Exodus - Leon Uris [48]
But he was alive! Every horrible moment of the months in the camps in Sweden, Belgium, and La Ciotat was worth it now! Once again she found the courage to search for her past.
Karen wondered why La Ciotat was being supported by money from Jews in America. After all, there was everything in the camp but Americans. She asked Galil, who shrugged. “Zionism is a first person asking money from a second person to give to a third person to send a fourth person to Palestine.”
“It is good,” Karen said, “that we have friends who stick together.”
“We also have enemies who stick together,” Galil answered.
The people at La Ciotat certainly looked and acted much like any other people, Karen thought. Most of them seemed just as confused by being Jewish as she was.
When she had learned enough Hebrew to handle herself she ventured into the religious compound to observe the weird rituals, the dress and prayer of those people who were truly different. The vastness of the sea of Judaism can drown a girl of fifteen. The religion was based on a complex set of laws. Some were written and some were oral. They covered the most minute of subjects, such as how to pray on a camel. The holiest of the holy were the five books of Moses, the Torah.
Once again Karen turned to her Bible. This time what she read seemed to throw new light and have new meaning for her and she would think for hours about lines like the cry of the prophet Isaiah: “We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men. We roar like bears, and mourn sore like doves ... we look for salvation, but it is far off from us ...”
These words seemed to fit the situation at La Ciotat. Her Bible was filled with stories of bondage and freedom, and she tried to apply these things to herself and her family.
“Look from heaven and see how we have become a scorn and a derision among the nations; we are accounted as sheep and brought the slaughter to be slain and destroyed or to be smitten and reproached. Yet, despite all this, we have not forgotten thy Name; we beseech thee, forget us not ...”
And again the path would end in confusion. Why would God let six million of His people be killed? Karen concluded that only the experiences of life would bring her the answer, someday.
The inmates of La Ciotat seethed with a terrible desire to leave Europe behind them and get to Palestine. The only force that kept them from turning into a wild mob was the presence of the Palmachniks from Palestine.
They cared little about the war of intrigue that raged about them between the British and the Mossad Aliyah Bet. They did not care about British desperation to hold onto the Middle East or oil or canals or traditional co-operation with the Arabs.
For a brief instant a year earlier everyone’s hopes had soared as the Labour party swept into power and with it promises to turn Palestine into a model mandate with open immigration. Talk was even revived of making Palestine a member of the British Commonwealth.
The promises exploded as the Labour Government listened to the voice of black gold that bubbled beneath Arab sand. The decisions were delayed for more study, more commissions, more talk, as it had been for twenty-five years.
But nothing could curb the craving of the Jews in La Ciotat to get to Palestine. Mossad Aliyah Bet agents poured all over Europe looking for Jewish survivors and leading them through friendly borders with bribes, forgery, stealing, or any other means short of force.
A gigantic game was played as the scene shifted from one country to another. From the very beginning France and Italy allied themselves with the refugees in open co-operation with the Mossad. They kept their borders open to receive refugees