Mapa sisters and Ma’apilim from Sweden - First with White boats and White buses to Sweden - Thereafter with Aliya Bet boat to Eretz Israel

Swedish Ma'apilim. To Sweden April-July 1945. From Sweden January 24, 1947.

Two sisters, 14 and 16, were locked in a cattle car in the middle of winter. One girl’s body became frozen and stuck to the side of the car. The other girl used her body to warm and unstuck her sister’s body. Mapa sisters?

Mapa sisters Entry cards to Sweden and adjacent on top of them Departure card with red stamp Trelleborg January 24, 1945. On that day S/S Ulua left Sweden with 640 Ma´apilim.

One of very first informations about Ulua in Swedish press appeared in TRELLEBORGSTIDNINGEN 1947-01-22. Information about it was delivered on January 21, 1947, two days before Ma´apilim borded the train to Trelleborg.

Eugene D. Alexanders Aliya Bet name was Mickey, sometimes Mickey Mouse. The Ma’apilim called him in this way. He was a crew member of S/S Ulua, the illegal boat from Trelleborg to Eretz Israel.

Eugene D. Alexanders Aliya Bet name was Mickey, sometimes Mickey Mouse. The Ma’apilim called him in this way. He was a crew member of S/S Ulua, the illegal boat from Trelleborg to Eretz Israel. Hew wrote in his repport from this trip:
I was to get to know and to like these young women and become quite horrified by some of the stories they told. The one that sticks with me the most (and not the most horrible).
It is about these two sisters, they were 14 and 16, locked in a cattle car in the middle of winter. One girl’s body became frozen and stuck to the side of the car. The other girl used her body to warm and unstuck her sister’s body.

There were two Mapa sisters that came to Sweden "from the camps" at the end of WWII and later became Maapilim - Holocaust survivors making their way to Eretz Israel. One of the ships carrying hopeful immigrants was called Hama’apilim or Ma´apilim, hence the name for the entire movement.

S/S Ulua, British intelligence and Mossad

British intelligence started to follow S/S Ulua already on its way to Sweden from France. When in Denmark they tried to stop the ship by informing Danes that it was a slave ship to transport white whores or similar. 

When S/S Ulua left Denmark for Sweden it choose another port to pick upp Swedish Ma´apilim, Trelleborg port instead of Gothenburg. Later when S/S Ulua arrived in Le Havre from Sweden at the end of February 1947 at the insistence of the British Embassy, the boat was prevented from leaving on the basis that she was unseaworthy to carry so many passengers. The commander on board, Arieh Eliav (25 y.), telephoned the Mossad office in Paris, requesting help to get ship to be released. Thereafter, the maritime direction in Le Havre port issued a seaworthiness certificate for the boat and Ulua was able to continue her journey. The ship at the end of February reached the beach Terento (February 21st) close to the port of Metaponto, Italy.  At the beach Terento the Holocaust survivors were taken on board during the night and using rubber boats. Thus, instead of going to the port of Metaponto the the authorities might try to stop the ship. 684 additional Ma´apilims (75% men) on board. Previously it had 644 Maápilim from Sweden (550 of them were women.) There were a total of 1384 immigrants on board when leaving Italy.

To fool the British again, S/S Ulua sailed from the beach Terento to the Turkish coast through the North of Rhodes to Port Said in Egypt and first from there north along the coast at Gaza and Ashkelon in order to avoid the British war ships patrolling close to the ports of Jaffa and Haifa. However, the British reconnaissance aircraft spotted S/S Ulua on February 27th, about 60 km from Port Said, Egypt. Five destroyers joined it, and the Haim Arlosoroff continued sailing towards the Gulf of Haifa. The crew of Ulua, now renamed to Haim Arlosoroff managed to fool the destroyers and crash the ship on the rocks of Bet Galim, near Haifa. Unfortunately this last event occurred opposite a British military base and Casino there. Almost all passengers were imprisoned by the British and transferred on British Navy prison ships to the detention camps on Cyprus..

S/S Chaim Arlosoroff - S/S Ulua after being chased by British warships, it was crashed onto the Haifa shores. British military was prepared and waited on the shore close to Casino.

The story of the first ma’apilim appears in the Torah (Numbers 14:39-45). After Moses announces the punishment for the sin of the spies, that the generation who left Egypt will have to spend 40 years in the desert and will never enter the Land, some people declare that they will go up to Israel anyway. Moses warns them against it as God will not be behind them. But they go anyway and are completely wiped out by local tribes. Their premature attempt to enter Israel is described by the word vaya’apilu, a word deriving from ofel, which means a fort or tower, whose verb form connotes some type of fortitude.

På eftermiddagen kom vi fram till Famagusta på Cypern. I små grupper gick
vi iland och klättrade upp i öppna, bevakade lastbilar. Det var tre kilometer till
lägret, och hela vägen var kantad av lätta tanks. Själva lägret var inhägnat av två
taggtrådsstängsel. Jeepar patrullerade där.
Ovanför taggtråden med jämna avstånd satt vakter på höga träställningar, utrustade med starka strålkastare. Bakom stängslet, bland förkrympta eukalyptusträd, syntes tröstlösa rader av tält och små tvättstugor. Och ännu flera vakter. "Mauthausen!" skrek mina kamrater. "Dachau! Birkenau !"