History of the Jews in Mauritius

In September 1940, the Atlantic, Milos, and Pacific, picked up 3,600 Jews from Vienna, Gdańsk and Prague in Tulcea, Romania, to be sent to Palestine.

[7] On 25 November 1940, a bomb planted by the Haganah, a Zionist paramilitary organisation, who wanted the Jews onboard to stay in Palestine, detonated on the Patria, a ship which was carrying an initial 1,800 deportees to Mauritius.

[6] It is claimed that the Haganah's intention was only to cripple the ship, however they miscalculated the required explosive force and instead it sank rapidly in Haifa Bay.

The remaining 1,584 refugees from the Atlantic who were not on the Patria were initially also imprisoned in Atlit, but were sent to Mauritius on 9 December 1940.

Initially, a ban on interaction between the sexes was enforced; the men were held in a former jailhouse and the women in adjacent iron huts.

At the end of World War II, the detainees were given the choice of returning to their former homes in Europe or immigrating to Palestine.