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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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.
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..
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| 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 !"

































