'Chaim Arlozorov' • The stationary ship in front of Bat Galim beach in Haifa | Shlomo Yuval

Haim Arlozorov and me

Haim Arlozorov, the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, was supposed to be at the top of the leadership of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel, had he not been murdered in 1933, in circumstances that remain shrouded in mystery to this very day.

The history of his short life invites the preparation of a script, which even a careless screenwriter would have a hard time destroying. The young man was - just for example - a close friend of Magda, who became a senior Nazi, as Himmler's wife... but this detail is the beginning of a story I did not intend to write, so I will correct the course...

From the day I stood up for myself as a child, I had a "family" relationship with Hashem Arlozorov, for reasons accumulated over the years: first I was born in a hospital cut off In the street that commemorates his memory. I spent the first 10 years of my life in our family apartment down the street at Arlozorov 1a, until the declaration of independence in 1948. Two years earlier, I found myself attracted to a ship that was stuck on a sandbar at Bat Galim beach. It was an immigration ship loaded with Holocaust survivors, pursued by the British Coast Guard, and the name of the ship, as hinted at in the title of the story - although it was a temporary name towards the end of its life - a ship "Chaim Arlozorov".

Here I will tell a little of what I gathered about the ship and the circumstances of its arrival at Bat Galim beach. The ship no longer exists, but it resides permanently in my memory pool, ever since my little foot stepped on its torn deck, the leg of an 8-year-old boy, who didn't know he deserved to be made human, to be afraid of ghost ships.

For many years I employed myself in studying the development of the Hebrew Defense Force and the activity of the Haganah, the Etzel and the Lehi during the British Mandate period, and I accumulated knowledge about unknown key figures, who persistently ask me to commemorate them. One of them, which is related to the immigration ship, the heroine of our story, will now receive the desired exposure.

In my search for a Jew with American citizenship, who purchased ships for the purpose of loading them with Jewish Holocaust refugees and shipping them to Israel, contrary to the wishes of the British government, I came across a man who was involved in the redemption of these Jews. was it Top of the line, a name that seems rare to me and hides a secret.

I searched on the Internet and in less visible sources, details about a person with a special last name - top, and it became clear to me that an American citizen with a pseudonym, purchased in the Americas, using a "straw company" behind which he hid Top of the line, 9 ships including a ship named "Aloa".

This ship has seen better days in military defense missions, since it was launched in 1912 as a coast guard ship. The Navy sold it in 1945 to a company in Honduras, which used it to transport bananas, until it was purchased by the straw company operated by Shmariahu.

The ship was purchased for Mossad Aliya B, to transport refugees to the Land of Israel. She was renovated in Baltimore by a team of volunteers who swore loyalty to the "Haganah" and then the ship sailed toMarseille in France, in preparation for her service in the immigration missions to Israel. Defense personnel loaded her with refugees in Sweden and France. The name of the ship was changed, as part of a struggle against the British rule that prohibited immigration to Israel, to the name - "Haim Arlozorov". She was appointed an honorable commander - Luba Eliav. Her first and last mission was to transport 1398 refugees to Palestine (AI), in an operation that made her, at the time of her destruction, the heroine of our story.

Before I delved into the ship's plots and started writing down what Li and Vela had, I gathered more information about Top of the line, in the years he lived among us. I planned to interview him in his old age, but I quickly realized that I had missed this opportunity. The main source of information was a publication in his memory initiated by his family, with the active participation of his friends in the kibbutz The House of Method.

This special man, a central hero in the plots Alia B, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, was killed in 1962 in a work accident in the olive groves of a kibbutz The house of the method Shabo lived after the establishment of the state, and he is 52 years old. In conversations with members of the kibbutz, it became clear to me that you can be killed when a basket at the end of a crane that helps harvest olives collapses on your head. Instead of an interview with the deceased, I received a booklet in his memory and a group of family photos that helped me decipher the mysteries of the name top. I learned that Shamariahu's father, Meir, who was the son of a teacher who taught Torah to the children of Israel in Jewish communities living in towns in White Russia, dreamed of the Land of Israel, left Russia, immigrated to the United States, married a wife, and changed his last name totop. It was not a casual name, but a combination of letters that, in addition to being a Hebrew word that soars to the heights, formed the initials of a sentence that expresses a dream that is committed to come true:

Zion a sovereign state will be

Shamariahu, Meir's son, was born in the USA in 1910 and grew up as a Jewish-American child, and together with his father visited the Holy Land in the early 1925s. During the visit, the two decided to return and return as immigrants. But the father, Meir, fell ill with tuberculosis and died in the USA In XNUMX. His dream did not come true, but the words were engraved on his tombstone:

Hebrew, that the revival of our people in the land of our ancestors was his ambition and all his hope

Shmariahu decided to immigrate to Israel on his own and quickly became a Tel Avivian boy. He enrolled in Herzliya Gymnasium and lives, without family, in Tel Aviv. As part of his class, he came with friends to organize to establish a kibbutz and also joined the organization Defense. During his progress in the national service, Shmariahu's American passport became an essential item for his actions in the defense service, regarding immigration in the US and Europe. Shmariahu engaged, with a group of Jewish-Americans, in locating and purchasing small ships, which were designed to be suitable for transporting thousands of immigrants. He then moved to France and headed The activity in Europe for the concentration of candidates for qualification. He coordinated the coordination of the preparation of the refugees for the voyage and the preparation of the vessels for the voyage and the planning of the evasion from the arms of the British intelligence, who followed these operations on land, in the air and at sea. This organization is known today as the Mossad for Aliya B and its plots are slowly being revealed.

"Chaim Arlozorov" loaded 664 immigrants in Sweden, including 500 girls who survived the death camps, which the Germans transferred to Sweden towards the end of the war in a "deal" between the Swedes and the Gestapo. After that, the ship was delayed in the port of Algeria until the plan to approach the shores of the country was formulated. When the signal to sail was given, another 734 applicants were loaded onto the ship, in an Italian port, and the voyage to Eretz Israel began. 

On 27/2/1946, the ship was spotted by a British patrol plane, and the ships of the navy gathered around it, with soldiers on board who were ordered to capture the defectors using force, if necessary. The next morning, a fierce battle developed between British takeover teams and the defectors, which lasted for - 3 hours, while advancing towards Haifa, reported wounded from both sides.

In the inlets of the Haifa Bay, the crew managed to maneuver the ship, and by running strong engines, the ship reached the very shallow waters and got stuck in the sand, close to the shore. Unfortunately for the refugees, it happened at Bat Galim beach, right in front of the large British base that was located there, near the Pacific coast. The few illegal immigrants who jumped into the water and swam to shore were caught immediately.

A group of commanders and some crew members hid in the belly of the ship and managed to reach the shore the next day, under the cover of darkness. All those who qualified were deported to Cyprus and arrived in Israel after the establishment of the state and the departure of the British from the Land of Israel.

When word spread about the arrival of an immigration ship, I hurried to get there to Bat Galim's swimming pool. I climbed as usual to the jumping tower, which rises to a height of 10 meters, from where I could see the ship and plan an approach to it.

The ship tilted on its side and was stuck in the sand at a distance of 200 meters from the springboard and I examined, from the vantage point of the springboard, the suitable course for swimming towards the ship, considering the currents that I knew from bathing in the corner of the beach next to the pool. In my imagination rich in pirate plots, I imagined myself fulfilling a dream of boarding a ghost ship and finding reality in the belly of the silent cruise ship.

With the distance of time and the waning of my tendency to adventure, together with the fears I developed as an anxious parent to his children, it seems I did well not to tell anyone about my plans to visit the ship. But more important than a secret youthful adventure, I was left with a feeling of complicity in a historical event. A sense of historical satisfaction, that I too "was there", in the place where the survivors were gathered and rescued. Who else will be able to tell, in future generations, such a story from his memories...?

Now we will return from the future to the past, to the case of swimming to the ship. It was a dangerous adventure, even by the wild standards of my happy childhood years. I discovered that swimming near the hull of a vessel close to the shore is always a dangerous swim, because of currents and holes. And... I set out, brave and not wise.

When I arrived, as long as I could, at the ship's hull tilted on its side, I discovered that there was no way to climb from the sea to the deck, except by a rope prone to tearing, and before I despaired I found, luckily, a crack in the ship's hull, which served as a one-time opening for me to enter and exit.

Being on the ship, I stuck to lighted areas, because trying to move around in the dark interior was, even in my reckless opinion, particularly dangerous. I soon came to the conclusion that the pinnacle of my success was just getting to the ship and the success of getting on it in such difficult conditions. I was looking for a souvenir that I could show off to friends who didn't have my experience, and I found a life belt with the ship's address from its days as an American ship - ULUA - made of tarpaulin fabric and a rubber tube for breathing air for rescue in the way that, apparently, those trying to survive shipwrecks at the beginning of the 20th century used to do it.

Over the years the ship has become a nuisance. They saw it as an obstacle that burdened any attempt to develop the Bat Galim beach for the well-being of the neighborhood residents and fishermen seeking water sports and entertainment close to the sea.

Metal merchants have found a way to acquire the ship's skeleton, rusting idly close to the shore. One day, when the good sun did not rise, the ship disappeared from the landscape and all that remained of it in the Mediterranean Sea, on our shore of Bat Galim... Ripples of waves loaded with fading memories.

There are still those who seek to find a piece of metal from the broken body of "Haim Arlozorov", to be placed on the promenade Bat Galim, As a souvenir for those who are alive and especially for future generations, who do not know the details of the ship's operation, the sending of the Mossad to Aliya B, including its pilots, sailors and commanders. The story of one chapter from the plots of the "Wonderful Factory"Alia B"For the rescue of brothers, the remains of the Holocaust, from all over Europe and North Africa.