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70th Anniversary of the Exodus Jewish Immigration Voyage to Israel
(Jerusalem Post) Shoshana Kranish - This week commemorates the 70th anniversary of the voyage of the Exodus, a ship carrying over 4,500 Jewish immigrants from France to Israel following World War II. The ship left the French port of Sete on July 11, 1947. A majority of the ship's passengers were Holocaust survivors who possessed no legal travel documents for their arrival in then-Mandatory Palestine. Upon nearing its arrival at Haifa's port, British soldiers boarded the ship and deported the passengers back to France. When the ship returned to France, the immigrants on board refused to get off, braving a heat wave and food shortages. The British eventually sent the ship to Hamburg, Germany, where they forced the passengers to disembark. The 1960 film "Exodus" featuring Jewish-American star Paul Newman was based on the ship's story, as was Leon Uris' 1958 novel of the same name.