Thirty Jews and 11 British seamen were injured in a wild battle aboard the refugee ship Chaim Arlosorof this morning when a naval boarding party was repulsed by the enraged refugees. Two Jews were killed about the same time by a bomb explosion here.
Although several shots were fired by British mine sweepers and destroyers, none of the injuries on the Arlosorof resulted from bullet wounds. The first boarding party was thrown overboard, but a second group managed to overpower the passengers with the aid of fire hoses, clubs and tear gas grenades.
The turmoil in Haifa, which was the scene of a mass demonstration protesting the barring of the immigrants, was increased when a bomb blasted the military paymasters office in the Barclay Bank building, doing extensive damage and injuring eleven persons, including two Jewish guards, Jehuda Melau and Joseph Fogelstein, who died later. The men who planted the explosives were dressed in British uniforms.
Troops posted in strategic positions in Haifa and the nearby bathing resort of Beth Galim prevented hundreds of Jewish demonstrators from converging on the refugee vessel, which grounded on a sound bar a few yards from the Beth Galim shores.
The Haifapport area and its approaches were ringed with troops, while in the Hadar Carmel section of the city Jewish demonstrators were urged by speakers to march on the ship. A heavy cordon was thrown around Beth Galim and nobody was allowed in or out of the settlement. One student was arrested when he sought to break through the circle of soldiers. From the shore the residents could hear the 1,350 passengers aboard the Arlsorof singing Hatikvah as they unfurled a huge Zionist flag.
ARRIVALS TRANSFERRED TO DEPORTATION SHIPS
Meanwhile, naval boarding parties transferred the refugees to landing craft and brought them to Haifa where they were placed aboard deportation ships. Twelve of the immigrants who had jumped overboard were rounded up and taken to detention barracks here.
Acting on a petition filed by the Jerusalem Jewish Community Council, the Palestine Supreme Court issued an order permitting the Arlosorof to remain in Haifa until an application for a writ of heabeas corpus on behalf of 50 of the passengers has been answered in court by the civil and military authorities.
The Arlosorof was first sighted early yesterday evening by British destroyers, whom she signalled that she was bound for Alexendria and was manned by an American crew. The destroyers shadowed her until this morning when they surrounded the vessel. En route to Haifa, the captain mansuvered the ship away from the escorting destroyers and made a rune for the Palestine shore until it ran aground.
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.
