Aliyah Bet
Aliyah Bet (Hebrew: עלייה ב', "Aliyah 'B'" – bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, many of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany or other Nazi-controlled countries,[1][2] and later Holocaust survivors,[1][3][4] to Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and 1948,[1] in violation of the restrictions laid out in the British White Paper of 1939, which dramatically increased between 1939 and 1948.
[1][3] As the persecution of Jews dramatically intensified in German-occupied Europe during the Nazi era, the urgency driving the immigration also became more acute.
The second one, from 1945 to 1948, in a stage known as Bricha ("flight" or "escape"),[3] was an effort to find homes for Jewish survivors of the Nazi crimes (Sh'erit ha-Pletah, "Surviving Remnant")[3] who were among the millions of displaced persons ("DPs") languishing in refugee camps scattered across post-war Europe,[1][3] primarily located in Allied-occupied Germany and Austria, and Italy.
"[1][3] During the first phase, several Zionist organizations (including Revisionists) led the effort; after World War II, the Mossad LeAliyah Bet ("the Institute for Aliyah B"), an arm of the Haganah, took charge.
Post-World War II, Ha'apala journeys typically started in the DP camps and moved through one of two collection points in the American occupation sector, Bad Reichenhall and Leipheim.
From there, the refugees travelled in disguised trucks, on foot, or by train to ports on the Mediterranean Sea, where ships brought them to Palestine.
Most of the ships had names such as Lo Tafchidunu ("You can't frighten us") and La-Nitzahon ("To the victory") designed to inspire and rally the Jews of Palestine.
[7] More than 300 volunteers, most of them American World War II veterans, including Murray Greenfield (of the ship Hatikva), volunteered to sail ten ships ("The Jews' Secret Fleet") from the United States to Europe to load 35,000 survivors of the Holocaust (half of the illegal immigrants to Palestine), only to be deported to detention camps on Cyprus.
