Underground to Palestine by Issy.E.Stone 1946 240pg 12/7/18
This book is an excellent historic document written at the time.
The Hagana had recruited a group of Jewish sailors take an illegal ship into Palestine, up till then foreign sailors been hired. The reporter wanted to travel with them but instead was sent by planw to Europe where he describes the DP camps. Interesting that most of the inmates were Polish Jews who had fled to Germany. There were DP camps all over Europe with people from as far away as Ethiopia and Afghanistan. Germans cities are buildings in rubble. Polish refugees said that the Polish government was okay but the people were leading pogroms against Jews. Getting over the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia was difficult. The writer could speak Yiddish the most common language amongst the immigrants.
This was a time when the Americans had requested that 100 000 Jews be let into Palestine and Britain disagreed. Britain was in the throws of getting out of Egypt and wanted to hold Palestine as a strategic asset to have a hold over Suez canal.
Slovakia was self administered under the Nazi's and was a place for Germans to relax and had plenty of food during the war. Where refugees and not let out of Poland the reporter goes to the Bratislava head and tells them what he is writing in the US press and they relent. He crosses to Austria which is divided up into different allied sections. Only 4000 of 200 000 Jews living in Vienna and they were mostly converts to Catholicism.
He meets Yiddish speaking Russian officers who tell him they are communist supporters but support the Zionist idea as there is no place for Jews in Eastern Europe.
He now goes to Italy where the ship is ready and it leaves the port and later picks up the refugees at a small place along the coast at night. He eventually gets onto a ship that has an American Jewish crew. Everything has to be done to avoid the British knowledge.
Every DP camp is under the allies with the Joint and Hagana involved. Quite a number of non Jews arrive with the refugees an example is a Polish women who took 2 children for her Jewish neighbour and wanted to be with them. Families who fled to the Russian sector repatriated to Poland and then onto DP camps towards Israel. He says that the ship was two thirds men as less women survived and the all showed signs of optimism compared to the people in defeated countries.
Later at sea a Turkish boat comes and many are transferred to it to run the gauntlet. The engine breaks down and the are stranded at sea and water is running out. An SOS brings a British ship but as they are in open sea does nothing. Eventually the get the ship to go and it gets to Haifa where the narrator has a visa and gets off. The refugees are put in Atlit. Later people were put on Cypress.
The book concludes that Britain hadn't come to terms with the end of Empire. They wanted to make treaties with the Moslem effendis to control the masses against the Bolsheviks. The Jews and Christian of the region were not important to their policy. He believes that so many refugees will arrive that they can't be stopped. One has to understand Britain's relationship to American and France as well as Cold War at the time. ( )

This is a good story by a journalist who shadowed a group of Jews during WWII during their journey from Poland to Palestine, traveling as they did, in trains, on foot, and by boat, trying to avoid Nazis and their colaborators. He attempted to go all the way with one group, but that did not work out. Still, he captured the essence of such a trip. ( )