Historical Background and Interviews
III. A New Beginning A New Beginning
permitted entry without prior approval from Arab leaders. In addi- tion, any obligation of Britain to facilitate a Jewish national home- land would end. The White Paper has been seen, in retrospect, as a message to Hitler that Britain would distance itself from Jewish rights. As Jews tried to flee from the Nazis, Britain tightened its block - ade around Palestine. Jewish refugees were arrested and sent back to Europe or delivered to detention camps on Cyprus in the Med- iterranean and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. In 1940, Britain forced thirty thousand Jewish refugees to return to Europe. The Haganah stepped up its pressure on Britain to allow Jewish refu- gees to enter Palestine. Sometimes, these efforts were ill-advised; it tried to blow a small hole in the hull of the Patria, an old boat carrying 1,900 illegal Jewish refugees from the port at Haifa to the detention camp on Mauritius by British order, but the ship sank, killing 240 of the refugees and a number of British guards. Britain responded by further tightening its military blockade, but as many as 90,000 Jews managed to enter that year. Haganah leaders David Ben-Gurion and Eliyahu Golomb, an- other familiar face at Yagur, disbanded Fosh and had its papers de- stroyed, theoretically because they could not reconcile themselves to the existence of a unified strike force devoted to a charismatic commander — Sadeh — over whom they had no control.3 Shortly after, however, Sadeh became the leader of a new organization, Poum (Plugot Meyuchadot, special companies), whose goal was to develop Jewish intelligence resources and special operations. In 1941, the Haganah and Yishuv (the Jewish community of Palestine), with permission from England, started all-out efforts to organize a coordinated Jewish fighting force, the Palmach (ac- ronym of Plugot Machats - shock, or strike, companies), to fight Germany and the Axis powers if the European war came to Pales- tine. But the Palmach also aimed at defending Jews in the Mandate against attacks. Again, Sadeh was the leader, and he chose his for- mer associates in Poum, Fosh, and the Special Night Squads to be 3
333
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online