80 years ago, on 25 November 1940 in Haifa Port, the SS Patria was bombed, killing 250 people. It’s a story that has been all but forgotten but which needs to be remembered. And, as you will see, I have a very personal, even incredible, reason why I am telling you this.
Prior to 1941, the Nazi policy to rid the Reich of its Jews was to promote emigration. In September 1940, Adolf Eichmann, who at the time supervised Jewish affairs in Vienna, arranged the charter of three ships to transport approximately 3600 Jewish refugees from Vienna, Danzig and Prague to Palestine — despite, or more likely because, it violated Britain’s restrictive Jewish immigration policy.
My mother’s family were from Vienna. Her sister, seven months pregnant, my uncle and their four year old son left Vienna on a paddle-steamer down the Danube, arriving in Tulcea, a Romanian port on the Black Sea, on 12 September, Yom Kippur. They were allocated places on the SS Atlantic, one of the three-ship convoy bound for Palestine. Engine and other technical problems meant they departed Tulcea a week or two after the other two ships, SS Pacific and SS Milos.
The Atlantic, an 80 year old barely seaworthy vessel with little or no sanitary facilities was designed to carry 250 passengers; more than 1700 Jewish refugees, facing a perilous 7 week journey, were crammed onto the vessel. Nearly four weeks out at sea, on 12 October in a primitive makeshift infirmary on board, my cousin, Uri, was born.
The SS Pacific and SS Milos reached Haifa Port on 1 November. The British, bent on refusing entry to Jews into Palestine, immediately transferred the refugees to another much larger ship docked in Haifa Port, the SS Patria. The Patria was meant to transport them to a British detention camp in Mauritius.
About 3 weeks later the Atlantic arrived, on 24 November. The immediate transfer of around 800 refugees, including my family, took place that day.
The next day, when about 850 were still to be transferred over from the Atlantic, there was a huge explosion on the Patria that ripped a gaping hole through the hull, sinking it within about 15 minutes.
Everyone on board was blown into the water.
More than 250 were drowned. The remaining 2000, including my aunt and uncle plus 4 year old Zeev and one month old baby Uri, somehow made it onto the quayside.
Following this, the British ordered that all the refugees be interned in Atlit, a British detention camp, 12 miles south of Haifa. (The camp is now a museum of the history of illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine and was declared a National Heritage site in 1987.) Their intention was to procure a replacement vessel to take all the refugees to Mauritius. Arranging this took at least a couple of months and during that time — most unexpectedly — the British had a change of heart, ruling that all the Patria survivors would be permitted to remain in Palestine. Good news for the majority, but the 800 or so from the Atlantic who hadn’t transferred onto the Patria were transported some weeks later to a British detention camp in Mauritius until the end of the war.
Who did it? And why?
The who is well known: The Haganah. As to why: there are a number of versions. The principal (and hopefully the truthful) one, that the Haganah wanted to prevent the deportation so they hit on a plan to disable the ship’s engines by planting a small explosive. This would buy time during the repairs to persuade the British to cancel the journey to Mauritius. Unfortunately they grossly miscalculated the amount of explosive used, which resulted in the catastrophe.
But there is another, horrendous, version — that the Haganah saw this as an opportunity to draw the attention of the world to the plight of the Jewish refugees at the hands of the British, in the seemingly naïve belief that it would make a difference. The collateral damage — loss of Jewish life — was not going to stand in their way.
Whichever is true, the facts surrounding the Patria incident have largely been kept under wraps. But we should remember, because the Patria affair was the largest catastrophe in which Jews caused the death of other Jews.
For my two cousins, both alive and well in Israel at ages 84 and 80 respectively, that is not the end of the story.
Fast-forward to 2012 and a chance conversation with my friend Francis in Finchley. We had started talking about our respective backgrounds. What emerged was, for me, mind-blowing.
My mother came from Vienna, his father from Prague. I explained how my mother came to England in May 1939 on a so-called ‘domestic’ visa and Francis told me that in 1940 his father had left Prague, making his way to Tulcea on the Black Sea where he boarded an illegal refugee ship bound for Palestine. Naturally Francis couldn’t understand why I appeared dumbstruck when he told me the ship’s name: the SS Atlantic.
I explained that my aunt and her family were also on that awful ship and that my cousin was actually born on it somewhere in the Mediterranean. He went on to tell me that his father had befriended a teenage girl on the Atlantic, Anina Korati, who was still alive at age 90 or so, living on a kibbutz. I felt sure my cousins would be interested to meet up with a fellow SS Atlantic seafarer, so I immediately got in touch with them with the lady’s contact details. Within a week, they went to visit her on the kibbutz. Of course they had never met before. Or so they thought.
She told them she had been a helper in the ship’s infirmary, doing whatever she could as a novice nurse. When she heard about Uri being born on the ship, it reminded her that she had been standing immediately outside the infirmary’s tent-like entrance, waiting to be called if needed, whilst a baby boy was being delivered by one of the 4 doctors on board.
She recalled that on hearing the baby crying, a gentleman stepped out — Uri’s father — inviting her to join him for a L’chaim on the birth of the baby.
Here was my cousin Uri in 2012 at age 72, facing the nurse who was there, on hand to assist in any way she could, at his birth.
This unlikely story emerged from a random chat with a friend in Finchley, all those years after the event. For some it may sound like a tale from The Twilight Zone, but it all really did happen.
