The People on the Beach: Journeys to Freedom After the Holocaust

by Rosie Whitehouse

Overview

One summer's night in 1946, over 1,000 European Jews waited silently on an Italian beach to board a secret ship. They had survived Auschwitz, hidden and fought in forests and endured death marches—now they were taking on the Royal Navy, running the British blockade of Palestine.

From Eastern Europe to Israel via Germany and Italy, Rosie Whitehouse follows in the footsteps of those secret passengers, uncovering their extraordinary stories—some told for the first time. Who were those people on the beach? Where and what had they come from, and how had they survived? Why, after being liberated, did so many Jews still feel unsafe in Europe? How do we—and don't we—remember the Holocaust today? This remarkable, important book digs deep and travels far in search of answers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781787383777
Publisher:	Hurst
Publication date:	10/15/2020
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Rosie Whitehouse is a journalist specializing in Jewish life after the Holocaust. She writes for BBC Online, the Observer, The Independent, Tablet magazine, The Jewish Chronicle, Haaretz and others. A graduate of the London School of Economics, she is an historical advisor at the Vienna-based Centropa, a Jewish history institute.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Rivne - Bandera's Victory
2. Vilnius - Harmatz's Choice
3. Auschwitz - Who Is For Life?
4. Krakow - The Homecoming
5. Tarvisio - The Gateway to Zion
6. Nuremburg - An Eye for an Eye
7. Dachau - Human Debris
8. St Ottilien - The Doctor and His Patients
9. Landsberg - The Town Where Nothing Happened
10. Munich - The Survivors' Passover
11. Milan - Peddling History
12. Selvino - The Most Vulnerable People in the World
13. Fiesole - The Lost Boys of the Bencista
14. Santa Maria di Bagni - Time to Breathe
15. Magenta - The Secret Camp
16. New York - F***B Shipping
17. La Spezia - Move Over Paul Newman
18. Haifa - The People's Trafalgar
19. Tel Aviv - Only Yesterday
Afterword

Editorial Reviews

"A remarkable story."—The Times

"An illuminating, welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and its aftermath." —Kirkus

"This is a story that needed telling and Rosie Whitehouse tells it with warmth, energy and empathy—the story of those who survived the greatest darkness, and dreamed of a new life in the light."

— Jonathan Freedland, Guardian columnist

"A fascinating, poignant, exciting and revelatory story, told dramatically yet subtly and meticulously, and filled with colorful and unlikely characters. Part travel writing, part investigative journalism, here is a swathe of world history told through the lives, tragedies, suffering and survival of a boatload of Jewish survivors."

— Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem

"Despite knowledge of the Nazi genocide, Holocaust survivors faced a hostile world of immigration barriers. Uncovering the stories of those who found sanctuary 'illegally', Whitehouse has written a thrilling detective story with ringing resonance for our times."

— Joanna Newman MBE, Association of Commonwealth Universities, historian of refugees from Nazism

"I could not put this book down. Moving, haunting and utterly fascinating, it tells a story of unlikely heroes who should be far better known: survivors, and those who helped them on their illegal journey to Palestine/Israel. Terrific."— Rabbi Dame Julia Neuberger DBE

"An important and profound book on the nature of historical memory, and a fascinating exploration of Britain and the Jews. . . . A gripping story of human drama and historical seriousness"—The Spectator

"Whitehouse's book radiates human understanding, warmth and above all restraint. She understood what many fail to grasp: The story of the Holocaust survivors needs no embellishment."— Haaretz

"Whitehouse's book will provide much-needed context to the circumstances in which Israel came into being and the ideology of those determined to create a country of their own."—Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs

From the Publisher

★ 2020-08-19
A painstakingly researched account of the seaborne refugee operations to deliver Jewish survivors of the Third Reich to what would become Israel.

Whitehouse, a journalist and historical adviser at Vienna-based Centropa, “an interactive database of Jewish memory,” impressively documents a moment in history when more than 1,000 Holocaust survivors gathered on a Ligurian beach and clambered aboard a rickety ship that was stuffed far beyond its capacity, sailing to the British Mandate of Palestine on a thankfully uneventful eight-day journey across the Mediterranean. The survivors braved Italian authorities, a British naval blockade, and an oddly hostile reception by those who reflexively believed that “they must have done some wrong in order to still be alive.” In order to effectively chronicle this and other tales of rescue, Whitehouse traveled to such critical sites as Berdychiv, where the Soviet journalist Vasily Grossman “was shocked to discover the major role that his former Ukrainian neighbors had played in the murder of his mother, his relatives and the thousands who lost their lives”; tourist-packed Auschwitz, where “cars and coaches fill the carparks and locals quick to make a few zlotys try to divert day-trippers from the free parking to their private paying lots”; and Dachau, “not a place that lends much help to the road-trip historian.” During her journey interviewing survivors, relatives, archivists, and historians, Whitehouse learned about stories not often recounted elsewhere, including the work of avenging former prisoners who poisoned their interned erstwhile SS guards with arsenic-laced bread; of the Jewish Brigade of the British army, “a unit of soldiers who had effectively gone AWOL” to help Holocaust survivors escape to Palestine; and of Italian partisans and ordinary townspeople in helping overcrowded refugee ships sail, a story commemorated in Leon Uris’ novel Exodus.

An illuminating, welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Kirkus Reviews