Newly released documents at the British National Archives show how the UK government tried to send thousands of Palestine-bound Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide back to post-war Germany. The British decision to turn away more than 4,500 Jews on board the refugee ship Exodus turned into a humanitarian and public relations disaster. Just two years after the end of the war, the world was outraged by the Nazis' systematic murder of six million Jews in what became known as the Holocaust. Despite the government's efforts to portray the decision in the most sympathetic light, the plan drew condemnation from many parts of the world.
The story detailed in more than 400 pages of formerly secret documents made available to the public on Monday concerns Jewish refugees who were on board the Exodus and trying to enter Palestine illegally during the tumultuous months before the United Nations voted in 1947 to create a Jewish homeland on part of Palestine. British authorities concluded that the only place they could send the Jews was to the British-controlled zone of Allied-occupied Germany, where the Jews could be placed in camps and screened for extremists. After Germany, many of the passengers were eventually detained in military camps in Cyprus along with other Jews deported from Palestine. When the State of Israel was founded in May 1948, the Exodus' passengers were able to move there.
The newly released documents show that diplomats and military officers knew that sending Jews back to Germany and putting them in camps so soon after the Holocaust would spark protests. "These documents show the British perspective for the first time," Mark Dunton, contemporary history specialist at the National Archives, told the AP news agency. He added: "It is obvious in the files that the British were sensitive to the claim they were putting Jews into concentration camps." A UK diplomat in France sent a coded warning to the Foreign Office in London in August 1947. "You will realize that an announcement of the decision to send immigrants back to Germany will produce violent hostile outburst in the press," he wrote, suggesting that authorities tell the press that the Jews would enjoy some freedoms even though they were to be confined in camps.
