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| On the morning of February 21, 1947, Haim Arlosoroff חיים ארלוזורוב sailed from Metaponto, carrying 1,398 passengers, 27 crew members, and 8 members of Mossad leAliyah Bet. Gideon Hilb let me take photos of his fathers' (Gad Hilb*) maps that were used during the entire Ulua trip. |
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Captain of S/S Ulua, Gad Hilb cites: "A cable about 60 meters long was fixed from the ship to the shore and another 734 Ma’apilim were loaded onto the ship while Yehuda Arazi and Ada Sereni watched the operation from the ship. Among those Ma’apilim were 50 “orphans of Salvino”. Photos are taken from the movie about another boat with Maapilim called "Unafraid".
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The S/S Ulua (Haim Arlosoroff חיים ארלוזורוב) reached the bay of Terento close to Gallipoli, Italy. It was in the third week of February. At Gallipoli, several Maapilim came aboard. Thereafter, on the evening of February 20, 1947, Ulua-Haim Arlosoroff crossed 54 miles from Gallipoli to Metaponto Beach led by a small boat operated by Mossad leAliyah Bet. At Metaponto Beach, the Holocaust survivors were taken on board during the night and using rubber boats. Thus, instead of going to the port of Metaponto or any other ports in area where 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).
On the morning of February 21, 1947, Haim Arlosoroff חיים ארלוזורוב sailed from Metaponto, carrying 1,398 passengers, 27 crew members, and 8 members of Mossad leAliyah Bet.
To fool the British intelligence, 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 it continued north along the coast at Gaza and Ashkelon. All this, to avoid the British warships 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. Soon five ships of the British navy: “St. Austell Bay”, “Welfare”, “Chevron”, “Rowena” and “Chieftain” joined the ship, while the Haim Arlosoroff continued sailing towards the Gulf of Haifa.
Fight onboard was between Maapilim and British soldiers and was described by several crew members and by Maapilim, a.o., by Chaim Kozieniceki and Lola Preis (directly to me).
Gad Hilb, the captain of Ulua wrote:
In the early morning of the 28th, the “Ulua” made a sudden dash for shore at full speed, surprising the British and dashing towards the port of Haifa. The Star of David was now flying from the mast and all the ma’apilim sang Hatikvah. A series of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers followed, between the “Ulua” and two of the British ships that tried to squeeze the “Ulua”, now the “Chaim Arlosoroff”, between them. During this maneuver, two officers and several British sailors jumped onto our ship and hand-to-hand fighting took place between them 4 and the ma’apilim. When the marines threw tear gas into the engine room, Ephraim Tzuk and his men were forced to evacuate, but not before the ship ground to a halt on the rocks of Ras-el-Krum opposite Bat Galim. (Unfortunately, a British camp was located there. Today this is a training base of the Israeli Navy). Several of the ma’apilim from Trelleborg jumped into the water and got to shore where they were picked up by British soldiers and later placed together with those who had remained on the ship. All the passengers and crew of the “Ulua” had arrived safely on this, the longest voyage by any ship during the entire period of Aliya Bet. The voyage had taken 34 days, the ship had traveled a distance of 4,500 nautical miles and had called at 5 ports and 3 other stops.
The crew of Ulua, now renamed to Haim Arlosoroff managed finally 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 in Cyprus.
Citations on the internet about the Maapilim picked up in Italy:
Avrum Shavit cites: "We waited ten days and then the “Chaim Arlosoroff” arrived from Sweden. All 700 of those who had been on the “Shabtai Luzinski” boarded this ship, and we sailed smoothly towards Palestine for four days."
Gad Hilb cites: "A cable about 60 meters long was fixed from the ship to the shore and another 734 Ma’apilim were loaded onto the ship while Yehuda Arazi and Ada Sereni watched the operation from the ship. Among those Ma’apilim were 50 “orphans of Salvino”. We also took on board Yechezkel Maoz, a Palyamnik, and two returning soldiers; Avraham(Avrum) Shavit and Yaakov(Yankale) Arnon. Yehuda, Ada, and the three Alon's boys left the ship, and on the morning of the 21st of February, 1947 we pulled away from shore to sea with a total of 1,398 ma’apilim, 27 members of the crew and 8 men of the Mosad for Aliya Bet (1,433 souls)."
*Gad Hilb was captain of the “Ulua” (“Chaim
Arlosoroff”).
** 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.
