Robert F. Sylk’s Exodus Speech to Hadassah
October 7, 2010
 My friends called me from Tel Aviv to tell me that the first Mexican restaurant opened in Israel last week. It’s called “The Casa Hadassah!”
Ladies and Gentlemen, over 6500 plus years ago, an ember was lit and that flame of freedom is still inside of us. 6500 years ago in Sumaria and Judea where a drop of water meant life or no life and where today it means the same.
Israel is a land of sand. It was 6500 years ago and it is today if not for water. I remember being in Israel on one of the 15 trips there in 1946 and looking down a long road and on this side was green grass and on this side was sand, and you knew that this side was Israel and this side was not. I stand before you today as I again remind myself of those turbulent days after WWII.
Coming home from school one day in 1946 I found Golda Meir in our kitchen telling my father that he has to go to Haifa to meet with Ben Gurion. She said to me, “Robert, if you want something said ask a man, but if you want something done, ask a woman.” We left that week and we stayed at the Maggido Hotel in the Port of Haifa looking over the harbor. I remember my father telling me that “the Israeli’s live on the sunrise side not the sunset side. It’s the side to see the day that is coming, not to see the day that is gone.”
Ben Gurion said, “Harry, we need $400,000, which would be in 2010 $$, about $20 Million + to purchase 10 vessels to break the British blockade to bring the dedicated and struggling immigrants to Israel. The first of these ships is to be named The Exodus.” He said Mr. Prime Minister, we will purchase the vessels and the money for the crews and repairs, docking fees, etc. will be sent to you in the usual manner and that’s how we got Paul Newman to Israel by promising him an ocean cruise.
On that visit in August 1946, Ben Gurion said “before you have a country, you have to have people.” We need people not only to populate our country but to populate our armies for the wars yet to be fought.
In fact at dinner that night, David Ben Gurion’s wife Paula told me that a war was inevitable but that the war would last less than 2 weeks because she said “her son joined the army and he has never held a job more than 2 weeks in his life” and she was right.
We knew this was to be a total commitment (Cow and Chicken story) (Steak and Eggs)
When we returned to America and Philadelphia, my father was on the telephones constantly for days and the following week, in September 1946, we got on the train to Baltimore and were taken to this ship. We walked up the gang plank and boarded, we spoke with some men and about 2 hours later were back at the railroad station going home. I stood on the deck of the Exodus before it was the Exodus. Purchased by the Sylk family as war surplus and in a clandestine effort she was outfitted in Baltimore as part of a secret fleet to transport holocaust survivors through the British blockade against Jewish immigration to the land of Israel.
The ship was formally the packet steamer SS President Warfield, named for the president of the shipping line carrying passengers and freight between Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland in the United States, from the ships launch in 1928 until 1942. During WWII, it served both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy as the USS President Warfield. In 1942 it was attacked by a German submarine west of Ireland on September 25, 1942. The ship evaded one torpedo and reached Belfast.
It joined the U.S. Navy on May 21, 1944 and served at Omaha Beach at Normandy. It finally arrived in Virginia in July 1945 and left active navy service September 13. It left the U.S. Navy registry on October 11, and returned to the War Shipping Administration (WSA) on November 14, 1945. On November 9, 1946, the Sylk family under the name of the Potomec Ship Wrecking Company of Washington D.C. who were acting as an agent of the Jewish political group Haganah purchased the ship. The ship ended up with the Mossad-the underground Jewish organization in Palestine intent on helping underground Jewish immigrants enter Palestine. It was renamed Exodus after the biblic al Jewish Exodus from Egypt to Canaan. Following WWII, many holocaust survivors were unable or unwilling to return to their native countries and were living in displaced person camps scattered throughout Europe. Many wanted to immigrate to Palestine, then under British rule but British policies prohibited that. Jewish organizations aimed to draw international attention to the refugees’ plight by staging a mass illegal immigration to Palestine in July 1947 when delegates of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine would be on a fact finding visit to the region. The Mosad based in Palestine and France oversaw this operation. The Exodus left Baltimore February 25, 1947 and headed for the Mediterranean port of Sete France. During this time my father asked me to get into his car with his brother Bill and we drove to Princeton New Jersey to speak with Albert Einstein (Einstein’s trip).
We flew to Haifa on July 15, 1947 and waited for its arrival.
With Palmach (Haganah’s Military Wing) it sailed as the Exodus with 4515 passengers and 43 crew including 655 children from the port of Sete France on July 11, 1947 and arrived at Palestine shores 7 days later on July 18. The British Royal Navy rammed the ship a few miles from shore in international waters where the Royal Navy had no jurisdiction. Two passengers and one of the crew died and 30 others were injured before the ship was taken over. During the struggle the new ship’s name, Exodus 1947 was proclaimed to the world. The ship was towed to Haifa where the immigrants disembarked.
The ship looked like a matchbox that had been splintered by a nutcracker. In the torn, square hole, as big as an open, blitzed barn, we could see a muddle of bedding, possessions, plumbing, broken pipes, overflowing toilets, half-naked men, women looking for children. Cabins were bashed in; railings were ripped off; the lifesaving rafts were dangling at crazy angles.
The 4,500 Jewish refugees were unloaded from the tattered ship. They were separated from their few belongings and days later placed on three ships (one hospital ship; two prison ships). We went to the Exodus but were not allowed to board but I reached out and touched it with my left hand.
Built to carry only 400 passengers and a crew of 58, the ship had escaped from a French port on July 11, with more than 4,500 Jewish refugees aboard. In the July 18 battle underground members evaded capture by going to hiding places aboard ship. After the Exodus docked at Haifa, a work detail of Jews came aboard at Haifa to clean the filthy vessel, and dozens of the Mosad walked off among them.
These refugees were supposed to go to the British camp for captured refugees (those caught while trying to illegally enter Palestine) on Cyprus. Cyprus was a twentieth-century purgatory, a hot hell of desert sand and wind blowing against tents and tin huts, a hell circumscribed by two walls of barbed wire whose architecture had come out of Dachau and Treblinka, a hell which privacy was unknown.
The three ships were sent by the British to Hamburg, Germany. For those on board, going back to the country that had murdered their families was an outrage. Here, the refugees were forced off the ships and taken to prison camps in the British occupation zone of Germany. The Exodus incident played an important role in fostering public awareness and support for the creation of the State of Israel. International outrage at the refugee’s treatment at the hands of the British resulted in an outpouring of empathy. All of the passengers of the Exodus eventually made their way back that year and settled in Israel.
The bravery of the Exodus passengers and crew may well have hastened the end of British rule here, as a result of the international attention and anti-British feeling which this series of events generated. This highly publicized international incident heavily influenced the United Nations resolution authorizing the partitioning of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. Thus, the Exodus 1947 voyage acted as the catalyst in the forming of a new nation. The secret American involvement focused on clandestine and illegal American Jewish efforts to finance and crew the most infamous of the ten American ships that brought Jewish refugees to Palestine, events that shaped world history to this day.
Between 1947 and 1948 volunteers from the United States and Canada acquired, equipped and manned the other ships which carried over 30,000 refugees through the British blockade.
The Exodus itself, battered and abandoned, burned and sank in Haifa harbor in 1952. After the history making voyage, the ship was tied up in Haifa harbor and forgotten. This ship that opened the doors and created the State of Israel in 1948 which brought massive immigration of European Jewish refugees from displaced persons camps into Israel. 600,000 Jews arrived that year in the new State. There was little time and money to focus on the meaning of the Exodus. In 1950, the Mayor of Haifa proposed that the ship that launched a nation should be restored and converted into a floating museum. During the process of resto ring the ship that had been left decaying in the harbor a mysterious accident occurred and the Exodus burned to the water line. The hulk was towed and scuttled north of the Kishon River near Shemen Beach. In 1964 an effort was made to raise her iron hull. The effort failed and she sank once again. In 1974, again an effort was made to raise the remains of the Exodus. The remains were refloated and being towed toward the Kishon River when she sank again. Without fanfare or ceremony the City of Haifa built its modern ship extensions on top of the remains of the Exodus. The area where the remains of the Exodus are buried today is a “holy” security zone and is not ac cessible. Historical markers and plaques exist for the Exodus in Southern France, Germany, Italy, and in Baltimore harbor in the United States. There are no memorials or markers in Israel.
This is our long train of history-As our present continues to reconnect to our past. Ladies and gentlemen, when I am old and grey and the lights start to dim I will think again of those golden days and I’ll remember this journey and I will remember all of you. God Bless America and God Bless Israel and thank you. Robert F. Sylk |
Businessman
and Philanthropist 
