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. 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. |
From Sweden to Eretz Israel in 1947.
Swedish Press Coverage of the Journey of Holocaust Survivors on S/S Ulua.
Abstract
At the end of WWII, thousands of Holocaust survivors came to Sweden. Most of them were young women and children, sick and emaciated after the years of horrors of Nazi persecution. They shared a common and tragic fate. In most cases, their mothers, fathers, and siblings were murdered, often in front of their eyes, during the Holocaust. Few expected to find a single surviving relative in their home countries. Despite considerable care and support received in Sweden, the majority of these young people had a clear desire to settle in Eretz Israel, then still the British Mandate of Palestine, with only some wanting to join relatives in the USA or South America.
The Jewish organization Halutz (Haluz) in Sweden tried to help Holocaust survivors. Already in October 1945, they assembled a list of over three thousand persons who registered their wish to move to Eretz Israel. However, the emigrants faced several obstacles, such as the British quotas for the number of Jews allowed to enter legally, the lack of appropriate transportation, and the need to obtain valid passports and entry visas.
In January 1947, it became technically possible to make the entire trip from Sweden to Haifa by boat and, at that time, it appeared to be the only feasible route for the sizable groups of people. Still, the Jewish organizations operated within very narrow margins of what was considered permissible by the British. This is why the S/S Ulua trip had to be handled in secrecy. While Sweden seemed to facilitate the departure of Jews, the Swedish media, apparently swayed by the British suspicion, treated the departure of the ship as a sensation worthy of the alarmist headlines and photos in the chief Swedish papers. At the same time, the content of the articles demonstrated a total lack of understanding and empathy for the special circumstances of the young Holocaust victims and a complete absence of respect for their desperate but courageous journey. Instead, the press focused on the inadequate conditions of the vessel and questioned the ability of the boat to reach its final destination. Particularly notable was the apparent disregard for the need to maintain secrecy with respect to the organization of the trip that the press manifested by disclosing information that could jeopardize the entire operation.
Introduction
Who were "Ulua Emigrants"?
The S/S Ulua ship departed from Trelleborg in Sweden on January 24, 1947. After the horrors of the Holocaust and the brief period of recuperation in Sweden, Ulua was to bring a group of Holocaust survivors to their destination, Eretz Israel, at the time still the British Mandate of Palestine. The British opposed immigration to the Mandate and the trip had to be secretive, was dangerous, and the goal hard to reach as history confirmed it.
"Ulua emigrants" were mostly women and children liberated in Bergen-Belsen by the British, who were brought to Sweden by the UNRRA White Boat humanitarian Mission in June-July 1945. A few of the passengers came to Sweden from Germany on the Red Cross White Buses, and some were children sent from Germany to Sweden in the so-called "Kindertransport" already before the war. Of the 650 Ulua passengers, 500 were women. All were united by a common and tragic fate that their mothers, fathers, and siblings were murdered during the Holocaust, and that they did not expect that a single family member could have been left in their home countries. For many of them, Europe was but the biggest Jewish cemetery! Some might have expected to meet distant relatives living in Eretz Israel (Mandate of Palestine) who emigrated before the war. To the objective observer, the circumstances of the Ulua passengers could only have inspired extreme sympathy and respect, but that, as we will demonstrate, was fully absent in the Swedish media coverage of the Ulua journey.
The plight of the survivors, Ulua passengers, can be dramatically illustrated by the picture taken in the women's camp in Bergen-Belsen. Here, sitting on the ground, two women peel potatoes for a meal in Bergen-Belsen, seemingly unaware of the abandoned naked corpses of the fellow prisoners who died before the liberation of the camp. A woman pictured in the background appears as if searching for relatives among the bodies. The woman in the front left of the picture has been identified as Alice Lok, and the woman lying on the ground is likely her sister, Edith, who later died at the British hospital in Bergen-Belsen. Subsequent research showed that Alice Lok had come to Sweden on the UNRRA White Boat M/S Kronprinsessan Ingrid that left Lübeck for Sweden on July 10, 1945.(Fig 1)
Surveying the archives, one gets the impression that the Swedish government was not opposed to the desire of the survivors to leave Sweden and might have even favored it. The survivors who found themselves in Sweden after the war would obtain passports of their country of origin, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary, from the appropriate consulates in Sweden (unless they could not bear contact with these consulates, in which case they were granted a Swedish foreign passport, a Främlingspass). In parallel, Swedish foreign passports were granted to a group of stateless Holocaust survivors, mainly German Jews who had been stripped of citizenship during the Nazi era. Possession of a passport was one of the two preconditions for embarking on a journey.
The second requirement to leave Sweden was a valid entry visa to a recipient country. And here the problem was solved through an action of the Jewish Refugees Welfare Society who obtained a group visa to Cuba. This particular group visa was issued on August 5, 1946, for a group whose personnel content was to be specified at a later date. Significantly, the visa was valid for only 6 months from the date of issue, or until February 5, 1947. This clearly suggests that the trip had been planned well before October 1946. And in fact, according to the documents in the Swedish National Archives, the authorities stamped the travelers' passports saying: "unimpeded departure before 31/10/1946" does not entitle the bearer to receive a ration card", indicating that the person would have left the country by the end of October 1946 and did not need a ration card. Since the trip was delayed until January 24, 1947, there was no chance of reaching Cuba before the expiry of the entry visa on February 5, 1947. And yet, the Swedish authorities were willing to look the other way. (Fig. 2)
Even with their shortcomings, the documents were found passable by the customs officers, but another obstacle loomed on the horizon. Apparently, the condition of the ship did not seem seaworthy to carry some 600 people to Cuba. In the end, the Trelleborg port manager was persuaded that the ship was to travel only to Le Havre, where it would be relieved by an ocean steamer. S/S Ulua traveled under the Honduras flag, underlining the fact that it was a third party rather than a Swedish expedition.
Significance of the Trip to the Press
It is evident from the survey of the Swedish press that the trip was treated in Sweden as a very newsworthy even sensational item. Articles about S/S Ulua appeared on the front pages of the newspapers, accompanied by photographs of the boat's journey. On January 31, 1947, a full week after S/S Ulua left Trelleborg, an article about the journey was placed on the front page of Dagens Nyheter, just next to a photo report from the funeral of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, who died in a plane crash at Kastrup Airport (Fig. 3)
Based on the statistics obtained from the digital searches at the Royal Library in Stockholm, "Ulua" as the keyword generates as many as twenty-five (25) articles published by Dagens Nyheter, followed by Svenska Dagbladet and Trelleborgs Tidningen with sixteen (16) each. By comparison, the evening papers, which often considered gossip and scandal seeking, had placed only a few articles on a later date. It is clear that in the case of Ulua, it is the morning newspapers that had attempted to present the ship's journey as a sensation of sorts, something normally attributed to the evening press. In this case, there were only nine (9) articles in Aftonbladet and only six (6) in Expressen.
These simple statistics and the content and placement of the articles show that it was the morning newspapers that fostered an atmosphere of sensation in the reporting on Ulua. Based on the above survey, while the evening newspapers shied away from emphasizing the event, the morning newspapers and Trelleborg Tidningen tended to portray the departure of Holocaust survivors to the Swedish public as a primary event requiring special attention. This was accentuated by the pointedness of the language and the choice of shockingly derogatory headlines. It was especially curious that supposedly serious morning papers such as Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet engaged in journalism based on secondary gossip rather than solid facts that would require describing the background and circumstances of the Holocaust survivors departure from Sweden and Europe. In contrast, uncharacteristically, reporting on "Ulua" was twice as frequent in the morning papers compared to the evening papers, leading to speculation that the press had been guided by reasons other than just journalistic curiosity.
The morning newspapers normally invest more than the evening newspapers in providing readers with in-depth reporting and background information but, their reporting on Ulua was scandalously low. Especially that all these newspapers had at their disposal an army of experienced reporters. Trelleborgs Tidningen's report at the quay appeared duplicated by the others who received information from the same source such as the telegram agency. Similarities in the published articles were striking, although some things were magnified or described more negatively than in other papers.
Information About the Trip
It is particularly striking how the newspaper articles of the time abstracted from the human factor of the Ulua expedition, presenting it as a curious anonymous event where a group of Jews was leaving Sweden in a substandard vessel for an unknown destination. Instead, one would expect a description of a dramatic scene where a number of people who shared the same tragic fate were finally trying to rebuild their lives. They experienced imprisonment in the ghettos, some as early as 1939, suffered in the concentration and death camps, witnessed annihilation of their younger siblings and parents in the gas chambers, during the death marches, experienced near-death conditions in Bergen-Belsen, and finally, at the end of the war, were rescued in Sweden, where they received life-saving care. There was no recognition that many were small children and lone travelers, the sole survivors of entire families. For that whole group, Europe was a large Jewish cemetery, and for most of them, there was no home to come back to, not only because of psychological barriers but also due to the hostility at home that awaited them. All that was missing from the press coverage. Ironically, the only "human" factor mentioned in one article was the voice of a young woman who, when asked about the purpose of the journey, apparently responded that she hoped to find a husband. Another was an amusing mention of the fancy signs marking Ulua's toilets: the ladies' decorated with a picture of an airily dressed woman on the door and the men's with a gentleman dressed in a tailcoat with a high hat in his hand, as reported by Expressen on departure day, January 24, 1947.(Fig.4)
The Leaks
The Jewish Refugees Welfare Society planned that S/S Ulua would depart on January 24, 1947, from the port of Trelleborg. Before the trip, the Holocaust survivors were to gather in safe, secret places, preferably near Trelleborg or along the Gävle-Stockholm railway line, and then Stockholm-Trelleborg. A chartered SJ train was to run the above routes the night between 23 and 24 January. Those who were notified were, of course, the Swedish passport and customs authorities, the port office in Trelleborg, and the SJ personnel (SJ Sveriges Järnvägar - Swedish Railway). Everyone else involved was to be kept in the dark until the last minute. The survivors who were to board the boat and who were still employed were not to inform their bosses about the trip, just not come to work at the appointed time. Information about the places where the survivors who were not to travel by train was also kept secret. Despite all of these precautions, the information about the trip leaked to the Swedish press, potentially jeopardizing the whole operation.
An information leak, "läckan" in Swedish, occurs when the secret information is spread outside an organization to unauthorized persons. It can be about the secrets that are spread to benefit the organization's enemy. A leak is used to stop or complicate a planned operation by spreading the secrets to the public via the mass media. To demonstrate that there was a leak surrounding the departure of the ship S/S Ulua from Sweden in 1947, I have performed a search of the archives of the articles published by the largest and most digitized Swedish newspapers available at the Royal Library in Stockholm.
The first newspaper to leak the information was Trelleborgs Tidningen, followed by Dagens Nyheter. The information seems to have reached the editors early, before 21 January 1947, because it was already published on January 22. The entire secret plan, including the places where the survivors would gather before the voyage, was published at the same time as the ship S/S Ulua stopped to stock up on fuel in Copenhagen, and when most of the future passengers were still spread over half of Sweden, from Malmö in the south to Gävle in the north.
The headline in Trelleborgs Tidningen said that " the so-called 'Judetransporten' (Jew-transport, transport of the Jews) has been planned since last autumn". This clearly indicates that the newspaper was aware of the trip earlier, but probably received a tip about its movement on January 21, 1947. That information may have been leaked to the other morning and evening newspapers, as Trelleborgs Tidningen already indicated in the headline that they knew about it all. The fact that S/S Ulua docked in Copenhagen was partly due to the ice situation, as the Swedish ports were not ice-free. Of course, it was also more convenient and safer for S/S Ulua to stock up and refuel on diesel in Copenhagen and come to Trelleborg just to swiftly pick up the passengers. Early in the morning of January 23, 1947, S/S Ulua sailed from Copenhagen and later, with the help of a Swedish pilot, docked in the port of Trelleborg, right by the quay track. At the quay in Trelleborg, it was met by a gathering of Swedish journalists and photographers.(Fig.5)
The Swedish news agency TT (Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå) apparently cabled all the newspapers on Thursday, January 23, with further details such as the destination of the trip (Cuba), the number of passengers (600), and that it would sail under the Honduras flag. It also informed that the crew was mostly Jewish and that the Jews who would board the ship mid-day on Friday were to arrive by the morning train from Stockholm. This brief information appeared in numerous newspapers, but it is not known if it was included in the TT-news broadcast by the national Swedish Radio. Once again, there was no mention of the circumstances of the travel by the Jews. Instead, the newspapers focused on the inadequate sleeping conditions on board and the insufficient supply of linen, considering the number of passengers.
It is my hypothesis that information leaked to the media came from the British government and the British security service, who wanted to stop the Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel. Most Displaced Persons (DP) camps were in Germany, and the majority of illegal transports of Holocaust survivors went through France as it was only a matter of crossing a single border on the way to coastal ports on the Mediterranean. Not to mention that, in France, there was also a strong Aliyah Beth network. The British government concluded an agreement with the French counterpart that the border stations would allow crossing only for the survivors equipped with valid visas. As most did not possess such visas, a trip by boat was an alternative route because it did not involve any border crossings. And this is exactly what was intimated by the Swedish newspapers that claimed the journey by boat was instigated by the fear of obstacles erected by the British Government in order to prevent the entry to Eretz Israel (the "promised land") by the Holocaust survivors. The papers wrote about a British naval ship that shadowed S/S Ulua, but often they disclosed that Ulua did not take the shortest way to LeHavre through the Kiel Canal within the British military zone, but instead traveled around to avoid the controls.
Evidently, to disarm the operation, reportedly, the harbormaster in Copenhagen received pertinent information from the British that S/S Ulua was to transport young women to the brothels of South America and that they should be detained in Copenhagen to stop the illegal activity. Fortunately, the harbormaster, a member of the Danish resistance movement, was forewarned about the final destination of the voyage and he simply wished Ulua's captain good luck before the boat left Denmark. The fact that the British followed S/S Ulua had been reported in the New York Times on January 24, 1967, and confirmed in the Swedish newspaper Expressen the next day.
Mainly through the information from the British press, the Swedish newspapers continued to report on the progress of S/S Ulua's journey along the coastline in Europe and then in the Mediterranean. At the same time, the purpose of the entire trip and the nature of its passengers were rarely mentioned, as if the trip itself was veiled in mystery.
When S/S Ulua arrived in Le Havre from Sweden at the end of January 1947, the British authorities initially tried to stop it because it was unseaworthy to carry so many passengers. To get the ship released, the 25-year old Ulua commander, Arieh Eliav, telephoned the Mossad office in Paris (Szwarc 2006), requesting help to get the ship moving. The commander's account gives testimony to the direct assistance he received from Jules Moch, the French Minister of Transportation. As a result, the maritime direction in the port of Le Havre issued a certificate of seaworthiness for the boat and S/S Ulua was able to continue its journey. However, further obstacles by the British were anticipated when the ship commander received orders to pick up additional survivors stranded in Italy. To avoid problems with the British, on February 21, 1946, instead of entering the port of Metaponto in Italy, the ship anchored close to the beach of Terento, where the Holocaust survivors were taken on board during the night, using rubber boats. In this way, some 684 additional survivors were successfully collected, bringing the total number of immigrants on board to 1384 on leaving Italy.
The language used by the Swedish Press
The press called the travelers "repatriandi", a seemingly ironic terminology, as these homeless people were not returning to their homes. At the same time, however, this was an official term used in Sweden for the war "refugees" coming to Sweden at the end of the war, while returning from the concentration camps, lagers, prisons, and other places as a result of the war. For example, the term "repatriandi" was used with respect to Polish, French, and Dutch concentration camp prisoners. The Jews have been excluded from that nomenclature at an early stage because it was understood that they really have nowhere to return to. Their homes have been taken over by others, and their families were completely wiped out. Nevertheless, in some reports, the Swedish journalists chose to use the term "repatriandi" when referring to the passengers of S/S Ulua as if to disregard the fact that the Swedish Refugee Council specifically excluded that term with respect to the Jews who lacked the protection of their homeland.
The peculiar thing about the Swedish newspaper articles about S/S Ulua's voyage is that, despite the large headlines and the extensive text, the journalists did not bother to explain the special case of the people on board and the desperate reason for their travel. At the same time, the press clearly described the abominable conditions of the boat that was barely seaworthy, and it clearly derided the ability of the boat to travel with so many people even for three hours to Le Havre.
The terms "Jewish refugees" and "repatriandi" are sometimes replaced by "Ulua passengers" and later by "Ulua immigrants", with the latter expression picked from the British media reflecting British opposition to immigration to Eretz Israel. The Holocaust survivors who were brought to Bergen Belsen from various camps at the end of WWII were named "Belsen prisoners". Belsen prisoners were people from different countries rescued in Bergen-Belsen by the British and who were carried on the UNRRA humanitarian Mission on White Boats to Sweden in June and July 1945. From the bias demonstrated by the press, it is evident that most of the names given to the ship and to the traveling survivors were either misleading or condescending.
The term "Judetransporterna" - "Jew-transports" was used in several articles about Ulua, and that term was also previously used in the Swedish press. In fact, a survey of the articles in the archives shows that it was precisely in 1942, the start of the Industrial Holocaust, when that expression gained its foothold in the press. "Jew-transport" referred to the trains from the ghettos in Poland that rolled towards the death camps, and again, in 1944 when the Holocaust of the Hungarian Jews started with the daily transports to Auschwitz, and in 1945 when "Jewish transports" meant a rapid evacuation of remaining prisoners to concentration camps in central Germany due to the impending offensive of the Red Army and the allied forces. (Fig.6)
Strangely enough, the keyword "Judetransporterna" or "Jew-transports" reappears in 1947 in connection with the departure of the survivors on S / S Ulua from Trelleborg. Based on readily obtainable statistics, "Belsen" as the keyword is found one hundred and sixty-two (162) times in Dagens Nyheter and one hundred and sixty-one (161) times in Svenska Dagbladet, the morning papers, and similarly one hundred and seventy-five (175) times in the evening newspapers Expressen and one hundred and forty-three (143) times in Aftonbladet.
Earlier in 1945, Dagens Nyheter and several other Swedish newspapers coined and used a more empathetic term, "Belsen prisoner" for Bergen-Belsen Holocaust survivors who came to Bergen-Belsen from various concentration camps and were brought to Sweden after. liberation of the camp at the end of WWII. One would expect the use of that term with respect to Ulua passengers who were recruited from this group. Instead, Ulua passengers were treated as an anonymous group carried by a "Judefartyg" ("Jewish ship") under "mysterious" and "obscure circumstances". One of the organizers of the trip, Günter Cohn, was called "the tour guide" or "manager" and its April 12, 1947 article, Expressen, wrote about "Jewish traffic" while relating the information about the British inquiry and discussions with the Swedish Foreign Ministry.
On April 12, 1947, Expressen reports that the British asked the Swedish Foreign Ministry to investigate whether Sweden did not become a center for illegal Jewish emigration. According to the paper, Sweden had assured the British that they had no legal means to prevent the Jews from leaving the country and even promised to undertake a thorough investigation by the Swedish police. EX\xpressen nevertheless uses the pejorative term "Jew traffic" and calls the departure of Holocaust survivors from Trelleborg, "the Ulua" affair, suggesting an improper event. (Fig.7)
Follow Up on the Trip
Circumstances of the "Uluaresan" (Ulua trip) will not be known in the Swedish media until March 11, 1947. Dagens Nyheter is actually the only newspaper that provides some explanation, if indirectly, because in 1947 their reporters visited those Belsen survivors who stayed behind in Sweden ("Belsenungdom", the Belsen Youth). Young Belsen Holocaust survivors of the concentration camps brought to Sweden mainly on UNRRA's White Boats, were comrades, former fellow prisoners of those who previously had left Sweden on Ulua. Their description as orphans, half of them marked by tuberculosis, indirectly informed about the Ulua crowd.
Based on my previous research, published in 2020, "The Liberated 1945, White Boat Mission from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden", after a period of recuperation, almost all survivors wanted to leave Sweden in 1946. The countries they wanted to go to were mainly Eretz Israel, then the Mandate of Palestine and/or America. Few wanted to stay in Sweden or return to their home countries. That desire was already demonstrated at the time of registration and at the issuance of the so-called DP-2 cards. And the same wish was evident at Belsenungdom, when Dagens Nyheter visited on March 11, 1947. Tragically, the Holocaust survivors who left Sweden on S/S Ulua were taken by British prison ships to internment camps in Cyprus, put behind barbed wire, and guarded by armed British soldiers, reminiscent of the guards in the concentration camps just a few months before.(Fig.8)
In March 1947, the newspapers published information about what happened to those who left Sweden on S/S Ulua, later renamed "Haim Arlosoroff". They described their capture by the British and their life in an internment camp in Cyprus. According to the article in the Daily Telegraph published on March 1, 1947, the ship "Haim Arlosoroff", carrying 1,378 passengers from Sweden and Italy, was stopped on February 27, 1947, by the British. The Royal Navy fighter HMS Chieftain and other hunters repeatedly tried to get over the ship, but they encountered hard resistance. The ship was then deliberately sunk at Bat Galim, just south of Haifa, opposite a British army camp. The crew and passengers were arrested and deported to Cyprus. And yet, despite the hardships, a letter from the camp in Cyprus published later by Dagens Nyheter clearly indicates that the prisoners did not regret their trip and would have done it again. They looked forward to being transferred to Eretz Israel as soon as current quotas for Cypriot prisoners would allow it. (Fig.9)
As described in the book by Inga Gottfarb who spoke with the Jewish leaders in Sweden at the time, people in Jewish circles were very worried about the press. Everyone was well aware that the Swedish government's positive attitude towards emigration could change overnight. Newspaper coverage could easily provoke strong protests and pressure from the British government to stop the trip, and this was to be avoided by all means. This is why the information about the boat's arrival in Sweden was kept top secret. As recorded in the Gottfarb book, Günter Cohn, "the tour guide" of the trip, confirms both the plan for the journey and the generally favorable attitude of the Swedish authorities towards those passengers who obtained their home countries' or aliens' passports and visas. The exception was Swedish citizens who were not allowed to leave. Cohn shares with Gottfarb his fear of the potential British pressure that could be triggered by the Swedish press. Unaware of the leak by Trelleborgs Tidningen on January 22, 1947, revealing the details of the voyage, he describes to Gottfarb his shock on arrival in Trelleborg Harbor on January 23 when the ship was met at the quay by some twenty journalists.
Information about the boat's arrival had spread quickly and reached the newspaper's editorial offices early on January 23, 1947. Günter Cohn had to hide from the journalists and he had gone on board of Ulua only in the evening after the press contingent was dispersed. Cohn traveled north early the next morning to meet the chartered train with passengers from Stockholm in order to bring them to Trelleborg. To his surprise, Dagens Nyheter, which he picked up at the station, described in detail and with photos the departure of the train he was waiting for from Stockholm Central station. The coverage of the trip was massive and oppressive. Gottfarb also relates Cohn's conviction that, although invisible, the British Secret Service was strongly opposed to the Jewish immigration to Eretz Israel, trying to stop it. As it turned out, Günter Cohen's fears had come true, and initially, the Trelleborg harbormaster did not allow survivors to board the boat. Instead, people huddled in the SJ train carriages rolled on the quay track next to S/S Ulua. Cohn quickly realized that an attempt to stop the trip must have occurred and proceeded to act quickly and forcefully. Engaging members of the group, he ordered an inspection of the ship that finally convinced the harbormaster to withdraw his objections. In the end, the survivors trapped on the train and those who came on buses are allowed to board. The departure was accelerated to respect the onset Jewish Sabbath, which fell at four o'clock.
Gottfarb clearly considers Dagens Nyheter the initiator of the total media coverage, but she does not see that Ulua's departure gave rise to any official diplomatic protests. However, such protests were reported by the media later, and the newspaper coverage clearly affected Ulua's journey. Even earlier than Dagens Nyheter, the information was published by Trelleborgs Tidningen. Further, the TT - Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, jointly owned by the national and evening newspapers, compiled the information about Ulua for its customary news broadcast on the Swedish Radio called the "Latest news from Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå". It is not known, however, if the news about the S/S Ulua had actually been broadcast by the Swedish Radio.
Fig. 1. April 17, 1945. Bergen-Belsen after liberation. Survivors in the women's camp prepare a meal, peeling potatoes while behind them lie the naked, abandoned corpses of fellow prisoners who died before the liberation of the camp. A woman in the background seems to search for relatives among the bodies. The woman in the front left is Alice Lok. The woman laying on the ground in the front right may be Alice's sister, Edith, who died at the British hospital in Bergen-Belsen. Alice Lok came to Sweden on the UNRRA White Boat M/S Kronprinsessan Ingrid that left Lübeck for Sweden on July 10, 1945.
Fig. 2. The second requirement to leave Sweden was a valid entry visa to a recipient country. And here the problem was solved through an action of the Jewish Refugees Welfare Society who obtained a group visa to Cuba. This particular group visa was issued on August 5, 1946, for a group whose content to be specified at a later date but the visa was valid for only 6 months from the date of issue, or until February 5, 1947. (SHMA Archives, Wasserman Wroblewski, R).
Fig. 3. Articles about S/S Ulua appeared on the front pages of the newspapers, accompanied by photographs of the boat's journey. Even a full week after S/S Ulua left Trelleborg, on January 31, 1947, an article about Ulua's journey was placed on the front page of Dagens Nyheter, just next to a photo report from the funeral of Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, who died in a plane crash at Kastrup Airport. Above, the report of the London correspondent of Dagens Nyheter writing about S/S Ulua being stopped in Le Havre. (SHMA Archives, DN Archives, Wasserman Wroblewski, R).
Fig. 4. Holocaust Survivors on the afterdeck dancing Israeli dance Hora after S/SS Ulua left the port of Trelleborg. (SHMA Archives, photographer unknown, provided by Eli Nusbaum).
Fig.5. January 24 1947. Trelleborg harbor. Sweden. On the right on the quay, the chartered SJ train with third class carriages. To the left, the stern of the refurbished S/S Ulua. In the background, survivors embark the ship.(SHMA Archives, photographer unknown).
Fig. 6. Based on accessible statistics obtained from the digital searches at the Royal Library in Stockholm, Frequency of the use of the keyword "judetransporterna" - "Jew-transport". It shows that it was precisely in 1942, the start of the Industrial Holocaust, when that expression gained its foothold in the press. " Jew-transport" referred to the trains from the ghettos in Poland that rolled towards the death camps, and again, in 1944 when the Holocaust of the Hungarian Jews started with the daily transports to Auschwitz, and in 1945 when "Jew-transports" meant a rapid evacuation of remaining prisoners to concentration camps in central Germany due to the impending offensive of the Red Army and the allied forces.
Fig. 7. On April 12, 1947, Expressen reports that the British asked the Swedish Foreign Ministry to investigate whether Sweden did not become a center for illegal Jewish emigration. According to the paper, Sweden had assured the British that they had no legal means to prevent the Jews from leaving the country and promised to undertake a thorough investigation by the Swedish police. Expressen nevertheless uses the pejorative term, "Jew traffic", and calls the departure of Holocaust survivors from Trelleborg "the Ulua affair," suggesting an improper event
Fig. 8. Olga Deutsch from Karcascomor, Hungary, was 9 when WWII started. Olga. Taken to Auschwitz where her mother and two sisters were murdered, Olga was an object of Dr. Mengele's "selektion" at the ramp and a subject of his medical experiments. From Auschwitz, she was transferred to KL Buchenwald where she was a slave worker at Krupp in Essen. Liberated from the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen, Olga was brought to Sweden on UNRRAs White Boat M/S Ingrid that left Lübeck on July 7, 1944. A passenger on Ulua/Haim Arlosoroff, she was captured on the ship in Haifa and was taken to the British detention camp in Cyprus. In 1947 she was brought back to Haifa and transferred to the British detention camp in Atlith, south of the city. Upon her release in August 1947, she was registered, photographed, and received a permanent permit to stay. (Arolsen Archives, SHMA Archives, Israel State Archives).
Fig. 9. February 27, 1947. S/S Haim Arlosoroff (S/S Ulua) on the beach at Bat Galim in Haifa. Holocaust survivors are being taken by Z-80 lighters, landing ships to three prison ships in order to be taken to a detention camp in Cyprus. (SHMA Archives, photographer unknown).
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Newspapers
Trelleborgs Tidning: 22 januari 1947.Dagens Nyheter: 31 januari 1947, 1 februari 1947, 11 mars 1947, 11 april 1947,Svenska Dagbladet: 24 januari 1947, 19 februari 1947. 8 augusti 1948. Söderhamns Tidning: 28 januari 1947.Aftonbladet: 24 januari 1947, 17 februari 1947, 20 februari 1947, 24 februari 1947, 6 mars 1947; Expressen: 24 januari 1947, 25 januari 1947, 14 februari 1947, 28 februari 1947, 12 april 1947.The Daily Telegraph. Jews fight the boarding party of Haifa. 1 mars 1947.
Literature
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Swarc, Alan. 2006. `Illegal Immigration to Palestine 1945-1948: The French Connection`. (University of London, PhD theses).
Wasserman Wroblewski R. 2020. `The Liberated 1945. White Boat Mission from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden`. (Stockholm: Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association). ISBN 978-91-986601-2-8
Wroblewski R. 1995. `6 tusen av 6 miljoner: ett requiem`, Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association (Föreningen Förintelsens Minne) ISBN 9163036126, 207 pages.
Movies and Homepages
The Illegals - movie. 1947. Levin Meyer Levin, director, 72 Minutes, 1947.
Archives
The Royal Library, National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden.National Archives in Stockholm (Riksarkivet, Marieberg)Arolsen Archives, Bad Arolsen.Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association Archives, Stockholm.Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.
