soc.history.war.world-war-ii

I refute the dismissal by the previous poster of the events concerning
the "Exodus 1947" ship and the "1947 Incident" recorded in both Jewish
and world history. I, therefore, submit further accounts and
references to what I posted earlier concerning the "Exodus 1947"
incident to substantiate the claims involved therein involving postwar
anti-semitism:

1) From Ruth Gruber herself in an interview for the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum:

RUTH GRUBER:
I was a journalist who felt that I had to shake the world by the
lapels and say: "Wake up! Look what's happening to people who've
suffered so much. Look what's happening to these Jews, the Jews of the
Exodus."

DANIEL GREENE:
In her 96 years, Ruth Gruber has been a witness to history. As an
American exchange student in Germany during the 1930s, she saw
Hitler's plans unfold. As a journalist covering World War II, she
accompanied a group of Holocaust survivors to New York. And,
immediately following the war, she covered the passage of the Exodus,
a ship filled with nearly 4,500 Jews trying to make their way to
Palestine. Gruber summarizes her legacy as fighting injustice with the
tools she knows best--her words and her photographs.

Welcome to Voices on Antisemitism, a free podcast series of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum made possible by generous support
from the Oliver and Elizabeth Stanton Foundation. I'm Daniel Greene.
Every other week, we invite a guest to reflect about the many ways
that antisemitism and hatred influence our world today. Here's
photojournalist Ruth Gruber.

RUTH GRUBER:
I loved German culture, German language, and German music, of course.
So I got a fellowship to Madison, Wisconsin, the German Department,
and from there went to Germany for one year. And I watched Hitler
coming into power.

He had learned how to gather up different segments of the population,
telling each of them how the Jews were their enemy, how America was
evil. I can still hear that hysteria to this day. And I felt that that
voice I was listening to came not from the vocal chords, but from his
bowels. It was a hideous, hysterical voice.

When I got back to America, they said to me: "Why are you worried
about this guy? He'll be out in a year."

Even German Jews felt that way, this lunatic, this clown, this madman
who was promising everything to every group of people. How wrong they
were. And if you heard him and watched him, you knew this was no
clown. This was a future dictator, who knew just how to win people
over.

Yes, yes. I think that's what taught me that you have to be an
eyewitness to understand what's going on in the world.

When the war ended, people think that the Jews who had survived the
Holocaust would rush out of Auschwitz, and Bergen Belsen, all the
others, tear down that cynical sign: "Arbeit macht frei--Work makes you
free" and live happily ever after. That's not what happened. The Jews
who had survived, those who could walk, those who were healing, went
home but everybody was dead, and they knew they could no longer live
in these towns and villages, shtetls, where they had grown up.

And we were in Jerusalem when I learned that a ship called Exodus 1947
had been attacked by four British warships. And I remember sending a
cable to the Herald Trib saying it looked like a matchbox splintered
by a nutcracker. One whole deck had been wiped out. You saw mothers
looking for children. You saw children running around looking for
parents.

The British Parliament was debating what to do with them. It was heat,
105 degrees. After 18 days in that terrible heat, word came that the
Jews of the Exodus are going back to Germany. The world was so
outraged, that reporters came from Japan, from China, from South
America. And on the eighteenth day, the British Consul called us all
together and said, "We're going to take three reporters."

And they decided that I should represent the entire American press. I
think they've regretted it for 40 years--60 years!

So I climbed up to the topmost deck and when they saw me come up,
strong-armed young men, who looked utterly different from the way they
had looked in '46 when they looked like skeletons, raised a flag. They
had painted the swastika on the British Union Jack. I realized this
was a historic flag because in this whole miserable situation, they
had seen the way to defy the whole world.

And they said: "Go below. Go see our floating Auschwitz."

And I went below, to the holds. It was a scene out of Dante's Inferno.
You saw half-naked men, you saw women holding babies. And when they
found that a woman, an American, a Jew, somebody who spoke some of
their languages, especially German, they began to shout phone
numbers.

"My mother's in Chicago! My sister's in Detroit!"

All these numbers.

"Telephone them! Tell them I'm alive!"

They gave me all these little slips of paper. And I promised I would
call their relatives, and I did when I got home.

And then they said: "Take pictures! Show the world how we're treated,
in this darkness!"

And I began taking pictures. I don't know how, because I was blind.
The only light came from a little window. And I thought none of these
pictures will come out, and to my surprise, every one of them came
out. And that light was exactly right.

2) THE HAGANAH SHIP "EXODUS 1947":
Yetziat Eiropah Tashaz = Exodus from Europe 1947:

http://www1.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035//exodus1947.html

The entire account with photographic record that cannot be dismissed.

Rob