World War II was a devastating and horrific period for European Jews. However, very few understand that the oppression of these people did not end with the war. Most found themselves without a home to go back to. Others did not want to go home. Most wanted to escape Europe all together and return to a place where they felt they could be untouched, their motherland and holy land. At this time Jerusalem was in what was then Palestine, and some Jews did successfully and legally immigrate there. Yet, many more were forced into special camps for displaced persons (DP) because of the “White Paper Law” that was in effect by the British parliament, who ran Palestine as a province., limiting the number of Jewish immigrants into Palestine. Because of this, there were numerous underground and illegal Jewish movements working to get people into Palestine. One of these attempts arguably became the most famous illegal immigrant story of all time: the story of Exodus 1947.
It was a time when it seemed that European Jews, as Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist leader, woefully stated: “There are two sorts of countries in the world, those that want to expel the Jews and those that don't want to admit them.”1 It was not unheard of for the British to uncover an illegal immigrant movement and to send them to a new DP camp, the most famous of which was on an island in the Mediterranean, Cyprus. Unfortunately this island quickly became overcrowded with displaced Jews – over 26,000 holocaust survivors were living in conditions similar to the internment camps. There was not so much starvation or death, but the conditions were completely unsanitary. As Ruth Gruber, a Jewish News Reporter from Palestine stated, “You had to smell Cyprus to believe it...and you didn't believe it.”2 All ...