Rita’s story of Exodus
70 years ago, the Exodus 1947 ploughed across seas. The ship brimmed with more than 4500 Jewish refugees – and their hopes and gritty determination to rise from the ashes of Europe and join the Jewish homeland. It was not without controversy, but it was the ship that launched a nation.
Rita Migdal shares her story with Rebecca Davis.
RITA Migdal (nee Sokolik), 83, recalls the moment she first laid eyes on the land of Israel – or as it was then – Palestine.
“We went up on deck. We saw the Carmel mountains and Israel for the first time.”
“We knew we were home.”
The shallow waters of the Mediterranean lapped against the rickety vessel, and there, 12-year-old Rita stood. Possessing little more than the hellish memories of Europe and a dream to rebuild in that elusive promised land, Rita was aboard the ship that heaved with 4515 Jewish refugees – mostly Holocaust survivors.
This was the Exodus 1947.
On July 11, 1947, Polish-born Rita and her brother Yosef, 15, boarded the Exodus at Port Sète near Marseilles in France with fellow members of the Habonim Dror Zionist youth movement.
Beneath a shroud of darkness, the ship later set sail for Palestine. For seven days they travelled across the sea. Despite being closely tailed by a British naval ship the entire duration, Rita describes a mostly positive mood throughout the voyage, with many songs being sung – Hatikvah was a favourite.
“On board we gathered from all corners of the earth, but having one aim in common – to leave behind life in the DP camps and to stop being stateless, being a burden to the world,” tells Rita.
“But this was not to be trouble-free as the gates to our new dream homes were locked. The keys were in the hands of the British.”
Under British-mandated Palestine, a strict policy against Jewish immigration was enacted. Their priority was to protect oil interests, and thus appeasement of the Arab world was paramount. The Arabs were vehemently against the large influx of Jewish immigrants who had poured in along the Palestinian coastline as part of Aliyah Bet. The covert operation headed by Ben-Gurion and the Haganah attempted to facilitate the immigration of more than 100,000 displaced Jews without papers. And so, as the remnants of European Jewry reached the shores to enter the homeland, many were exiled again, this time behind the barbed wire of Cyprus’ internment camps.
The British did not attack the Exodus until it was along the Gazan shoreline. They rammed the sides of the ship, before coming aboard. The immigrants fought back with brute force. Rita remembers hearing the fighting from below deck, where the women and children were protected.
“The ship was lifted up, like this,” she says, motioning her hands vertically.
“Our fighters were on deck, hurling tins of soup, tins of vegetables and potatoes at the British.”
As Rita speaks, she recalls the “frummers”.
“Suddenly, I could see a group of Orthodox. I didn’t even know we had so many Orthodox Jewish people aboard – really Orthodox. They started to have a prayer on the ship, shokeling (swaying motion during prayer).”
She deflects for a moment, the memory of their movements catapulting her back to a home vanished, in Poland. Rita remembers sitting in shule as a young child, warmly embraced upon her grandmother’s lap.
She returns to the ship.
“And here was a group concentrating on praying, like really praying to God, that nothing should happen. And I was so fascinated that I said, ‘Are we going to be saved by their words or shokel?’”
“It was a feeling I never experienced. Like, we need it. Because of them, because of the way they are praying, maybe we will be ok? Hope. At that time, I felt it came from above.”
With three Jews killed in the fighting, and many injured – including Yosef – the battered Exodus limped into port at Haifa. There, the refugees were forced off the boat and onto the three British prison ships that laid in waiting. Rita recalls when the British confiscated everyone’s belongings, promising they would see them again in Cyprus. She cried and begged that they take anything except for her album, the collection of beloved photos of her family that had almost entirely perished in the Holocaust. Rita’s uncle Sol had gifted her with the album, “the only remnants from the family Sokolik”, he had inscribed on the first page.
Israel “Sol” Sokolik was a partisan of the Slonim ghetto, and it was his gift upon finding the young orphans, Rita and Yosef, at the DP camp in Rosenheim, Germany in 1946. Their parents had died in Uzbekistan where the family had fled at the outbreak of war.
But not only would the three ships not travel to Cyprus – Rita would never see her album again.
The refugees had survived the horrors of the Nazi war machine, DP camps and the voyage of the Exodus. Now, those who had already lost so much were also denied the opportunity for a new start in their ancestral homeland, and were directed back to France.
“The conditions aboard the prison ship were horrible,” Rita recollects.
“It was an iron floor. No bed. No chairs. All we got was a blanket that we shared. It was hot. No air conditioning. Salt water only. The food had weevils. We were hungry. We were thirsty.”
Everyone slept alongside each other on the floor. Rita remembers a Romanian man who made an unwanted advance in the night.
“I grabbed his foot and twisted it so hard. He screamed. I never saw him again!”
Upon arrival at Port-de-Bouc near Marseilles, France, the immigrants refused to disembark in protest. French government officials boarded the ship, and offered full French citizenship to those who willingly wished to disembark. Rita recalls the response from their leader, Mordechai Rosman:
“No. Thank you for your kindness, it is very nice. The only place that we are going to go down willingly will be Palestine.”
It was also during this time that the reality of the cruel fate that had befallen Rita’s family became clear.
“Next to me where I was standing, I had a mother and a baby with numbers tattooed on her arm. A baby!”
“I hadn’t seen the numbers before. I didn’t know the story exactly, I was too young … But here was the first time that I understood. They had come from ovens, gas chambers, from being in prisons, being killed. I said, ‘oh my God’.”
“This is how I learned where my family went. I put two and two together.”
After a hunger strike and three-week stand-off with the immigrants, the British finally ordered the ships back to Germany.
“We landed at the Port of Hamburg. We stood up to them, but they dragged us off our ship, Runnymede Park, one by one.They also used tear gas and fire hoses. The ship was full of water.
“Trains then took us to the camps. We felt like prisoners. For those who had suffered the concentration camps, they felt it was like going back to Auschwitz.”
But, with the deployment of a few international correspondents aboard the prison ships, and the Jewish resistance shown throughout the ordeal, the issue was thrust into the limelight by the media. Capturing worldwide attention, the British underwent intense scrutiny for their treatment of the refugees, as the dire need for the establishment of a Jewish state was highlighted.
Less than one year later, Israel was born.
Shortly after, Rita, Yosef and another sibling, Yosefa were finally able to call themselves Israelis. They settled on Kibbutz Sdot Yam. Ten years later, Rita would marry Sam Migdal, “a very, very good and charming man” and the sole survivor of 47 family members from Warsaw. They would live in New York for a short time before immigrating to Australia with their two daughters in 1963.
“The Exodus shows what belief, determination and strength can achieve,” reflects Rita.
“You had to persevere and be flexible. Humans can adapt themselves in any situation for survival. It can bring out the best in some – to accept and continue – and in others it can bring out the worst – to give up and behave poorly.”
“I just feel gratitude. Thanks to the Exodus, I found my freedom.”
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