As antisemitism spreads its poisonous tentacles across the UK, politicians and other influencers were absorbing the harrowing truth of how Britain prevented thousands of Jews from escaping the Holocaust.
At a meeting in the British House of Commons to which leading representatives of the Jewish community were invited, along with an Israeli delegation, they also heard from survivors of the 1947 Exodus ship intercepted by the British Navy and sent back to Germany with its 4,500-plus refugees.
Lord Pickles, formerly the UK’s Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues, Conservative MP Rebecca Smith and former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby all expressed their profound regret for what happened.
Entitled Heroic Journeys to the Promised Land and set up by a small non-profit organisation called Repairing the Breach (RTB), the meeting also heard from relatives of October 7th, 2023, massacre victims, which included the grandchildren of an Exodus survivor.
RTB was founded by British Israeli Rosie Ross and is dedicated to making amends for the 1939 British White Paper policy severely restricting Jewish immigration to British Mandate Palestine, leading to inevitable large-scale loss of life with millions trapped in Nazi-occupied territory.
After heroic stories of survival were heard, 23-year-old Maor Rozenberg shared how his Polish grandmother Pnina was on board the ill-fated Exodus, aged 13, and how his cousin was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7th just three years ago.
Arbel Yehud was “held alone as a woman in captivity for 482 days, surviving all sorts of violence and severe loneliness,” Rozenberg told around 60 people gathered in the Jubilee Room last Thursday (October 15), just eight days after the third anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
“My grandmother’s strongest memory of the Exodus ship is the battle with the British soldiers in the port of Haifa,” Rozenberg said, adding that she remains “immensely proud” of the fight that the desperate, destitute refugees put up against armed soldiers.
As well as wanting her grandchildren to learn life lessons from her story of survival, he said that “above all, she wanted to ensure that we, the younger generation, make sure that what happened to her and her family will never happen again”.
But on October 7th, 2023, then 90-year-old Pnina’s worst fears materialised. “Everything that my grandmother worked so hard to prevent from happening again… happened again.”
When Pnina lost a grandson after 6,000 terrorists invaded kibbutz Nir Oz and her granddaughter was held hostage for so long “it was the realisation of her greatest nightmare” – but this time on Israeli soil, what was supposed to be a safe haven for Jewish people.
Dr Arie Itamar, 87, was another survivor of the Exodus on which 4,515 refugees were crammed onto a vessel built only to carry ten percent of that number.
He said Britain made three mistakes – the first was in attacking the ship, the second was fighting the refugees in Haifa and the third was taking the Holocaust survivors back to Germany, “to the land of death.”
Justin Welby acknowledged our need for repentance of our wrongdoing as a nation, calling us to “love justice and do mercy and walk humbly with our God.”
Adrian Cohen, Senior Vice-President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “Hundreds of thousands could have survived the war but for the White Paper.” It was a very difficult and shameful period and the fact that the restrictions continued after the war was “a terrible indictment.”
Lord Pickles reminded the audience that former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt had admitted in 2019 that the 1939 White Paper was “a terrible mistake.” And the issues that existed in the 1930s, Pickles added, along with the plight of the Jewish people, are as alive now as they ever were.
“There are people out there right now seeking to deny the truth of the Holocaust… seeking to try to criminalise and talk away the right of the only Jewish state in the world. In many ways, your home is on the front line of why we are in politics at all because there are forces that want to destroy democracy.”
Rebecca Smith concluded: “And I want you to know that there are many like me in the House of Commons, many like Lord Pickles in the House of Lords, from all parties, who very much support you and are very sorry about what happened back in the 1940s as well.”
Charles Gardner is author of Israel the Chosen, available from Amazon; Peace in Jerusalem, available from olivepresspublisher.com; To the Jew First, A Nation Reborn, and King of the Jews, all available from Christian Publications International.
