
DATE: Monday, April 14, 1997                TAG: 9704120056

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: Larry Maddry 

                                            LENGTH:  163 lines

DESPERATE VOYAGE IN EARLY 1947, THE OLD STEAMER, WHICH YEARS EARLIER HAD CARRIED PASSENGERSBETWEEN NORFOLK AND BALTIMORE, DEPARTED ON A SECRET MISSION: TO PICK UP 4,500 DESPERATE JEWISH REFUGEES IN EUROPE AND DELIVER THEM TO PALESTINE - PAST A FORMIDABLE BRITISH BLOCKADE. THE VOYAGE WOULD END IN A BLOODY CONFRONTATION THAT SHOCKED THE WORLD.

One thing is certain. None of the thousands who boarded the Old Bay Line steamer President Warfield in downtown Norfolk ever dreamed she would sail beyond Chesapeake Bay . . . let alone into history.

Dubbed ``the aristocrat of the Bay'' when she was built in 1928, the 330-foot steamer in service between here and Baltimore was a beamy, double-decked vessel that served as the flagship of the company fleet. It had been named for S. Davies Warfield, president of the line and uncle of the Duchess of Windsor.

Many older residents of Hampton Roads can recall strolling her breeze-swept decks and spending the night in her staterooms. Those who stood at the rails and watched her shadow fall across the water never imagined the longer shadow she would one day cast on world events.

Even today the vessel's story is like an impossible dream. For the steamer - built for 400 passengers - was boarded by 4,500 persecuted Jews in 1947, all seeking a better life in Palestine. Renamed the Exodus 1947, when she left France with her human cargo overflowing onto the decks and crowd ing the rails, she was headed for the port of Haifa, in what is now Israel.

Not one aboard - or in the world at large - would have imagined British destroyers would ram the vessel when she was off the Egyptian coast to enforce their limitation on Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Or that British marines would storm aboard the vessel with small arms and machine guns blazing. Bullets exploding from the muzzles struck the bodies of defenseless children, women and men. More than 200 people were injured and three died during the incident.

That attack, a half century ago - followed by the return of the Jews aboard to barbed-wire, displaced-persons compounds in Germany - so outraged world opinion that it helped lead to the United Nations' partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel in 1948.

Nowhere was the horror of that ruthless attack felt more keenly than in Norfolk, where members of the Jewish community here had more than a passing interest in the President Warfield and its refugees.

Built in 1928, the dilapidated President Warfield had been mothballed after gallant service as a troop ship ferrying GIs to England. Miraculously surviving the Normandy invasion, she had joined the James River Idle Fleet in November 1945 and was later purchased for scrap by the Potomac Shipwrecking Co.

The vessel was saved from the scrap heap by Haganah, an underground Zionist group procuring ships to carry Jewish refugees to Palestine. Haganah secretly purchased the vessel under the name Weston Trading Co.

After departing Baltimore in early 1947 for the voyage to Europe, the vessel was damaged in a fierce storm off the North Carolina coast and put into Norfolk for repairs. Local Jews, including Joseph L. Hecht, chairman of the Norfolk Zionist Emergency Council, raised funds to repair the vessel.

An exhibit on the boat, called ``Chartered for History: President Warfield to Exodus 1947,'' will open on Wednesday at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk. Drawn from the collections of the Mariners' Museum Research Library, the archives of Ohef Sholom Temple and the Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, it will display more than 20 photographs, postcards, news accounts, books (including a first-edition copy of Leon Uris' ``Exodus'') and other memorabilia inspired by Exodus 1947.

One Norfolkian aboard the former Old Bay Line steamer when she was attacked in July 1947 by the British military was Abbott Lutz, who had been a crew member when the refugees - most fleeing Germany - had boarded in Sete, France. Lutz was a freelance photographer for The Virginian-Pilot and was well-known locally for his radio show devoted to cooking.

Marty Sherman, a retired furniture manufacturer now living in the Ghent section of Norfolk, recalled an evening in the spring of 1947 when Lutz appeared at a local delicatessen frequented by bachelors. He recalled Lutz was in the company of ``some bedraggled, unshaven young men'' and introduced them.

Lutz was guarded in his comments because of Haganah's desire for secrecy about the mission of the President Warfield, Sherman recalled. ``He merely introduced me to the men as members of the crew of a ship anchored in Norfolk.''

As the evening wore on, the crew members munched on sandwiches and became more outgoing. When Saul's Delicatessen's shades were drawn at closing time, the men stayed and the crew members told Sherman their purpose and destination.

``Abbot and I went aboard the vessel at about 2:30 a.m. at their invitation,'' Sherman recalled. ``Every inch of space contained newly built bunks made of lumber.''

``I was struck by her disreputable condition,'' Sherman said. ``I wouldn't have taken her to Portsmouth.''

Nevertheless, before Lutz and Sherman left the ship, the captain tried to persuade them to go along on the trip to Europe and to Haifa - to ``run the British blockade,'' he said.

``The captain said it would be an adventure we'd remember for the rest of our lives,'' Sherman recalled.

Lutz decided to join the crew. Sherman said he declined to go because he had just returned from four years of duty with the Army in Italy.

Lutz distinguished himself during the assault on Exodus 1947, on July 18, 1947, by crawling beneath a table in the radio room as British troops were coming aboard.

Microphone in hand, he radioed details of the bloody episode taking place outside the door to all who would listen. It was the first report of the tragedy broadcast to the world.

Because of his U.S. citizenship, he was released after being transported to Germany, and he returned to Norfolk in late 1947.

When a reporter for a Norfolk newspaper asked him why Jews in Europe wanted to go to Palestine, he replied, ``Because Europe is nothing but one big graveyard. He told of starvation among Jews there and stories of people so desperate that they would search the pockets of men shot by firing squads looking for food.

During the period when the President Warfield was in Norfolk for repairs, a minister familiar to many here walked down the gangway to the local dock. It was the Rev. John Stanley Grauel, the executive officer of the Exodus. A Methodist minister who had attended Oceana High School as a youth, he was working with Haganah.

Grauel visited the parlors of many Norfolkians seeking funds to finance repairs to the vessel and any other assistance that could be provided.

Donations also helped purchase necessary equipment for the vessel. And many items of a nautical nature mysteriously disappeared from the Navy base in Norfolk and wound up aboard the President Warfield.

In 1960, Grauel returned to Norfolk, where he was made an honored guest by the Women's Division of the United Jewish Appeal. He gave a talk to the group, telling his audience how the British destroyers rammed the Exodus 14 times.

``Bunks collapsed, pipes broke and sprayed steam and water. All our lights went out,'' he said. ``I wonder if any of you has ever heard 1,200 children scream.''

The minister said a group of young people on the deck of the Exodus had answered the small-arms fire of the British by throwing cans and potatoes. The British replied by riddling them with machine-gun fire, he said.

Another group of marines - walking down a dark corridor of the ship - cleared the way with machine-gun fire, he reported. ``It just happened to be that section of the ship where most of the orphans were accommodated,'' he said.

The refugees aboard the Exodus were processed by the British in Haifa and then taken to Hamburg, Germany, and, later, placed in refugee camps that had formerly been concentration camps.

Exodus 1947 was eventually towed to a maritime graveyard off the coast of Haifa. A fire in 1952 destroyed the vessel to the waterline. The hulk was towed to Israel's Bay of Shemen, where it can be seen even now. ILLUSTRATION: Photos by The Mariners' Museum

For complete cutline, see microfilm

Photo by Jabotinsky Institute in Israel

For complete cutline, see microfilm

PHOTO BY ABBOTT LUTZ / Courtesy of Norman Hecht

Shown aboard the President Warfield while it was docked in Norfolk

for repairs are five men who played key roes in organizing its

historic journey. From left, David Friedman of Norfolk; the Rev.

John Stanley Grauel, a Haganah agent; Joseph Goldberg, a lawyer from

Worcester, Mass.; Jesse Nathan of Norfolk; and Joseph L. Hecht,

chairman of the Norfolk Zionist Emergency Council.

Graphic

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