Cyprus internment camps

Some 28,000 Jews were still interned in the camps when the Mandate was dissolved, partition was enacted, and the independent State of Israel was established at midnight local time on May 14, 1948.

[3] The British government agreed to continue issuing 1,500 certificates per month, but the influx of Jews, especially from the displaced person camps in Europe, well exceeded that number.

The most significant was in August 1948, when an estimated 100 inmates escaped a detention camp via a secret tunnel the British believed had been dug over a period of six months.

[11] When on February 14, 1947, Britain informed the United Nations that it would no longer administer the mandate for Palestine, some 28,000 Jews were still interned in the camps of Cyprus.

After the declaration of independence of the State of Israel in May 1948, there were still 24,000 illegal immigrants in the Cypriot internment camps, who expected to be released quickly but faced the refusal of the British authorities to charter ships under their flag to take them to the Promised Land.

Finally, emigration from Cyprus began in early July 1948 with two large ships Hatzmaout and Kibboutz Galuyot which carried more than 4,100 immigrants from its camps.

[2] In January 1949, an undetermined number of Jews who had previously been able to escape the camps and had remained free in Cyprus, surrendered in order to be sent to Israel.

[11] Despite the initial refusal and procrastination of the British, aliyah was finally approved and the camps were definitively evacuated on February 11, 1949,[15] although some families and individuals remained in Cyprus until November 1949 for health reasons or because they had young babies.

[6] The Jewish Agency sent teachers and social workers from Palestine[6] but refused to give direct aid to the detainees on the grounds that it would grant legitimacy to the camps.

Ruth Gruber documents the daily life of Jewish detainees and conditions in the camps of Xylotympou and Caraolos in her book Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation.

The book series "Promise of Zion" by Robert Elmer references the camps as the main character avoids being captured with other Jews on board a ship, and again when he returns to Cyprus in search of his mother.