FALL 2006 AMERICAN VETERANS OF ISRAEL VOLUNTEERS IN ISRAEL’S WAR OF INDEPENDENCE UNITED STATES & CANADA VOLUNTEERS 136 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016 Aliya Bet: The Pans, Paul Shulman Beds for Bananas The View of the British and the Perils of Passage A First-Hand Story of the S.S. Re- Admiralty Part One: A “ far-better” shipping demption And What Happened Af- A review essay of Stewart, Ninian. company terwards in Cyprus and in Pales- The Royal Navy and the Palestine By J. Wandres tine Patrol. London: Portland, 2002. The story of the Haganah Ship Laurence Kohlberg published this Exodus 47 has been told and retold article in the Autumn 1948 issue of the This review essay was written by over the decades and has become part Menorah Journal after having served Elihu Bergman a short time before of legend and lore of Israel’s founding. on the Paducah, renamed Geula or his death a year ago. Elihu was a past The ship’s attempt to land more than Redemption. Laurence, after gradu- president of AVI. He held a PhD in 4,500 refugees on the shores of Eretz ating from Phillips Academy in Mas- Political Science and had published a Israel was not initially successful. But sachusetts, toward the end of World number of academic articles on Aliya Bet. We are not aware that this essay WANDRES continued on pg. 11 KOHLBERG continued on pg. 2 has been published elsewhere. The Newsletter offers a slightly abbreviated Machal Veterans to be In- Surrounding the stage is a sweeping, version. The full version may be scribed In the Canadian angled structure crenellated by eight obtained by writing to sklausner@ candles, alluding to a Hanukkah meno- ucwphilly.rr.com. Jewish War Veterans Memorial rah - a theme chosen due to Hanukka’s celebration of the fight for the freedom Historians of the period could from tyranny. A pointed flame-bearing justifiably argue that the Jewish illegal The Toronto Post of the Jewish War Veterans of Canada has undertaken the structure that pierces the wall is the immigration campaign following shamash, the main candle used to light World War II—945-948—created erection of a Memorial to ALL Jewish War Veterans from around the world. all the others. Liebeskind says that the a major obstacle to continued British Hanukkiah form is interpreted as a rule in Palestine. The costs of stopping This Memorial will be erected in To- ronto in Earl Bales Park - in proximity shield of light with the shamash as a illegal immigration were simply too guardian asserting the spirit of valour, burdensome for a British economy to the Holocaust Memorial, which was erected some years ago. This Memo- courage and strength against the forces devastated by the War. In spite of of evil. Flames of Memory, the design- these realities the postwar Labour rial was designed by the world-famous Daniel Libeskind and will serve to keep er’s title for the memorial cre--ates an government ranked the stoppage of enduring memorial dedicated to the illegal immigration among its top alive the memory of all Jewish veterans MEMORIAL continued on pg. 9 priorities -and budgetary investments - of the past two centuries. The ground ALIYA BET continued on pg. 16 breaking took place in October 2005 and it is our hope that all will Samuel Z. Klausner, be ready for the editor of the AVI Newsletter, Grand Unveil- has announced his retirement ing in July 2007. At the centre of from the editorship at the the Memorial is end of 2006. a 50-200 seat a m p h i t h e a t r e . Libeskind Veterans Memorial American Veterans of Israel 36 E. 39 Street New York, NY 10016-0914 Officers and Executive Board President Arthur Bernstein 978 532 6956 Vice President Joseph Warner KOHLBERG continued from pg. 1 46 497-040 away? The harbor pilot didn’t notice it. Executive Director War II, enlisted in the service and was He turned to our Jewish second mate Simon Spiegelman assigned as a Second Engineer on a with a puzzled look and said, “Christ, 22 685 8548 [email protected] transport ship. Upon returning from there are a lot of Jews on this ship.” The his experience in aliya bet, he attended vessel was an ex-Navy training ship Treasurer David Gerard the University of Chicago where his forty-five years old, speed 10 knots, 63 499 4327 doctoral dissertation on stages of mor- tonnage 900. Even I couldn’t believe [email protected] al development was accepted in 1958. she’d hold fifteen hundred passengers, Regional Vice Presidents He taught for several years at Chicago more than the Queen Mary, if we ever USA Northeast: Ira Feinberg and then appointed professor of educa- got that far. 20 886-1188 tion and social psychology at Harvard I used to wonder about that. You would, too, if you’d been aboard as we Southeast: Irving Meltzer University. While working in Belize in 56 637 5874 1971 he contracted a tropical disease, ploughed across the Atlantic. You might have gone down to the fire room and West: Bailey Nieder which caused him significant pain and 206 722 897 bouts of depression. In 1987, on a short found me looking up at the boiler gauge glass. No water in it. The engineering Midwest: Ben Hagai Steuerman leave from the hospital he drove to the 773 935 0802 coast where he drowned, an apparent regulations would be running through my head. If the fireman loses the water, Canada: Jerry Rosenberg suicide, at the age of 59. This is a slight- 46 787-7632 ly abbreviated version of his original cut out the fires and secure the boiler. article. It is a testimony written almost When the boiler is cool, have it inspect- Israel Liaison: David Baum [email protected] immediately after the experience. It is ed for burnt-out or sagging tubes. the report of a very bright twenty year “Cut out the fires, Len,” I’d shout. World Machal: Zipporah Porath [email protected] old. “Don’t get so excited, Larry. The water We were the eighth or ninth ship will be coming up in a while.” I’d shrug VP/ Directors Newsletter, Internet and Trustees being sent across from America in my shoulders and walk back into the Committee: May 1947 to take refugees to Pales- engine room. Or, perhaps, you’d take a Samuel Z. Klausner 25 473 6034 tine “illegally.” The Hebrew name for stroll on deck. The bos’n, an ex-Navy [email protected] this blockade-running was Aliyah Bet, boy from Brownsville, New York City, would probably be looking for Buck- Archives and Museum the “Clandestine Immigration.” As the Ralph Lowenstein name indicates, it was not a matter of shot. We called him Buckshot because 352 392 6525 he had such a load of lead in his tail. He [email protected] conspiracy. Everything had been done legally in America; and American dol- had left college to make this trip, and he Public Relations: Paul Kaye still retained the student’s horn-rimmed (78) 428-2465 lars made it legal in Europe. As for [email protected] keeping it secret from the British-well, glasses and four-syllable vocabulary. He was a Trotskyite and brought along Speakers Bureau: Naomi Kantey we could always hope. But we’d be sat- 20 489 3809 isfied just to get the people out of Eu- huge stocks of literature to convert the rope, even if it were only to Cyprus. crew and the refugees. Events and Activities David Hanovice I took a launch out to the ship and, Six days out, we reached Fayal, in Bill Gelberg being the only passenger on the launch, the Azores, where our first hitch devel- Louis Laurie Adrian Phillips I began talking to the man at the wheel. oped. We were supposed to get oil and Norman Schutzman “What ship are you on?” he asked. “The water there, but the British had control Lola Sprinzeles Charles Weiss Paducah.” of all the oil on the land and tied it up, “Does she fly the Panamanian and the agents demanded cash for the Machal West- Liaison Max Barchichat flag?” “Yes.” water and stores; so we were held up President-Machal West “She isn’t running Jews to Pales- a week waiting for the money to come (88) 982-272 tine?” through. Finally we left, bound for Lis- Websites “No, we’re going to carry banan- bon where we were definitely supposed http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~sklausne/aviweb.html to get oil, and a few days later arrived http://www.israelvets.com as.” What was there to give our ship and anchored in the Tagus River. Again 2 it was impossible to get oil; so we got They asked us what the wooden shelves and salaamed toward Mecca. We were orders to proceed to Bayonne, a small were for, and we told them we were go- so close we could hear a couple of the port on the Atlantic coast of France, ing to carry bananas on them. The next English sailors say, “Blimey, they’ve near the Spanish border. By this time the day the Bayonne paper was headlined got bloody Arabs aboard.” After a while chief engineer’s report of the amount of “Couchettes pour les Bananas” (Beds she fell behind again and followed in oil left aboard was preceded by a minus for Bananas), with a story that we were our wake. About this time we found our sign; but, luckily, his calculations were going to run refugees to Palestine.