Operation Exodus
Gordon ThomasDuring WW2 over six million Jews died in 32 concentration camps. The death camps of Auschwitz/Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Majdanek were at the heart of the Nazi 'Final Solution' for the
- Author
- Gordon Thomas
- Publisher
- JR Books
- Price
- £20
- Published
- 2015
Operation Exodus by Gordon Thomas
During WW2 over six million Jews died in 32 concentration camps. The death camps of Auschwitz/Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Majdanek were at the heart of the Nazi “Final Solution” for the extermination of the Jewish people, and these camps ran on an industrial scale. Others died in work camps.
At the end of the war, and despite the end to hostilities, the Allies were very concerned about disease and starvation amongst former camp inmates. Displaced Persons, as they had been known since 1943, were now housed in mainly tented camps with the idea being to contain any disease. This was a difficult task as many of the former inmates just wanted freedom, others sought revenge.
Over 15 million foreign workers were repatriated quickly, but nearly two million others, mainly from Eastern Europe, refused to go home. Many of these were Jews. It took seven years to try and resolve the problem, by which time the state of Israel had been established.
The covert Aliyah Beet organisation, run by the Jewish Agency, had smuggled over 7,000 Jews into Palestine by 1939. It continued to do so during WW2, but at the end of the war escape lines were in place for many more Jews to escape Europe, mostly from the south of France and Italy, where a fleet of 64 ships had been assembled. These took people all round the world, but the majority went to Palestine/Israel.
This book tells the story of one of the ships, the “Exodus”. This is a story of defiance, and against all the odds the determination of a group of former camp inmates to reach “The Promised Land”, Israel.
ISBN 978-1-906779-26-9. JR Books. £20.