Holocaust Museum Remembers Exodus

Ship Survivors Are Sought 60 Years After Tragic Voyage

Sixty years ago this summer, the Exodus 1947 sailed from Marseilles, France, with 4,500 passengers, most survivors of the Holocaust, and began another horrific chapter in Holocaust-era history.

The refugees were bound for Palestine, then a British territory, and, a few miles from shore, the British Royal Navy boarded the ship and eventually deported the passengers to France. When they arrived back in Marseilles, the refugees refused to disembark. They went on a hunger strike and ended up in displaced-persons camps in Germany. It wasn't until 1948, and the creation of Israel, that some passengers made the journey they had started.

Yesterday the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum announced that it was returning to the Exodus story. The ship had no passenger manifest, so the museum, along with the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem and other agencies, is trying to compile a complete list of passengers from survivors and their families.

"The project is about honoring the survivors," said Michael Haley Goldman, acting director of the museum's Registry of Holocaust Survivors.

Genya Markon, a curator at the museum, wants to expand the work that Meier Schwarz, the head of the Exodus Survivors Convention Committee, started in Israel. His group has located 1,800 passengers.

The story of the Exodus captured worldwide attention through newsreels, newspaper stories and the radio. Many people were outraged at the treatment the refugees received from the British.

When the British navy boarded the ship, the passengers rebelled and sailors killed two of them and injured several dozen. Once in control, the British landed the ship at Haifa, Palestine, and moved the passengers to three deportation ships. On their way back to France, they were placed in detention centers in Cyprus. But once in Marseilles, the passengers refused to leave the ship and lived on board for two months in appalling conditions. The next step was a return to a displaced-persons camp.

The ship's story was told in the best-selling book "Exodus," by Leon Uris, and a 1960 film based on the novel. There was also a 1997 documentary, directed by Elizabeth Rodgers and Robby Henson.

Markon has a personal interest in the ship's story. Her cousin Cilia Rudashevsky was a passenger and her identity card from the Poppendorf displaced-persons camp is at the museum. "The lessons of the Exodus are personal," says Markon, "but the main importance is the world should not stand by and watch things happen."