Patria Disaster - Wikipedia

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Patria disaster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patria_disaster

Coordinates: 324848N 35137E

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Patria disaster was the sinking on 25 November


1940 by the Haganah of a French-built ocean liner, the
11,885-ton SS Patria, in the port of Haifa, killing 267
people and injuring 172.[1]
At the time of the sinking, Patria was carrying about
1,800 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe whom
the British authorities were deporting from Mandatory
Palestine to Mauritius because they lacked entry permits.
Zionist organizations opposed the deportation, and the
underground paramilitary Haganah group planted a bomb
intended to disable the ship to prevent it from leaving
Haifa.

SS Patria sinking in Haifa port

The Haganah claims to have miscalculated the effects of


the explosion. The bomb blew the steel frame off one full side of the ship and the ship sank in less than 16
minutes, trapping hundreds in the hold. The British allowed the survivors to remain in Palestine on
humanitarian grounds. Who was responsible and the true reason why Patria sank remained controversial
mysteries until 1957, when Munya Mardor, the person who planted the bomb, published a book about his
experiences.[2]

Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Background
Disaster
Aftermath
See also
References
Other sources
Further reading

Background
Before the government of Nazi Germany decided in 1941 to exterminate all Jews in Europe, its policy
allowed the reduction of Jewish numbers in Europe by emigration. Jewish organizations, both mainstream
and dissident, ran operations that tried to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine in violation of the immigration
rules applied by the British government.
This required cooperation with the Nazi authorities, who saw the opportunity to make trouble for Britain as
well as to get rid of Jews. The Zentralstelle fr jdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish
Emigration or ZjA) worked under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann, organizing Jewish emigration from
the Nazi-controlled parts of Europe. In September 1940 the ZjA chartered three ships, SS Pacific, SS Milos
and SS Atlantic, to take Jewish refugees from the Romanian port of Tulcea to Palestine. Their passengers
consisted of about 3,600 refugees from the Jewish communities of Vienna, Danzig and Prague.
Pacific reached Palestinian waters on 1 November, followed by Milos a few days later. The Royal Navy

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intercepted the ships and escorted them to the port of Haifa. Warned in advance of the ships' arrival, the
British Colonial Office was determined to refuse entry to the immigrants. With the security situation in the
region improving following British successes in the Western Desert Campaign, the Colonial Office decided it
was less risky to provoke Jewish anger than to risk an Arab revolt, and that an example would be made to
dissuade other potential immigrants from making the attempt.
The British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, issued a deportation order on 20
November, ordering that the refugees be taken to the British Indian Ocean territory of Mauritius and the
Caribbean territory of Trinidad.[3]
The refugees were transferred to another ship, SS Patria, for the voyage to Mauritius. Patria was an
11,885-ton ocean liner dating from 1913 that the French company Messageries Maritimes ran between
Marseille and the Levant. She had reached the Port of Haifa shortly before Italy declared war on France and
Britain, and then remained in port for safety. After the French surrender to Nazi Germany the British
authorities in Haifa first detained Patria and then seized her for use as a troop ship. As a civilian liner she
was permitted to carry 805 people including her crew, [4] but after being requisitioned she was authorised to
carry 1,800 troops (excluding the crew).[4] She still only had enough lifeboats for the original 805 passengers
and crew, so these were supplemented with liferafts.[4]
The refugees from Pacific and Milos were soon transferred to Patria. Atlantic arrived on 24 November and
the transfer of eight hundred of its 1,645 passengers began.

Disaster
Meanwhile, Zionist organizations were considering how to thwart the
deportation plan. A general strike had little effect. The Irgun tried
unsuccessfully to place a bomb on Patria to disable her.[5] The
Haganah also sought to disable Patria, with the intention of forcing
her to stay in port for repairs and thus gaining time to press the
British to rescind the deportation order. The Haganah officer in
charge of the operation was Yitzhak Sadeh, authorised by Moshe
Sharett, who led the Political Department of the Jewish Agency in the
temporary absence of David Ben-Gurion, who had left for the United
States on 22 September and did not return until 13 February 1941. [6]

Graves of some of the victims of the


sinking

On 22 November Haganah agents smuggled a 2-kilogram (4.4 lb)


bomb aboard the ship, timed to explode at 9 p.m. that day. It failed,
so a second, more powerful bomb was smuggled aboard on 24 November and hidden next to the ship's inner
hull. At 9 a.m. on 25 November, it exploded.[7] The Haganah had miscalculated the effect of the charge and
it blew a large hole measuring 3 by 2 metres (9.8 ft 6.6 ft) in the ship's side, sinking her in only 16
minutes.[8]
When the bomb exploded, Patria was carrying 1,770 refugees transferred from Pacific and Milos and had
taken on board 134 passengers from Atlantic. Most were rescued by British and Arab boats that rushed to the
scene.[9] However, 267 people were declared missing over 200 Jewish refugees [1] plus 50 crew and British
soldiers and another 172 were injured. Many of the dead were trapped in Patria 's hold and were unable to
escape as she rolled on her side and sank. [10] 209 bodies were eventually recovered and buried in Haifa. [11]

Aftermath
The surviving refugees from Patria, together with the remaining 1,560 passengers of Atlantic, were taken to

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the Atlit detainee camp. Later, after an international campaign, the survivors of Patria were given permits to
stay in Palestine. However, the other Atlantic passengers were deported to Mauritius on 9 December. After
the war they were given the choice of where to go; 81% chose Palestine and arrived there in August 1945.
In December 1945 Ha-Po'el ha-Tza'ir ("Young Worker") a Mapai party newspaper, commented "On one
bitter and impetuous day, a malicious hand sank the ship". The comment was written by the deputy editor,
Israel Cohen, who did not know that all of the people responsible were Mapai leaders. [9] Angered by the
newspaper's comments, some Haganah leaders sent Ben-Gurion's son Amos to the newspaper office where
he slapped the editor, Isaac Lofven, across the face. [9]
A bitter debate over the correctness of the operation raged in secret
within the Zionist leadership. The decision had been made by an
activist faction, without consulting more moderate members
according to normal procedure, and this caused serious internal
divisions that persisted for many years. An effort was made to
enshrine the incident as an icon of Zionist determination, but this
largely failed.[9] As early as 15 December 1945 Isaac Lofven warned
a Mapai meeting against trying to "sanctify" the tragedy.[12]
Some leaders of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine)
A nameplate preserved from Patria
argued that the loss of life had not been in vain, as Patria 's survivors
had been allowed to stay in the country. Others declared that the
Haganah had had no right to risk the lives of the immigrants, as they had not decided of their own free will to
become participants in the underground Jewish conflict with the British authorities. [13]
The Haganah's role was not publicly revealed and a story was put out that the deportees, out of despair, had
sunk the ship themselves (the version recounted, for example, by Arthur Koestler[14]). For years Britain
believed the Irgun was probably responsible.
The Haganah's role was finally publicly disclosed in 1957 when Munya Mardor, the operative who had
planted the bomb, wrote an account of his activities in the Jewish underground. He recounted, "There was
never any intent to cause the ship to sink. The British would have used this against the Jewish population
and show it as an act of sabotage against the war effort".[15][16] He said that it was in the highest interest of
the Haganah to fight the sanctions of the British White Paper of 1939, and the primary objective was to avoid
casualties.[15] The British estimated 267 people were killed, [11] but neither the Jewish Agency nor the
Haganah could establish how many people escaped the sinking and how many had died. [15]
Munya Mardor continued to work at the port in order to remove suspicion from himself. [15] The Haganah
also put up an investigative body to find out why such a relatively small amount of explosives could create
such a large hole in the ship. The Haganah investigators concluded that the boat's superstructure was in poor
condition, and therefore unable to withstand the pressure of the explosion. [15]
Rudolf Hirsch, a Jewish-German writer who had emigrated to Palestine in 1939, was a close associate of
Arnold Zweig there, and later remigrated with Zweig to East Germany, published a novel about the incident,
Patria Israel,[17] in which he also explicitly refers to Mardor's account.

See also
Aliyah Bet
SS Exodus
SS Ocean Vigour
Struma disaster

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References
1. "Deaths of 260 in 1940 ship explosion commemorated". JWeekly.com. San Francisco Jewish Community
Publications Inc. 14 December 2001.
2. Mardor, Munya Meir (1970) [1957]. Shelihut Alumah: Pirke Mivtsaim Meyuhadim Be-Maarkhot Ha-Haganah (in
Hebrew). Tel Aviv: Tseva haganah le-Yisrael, Hotsaat Maarakhot: Misrad ha-bitahon.
3. Bauer, Yehuda (1981). American Jewry and the Holocaust. Wayne State University Press. pp. 143144.
ISBN 0-8143-1672-7.
4. Pitot, Genevive (2000). The Mauritian Shekel: The Story of Jewish Detainees in Mauritius, 19401945. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 83. ISBN 0-7425-0855-2.
5. Bell, J. Bowyer (1996). Terror Out of Zion: The Fight for Israeli Independence. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction
Publishers. p. 53. ISBN 1-56000-870-9.
6. Friling, Tuvia (2005). Arrows in the Dark: David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv leadership, and Rescue Attempts During
the Holocaust. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 40, 44. ISBN 978-0-299-17550-4.
7. Penkower, Monty Noam (2002). Decision on Palestine Deferred: America, Britain and Wartime Diplomacy.
London: Routledge. pp. 5559. ISBN 0-7146-5268-7.
8. Stein, Leslie (2003). The Hope Fulfilled: The Rise of Modern Israel. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group.
pp. 227228. ISBN 0-275-97141-4.
9. Chazan, Meir (2003). "The Patria Affair: Moderates vs. Activists in Mapai in the 1940s". Journal of Israeli
History. 22 (2): 6195. doi:10.1080/13531040312331287644.
10. Ofer, Dalia (1990). Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel, 19391944. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. p. 35. ISBN 0-19-506340-6.
11. Perl, William R. (1979). The Four-front War: From the Holocaust to the Promised Land. New York: Crown
Publishing Group. p. 250. ISBN 0-517-53837-7.
12. [ Malicious Hand]. News1 (in Hebrew). IL. Retrieved 4 March 2013.
13. Ofer, Dalia (2004). "A Dual Perspective: Yaakov Shabtai and the Historian's Account of the Deportation to
Mauritius". In Lentin, Ronit. Re-presenting the Shoah for the Twenty-first Century. New York: Berghahn Books.
p. 95. ISBN 1-57181-802-2.
14. Koestler, Arthur (1983) [1949]. Promise and Fulfilment Palestine 19171949. London: Macmillan Publishers.
p. 60. ISBN 0333351525.
15. Feld, Eva (August 2001). "The Story of the S/S Patria". Jewish Magazine. IL.
16. Nasr, Kameel B (1997). Arab and Israeli Terrorism. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. p. 22. ISBN 0-7864-0280-6.
17. Hirsch, Rudolf (1983). Patria Israel. Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag. ISBN 3-7352-0071-0.

Other sources
Wasserstein, B (1979). Britain and the Jews of Europe 193945. Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. not
cited. ISBN 0198226004.
Ofer, Dalia (1984). "The Rescue of European Jewry and Illegal Immigration to Palestine in 1940.
Prospects and Reality: Berthold Storfer and the Mossad le'Aliyah Bet". Modern Judaism. 4 (2):
159181. doi:10.1093/mj/4.2.159.
Ramona, Philippe. "Le Patria". L'Encyclopedie des Messageries Maritimes (in French). Philippe
Ramona.

Further reading
Friedmann, Ronald (1998). Exil auf Mauritius 1940 bis 1945. Report einer "demokratischen"
Deportation jdischer Flchtlinge (in German). Berlin: Edition Ost. pp. not cited.
ISBN 3-932180-29-1.
Gruber, Ruth (1999). Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation. New York: Crown Publishing
Group. pp. not cited. ISBN 0-8129-3154-8.
Holly, David C (1995). Exodus 1947. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. pp. not cited.
ISBN 1-55750-367-2.
Steiner, Gershon Erich (1982). Story of the Patria. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust

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Memorial Museum. ISBN 0-8052-5036-0.


Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Patria_disaster&oldid=732845971"
Categories: Mandatory Palestine Maritime incidents in Israel Maritime incidents in November 1940
Jewish immigrant ships Ship bombings Migrant boat disasters British Empire in World War II
Mandatory Palestine in World War II

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