Gertruda's Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II (29 page)

“Interesting,” he said. “Tell me what you’re doing here.”

At length she told her story.

“You’re an amazing woman.” Grauel was impressed. “All of you on this ship are amazing people. I’m proud I was given the opportunity to help you.”

Gertruda furtively admired his height, his solid body, his expressive face, and an old, almost forgotten feeling, which had grown dull over the years, revived in her heart: she liked him.

She asked him to tell her about his life. Grauel said that he had been born in Germany and had wanted to be a minister at an early age. He had moved to the United States with his parents as a child and, after studying theology, at the age of twenty-eight, he was appointed a minister in a Protestant church in a small American provincial town.

“Do you intend to return to the church when the trip is over?”

“Maybe,” he answered.

“Do you have other plans?”

“Not right now.”

In the following days, Gertruda noticed that Grauel spent a lot of time with her. They ate together in the dining room and got into long conversations on deck when the day’s heat subsided and the sun began to set. Michael noticed that since she had first met Grauel, Gertruda paid more attention to her appearance, and even put on lipstick. Grauel was affectionate to the child. He found a fishing pole and they tried to pull fish out of the sea. They loved to fish together, even though they didn’t get even one bite.

In the cool evening, the deck was packed with passengers who came out of the hold to breathe some fresh air. Some of them lay on the hard wooden boards, babies cried, and children vainly sought a place to play. Zvi Yacobovitch played the violin. Despite the crowding, Grauel, Gertruda, and Michael found their own corner. Grauel talked about his childhood; Gertruda translated for Michael. The child listened, wide-eyed. One of those stories stayed etched in Michael’s brain even many years later.

Father John Grauel, 1984
.

“My father,” said Grauel in his deep voice, “came from Germany to America in the early 1920s and found work as a simple laborer in a metal plant. He worked there devotedly and lovingly for years. He didn’t make much, but he made enough to support my mother, me, and my little brother, until the Depression of 1929. My father was fired, and we had to wander around the United States looking for work for him. I remember we went to Washington. The city was flooded with thousands of unemployed living in a gigantic tent camp in the middle of the city. My father was depressed. Every day he sat for hours on a bench in a public park and pitied himself. He thought he had no chance of getting work. The little bit of money we had quickly ran out and we knew that within a few days we wouldn’t have any food to eat.

“I couldn’t watch my father sink more and more into his depression. I decided to do something a bit crazy. I went to the White House where the president lived and slipped inside without the guards seeing me. I walked around the corridors and looked for a
door that said
PRESIDENT.
Finally, someone in a tailored suit stopped me and asked what I was doing there. I said I had come to ask the president to give my father work or we would all starve to death. The man smiled at me and said: ‘I like your daring and originality’ He went and brought me a cheese sandwich and a bottle of soda and asked me to send my father to him the next morning.

“I went home and told my father. He hugged me in his strong arms and was so excited, he couldn’t sleep all night. In the morning he went to the White House, met with the man, and was sent to work on a building the government was constructing in the city. We were saved.”

Grauel stroked Michael’s head.

“You loved your father very much, didn’t you?” asked the child in Polish, and Gertruda translated.

“Very much.”

“So did I. It’s been a long time since I saw my father.”

Gertruda’s new friendship with the minister stirred feelings in her that grew stronger. The pleasant man won her heart and she wanted to believe that he felt the same way about her. One night, on deck, they got into a long conversation. She said that she intended to accompany the boy to the Land of Israel, guarantee that he was accepted there, and, if possible, stay with him until her dying day.

“I’m also considering staying in Palestine,” said Grauel.

“Have you ever thought of settling down with a woman you’d love?” she asked cautiously.

“No,” he mumbled.

“If you like … I’d be willing to convert to Protestantism for you … I’d be glad if … “She blushed.

He patted her hand. “You’re a charming woman,” he said. “You deserve somebody better than me.”

He wanted her to understand: “I’m not attracted to women,” he said softly. “That’s why I haven’t gotten married until now.”

She understood and her heart fell. All the dreams she had spun about life with him vanished.

“You don’t feel well?” asked Grauel when he saw her pale face.

“I’ll recover,” she said, and averted her face so he couldn’t see her tears.

The fleet of British destroyers following the
Exodus
grew in number almost every day. By the fourth day out, six of them were seen. The destroyer
Ajax
, which had shot a mortal hit to the German flagship
Graf Spee
in the war, approached the ship and the question came from its loudspeaker: “Are you taking illegal immigrants to Palestine?” The
Exodus
didn’t answer. The British voice called again: “We know exactly who you are and where you want to go. You will never get there. You won’t pass because our navy is invincible. Don’t endanger women and children in vain. In the name of humanity, we ask you to prevent the attempts of your leaders to break through our blockade. Change your course while it’s not too late.”

In reply, the
Exodus
turned its loudspeakers to the British ships and broadcast Hebrew songs.

All the British destroyers were now in very close range to the survivors’ ship. They sailed beside her, demonstrably maneuvering their batteries of guns. Armed commandos stood on the decks wearing gas masks.

The crowding in the holds and on the decks of the
Exodus
, the heat that oppressed and choked the thousands of immigrants, the lack of any privacy, the lack of any possibility of finding a quiet corner, and primarily the tension and fear sown in them by the British destroyers—all that turned life on the ship into an almost impossible endurance test. Many of the forty-five hundred men, women, and children who bore on their bodies—and mainly their souls—wounds that hadn’t yet healed had brought customs from the camps that were hard to get rid of. Here, too, on the ship, harsh scenes of brutality appeared. People pushed each other in lines for food and water, burst into the clinic to get treatment before everyone else, horded food despite the abundance, and tried to get to the bunks near the windows and the openings. Organized groups almost always got what they wanted at the expense of those who weren’t pushy. Fistfights broke out almost every day.

Alone, too tired to fight, Gertruda had to get up early in the morning to stand in lines before dawn, to get food and water when the morning distribution began. She often found that many people had preceded her in line. Sometimes, the long wait was near pointless and when she got to the distribution point, almost nothing was left for her and Michael. She was no stranger to frustration and disappointment. She had experienced them intensely during the war and knew how to overcome them without complaining.

Michael often insisted on standing in line with her. For hours he stood there looking helplessly at the people who got what they wanted through force. As during the war, his heart hurt now when he saw Gertruda’s sad face.

One day, when Michael and Gertruda had returned empty-handed, he went to the commander of the ship, Yossi Hamburger, and demanded that the crew establish order, but all the commander’s
efforts to ensure that everyone got his portion met with failure. The laws of the jungle were stronger than he was.

The minister Grauel often offered to share his food with Gertruda and Michael. They refused to take food from him, but he pleaded until they gave in. The three of them usually ate together.

“You can’t blame those people,” he said. “They survived hell because they fought for every piece of bread. They’ll go on fighting out of habit. It will take time for them to return to themselves.”

Even though the
Exodus
was clumsy and heavy, she did have some advantages over the British destroyers assigned to prevent her from getting to the shores of the Promised Land. She was higher than they were, surrounded by layers of steel, and thus better defended than other illegal immigrants ships. The British calculated that only their command bridges, in the top section of the destroyers, were parallel in height to the decks of the
Exodus
. That was the only place, even if not the most convenient, from which the illegal immigrant ship could be stormed. British naval engineers had learned of this in time and secretly built elevated scaffolds on every destroyer to make it easy for the soldiers to assault when they came alongside the
Exodus
. To hide those scaffolds, the destroyers took care to sail behind the
Exodus
at an angle to conceal the new towers.

On Friday night, July 18, 1947, the passengers of the
Exodus
had a modest meal. They were heavyhearted and frightened. The ship was sailing at full steam to the shores of Palestine, now only fifteen miles away, and eight British ships, their lights out, were chasing them like stubborn hounds. Both the British soldiers and
the survivors understood that the inevitable clash would occur in only a matter of hours.

At that time, under cover of dark, two Palmach units were hiding on the shore of Tel Aviv to get the immigrants off the ship quickly when they arrived. About twenty fishing boats and barges, secretly mobilized, waited in the port of Tel Aviv for orders to go to the ship and start transferring the immigrants to shore. The assumption was that if the operation were carried out quickly, many of the ship’s passengers could slip into Tel Aviv before the British could block the area. But all plans and hopes vanished that night.

Preparations for the British attack on the
Exodus
began in the evening. A state of high alert was declared on the British ships. The soldiers ate a hasty meal and were ordered to put on battle gear, load their weapons, and stand by for orders. When the operation started, the destroyers were supposed to accelerate. Two of them would attach their sides to the
Exodus
. The scaffolds would be thrown onto the deck of the illegal immigrant ship so the soldiers could swoop onto the deck, stop the progress of the ship, and take control of it. At the same time, the other ships would sail close by, ready to send reinforcements if needed and prevent the illegal immigrants from fleeing to shore in the lifeboats.

The mood aboard the
Exodus
was tense. The ship made its way silently, most of its lights dowsed. Even though none of the passengers knew what the British were liable to do, they were sure they wouldn’t let illegal immigrants ashore. Most of them lay in bed, but couldn’t sleep. Only the children slept. The roar of the motors rose from the belly of the ship, dull and monotonous. A dreary moon sailed in the cloudless sky and a warm wind scattered the smoke rising from the smokestack.

At 1:52
A.M.,
the order was given to attack. The British sailors were ordered to increase speed and the destroyers shrank the distance. Bright spotlights were trained on the decks of the
Exodus
and flooded the ship in a blinding light. The loudspeakers split the air and drowned out the roar of the waves.

“Stop at once!” echoed the warning in English. “You have illegally entered the territorial waters of Palestine.”

At these words, Ike Aaronovitch’s face turned red with anger.

“Dammit!” he shouted. “They’re lying. We’re still in international waters. They have no right to stop us here!” Every seaman knows that stopping a boat outside of territorial waters is an international crime. The British didn’t care. They were determined to stop the
Exodus
no matter what.

Ike stood in the pilot’s cabin, his hands angrily gripping the wheel. Yossi Hamburger was standing next to him, just as furious. He was certain the British would do anything to stop them, even if international law didn’t allow it.

“If you won’t stop,” the loudspeakers went on thundering, “we shall be forced to come up on your deck, to arrest all of you and take the ship to Haifa.”

Hamburger rushed to the radio cabin and ordered the radio operator to broadcast an answer to Commander Gregson, in charge of the British operation: