Aliyah Bet

''Aliyah Bet'' ( he, עלייה ב', "Aliyah 'B'" – bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, most of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany, and later Holocaust survivors, to Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948, in violation of the restrictions laid out in the British White Paper of 1939, which dramatically increased between 1939 and 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Jewish displaced persons and refugees from Europe began streaming into the new sovereign state.

In modern-day Israel it has also been called by the Hebrew term ''Ha'apala'' ( he, הַעְפָּלָה, "Ascension"). The ''Aliyah Bet'' is distinguished from the ''Aliyah Aleph'' ("Aliyah 'A'", Aleph being the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) which refers to the limited Jewish immigration permitted by British authorities during the same period. The name ''Aliya B'' is also shortened name for ''Aliya Bilty Legalit'' ( he, עלייה בלתי-לגאלית, "illegal immigration").

Organization

During ''Ha'apala'', several emissaries from the Yishuv, Jewish partisans, the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, Zionist youth movements and organizations worked together to facilitate the immigration of Jews escaping from Nazi Germany to Mandatory Palestine beyond the established "White Paper" quotas. As the persecution of Jews dramatically intensified in German-occupied Europe during the Nazi era, the urgency driving the immigration also became more acute.

''Ha'apala'' occurred in two phases. The first one, from 1934 to 1942, was an effort to enable European Jews to escape Nazi persecution and genocide. The second one, from 1945 to 1948, in a stage known as ''Bricha'' ("flight" or "escape"), was an effort to find homes for Jewish survivors of the Nazi crimes (''Sh'erit ha-Pletah'', "Surviving Remnant") who were among the millions of displaced persons ("DPs") languishing in refugee camps scattered across post-war Europe, primarily located in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria, and Italy."

During the first phase, several Zionist organizations (including Revisionists) led the effort; after World War II, the Mossad LeAliyah Bet ("the Institute for Aliyah B"), an arm of the Haganah, took charge. The Palyam, a maritime branch of the Palmach, was given responsibility for commanding and sailing ships from Europe to Mandatory Palestine.

Routes

Post-World War II, ''Ha'apala'' journeys typically started in the DP camps and moved through one of two collection points in the American occupation sector, Bad Reichenhall and Leipheim. From there, the refugees travelled in disguised trucks, on foot, or by train to ports on the Mediterranean Sea, where ships brought them to Palestine. Most of the ships had names such as ''Lo Tafchidunu'' ("You can't frighten us") and ''La-Nitzahon'' ("To the victory") designed to inspire and rally the Jews of Palestine. Some were named after prominent figures in the Zionist movement, and people who had been killed while supporting Aliyah Bet. More than 70,000 Jews arrived in Palestine on more than 100 ships.

American sector camps imposed no restrictions on the movements out of the camps, and American, French, and Italian officials often turned a blind eye to the movements. Several UNRRA officials (in particular Elizabeth Robertson in Leipheim) acted as facilitators of the emigration. The British government vehemently opposed the movement, and restricted movement in and out of their camps. The British set up armed naval patrols to prevent immigrants from landing in Palestine.

History

Over 100,000 people attempted to illegally enter Mandatory Palestine. There were 142 voyages by 120 ships. Over half were stopped by the British patrols. The Royal Navy had eight ships on station in Palestine, and additional ships were tasked with tracking suspicious vessels heading for Palestine. Most of the intercepted immigrants were sent to internment camps in Cyprus: (Karaolos near Famagusta, Nicosia, Dhekelia, and Xylotymbou. Some were sent to the Atlit detention camp in Palestine, and some to Mauritius. The British held as many as 50,000 people in these camps (see Jews in British camps on Cyprus). Over 1,600 drowned at sea. Only a few thousand actually entered Palestine.

The pivotal event in ''Ha'apala'' program was the incident in 1947. ''Exodus'' was intercepted and boarded by a Royal Navy patrol. Despite significant resistance, passengers from ''Exodus'' were forcibly returned to Europe, and eventually put in camps in Germany. This was publicized, to the great embarrassment of the British government.

One account of Aliyah Bet is given by journalist I. F. Stone in his 1946 book ''Underground to Palestine,'' a first-person account of traveling from Europe with displaced persons attempting to reach the Jewish homeland.

Some 250 American veterans, including Murray Greenfield (of the ship ''Hatikva''), from World War II volunteered to sail ten ships ("The Jews' Secret Fleet") from the United States to Europe to load 35,000 survivors of the Holocaust (half of the illegal immigrants to Palestine), only to be deported to detention camps on Cyprus.

Timeline

Before World War II

* In 1934, the first attempt to bring in a large number of illegal immigrants by sea happened when some 350 Jews sailed on the ''Vallos'', a chartered ship, without the permission of the Jewish Agency, who feared illegal immigration would cause the British to restrict legal immigration. She arrived off the coast of Palestine on 25 August, and the passengers disembarked with the help of the Haganah, which received special permission to assist them.
* On 29 July 1939, the '' Colorado'', flying under the Panamanian flag and carrying 378 Jewish refugees from Europe was intercepted by the British; the illegal immigrants were arrested and taken into Haifa.
* On 19 August, the ''Aghios Nicolaus'', a Greek owned ship, transferred 840 immigrants to smaller vessels off the coast and sent them to shore.
* On 23 August, the ''Parita'', carrying some 700 refugees on board, was deliberately beached at Tel Aviv by the passengers, the captain and crew having fled in a small boat.

During World War II

* On 2 September, the ''Tiger Hill'', a 1,499-ton ship built in 1887, was intercepted and fired on by Royal Navy gunboats off Tel Aviv, killing two passengers (Dr Robert Schneider and Zvi Binder); the ship HMCS ''Belleville'' beached on the shore with 1,205 immigrants on board; the ''Tiger Hill'' had sailed from Constanţa, Romania, on 3 August 1939, with about 750 immigrants on board and had taken on board the passengers from the ''Frossoula'', another illegal immigrant ship that was marooned in Lebanon.
* On 16 September, the ''Rudnitchan'' transferred 364 Jewish refugees into five lifeboats outside the territorial waters of the Mandate and sent them ashore as illegal immigrants.
* On 19 September, the '' Noemi Julia'', sailing from Sulina in Romania with 1,130 Jewish refugees from Europe on board was intercepted in the Mediterranean by a British warship and forced to Haifa port; fearing that they would be sent back, the illegal immigrants engaged in passive resistance; the British authorities brought them ashore and held them in a detention camp; they were released a month later.
* On 24–25 November 1939, a large group of immigrants traveled by train from Vienna to Bratislava and about 2 weeks later sailed from there on the riverboat ''Uranus'' down the Danube. At the Romanian border, the three smaller riverboats to which they had been transferred on December 14 on entering Yugoslavia were intercepted and the immigrants were forced to disembark at the old fortress town of Kladovo. About 1,100 refugees were stranded there and came to be known as the Kladovo-Sabac Group. In May 1941, they were still in Yugoslavia, where 915 of them were caught and eventually killed by the invading Nazis. The 800 men were shot by Nazi soldiers in a farmer's field at Zasavica; after the war, the remains of the men were re-interred in a mass grave in the Belgrade Sephardi Cemetery. The women and children were imprisoned in the Sajmiste concentration camp where they perished from hunger, disease, exposure to the bitter cold winter weather, or gassed to death in a mobile gas truck.
* On 18 May 1940 the old Italian paddle steamer ''Pencho'' sailed from Bratislava, with 514 passengers, mostly Betar members. The ''Pencho'' sailed down the Danube to the Black Sea and into the Aegean Sea. On 9 October, her engines failed and she was wrecked off Mytilene, in the Italian-ruled Dodecanese Islands. The Italians rescued the passengers and took them to Rhodes. All but two were then placed in an internment camp at Ferramonti di Tarsia in southern Italy. They were held there until Allied forces liberated the area in September 1943.
* In October 1940, 1,770 Jewish refugees sailed from Tulcea to Haifa in two ships. The arrived off Haifa on 1 November, followed a few days later by the . The Royal Navy intercepted each ship and escorted it into Haifa, where British authorities detained the refugees before transferring them to a requisitioned French ocean liner, the , for deportation to Mauritius. They were followed from Tulcea by another 1,634 refugees aboard the , which arrived on 24 November off Haifa, where the Royal Navy escorted her into harbour. On November 25 the British had just started transferring ''Atlantic''s refugees to ''Patria'' when Haganah agents planted a bomb aboard the French liner with the intention of disabling her to prevent her from sailing. However, the bomb quickly sank ''Patria'', killing 260 people and wounding 172. The survivors were allowed to stay in Palestine on humanitarian grounds.
* In October 1940, a large group of refugees were allowed to leave Vienna. The exodus was organized by Berthold Storfer, a Jewish businessman who worked under Adolf Eichmann

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