. The obvious address for such people was—American Habonim.

The first to join Dani's staff was Ari Lashner, just back from the wars as a communications officer in the Merchant Marine. By background in Habonim, by temperament, and, to some extent, by recent training, he was well suited for the job he undertook: to find crews for the ships, former Canadian corvettes, which Dani had purchased in Panama as war surplus materials for the Aliya Bet fleet.

The recruitment work could, of course, not be carried on in the light of day. Actually there was nothing illegal, as far as the American government was concerned, about buying up war surplus ships or about signing on to serve as a seaman on a merchant ship. But public notice of any kind was the last thing the Aliya Bet organization wanted: British eyes and ears were all over. And so, while Dani put his headquarters, under the cover of a legitimate shipping business, in a tiny room in a lawyer's office—a room with one desk, one chair, and one sofa (while one worked at the desk, the other sat on the sofa and waited)—Ari established himself at a desk in the office of the Hechalutz Organization. Out of that office he began contacting his prospects.

Most of them did not have to be looked for very hard. Several dozen chalutzim, members of Habonim, Hashomer Hatzair, and other Zionist youth organizations, were by that time sitting around all over the country, waiting for a chance to get to Palestine. Immigration to Palestine was practically at a standstill. There was some hope that the British, pressed to the wall by the clamor of the refugees in the D. P. camps, would finally agree to grant some immigration permits; but would any of these be spared for the chalutzim from America? When word came from Ari that there may be some chance of getting to Palestine soon, these anxiously waiting chalutzim quickly began to converge on New York. Here they heard the whole story: not only was there an excellent chance for aliya, but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform a great service—to man a ship that would bring to Palestine a load of "illegals," in defiance of the British blockade. No persuading was necessary.

Before long the two ships were fully manned. Among the forty-fifty chalutzim on board there were a few with some wartime sea experience, but most of them had none. With the aid of a professional sea captain of long experience and with the addition of a few merchant marine officers for the key posts on deck and below, the crew was soon put into shape. They lived on board the ships for two months before sailing and trained a little, mostly informally, while the ships were being made seaworthy again and fitted out for their new mission.

Then, one evening, came the official induction into the ranks of the Hagana. The surroundings were drab enough—a room in a downtown New York office building—but there was something cloak-and dagger about the ceremony, presided over by Yaakov Dostrovski in the presence of some other Hagana dignitaries and some of the large money-givers. The room was almost dark; there was a Bible, and each of the inductees swore on it; there were some speeches in Hebrew, which few of the boys understood; there was a dash of symbolism which the Palestinians took seriously, but to the boys themselves it looked rather like some boy-scout stuff—and it was soon over. The boys were "in," now ready to sail.

Sailing day, postponed several times because of all sorts of difficulties, was finally set for the day before Passover. Matzoth and a case of wine were brought on board at the last minute; the dignitaries came to bid goodbye and to wish good luck—and the ships were off.

They moved on their appointed course, first to Europe, and then, loaded with refugees, to Palestine. One, known in Aliya Bet annals as the Wedgwood, had the less eventful history of the two: while making its first run, it was intercepted in Haifa by the British authorities and put out of commission. The second ship had better luck. On its first sailing from Marseilles, heavily loaded with some twelve hundred aboard, it succeeded in making contact offshore with a smaller and much less valuable member of the Aliya Bet fleet, to which the refugees were transferred in midsea. That vessel, the Birya, was soon captured by the British navy. The corvette, meanwhile, was able to return for another load, this time to Yugoslavia. There, because the local authorities forcibly emptied onto its decks the entire population of the D.P. camp, it was dangerously overloaded as it sailed with over twice the number of passengers as on its first run. This second sailing was the last: to transfer so many people in midsea was unthinkable. The boat, renamed the Hagana as it was nearing Haifa, was soon in British hands.

(With this, incidentally, the history of these two ships did not come to a close. They were moored in Haifa; but, when the British left, they were hurriedly reconditioned and pressed into service as the flagships of the newly founded Israel navy.)

The operation on the American side meanwhile continued. After An left on board the Hagana as its radio officer, Dani again turned to Habonim for help; and several of its members were assigned to continue with the now-expanded recruitment program. The personnel headquarters were removed from the Hechalutz office, and an independent little office began to function under the name of the Palestine Vocational Service. Ostensibly it was an office for the supply of vocational information and assistance to prospective settlers in Palestine. P.V.S. had information on all sorts of subjects, but the only jobs it had to offer were jobs for seamen: deck officers, engineers, navigators, ship stewards, radio personnel, and, above all, able-bodied seamen, with or without experience. Chalutzirn kept coming and kept signing on, but their numbers were insufficient to meet the growing demands Dani was making. Yet there was never a dearth of other candidates. Many hundreds found their way to the P.V.S. office by word of mouth, through all sorts of organizations, or by way of furtive little notices stuck away in the daily press and in seamen's journals, with P.O.B. numbers as the only lead. There were all sorts of men among them, with all kinds of motivations. Some came for the money (which actually was very little, except for some of the professional seamen who got the regular rates), some for the excitement and adventure; while others were moved by sympathy for the people whom they were going to help or by a desire to participate personally in righting a great wrong.

Nearly a dozen ships all told, large and small, were manned in this fashion and sailed from various ports of the American East and Southeast. The best known among them was the S.S. President Warfield, a Chesapeake Bay day liner, which had never been out to sea before and had never been intended for a sea voyage. Yet it made a winter crossing of the Atlantic with an inexperienced crew; and, renamed the Exodus and loaded with many thousands of refugees, it made a valiant, though unsuccessful, attempt to run the British blockade in the Mediterranean. But the story of that ship is too well known by now to be repeated here.

Eventually the Palestine Vocational Service closed its doors. One after the other, its directors and interviewers went off to Palestine themselves, most of them by methods not unlike the ones employed by their recruits or their recruits' cargoes. Before long the "illegal" fleet was disbanded. It had done its job well, not only as a means of aliya for tens of thousands, but as a political instrument of the first order. Its passengers, some after a sojourn in Cyprus or some other place of detention, finally reached the shores of safety. Now many hundreds of thousands of others no longer needed to depend on ships sailing under the cover of night, barely seaworthy, unbelievably overcrowded, manned by willing but, too often, untried hands. In Haifa port the flag of Israel was now flying. The Law of Return had been proclaimed. "Let anyone who is hungry, come in."

AKIVA SKIDELL, Kfar Blum, 1960