‘We lost the battle near Haifa, but we won the war of establishing the state of Israel’

But before the Exodus could reach Israel, it was attacked and seized by the British Royal Navy, and a crew member and two passengers were killed in the ensuing struggle. The ship was sent back to France, and the incident became a long-drawn-out saga as passengers refused to disembark.

“We were travelling to France with all the international media around us,” Itamar said. “I was ill. I was just about to die, but when we reached French coast, I was saved because there was fresh vegetables and fruit.”

Itamar at Ainring DP camp in July 1947, before the Exodus (photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

After weeks at sea, the British government transported the passengers to Germany, where they were forcibly removed and returned to displaced persons camps. The sight of Holocaust survivors being sent back to Germany provoked international outrage in Britain’s direction.

Ultimately, most of the passengers would reach Israel once it was established in 1948 – an event which might not have transpired without Britain’s very public embarrassment.

“Our leaders say we lost the battle near Haifa, but we won the war of establishing the state of Israel,” Itamar smiled.

He was speaking last week at an event for Repairing the Breach (RtB), hosted by Lord Eric Pickles and Rebecca Smith MP at the Palace of Westminster.

Lord Eric Pickles (left) with Lynn and Mike McNally, both directors of March of Life UK (photo: Mike McNally)[Missing Credit]

RtB works to build healing relationships between the UK and Jews who suffered under the British Mandate, by allowing “British Christians to acknowledge our sorrow and shame for British policies and treatment of Jewish people during [the British Mandate period]”, said founder Rosie Ross.

Itamar recounted an anecdote from his time aboard the ship which laid testament to the unshakeable and perpetual bond between Israel and her people.

“A teacher took us children, he gave us notebooks and pencils, and we stood in a [line],” he said. “Everybody put their paper on the back of their friend, and [the teacher] started to dictate Hebrew.”

“The British soldiers were sitting above, watching. The teacher translated the British soldiers as saying: ‘A nation which has such children, we shall never defeat them.’”

Dr Ariel Flat was also on the Exodus – as a three-year-old – and he concurred with Itamar about the sentiment of hope and pride among the ship’s passengers.

“[There were] many pregnant women and families with small children, and everyone’s purpose was to make [a] good future for them – some kind of liveable, honourable future for their children,” he said.

Three-year-old Flat in Germany, probably around the end of 1947 (photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]

Flat, who attended the event with his wife, Dorit, explained that his involvement with RtB was driven by a desire to understand what his parents had endured. “It was very important for me to see what my parents went through,” he said.

The powerful testimonies at the event precipitated an impromptu speech from guest David Hews, who served in the Royal Navy many years later.

“I just want to repent, on behalf of the destroyer men and as one myself – we are so sorry,” he said. “The present-day destroyer men would be sorry as well for what [their predecessors] did.”

Meanwhile, Dr Verity Steele – who interviewed guest speakers alongside Professor Maiken Umbach – spoke emotionally about her uncle, who served in the British Royal Navy, but had always been reticent about his time in the forces. 

Dr Verity Steele interviewing Dr Arie Itamar (photo: Ben Conway)[Missing Credit]

“In 2014 [several years after he died], I received his service record from my cousin,” she explained. “I took it down to the naval museum in Portsmouth and got it deciphered, and discovered he was on HMS Chequers, one of the four destroyers that converged on the Exodus.”

“This kind of hit me,” she continued, speaking through tears. “I think when it’s a family connection, it brings the history to life. I felt completely floored by it.”

“[I was] sad that my uncle had never talked. Sad that we, as a family, had not had the chance to own this history and express our sorrow.”

Another guest speaker was Maor Rozenberg, who was connected to the Exodus through his 93-year-old grandmother, Penina, who boarded the ship as a 13-year-old.

“My grandmother's strongest memory from the Exodus ship is the battle with the British soldiers in the port of Haifa” the 23-year-old said. “She is immensely proud of herself and the young people who fought soldiers with weapons without anything – with sticks, with potatoes, with cans.”

“For her, it stands as a testament to the inner strength of people who were fighting for a noble cause – immigrating into the holy land of Israel.”

Rozenberg’s family are among the founding members of Kibbutz Nir Oz. Around a quarter of its 400 residents were killed or abducted on October 7 – including Rozenberg’s relatives Dolev Yehoud and his sister, Arbel, and Arbel’s partner, Ariel Cunio. Dolev was killed while confronting Hamas, as part of the kibbutz’s initial response team; Arbel and Ariel were both kidnapped and kept isolated and abused in captivity, for 482 and 738 days respectively, before being returned alive.

Posters for three Israeli hostages, including Arbel Yehoud (photo: AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

“For my grandmother, it was the realisation of her greatest nightmare – to see what happened to her and her family happening again, but this time on Israeli soil, in the place that she worked so hard to ensure would be a safe haven for the Jewish people,” Rozenberg said.

“It really devastated her. From a very happy and optimistic woman, she became a very sad and pessimistic one for more than two years.”

Now, with the hostages returned to Israel, he says she is “in a much better place”.

For many of the passengers.the journey to France to arrive at the Exodus was about as treacherous as the ship’s journey

The Bricha movement was an underground network which helped Jewish refugees escape post-war Europe and make their way towards the land which would soon become the state of Israel.

“[My father] was recruited to be the commander of the Bricha in Poland,” said Dr Miri Nehari, who was among the post-Holocaust baby boom, born in 1946.

“Under his commands, about 200,000 Jews were fed, housed, clothed, and moved on to central Europe to go on their way to Israel. Abandoned orphans in the streets were also collected [and helped].”

Left to right: Rebecca Smith MP, Lord Eric Pickles, Dr Miri Nehari, Gilit Kalmanovich, Hanna Weiss, Professor Maiken Umbach, Rosie Ross, Dr Verity Steele, Lea Bahat, Igal Even-Ziv, Dr Arie Itamar, Maor Rozenberg, Dorit Flat, Lidia Newton, Dr Ariel Flat, Shlomo Nehari (photo: Mike McNally)[Missing Credit]

Hanna Weiss, another guest speaker, was also born in 1946 and immediately taken towards Italy with the help of the movement, where she and her family eventually boarded a ship to then-Mandate Palestine.

“My parents joined the Bricha and started a journey of four months,” she said. “They never knew their next stop or where they would sleep. They had to think about carrying a baby with them as well.”

“The most challenging part of the journey was climbing the Austrian Alps [at] 2650 meters [in altitude]. They were climbing for three nights in the snow, passing me in a straw basket from person to person.”

“Marching in the snow reminded [my mother] of the traumatic death march.”

Weiss’ daughter Gilit Kalmanovich spoke of the responsibility she feels to keep alive the lesser-known stories of the post-Holocaust years. She is studying for a PhD in Modern Jewish History at Ben Gurion University.

“The history of displacement and survival […] is the story of my family’s reality,” she said. “I carry profound responsibility to help shape how this history is remembered and understood in our time through research and documentation.”

“To know and to tell this story is imperative, so that such darkness may never be repeated.”

Rebecca Smith MP and Lord Eric Pickles (second and third from left) as guest speakers are introduced (photo: Ben Conway)[Missing Credit]

That same responsibility is felt by Rebecca Smith MP who hosted the event, alongside Lord Eric Pickles.

Smith is the Conservative MP for South West Devon. She travelled to Israel for the first time last year – thanks to Conservative Friends of Israel – where she visited Kibbutz Nir Oz and the Nova festival site. She also went on March of the Living, a silent walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, this year.

“Whenever anybody writes to me asking me to condemn what Israel are doing at the moment, it’s very helpful to be able to go back and say: ‘I appreciate your opinion, but having seen it for myself – not just having heard it, but to have seen the Nova site, to have met hostages and those who were waiting for their loved ones to return’… It definitely changes the perspective,” she said.

Pickles, who served for a decade as the UK special envoy on post-Holocaust issues, said “it became pretty clear” that his title was “phoney” because “we are not living in a post-Holocaust world… The issues that existed in the 1930s and the plight of the Jewish people are just [the same] now.”

Also in attendance was Adrian Cohen, senior vice president of the Board of Deputies, who described the British Mandate as “a shameful period”.

And Justin Welby, former Archbishop of Canterbury, provided the Church’s response, saying it was “a cause for repentance, sorrow, and acknowledgement”.

“Listen to the truth as to what the British did,” he said. “Listen to how we kept people from going to the land which they were intending to make sure was the one place of safety in the world, and how we stopped that.”