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42-775: Palyam was set up in April 1945 as the Palmach's tenth company (Pluga Yud) which originated from the Palmach's Naval Platoon. The Company's first commander was Abraham Zakai. It belonged to the Fourth Battalion which was the Palmach's Staff Battalion, attached to the Palmach's Staff Battalion (the 4th Battalion). The division was in charge of amphibious warfare, beach reconnaissance, close-quarters combat, maritime security, naval boarding, providing security at naval base or shore stations, raiding with small unit tactics, screening, and underwater demolition. The majority of their activities were related to

84-767: A Soviet Navy submarine, in what is referred to as the Struma disaster . Manuel Quezon , the president of the Philippines , under the Open Doors policy planned to accept Jewish refugees from Europe. Then a Commonwealth , the United States limited the number of Jews to be admitted to its colony. 1200 Jews arrived in the Philippines from 1937 to 1941. The United States had about 27 000 available visas in late 1938 for individuals for refugees. At that time, consulate offices outside

126-611: A few thousand actually entered Palestine. The pivotal event in Ha'apala program was the Exodus incident in 1947. Exodus was intercepted and boarded by a Royal Navy patrol. Despite significant resistance, passengers from Exodus were forcibly returned to Europe, and eventually put in camps in Germany. This was publicized, to the great embarrassment of the British government. One account of Aliyah Bet

168-555: A maritime branch of the Palmach , was given responsibility for commanding and sailing ships from Europe to Mandatory Palestine. Post-World War II, Ha'apala journeys typically started in the DP camps and moved through one of two collection points in the American occupation sector, Bad Reichenhall and Leipheim . From there, the refugees travelled in disguised trucks, on foot, or by train to ports on

210-718: A particular field or college-educated. Generally, they were young in age. Many of the 100 000 people who found refuge in neighbouring European countries, like the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, were captured and murdered by the Nazis, after May 1940, when they invaded western Europe. As the Nazi regime occupied Czechoslovakia , beginning in 1938, and invaded Poland in 1939, there were more Jewish refugees. In October 1943, 7000 Danish Jews , and 700 of their relatives who were not Jewish, escaped Nazi-occupied Denmark for neutral Sweden , as

252-446: A shop, a bank account, and legal rights. He passed through the building and came out at the other end without property, without privileges, without rights, with nothing except a passport and order to leave the country within a fortnight; otherwise, he would find himself inside a concentration camp." By the end of 1939, there were more than 117,000 Jews who left Austria and more than 300,000 who left Germany. Most of them were trained in

294-506: Is distinguished from the Aliyah Aleph ("Aliyah 'A'", Aleph being the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet) which refers to the limited Jewish immigration permitted by British authorities during the same period. The name Aliya B is also shortened for Aliya Bilti Legalit (Hebrew: עלייה בלתי-לגאלית , lit.   'illegal immigration'). During Ha'apala , several emissaries from

336-491: Is given by journalist I. F. Stone in his 1946 book Underground to Palestine , a first-person account of traveling from Europe with displaced persons attempting to reach the Jewish homeland. More than 300 volunteers, most of them American World War II veterans, including Murray Greenfield (of the ship Hatikva ), volunteered to sail ten ships ("The Jews' Secret Fleet") from the United States to Europe to load 35,000 survivors of

378-685: The Americas . The refugees were assisted by French and American Jewish organizations. Most travelled between 1939 and 1941, and after Germans pressured the country to limit Jews ability to travel through their country, from 1942 to 1944 there were about 7,500 people who were admitted entry to Spain for Portugal. Spanish consuls also provided identity papers so that up to 5000 people could escape through other parts of Europe. Sweden took in Jews from Norway and Denmark. The Swiss took in nearly 30 000 Jews, yet also turned away 20 000 at their border. In July 1938,

420-638: The Mediterranean Sea , where ships brought them to Palestine. Most of the ships had names such as Lo Tafchidunu ("You can't frighten us") and La-Nitzahon ("To the victory") designed to inspire and rally the Jews of Palestine. Some were named after prominent figures in the Zionist movement , and people who had been killed while supporting Aliyah Bet. More than 70,000 Jews arrived in Palestine on more than 100 ships. American sector camps imposed no restrictions on

462-621: The Nazi Party and by Germany's collaborators , ultimately culminating in the Holocaust . However, even before the genocide itself, which began during World War II , the Nazis had widely sponsored or enforced discriminatory practices—by legislation, in many cases—against Jewish residents, such as through the Nazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses . Although Adolf Hitler and the German government were initially accepting of voluntary Jewish emigration from

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504-674: The World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee , and an emergency shelter was established at Fort Ontario in New York , which housed almost 1000 refugees. Approximately 20 000 European Jewish refugees settled in the Republic of China , which already had a substantial expatriate population, during the 1930s and the 1940s. Many of them established businesses, decided to remain in

546-625: The British patrols. The Royal Navy had eight ships on station in Palestine, and additional ships were tasked with tracking suspicious vessels heading for Palestine. Most of the intercepted immigrants were sent to internment camps in Cyprus : (Karaolos near Famagusta , Nicosia , Dhekelia , and Xylotymbou . Some were sent to the Atlit detention camp in Palestine, and some to Mauritius . The British held as many as 50,000 people in these camps (see Jews in British camps on Cyprus ). Over 1,600 drowned at sea. Only

588-527: The Cubans cancelled the refugees' visas. The ship was denied permission to land in the United States and Canada and it had to make a return voyage to Europe. Of 928 returning passengers, 288 were accepted by Britain, 366 survived the war on the continent, and 254 were murdered during the Holocaust. In 1944, the War Refugee Board (WRB) was established to assist tens of thousands of refugees, in coordination with

630-514: The Dominican Republic was the only country at the Évian Conference that said it would admit a large number of refugees. President Rafael Trujillo did this partially to deflect international criticism of mass killings of Haitian refugees in the Parsley massacre . Between 1938 and 1941, Bolivia allowed for 30 000 refugees to immigrate to its country. The Zionist movement facilitated

672-814: The European continent. In 1933, Hitler and the Jewish League agreed to the Haavara Agreement in which, over time, German Jews and their finances could and would settle in Mandatory Palestine . Furthermore, the Havaara Mark was used instead of the Deutschmark , because of its lower interest rates, and it was seen as more favourable. By the end of the 30‘s, over 60 000 German Jews had emigrated to Palestine. Following this, they discouraged emigration by restricting

714-589: The Holocaust (half of the illegal immigrants to Palestine), only to be deported to detention camps on Cyprus. The success of Aliyah Bet was modest when measured in terms of the numbers who succeeded in entering Palestine. However, it proved to be a unifying force both for the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv ) and for the Holocaust-survivor refugees in Europe ( Sh'erit ha-Pletah ). The immigrants who drowned in

756-1117: The Jews escape, but there were some that risked their lives for the cause. Such people were later amongst what became known as the Righteous Among the Nations . Palestine alone could absorb and provide for the homeless and the stateless Jews uprooted by the war. [...] It is to canalize all the sympathy of the world for the martyrdom of the Jews that the Zionists reject all schemes to resettle these victims elsewhere — in Germany, or Poland, or in sparsely populated regions such as Madagascar. — Chaim Weizmann , first president of Israel In May 1945, European Jews were released from concentration camps or came out of hiding, to find that they had lost family members and their former homes. The population of displaced persons also included more than 150 000 Jews who had left Central and Eastern Europe due to violence and anti-Semitism . Countries continued to resist taking in Jews, however. The most favourable destinations for

798-746: The Navy, and up to 1975, most of the Navy's commander-in-chiefs, were Palyam veterans. Palyam members who specialized in maritime sabotage formed Shayetet 13 , the IDF Naval Commando unit. Aliyah Bet Aliyah Bet ( Hebrew : עלייה ב' , " Aliyah 'B'" – bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet ) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews , many of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany or other Nazi-controlled countries, and later Holocaust survivors , to Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948, in violation of

840-587: The Russians and sent to Siberia in intolerable circumstances. Many died from harsh treatment at the hands of the Russians from 1939 and 1943 and onwards. Other Jews were spared harsh treatment, however, and some were trained in Moscow, so as to be fit to command a new Polish government after the war was over. Some of them were sent to remote areas of the Soviet Union, Siberia, or Central Asia. In June 1941 Germany invaded

882-916: The Soviet Union and began the systematic extermination of Jews as part of Hitler's Final Solution plan, beginning with their removal to extermination camps . During The Holocaust in the Soviet Union , Jews who were unable to flee to the Asian parts of the country were methodically shot. By the end of the war, 67 percent of the Jews from Europe had been murdered. Despite pressure from Germany, Fascist Italy protected Jewish people in lands that it occupied in Greece , France , Dalmatia , Croatia , and Yugoslavia , as well as protecting Jews in Tunisia , between mid-1942 and September 1943. About 30 000 Jews entered Portugal through Spain, and many sought passage in Lisbon on ships bound for

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924-451: The US were visited by 125 000 applicants, and by June 1939, there had been more than 300 000 applicants. This was far more than the US would allow into the country due to its immigration policy. The MS St. Louis sailed from Hamburg , Germany for Cuba , who had issued transit visas for more than 900 Jewish refugees, on a voyage that occurred from May to June 1939. Once the ship had arrived,

966-817: The United States. After the German occupation of Norway in 1940, some Norwegian Jews were able to find a safe haven in Sweden, which was neutral. However, over half of the Norwegian Jews were rounded up by Quisling regime police and handed over to the Reichskommissariat Norwegen . Jews were prevented from leaving German-occupied Poland by the Schutzstaffel (SS). About 10% of the Polish Jewish population, together with 1 million Poles in total, were rounded up by

1008-623: The Yishuv , Jewish partisans , the Jewish Brigade of the British Army , Zionist youth movements and organizations worked together to facilitate the immigration of Jews escaping from Nazi Germany to Mandatory Palestine beyond the established " White Paper " quotas. As the persecution of Jews dramatically intensified in German-occupied Europe during the Nazi era , the urgency driving

1050-521: The amount of money Jews could take from German banks and imposed high emigrations taxes . The German government forbade emigration from the Greater Germanic Reich after October 1941. The German Jews who remained, about 163 000 in Germany and less than 57 000 from annexed Austria , were mostly elderly who were murdered in ghettos or taken to Nazi concentration camps , where most were murdered. Jews were able to leave Vichy France until

1092-480: The conference was that it proved that forced emigration would not solve the problem. Another was a concern that there might be pro-Nazi spies among the refugees. It was also difficult to get out of Europe. After the war started, there were few ships that left European ports. Lisbon was a neutral port, however, from which refugees could still travel. At the time that Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, there were about 523 000 German Jews (<1 percent of

1134-633: The country permanently, and even acquired Chinese citizenship . Almost all of them fled during the Chinese Civil War and the Communist Revolution , with most Jewish expatriates being evacuated from Shanghai to Israel beginning in 1948. Organizations were established to assist refugees, like the World Jewish Congress , the Jewish Agency for Palestine , and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee . There were few non-Jews that helped

1176-573: The country, it became difficult to find new host countries, particularly as the 1930s were marked by the Great Depression , as the number of Jewish migrants increased. Eventually, the Nazis forbade emigration; the Jews who remained in Germany or in German-occupied territory by this point were either murdered in the ghettos or relocated to be systematically exploited and murdered at dedicated concentration camps and extermination camps throughout

1218-506: The difficulties lay in the fact that no country wished to receive them. — German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in a conversation to Adolf Hitler. Following the Anschluss , the annexation of Austria to Germany in 1938, and forced emigration deepened the refugee crisis, the Évian Conference was held in France to explore options for countries to emigrate to, but the key outcome of

1260-487: The displaced Jews were Palestine and the United States; in the latter, President Harry S. Truman issued the "Truman Directive," on 22 December 1945, and up to 40 000 Jews entered the United States by 1 July 1948. That year, a law was enacted by Congress that increased immigration quotas to allow in approximately 80 000 Jews, who were subject to what Truman called "flagrantly discriminatory" entry qualifications. About 102 000 forced labourers and other individuals from

1302-469: The escorting of ships of Aliyah Bet , immigration ships (66 of them in all) bringing Jewish refugees from Europe by boat, despite the British White Paper of 1939 limiting Jewish immigration into Mandate Palestine . From August 1945 to May 1948, approximately seventy Palyamniks escorted close to 70,000 immigrants in 66 sea voyages, from Sweden in the north to Algeria in the south, France in

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1344-404: The fall of 1942. Although Jews could initially leave Nazi Germany with ease, it was difficult to find countries that would take them, particularly after the initial wave of immigrants in Europe, Britain, and the United States had been accepted. One of the reasons that emigration was so difficult was that it began during the Great Depression . ...we all wanted to get rid of our Jews but that

1386-417: The immigration also became more acute. Ha'apala occurred in two phases. The first one, from 1934 to 1942, was an effort to enable European Jews to escape Nazi persecution and genocide . The second one, from 1945 to 1948, in a stage known as Bricha ("flight" or "escape"), was an effort to find homes for Jewish survivors of the Nazi crimes ( Sh'erit ha-Pletah , "Surviving Remnant") who were among

1428-646: The millions of displaced persons ("DPs") languishing in refugee camps scattered across post-war Europe , primarily located in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria , and Italy ." During the first phase, several Zionist organizations (including Revisionists ) led the effort; after World War II , the Mossad LeAliyah Bet ("the Institute for Aliyah B"), an arm of the Haganah , took charge. The Palyam ,

1470-609: The movements out of the camps, and American, French, and Italian officials often turned a blind eye to the movements. Several UNRRA officials (in particular Elizabeth Robertson in Leipheim) acted as facilitators of the emigration. The British government vehemently opposed the movement, and restricted movement in and out of their camps. The British set up naval patrols to prevent immigrants from landing in Palestine. Over 100,000 people attempted to illegally enter Mandatory Palestine. There were 142 voyages by 120 ships. Over half were stopped by

1512-416: The population) in the country. Subject to threats and persecution, Jews began to emigrate from that point until the start of World War II. In Austria, more than 50% of the Jews had left the country by May 1939, following Adolf Eichmann 's program to force Jews to emigrate that began in the spring of 1938. Franz Mayer , a Jewish leader, said of Eichmann's system: "You put in a Jew at one end, with property,

1554-614: The rehabilitation of displaced Jews in Mandatory Palestine , which was a destination for 18 000 Jews escaping the Nazi regime through the Balkans between 1937 and 1944. There were more than 16 000 Jews who later were bound for Palestine on boats from the Romanian and Bulgarian ports on the Black Sea and often through Turkey for refueling. One ship, MV Struma , was sunk, presumably accidentally, by

1596-534: The restrictions laid out in the British White Paper of 1939 , which dramatically increased between 1939 and 1948. With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948 , Jewish displaced persons and refugees from Europe began streaming into the new state in the midst of the 1948 Palestine war . In modern-day Israel , it has also been called by the Hebrew term Ha'apala (Hebrew: הַעְפָּלָה , "Ascension"). The Aliyah Bet

1638-584: The sea and whose bodies were found were buried in the National Cemetery in Mount Herzl in Jerusalem . [REDACTED] Media related to Aliyah Bet at Wikimedia Commons Jews escaping from German-occupied Europe Between 1933 and 1945 , a large number of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe . This exodus was triggered by the militaristic antisemitism perpetrated by

1680-540: The west to Romania in the east. They also escorted the arms ships that brought vital arms during the war. On the eve of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War , Palyam consisted of approximately four hundred marines, eighty of them were graduates of the marine officers course which was held in the Marine School near the Technion , and seventy of them graduates of the ship commanders course at kibbutz Sdot Yam . Headquarters of Palyam

1722-555: Was coordinated by the Danish resistance movement . They travelled to Malmö , Sweden across the Øresund Channel. Many of the French, Luxembourgian, Belgian, and Dutch Jews were protected by their Country's resistances, hid in secret locations that were hard to find for the Nazis, and fled to the United Kingdom, Free France (Algeria), Sweden , Switzerland , Spain , Portugal , Canada, and

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1764-417: Was located in kibbutz Sdot Yam, but the unit had installations in kibbutz Neve Yam , Ma'abarot , Giv'at HaShlosha , Shefayim and Yagur . On March 17, 1948, the Naval Service (the precursor of the Israeli Sea Corps ) was formed, and the Palyam were ordered to join. Many of the Palyam members formed the core personnel and command of the Naval Service. In fact, most ship commanders during the first years of

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