The Astir, the Astia and the Marsis

NOTE: This article is undergoing changes. There is very little material available on Ashkelon’s role in the Astir and the Marsis. The accounts that are available sometimes contradict each other. This post will be updated as I find more information.

At the entrance to the Marina stands a sculpture by Dov Heller to commemorate the arrival of hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis. This is the story about how they came to Palestine.

In Hebrew, some items are counted by numbers and some by the letters. But when it comes to the waves of immigration there the Aliyot are counted by numbers such as the First Aliyah (1881 to 1903), Second Aliyah (1904 to 1914), Third Aliyah (1919 to 1923), Fourth Aliyah (1924 to 1928) and then the Fifth Aliyah (1929 to 1939).

But there was another wave of immigration called Aliyah Bet (1934-1948). In the case of this Aliyah the bet does not stand for the “second”, it is the shortened name for “Aliyah Bilty Legalit” (עלייה בלתי-לגאלית‎) or illegal immigration. This organized operation was referred to as Ha’apala as well as Aliyah Bet. Many of the ma’apilim were caught by the British and in the case of the Exodus ship, returned to Europe.

Often, ma’apilim that were intercepted by the British were sent to internment camps in Cyprus and Mauritius, while some were allowed to go to a camp in Atlit or Trifin. About 50,000 Jews were held in these camps. It was very difficult to find a ship operator who was willing to sail to Palestine, because the British had cracked down on illegal immigration and were jailing sailors and confiscating the ships.

In 1933, the Nazi party took control of the Free City of Danzig and the Jewish community turned to the League of Nations for protection. They were able to get limited protection and the activation of the Nuremberg Laws did not apply in Danzig. But after Kristallnacht the situation became untenable for the Jewish community. They worked with the government and in December of 1938, the Jewish community announced that they would all leave Danzig.

Steps were taken to liquidate the synagogue and move the residents to Palestine. Some items from the synagogue were sent to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, while the lamps and candlesticks were sold to the Warsaw synagogue. Their organ, which was a contentious issue for the congregation, was sold to a Catholic church in Krakow as no Jewish place of worship wanted to buy it. Community records were sent to Jerusalem.

The plan was for the remaining Jews to leave Danzig and try to evade the British navy blockade and reach the shores of Palestine. Word got out and when British Intelligence heard of the proposal, the departure point was changed. Eventually a decision was made to sail from Reni, a port city on the Danube in Romania. The leaders in the community were able to arrange for transfer visas and the Jews crossed over Hungary and Romania to get to the port. The Jews reached Reni and waited for their ride to safety.

The Revisionist organizers hired the Astir, a Greek cargo ship and arranged for it to be temporarily fitted to carry 400 to 500 passengers. Instead of taking the full 1,000 Jews of Danzig, the organizers brought hundreds of members of the Revisionist organization from, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. As a result, only half of the Danzig Jews were able to get aboard. When the Astir set sail on its three-month journey, it had 724 people aboard.

When the Astir reached Haifa on April 1, 1939, the British refused entry to the Jews aboard and 12 days later it was forced to leave with its passengers. It sailed for several months in the Aegean, looking for a place for the passengers to disembark and buy new supplies. They reached Piraeus, a port in Greece and changed tactic. The owners of the Astir hatched a plan to get rid of their passengers. Knowing that their ship would be confiscated by the British if they sailed too close to Palestine, they took over a schooner called the Marsis, tied it to the Astir and set sail for Palestine again. When they were off the coast of Ashkelon, they transferred some of the passengers to the Maris, and they eventually ended up stopped by the British naval forces.

The stories were told and retold and about seven years ago, a Wikipedia editor discovered a mistake in the history of the ship. Astir in Hebrew is written אסתיר. The last letter is a “resh”. But a typo was made at one point with the last letter a “hey” instead of the resh making it אסתיה. The two letters are so similar, it was a tiny mistake, but because the ship made two attempts to land in Israel (Haifa and Ashkelon), the belief was that there were two separate ships. Over the years, when the lists of ships were studied, they were usually displayed according to dates. The Wikipedia editor studied British documents and discovered the error in 2013. Just one ship and the correct name is Astir.