4/14 - The fourth of "my children" that came on the White Boats to Sweden and left 18th months later for Eretz Israel is Ofra Freiman Lustgarten.
When we met in Haida, she was first talking about her weight, when leaving Lübeck - 25 kg. About the trip to Sweden and the Emergency Hospital in Örebro. She remembered the names of her doctor and the nurses from the hospital. Looking through the book she got from SHMA, the Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association, she recognized herself and several others in the photos.
Thanks, Eli Nusbaum and Amir Roggel, for making this day so memorable for me, and I hope also for them 
 From Trelleborg in Sweden to Haifa. The SS Ulua (later renamed Haim Arlosoroff) was a ship carrying 1,378 Jewish Holocaust survivors to Eretz Israel. 650 of them came from Sweden. Most of them came to Sweden during the UNRRA White Boat mission at the end of WWII. In February 1947, it was intercepted by the British Royal Navy as part of their efforts to prevent Jewish immigration. British troops (white helmets in this photo) are ultimately boarding the vessel. The ship ran aground near Haifa, where the passengers and crew faced intense confrontation with the British. Following the capture, most of the Holocaust survivors on board were deported to detention camps in Cyprus. |
