Eight hundred men and 500 women disembarked here this morning from the Josiah Wedgwood, which was escorted into Haifa last night by three British destroyers, after having been intercepted en route here from Italy.
The passengers came from various Eastern European countries, including Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. A few were from Greece. Nearly all had been inmates of Nazi concentration camps. Most were in good health. More than twenty per cent of the women are pregnant.
When the Wedgwood anchored in the harbor she broke out the British and Zionist flags and all the passengers joined in singing in Yiddish a partisan song entitled “We Are Here.” The disembarkation proceeded smoothly under the eyes of armed guards and the refugees were taken to the Athlete clearance camp, where they will remain until immigration certificates are available.
The captain and crew of the vessel, who would be liable to arrest under Palestine’s emergency defense regulations, disappeared just before the disembarkation began.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
