Before the government of Nazi Germany made the decision to exterminate the Jews in Europe in July 1941, Nazi policy still allowed for the reduction of Jewish numbers in Europe by emigration. Jewish organizations, both mainstream and dissident, ran operations which attempted to bring Jews from Europe to Palestine in violation of the strict immigration rules imposed by the
British Mandate government.
This required cooperation with the Nazi authorities, who saw the opportunity to make trouble for the British as well as to get rid of Jews. The Committee for Sending Jews Overseas was an office that operated under the supervision of
Adolf Eichmann, organizing emigration of Jews from the Nazi-controlled parts of Europe. In September 1940, the Committee chartered three ships, the
Milos, the
Pacific and the
Atlantic, to transport Jewish refugees from the Romanian port of
Tulcea to Palestine. Their passengers consisted of about 3,600 refugees from the Jewish communities in
Vienna,
Danzig and
Prague.
The
Pacific reached Palestinian waters November 1 , followed by the
Milos a few days later. The ships were intercepted by the
Royal Navy and taken to the
port of Haifa. Warned in advance of the ships' arrival, the British
Colonial Office was determined to refuse entry to the immigrants. With the security situation in the region improving following British successes in the
Western Desert Campaign, the Colonial Office decided it was less risky to provoke Jewish anger than to risk an
Arab revolt, and that an example would be made to dissuade other potential immigrants from making the attempt. The British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir
Harold MacMichael, issued a deportation order on November 20, ordering that the refugees be taken to the British
Indian Ocean territory of Mauritius and the
Caribbean territory of Trinidad.
The refugees were transferred to another ship, the
Patria, for the journey to
Mauritius. The
Patria was a 12,000 ton
passenger ship which had recently been seized by the British following the French
surrender to Nazi Germany. It was a 27 year old steel-hulled vessel with a crew of 130.
[3] As a civilian liner, it was only permitted to carry 805 people (including the crew); after its requisitioning, it was reclassified as a troop transport, permitting it to carry 1,800 people (excluding the crew). However, it still only had enough lifeboats for the original 805 passengers and crew, with the rest having to rely on rafts in the event of an emergency.
The refugees from the
Pacific and
Milos were soon transferred to the
Patria. The
Atlantic arrived on November 24 and the transfer of eight hundred of its 1,645 passengers began.
Meanwhile, the Zionist organizations were considering how the deportation plan could be thwarted. A general strike had little effect. The
Irgun attempted unsuccessfully to place a bomb on the
Patria to disable it. The Haganah also sought to disable the
Patria, with the intention of forcing it to stay in port for repairs and thus buying time that could be used to pressure the British to rescind the deportation order. The officer in charge of the operation was
Yitzhak Sadeh, but his authority came from
Moshe Sharett, who was the leader of the Political Department of the
Jewish Agency in the temporary absence of the imprisoned
David Ben-Gurion.
On November 22, agents of the Haganah smuggled a two-kilogram bomb on board the ship, timed to explode at 9 pm that day. It failed to explode, and a second, more powerful, device was smuggled on board on November 24. At 9 am on November 25, the bomb exploded alongside the inner hull of the ship By this time, the
Patria was carrying 1,770 refugees from the
Pacific and
Milos and had taken on board 134 passengers from the
Atlantic. The plan had been for the ship to be disabled without causing casualties, but the Haganah had miscalculated the effect of the explosion. The bomb blew a large hole measuring three meters by two in the side of the ship and it sank in only fifteen minutes
