This week Yitzhak Aharonowitz Captain of the Exodus passed away. As a tribute to this hero, below is real story of the the Famous Voyage (which is much different from the movie).With the White Paper of 1939 the British caved into Arab pressure (that would never happen now--would it?) and severely limited the number of Jews that could enter what was then called Palestine.
During WW II it meant that they were causing the death of hundreds of thousands of Jews who could have escaped the Holocaust, had they a place that would take them in. After the Holocaust, many of Hitler's victims were trying to get in to the Holy Land. The British in their infinite wisdom threw these refugees back into camps this time on Cyprus.
Boris Agulnik was one of those refugees, he ended up on a ship called, The Exodus.
Boris Agulnik says that in 1947, after months of travel by train, foot and cart, his family made its way from the Russia-China border to Poking Pine City, the second largest German DP camp after Belsen. Their plan was to reach Palestine. "There, my sister Yudit was born and... I finally had my brit mila, at age three. There was no anesthetic and they said I screamed in Russian, 'Mommy, mommy it's painful.' Afterwards, I'm told, I used to proudly go around and boast, 'Now I am a Jew and I am going to Israel.'"
Few immigrants to Israel can claim that the story of how they arrived entailed a lengthy sea journey that was chronicled in daily newspapers around the world. How many have kept the El Al tickets from their aliya flight? But Agulnik proudly shows Metro his Exodus boarding pass.
While still in the camp, Agulnik senior was approached by the Hagana. Having been a battle-hardened colonel in the Soviet army, he was needed in Palestine. The family boarded a truck that was part of a convoy bound for Sete, a port near Marseilles. From there, they would be joined by other Holocaust survivors and displaced persons and would board the President Warfield, bound for Palestine.
"At the German-French border we were told to get out of the trucks and cross by foot. Scared that they would not allow us through with a three-month-old baby, my mother hid little Yudit in a box and left her on the truck. At the other side, after [the] nerve-wracking process at passport control, my anguished mother rummaged through the boxes until she found my sister, who was crying from hunger and fear," Agulnik recalls. "One of the French soldiers noticed the commotion, but when he saw [my mother] breastfeeding Yudit, he tactfully looked away."
"Looking away," however, was something the British refused to do. After setting sail on July 11, the President Warfield soon had company. The British Royal Navy began tailing the vessel, despite its Columbian flag. Soon, there was little point in pretense. The destination was Palestine, and the ship - under the command of young American Yitzhak Aharonowitz and his mainly American crew of Jewish ex-servicemen - was ready to convey a message to the world.
One can imagine the outcry after the ship's real name was revealed in bold lettering: EXODUS. If any on board the British ship failed to understand the reference, they would have understood the unfolding drama when the Columbian flag was lowered and the Israeli one raised. The course of not only a ship, but a whole nation, was at stake.
"What was different about the Exodus," explains Agulnik, "was the massive number of passengers on board. Generally, the ships that had been bringing in illegal immigrants before were relatively small, carrying at the most a few hundred passengers. With over 4,500 on our vessel, the Hagana had upped the ante. The stakes were high!"
The British government, which wanted this evolving drama to reach a finale of its own choosing, ordered its Navy to hijack the ship.
Con't at link -- and continue reading about the reunion of Aharonowitz, at 84, with his First Officer.