http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080504/ap_on_re_eu/britain_postwar_jews_1;_ylt=AnxS...
Documents show UK post-WWII dilemma over Jewish refugees
By GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Writer
LONDON - Documents released Monday show how the British government tried to
send thousands of Palestine-bound Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide back
to postwar Germany without inflaming world opinion.
Could it be done? The answer was no. It was just two years after the end of
the war and the world was outraged by the systematic murder of 6 million
Jews by the Nazis in what became known as the Holocaust.
Despite the best efforts of early spin doctors to portray the move in the
most sympathetic light, the decision to turn away the more than 4,500 Jews
on board the Exodus refugee ship turned into a humanitarian and public
relations debacle for Britain.
The story is detailed in more than 400 pages of formerly secret documents at
Britain's National Archives made available to the public on Monday.
The Jews aboard the Exodus were trying to enter Palestine illegally during
the tumultuous months in 1947 before the United Nations voted to create a
Jewish homeland in part of Palestine.
