Exodus 1947 Commander Yossi Harel Dies
April 26, 2008
Yossi Harel, who led four Aliyah Bet (illegal immigration) missions in 1946 and 1947, dies from a heart attack in his Tel Aviv home at the age of 90.
Harel was born Yossef Hamburger in Jerusalem in 1918 to a six-generation Jerusalem family. He had a difficult childhood with his mother suffering from mental illness, and he began working at an early age to supplement his father’s income. He spent his evenings studying foreign languages, becoming fluent in English, French and Arabic. At the age of 14, he left his family to join the Haganah.
In the Haganah, Harel was greatly influenced by Yitzhak Sadeh, a Russian immigrant and World War I veteran who made aliyah in 1920. In 1937, at the height of the Arab rebellion, Sadeh mentored many of the younger members of the Haganah. He created a special field company named Posh (an acronym for “field forces”) in which Harel served as a chief weapons instructor.
The following year, the British authorized special Jewish night squads under the command of a British officer, Orde Wingate. The squads specialized in intelligence gathering, fighting mostly at night, and succeeded in launching surprise attacks against Arab militants. Harel joined the squads. Wingate admired Harel’s bravery in battle and came to see him as a protégé, giving him the nickname “the Bomber” after one mission.
Harel joined the British army during World War II and drove a truck, first in North Africa, then in Greece, where he injured his ear in 1941, ending his service. He returned to Tel Aviv and the Haganah, where his commander was Shaul Avigur, for whom he served in an intelligence capacity before the war. Avigur led Aliyah Bet, the illegal immigration of Jews into Eretz Yisrael, created in 1938 to aid Jewish refugees. The operation also smuggles in weapons.
In November 1946, Harel was named second in command of the Aliyah Bet ship the Knesset, which would carry nearly 4,000 passengers with a sister ship the Abba Berdichev, from Bakar in Croatia. It was the first time that Harel met Holocaust survivors. He recalled, “A shiver ran down my spine. These Jews had been saved from the fire. They were homeless refugees. They stood bunched into small groups. Some had little children with them. We had the feeling that they were precious treasure that had to be handled with care. They had been given into our custody not so that we would pity them, but rather that we and they were bound in a mutual pact; that we were partners.” (http://palyam.org/indexEn, accessed March 2016)
The British intercepted the two ships and sent the passengers to internment in Cyprus, where Harel was held for a day before being released back to Palestine.
Harel was sent to Italy in 1947 and given command of a newly acquired American ship, the President Warfield. The ship left Sete, France, on July 11, 1947, with 4,530 Holocaust survivors on board. On the fourth day of the voyage, Yossi received word from Tel Aviv headquarters that the ship would be called Exodus 1947. “We were mad,” Harel said. “What sort of a name was that? We wanted something aggressive like the Jewish Revolt. But these were our orders.”
British destroyers tracked the Exodus 1947 almost from the start. On July 18 at 2 a.m. off the coast of Gaza, the British fired on the ship and rammed it. Harel ordered the ship to cease resistance. The British accompanied it into Haifa, where members of the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) witness the ship’s passengers being doused with DDT and packed onto deportation ships. The event has an impact on the committee’s recommendation for partitioning Palestine.
Harel, hiding and dressed as a stevedore, disembarked the next day. In November, he commanded two additional Aliyah Bet ships.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, Harel worked in the intelligence community. He lead Unit 131, an Israeli spy network operating in Arab countries.