Untold story

The difficulty in building memorials, as pointed out in Greer Fay Cashman’s October 9 Grapevine feature “In defense of history,” is very understandable. We are a country of men and women who have made Israel’s history. The Machal memorial tells in one simple exhibit the names of all who fell.

But there is one educational memorial that is missing. It is the story of over 250 young men who volunteered in the US to sail some 10 vessels that were hardly seaworthy. It was at the conclusion of World War II, and survivors of the Holocaust were languishing in camps, wanting to leave Europe.

It was only Palestine, with its Jewish population, and world Jewry that pressed for the aliya of these survivors. It was in the US that the money was raised to buy vessels that in the end could not have passed safety inspections.

Men volunteered, some 250, to man these ships. After serving in various ways during the war, they saw the need and brought more than 50% of the survivors out of Europe. Most ended up in Cyprus behind barbed wire. These illegal immigrants forced the British to go to the UN, and Israel was born.

This is a dramatic story that should be worthy of an exhibit in Atlit, where many of the survivors came ashore. The exhibit would be educational and also pay tribute to the unsung volunteers, nearly all of whom returned to the US to carry on with their lives. MURRAY S. GREENFIELD Tel Aviv The writer was one of the naval volunteers.