How a Group of Holocaust Survivors Defied the British Navy to Sail from Italy to the Land of Israel https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2021/01/how-a-group-of-holocaust-survivors-defied-the-british-navy-to-sail-from-italy-to-the-land-of-israel/

January 25, 2021 | Rosie Whitehouse
About the author:

As World War II came to an end, Jews who had lived through the camps and ghettos returned to their former homes in Eastern Europe to discover intense, and sometimes violent, hostility from their erstwhile neighbors, not to mention the encroachment of Stalinist tyranny. They thus left in droves for areas under control of the Western Allies, whence many hoped to immigrate to Palestine. But they soon discovered that the United Kingdom had slammed the doors to their homeland shut. Some 70,000 Jews thus made their way over the Alps to Italy, where a Zionist underground was working to secure their passage to the Land of Israel. In her recent book, The People on the Beach, Rosie Whitehouse tells this story, focusing on 1,300 young Jews who crammed onto the Josiah Wedgewood, a Canadian corvette, in 1946. She discusses her book in an interview with Rob Attar. (Audio, 44 minutes.)

Read more on History Extra: https://www.podbean.com/media/share/dir-qz3ju-cce2411