Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation

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Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation

by Ruth Gruber, Richard Holbrooke (Introduction)

4.24 of 5 stars 4.24 · rating details · 17 ratings · 3 reviews

With more than 100 photographs by the author

"The ship looked like a matchbox that had been splintered by a nutcracker. In the torn, square hole, as big as an open, blitzed barn, we could see a muddle of bedding, possessions, plumbing, broken pipes, overflowing toilets, half-naked men, women looking for children. Cabins were bashed in; railings were ripped off; the lifesavi...more With more than 100 photographs by the author

"The ship looked like a matchbox that had been splintered by a nutcracker. In the torn, square hole, as big as an open, blitzed barn, we could see a muddle of bedding, possessions, plumbing, broken pipes, overflowing toilets, half-naked men, women looking for children. Cabins were bashed in; railings were ripped off; the lifesaving rafts were dangling at crazy angles."

On July 18, 1947, Ruth Gruber, an American journalist, waited on a wharf in Haifa as the Exodus 1947 limped into harbor. The evening before, Gruber had learned that this unarmed ship, with more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors crammed into a former tourist vessel designed for 400 passengers, had been rammed and boarded by the British Navy, which was determined to keep her desperate human cargo from finding refuge in Palestine. Now, though soldiers blockaded both exit and entry to the weary vessel, Gruber was determined to meet the refugees and hear their tales. For the next several months she pursued the émigrés' stories, from Haifa to the prison camps on Cyprus (where she was misled by the British to believe the DPs would land, though they never did), to southern France, and, appallingly, back to Hamburg, Germany, where they were ultimately sent by the intractable British authorities.

As the lone journalist covering this story, Gruber sent riveting dispatches and vivid photographs back to the New York and Paris Herald Tribune, which in turn sent them out to the rest of the world press. Gruber's relentless reporting and striking photographs shaped perceptions worldwide as to the situation of postwar Jewish refugees and of the British Mandate in Palestine, and arguably influenced the United Nations decision to finally create the State of Israel in 1948.

In 1948, Gruber assembled her dispatches and thirty of her pictures into Destination Palestine, the book that became the basis for Leon Uris's bestselling novel Exodus and the film of the same name. In this revised and expanded edition, Gruber has included a new opening chapter of never-before-published material on the wretched DP camps of Europe, where the refugees were living before boarding the Exodus 1947; updated the fate of many of the passengers, describing how they smuggled themselves into Palestine--despite the myriad obstacles thrown up by the British authorities--even before the State of Israel was born; and selected seventy additional photographs from her personal archives.

Bartley Crum's introduction to the original edition, retained here, likened Gruber's achievement to John Hersey's Hiroshima for its powerful compression of a momentous event, its vivid reportage, and its capacity to change the way people think about contemporary history. Exodus 1947 is an enormously moving account by one of the twentieth century's most remarkable women, stirring and shocking us more than fifty years after that battered ship entered Haifa harbor.(less)

Hardcover, 224 pages

Published October 1st 1999 by Crown

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Apr 15, 2009 Duane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was a complete shock to me. I had no clue such injustices happened to the Jewish people after World War 2 by the British. The author takes you back to when she was there to witness the travesty that the Jewish people aboard Exodus 1947 had to go through just to try to seek their freedom. During this time, Jewish people fleeing war torn Europe wanted to get to Palestine, but the British controlled all immigration and they purposely kept the number each month to a assinine number. The pe...more

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Jan 26, 2011 Trebledb added it

A tragic time post World War II where liberated "displaced persons" from European concentration camps had nowhere to go and were prevented from entering Palestine by the British.

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Feb 02, 2011 Angie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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Wow! Amazing author! Amazing photos! Amazing story! Will definately be reading more by this author and about this subject.

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About Ruth Gruber

Ruth Gruber is an award-winning Jewish American journalist, photographer, and humanitarian. Born in Brooklyn in 1911, she became the youngest PhD in the world and went on to author nineteen books, including the National Jewish Book Award–winning biography Raquela (1978). She also wrote several memoirs documenting her astonishing experiences, among them Ahead of Time (1991), Inside of Time (2002),...more

More about Ruth Gruber...

Books by Ruth Gruber

Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America

Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story

Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent

Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman

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