Raquela (16 page)

The policemen pulled Judith aside. Her name seemed to match a name on their list. They searched her purse and questioned her at length. Raquela could not hear the questions. But anger choked in her throat. Had Judith not suffered enough?

The war was nearly six months over in Europe, but in Palestine the White Paper War was escalating. The Mandatory Government passed severe emergency regulations. Anyone could be arrested for being a member of a group, if even a single person of that group had been arrested; it was collective guilt as well as guilt by association. Anyone could be detained and deported to one of the British prisons in Africa, without charges or a trial. Newspapers were censored. Radio broadcasts were censored. Civil liberties were dead.

What were the police planning to do to Judith? Raquela stared at them in anger.

Finally, Judith was released. “Case of mistaken identity,” she told Raquela.

In the bus they spoke in whispers, knowing some of the passengers might be agents of the CID, British Counterintelligence.

“They kept you so long I was sure they were going to arrest you,” Raquela said. “I was already planning how I would ask Jacob to get the Palmach to spring you out of jail.”

The image of Palmach commandos breaking into jail to rescue her brought a smile to Judith's face.

They both had many friends in the Palmach, the spectacular striking force of the Haganah, established in the dark days of 1941 when Rommel was at the gates of Palestine.

The British, grateful for their help, had trained hundreds of young men and women as guerrilla fighters. Arab-speaking Jews, like Moshe Dayan, had been sent, disguised as Arabs, on dangerous missions to help liberate Vichy-held Syria and Lebanon, and to Iraq to help quell the pro-Nazi uprising.

In Europe during the war, it was these young Palmach boys and girls who had parachuted behind the Nazi lines to make contact with the anti-Nazi resistance, to bring word to the trapped Jews that they were not abandoned, that help was on the way.

As soon as the war in Europe was over, the war against the White Paper escalated, and the Haganah was forced to go underground.

The Friday-afternoon Sabbath peace descended on the treelined streets of Bet Hakerem as Raquela and Judith walked from the bus stop down the street. They entered the garden fragrant with autumn flowers.

Raquela flung the door open, overjoyed to find that Jacob and Meira had come with their baby for the Shabbat meal.

Everyone talked gently to Judith. They knew the tragedy had ebbed her strength. At the table they surrounded her, trying to assuage her agony and pain. Jacob, who knew the most about the tragedy in Europe because of his position in Shai, understood best how to comfort Judith.

“The word is hope,” he said. “Never give it up. Keep searching; keep on putting those ads in the papers. And maybe your brother Joseph will turn up on our shores.”

Judith's eyes, wept out, filled again. But now she was smiling through her tears.

“Let me tell you what's happening in Europe,” he said. “A mass migration—such as the world has never seen. Spontaneous. The people who went to their old homes and couldn't live there anymore are now migrating by the thousands back to Germany.”

“Germany!” Raquela blurted. “How can they go back to Germany? The deathland.”

Jacob nodded. “Yes, the deathland. Why Germany? Because the Americans are there, and the Americans are helping. The Displaced Persons camps are filling up every day with more survivors. And now, from the DP camps, the people are making their way almost instinctively, like lemmings; but they're not going to their deaths; they're coming here, to life, to Palestine.”

“Someone has to help them,” Papa said. “Who's helping?”

“We are, Papa. The Haganah. We have two arms helping—on land and sea. The Bricha and the Mosad.”

He explained that the Bricha—the word means “flight”—was a clandestine body of emissaries from Palestine with a large contingent of Jewish Brigade men still in Europe, who were guiding the mass movement across the frontiers.

The Mosad le-Aliyah Bet—the Committee for Illegal Immigration—headed by top Haganah leaders, was in charge of buying boats, outfitting them, and getting the DPs onto the ships.

Jacob turned to Judith, who hung on to his words as though they were a lifeline. “Nearly every able-bodied man and woman, boy and girl, in the DP camps wants to get on one of our boats. Maybe one of those boys will be Joseph.”

Judith whispered, “Dear God, make it happen.”

Now the ships were coming, slipping through the Mediterranean, landing on the coast in the dead of night. Haganah men and women waded into the water, helped the refugees jump off the ships, then rushed them into kibbutzim and towns along the coast. They hid them out until they could get them ID cards, give them a history and a past, and teach them the answers to give soldiers and police if they were stopped on the street or pulled off a bus at a sudden checkpoint. When the British caught wind of the operation, they sent naval vessels into the Mediterranean to halt the mass movement; they patrolled the coast of Palestine with planes, ships, and radar stations.

Some of the little boats escaped the dragnet, but many were caught. The British pulled the people down, put them on trucks, and transported them to Athlit.

An ancient and beautiful port, Athlit lay just below Haifa, on the Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages the Crusaders had built a strategic castle overlooking the natural harbor for the Knights of the Cross. The castle ruins were still standing. Here during the Arab riots of 1936-39 the British erected one of their chain of police stations, “Tegart Fortresses,” named for Sir James Tegart, the architect who had planned them. Now the British were adding a new chapter in Athlit's history: a detention camp for the survivors of the fire in Europe.

By the fall of 1945 the camp was already overflowing with more than two hundred refugees, captured, dragged off” the little “illegal” boats, herded into tents and barracks, and caged behind barbed wire: one more concentration camp in the wake of the tragedy and the passion. To the terrible roll call of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Maidanek, a new name was inscribed: Athlit. But this camp was on the soil of the Holy Land itself.

In October 1945, again in the warm glow of the Sabbath candles, Jacob announced, “I've brought a stack of reports and papers. I'm going to tell you the newest story of Athlit.”

And for the next hour, Raquela, Meira, Mama, and Papa sat spellbound, as Jacob told the story.

Nahum Sarig, commander of the Palmach First Battalion in the north, waited in his underground command post in Bet Hashittah, his kibbutz in the valley of Jezreel.

Two twenty-three-year-old Palmach commanders, in khaki shorts and shirts, entered.

Sarig looked up from his desk. “
Shalom
, Yitzhak.
Shalom
, Nehemia.” He motioned them to sit down. One was a handsome fair, blue-eyed commander, Yitzhak Rabin; his dark-haired companion was Nehemia Schein.

Sarig's leathery face was tense; his eyes were hard. “We've just received secret information. The two hundred eight refugees in Athlit are to be deported to Eritrea.”

A swift glance passed between Rabin and Schein. Eritrea, on the east coast of Africa, near Ethiopia, had been used by the British during the war to imprison members of the Irgun. They had called it Devil's Island.

Sarig went on: “Haganah headquarters in Jerusalem has ordered us to prevent the deportation.”

He rose and began to pace the floor.

“We have no intention of shedding blood—British, Arab, or Jewish. But we are prepared to pay the price, if need be, to overcome any opposition. Our objective must be measured by how many of the two hundred and eight refugees we set free. Alive.”

The young commanders nodded silently.

“We will assemble one hundred fifty Palmach men and women for the operation,” Sarig said.

He spread a diagram of the Athlit detention camp on his desk, its entrances and exits carefully drawn. Code letters marked the refugees' tents and barracks in the northern half of the camp and the buildings in the southern half where the soldiers and police were billeted. Surrounding Athlit were three British military camps and the Athlit police station filled with hundreds of soldiers and police. Next to the detailed sketch, he spread a map of the Athlit-Haifa area and the Carmel mountain range.

Sarig began his briefing: “This action is against the British, but it has wider political and moral meaning. It is the first action
by force
undertaken by instructions from the Jewish Agency.” He had emphasized the words “by force.” All previous actions of the Haganah had been without arms.

“There are three things we must calculate: how to release the people, how to transport them, and how to bring them to safety.”

OCTOBER 10, 1945

Just after dusk one hundred fifty Palmach men and women moved out from Kibbutz Bet Oren, at the top of Mount Carmel. The kibbutz was only four miles from Athlit, but the road wound around the mountain through deep crevices and rough terrain. In trucks the Palmachniks drove west, toward the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway.

All forces were deployed. One group—under Amos Horev, who later became president of the Haifa Technion—hid at the side of the road, to secure the operation and block the highway in case of trouble.

Another group huddled opposite the Tegart fortress-police station, to prevent the police from moving to the support of the guards inside the camp that lay a mile off the main road.

Others, led by Rabin and Schein, waited for H-hour in the fields some forty yards outside the camp.

One
A.M
.

Inside the detention camp, young men and women “teachers” stirred in their bunks. They had been living in the camps as representatives of the Jewish Agency, holding classes for the imprisoned refugees; actually, they were the best athletes in the Palmach.

Inside the double rows of barbed-wire fences that surrounded Athlit, six Arab guards stood watch around the perimeter. An Arab policeman, hearing noises, began to shout. A Palmach soldier clamped his hand over the policeman's mouth.

A second Arab raised his gun and fired. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still no fire. He examined his gun and flung it on the ground in anger. The pin in his rifle had been broken. That afternoon the “teachers” had broken the firing pins in all the police rifles.

The “teachers” now gagged and tied up the six guards. Thirty more Arab and British police slept in the barracks, unaware.

A flashlight signaled to Rabin outside the camp. Armed with wire clippers and guns, Rabin's Palmachniks cut the barbed wire and slipped into the camp. Behind Rabin's group came Nehemia Schein's.

Rabin's people were deployed all over the camp, prepared to use force if necessary, while Schein's group headed straight for the tents and barracks.

The refugees lay in their beds fully dressed. They had learned of the breakthrough one hour earlier. At the signal, they jumped out of bed and followed Schein's young commandos out of the camp.

Schein led them, not along the one-mile asphalt road to the highway but across the fields, out of sight of the police station and possible patrols.

Meanwhile, hidden in darkness, Nahum Sarig's group waited with trucks, east of the main road, to transport the refugees across Mount Carmel to Kibbutz Yagur, seven miles southeast of Haifa.

The scheduled time for getting the people out of the camp, across the field, and into the trucks was thirty minutes.

Rabin looked at his watch.

H-hour plus fifteen minutes. All was well, Rabin could hear light footsteps as the people stole out of the barracks and tents.

He saw a guard moving. Should he shoot him? Under the camp light he caught sight of the guard's face. The guard seemed terrified. Shooting would wake the sleeping policemen. He did not shoot. The guard moved away.

H-hour plus twenty minutes.

Rabin waited. Would the guards wake?

H-hour plus thirty minutes. Silence.

Rabin ordered a swift last-minute search. Every refugee was out of the camp. Not one shot had been fired.

Rabin and his Palmachniks, the last to leave the camp, moved stealthily through the gaps they had cut in the barbed wire and began running toward the trucks waiting east of the main highway.

Halfway across the field, Rabin saw disaster.

The men, women, and children were moving slowly, dragging sacks and pillowcases. They had refused to leave their pitiful possessions in the camp. The packs contained all that remained of their families, their homes, their history, their past.

The timetable was broken. By now every refugee should have been safely across the highway and climbing into the trucks. If the British caught them, there would be bloodshed everywhere. The people, aware of the danger, began dropping their sacks and pillowcases; the fields were littered with all they had salvaged of their lives.

Rabin raced to the main road where Sarig was standing. “Things are not working according to plan.”

Sarig had more bad news. “Nehemia Schein is seriously ill. He's burning up with fever. Let's get the first hundred or so refugees, the stronger ones who've already reached us, into the trucks. We'll make a dash to Kibbutz Yagur and get Schein to the doctor. We don't dare wait for the slower ones, or we'll foul up the whole operation. You'll have sixty Palmachniks to help you protect about one hundred of the weaker refugees. You'll have to take them on foot to Bet Oren; they'll never make it to Yagur.”

Kibbutz Yagur, one of the largest kibbutzim in the country, lay in the eastern foothills of the Carmel Mountains, in the Zebulun Valley. It was the Haganah's central arms cache. Most of the rifles for the raid on Athlit had come from Kibbutz Yagur.

“What about the trucks we can't use?” Rabin asked. “There'll be a fleet of empty trucks.”

“We'll send them out in convoys on the road. Empty. To throw the British off our tracks. Good luck, Yitzhak.”