Status Updates From Commander of the Exodus

'The Pan York and the Pan Crescent departed on Friday, December 26, 1947, at four in the afternoon, one after the other. Everybody came on deck; a crowd the equivalent of two cities in Palestine stood and sang “Hatikva.”'

-Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 187)

"After Exodus, Yossi left on Shaul Avigur’s orders for his next mission—bringing the two largest ships in the history of illegal immigration."

-Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 160)

"It was the first time the British had attempted a blockade on the European coast and also the first time the Aliyah Beth had broken through."

-Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 124)

'Shlonsky asked Yossi, “What now?” And Yossi said he was leaving at once to bring another ship. Shlonsky quoted the line “My creatures are drowning at sea and you sing songs?”—a line that, according to Jewish legend, God said to the angels when they extolled Him at the sight of the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea.'

Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 98)

'They sang with feeling,... (“My shtetl is on fire …”), and some songs in Romanian, swaying her body while she sang, as in a dance. Hundreds of hungry, thirsty people stood there and wept. Afterward, she ran below. And the sea continued to surge.'

Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 82)

"On November 2, the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the trains came in sight of the ships at timed intervals one after another, as scheduled beforehand. The last train was late and arrived without its dining car, so they had to reduce the food rations even more."

-Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 66)

"What Orde Wingate taught in the mountains of Galilee and on the Lebanese border applied here—sometimes the notion that timing is everything is a great folly."

Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 42)

"Wingate had been correct. In 1939 the White Paper was indeed issued—on the anniversary of Kristallnacht and four years after the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws."

-Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus (pg. 22)

"The first meeting since he had grabbed her child from her. It was an encounter without anger. Without pardon. Without a glance. Without judgment."

Kaniuk, Yoram. Commander of the Exodus.

Already crying... what hell these people have been put through, it's inconceivable.