A bus will run from the JCC in West Hartford to Temple Beth Israel in Danielson where Martin Silver will speak on Sunday, April 19, 2015 about his secret mission launched after the Holocaust to bring survivors to safety.

Martin Silver. Courtesy image

By Alexis Zinkerman

In 1947 Martin Silver was recruited to go on a secret mission to bring displaced Holocaust survivors to the emerging state of Israel in 1948. President Harry Truman to oblige our allies, made a law in the United States not to support Arabs and Jews in Britain’s Palestine with money, ships, or weapons. Silver was a student at the New York state Maritime Academy in the Bronx when his professor Dr. Meir Degani, a European born, Palesinian-raised physics professor, took him aside.

“It was all very private,” said Silver. “We sat on a park bench where no one could hear us talk.”

Dr. Degani told Silver and other Jewish students about the Holocaust survivors in displaced persons camps in Europe and how many messengers were over in Europe giving them hope that thy would find assistance to get to Palestine. Other messengers, who went to the States, included the young Golda Meir, future Prime Minister of Israel, and Teddy Kalick, future mayor of Jerusalem. These messengers raised money from wealthy Jews in United States to buy ships and weapons, which had to be hidden until the ships were ready. They needed men to operate the ships. Silver volunteered.

Photo taken by Martin Silver, a crew member of the Mala boat in 1948.

Silver spent his weekends working on the Mala ship, a former Presidential yacht built in 1895, which had been towed to a Brooklyn shipyard. The workers repaired the ship so it was seaworthy for the mission’s needs not so it would pass an American Maritime inspection. While repairing the ship, they flew the Caribbean flag to ward off government officials.

The crew of the Mala, then, set sail for 31 days from Brooklyn to the Port of Marseilles in the south of France. In France, carpenters were hired to gut the insides of the yacht and install wooden bunks to be able to transport 1400 survivors to Palestine. The ship was moved to La Ciotat, 20 miles east, for boarding.

The survivors were brought in trucks from the displacement camp. Many had tried to go to Palestine before on the Exodus 47 but that ship was caught by the British blockade and the 4,500 passengers were sent back to Germany.

Silver  and the all volunteer crew worked more than 12 hours on the boat in the engine room. They worked very hard and ate properly.

“Daily life was crowded. I had little contact with survivors,” said Silver. “It was smelly beyond belief. I took photographs to send home to my mother so she would know her 19-year-old son was okay.”

The survivors were fed a piece of bread and weak soup merely because the ship could not hold more provisions on board. It was a subsistence diet.

“I had to walk from the engine room to the fire room which meant going on deck. Every inch of the deck were bodies, people of all ages teens to elderly. Messengers accompanied the survivors to give messages of hope and sing songs. The main language was Yiddish. There were people from Germany, Poland, Russia on board.”

In Haifa Harbor, light weight Egyptian planes dropped one or two bombs in the water but the Mala went unscathed. The survivors made it to Palestine where they were sent to kibbutzim and absorption centers or to the army. The Israeli War of Independence was just beginning.

The Mala stayed one month in Palestine for repairs then went back to Europe to take another 1400 survivors.

Martin Silver will speak on Sunday, April 19, 2015 at 1 PM at Temple Beth Israel, 39 Killingly Dr. Danielson, CT 06239. The talk is $18 at the door. Call for more information about the talk at 413-253-7948.

There is a bus leaving from the West Hartford JCC. Call to reserve your place on the bus. We have pictures taken on the Mala by Silver available for reprinting.