Jewish refugees from British detention camps in Cyprus file down the gangplank at the Haifa port (Screen capture: YouTube)
In this July 1948 newsreel, Jewish refugees from British detention camps on Cyprus arrive in Haifa.
On screen, women and children are checked by British inspectors before boarding the Pan-York in Famagusta, Cyprus.
“Now these people are off to the promised land,” announces the British narrator, who evidently sympathizes with the former British Mandate. “A short voyage and a happy one, I should imagine, and all the passengers looking forward with high hopes to their future.”
Many, though, are not yet “off to the promised land.” The ship holds mostly women and children, for men of military age were still not allowed to leave Cyprus, according to the narrator.
“True, the country of their choice was still virtually a battleground, but it was Palestine,” he concludes, as passengers crowd down the gangplank and step onto Israeli soil for the first time. “And that’s where they’d been wanting to go during many months of waiting.”
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(The Associated Press and Movietone News recently released their vast video archives on YouTube, allowing the public to freely access a million minutes worth of historical news clips dating back to 1895 — including many iconic scenes from Israel’s history featured in this Times of Israel series.)
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