“Quick! Quick!” they were ordered. “Take off your clothing and change into these at once!”
“Throw away any identification papers!”
“Those dressed, follow us … move … move … move!”
“Quiet! No noise!”
“No lights!”
The refugees tore the drenched clothing from their bodies and put on the blue uniforms of the fishermen.
“Mingle … everyone mingle… .”
On deck of the Star of David, Karen handed children down to the Palmachniks one by one as fast as they could make a trip in and come back out. Strong, sure-footed men were needed to hold the children in the surf.
“Faster … faster …”
There were uninhibited cries of emotion from some who fell on the holy soil to kiss it.
“You will have plenty of time to kiss the ground later but not now … move on!”
Bill Fry stood on his bridge barking orders through a megaphone. Within an hour nearly everyone had abandoned the Star of David except for a few dozen children and the section chiefs.
Thirty kilometers to the north a Palmach unit staged a devastating assault on some British warehouses south of Haifa in an effort to divert the British troops in that area away from the beaching operation at Caesarea.
On the beach the fishermen and Palmachniks worked rapidly. Some of the refugees were taken into the village and others to trucks which sped them inland. . As the last of the children was handed over the rail of the Star of David, Bill Fry tore down the ladder to the deck and ordered the section heads over the side.
Karen felt the icy water close over her head. She balanced on her toes, treaded water for a moment, and found her direction. She swam in close enough to find footing. Ahead of her, on the beach, she could hear confused shouts in Hebrew and German. She came to a huge rock and crawled over it on all fours. A wave washed her back into the sea. Now she worked to solid ground and pushed in foot by foot against a driving undertow. Downed again on all fours she crawled closer to the shore.
A piercing sound of sirens!
An ear-splitting crackle of rifle fire!
On the beach everyone was dispersing!
Karen gasped for breath as she emerged into knee-high water, holding her side. Directly before her stood a half dozen khaki-clad British soldiers with truncheons in their hands.
“No!” she shrieked. “No! No! No!”
She hurled herself into the cordon screaming, clawing, and kicking with fury. A strong arm seized her from behind and she was wrestled into the surf. Her teeth sank into the soldier’s hand. He yelled in pain and released her. She flung herself forward again fighting like a savage. A second soldier held his truncheon high and brought it down and it thudded against her head. Karen moaned, went limp, and rolled unconscious into the water.
She opened her eyes. Her head throbbed horribly. But she smiled as she looked up into the face of stubble-jawed, bleary-eyed Bill Fry.
“The children!” she screamed, and spun off the cot. Bill’s hands grabbed her.
“Take it easy. Most of the kids got away. Some of them are here.”
Karen closed her eyes and sighed and lay back on the cot again.
“Where are we?”
“British detention camp … Atlit. It was a wonderful show. More than half the people got away. The British are so damned mad they rounded everybody up and herded us off here. We got crew, fishermen, refugees … everybody mixed up in this mess. How do you feel?”
“I feel horrible. What happened?”
“You tried to whip the British Army singlehanded.”
She pushed the blanket off and sat up again and felt the lump on the side of her head. Her dress was still damp. She stood and walked, a bit wobbly, to the tent opening. There were several hundred more tents and a wall of barbed wire. Beyond the barbed wire were British sentries. “I don’t know what came over me,” Karen said. “I’ve never struck anyone in my life. I saw those soldiers standing there … trying to stop me. Somehow the most important thing that ever happened, happened that moment. I had to put my foot on Palestine. I had to or I’d die … I don’t know what came over me.” She sat down beside him.
“Want something to eat, kid?”
“I’m not hungry. What are they going to do with us?”
Bill shrugged. “It will be light in a few hours. They’ll start processing us and asking a lot of damned fool questions. You know the answers.”
“Yes … I keep repeating that this is my country to whatever they ask.”
“Yeah … anyhow, they’ll keep you here a couple or three months and then they’ll turn you loose. At least you’re in Palestine.”
“What about you?”
“Me? Hell, they’ll throw me out of Palestine same as they did the last time. I’ll get another Mossad ship … try another run on the blockade.”
Her head began to throb and she lay back but she could not close her eyes. She studied Bill’s grizzled face for many moments.
“Bill… why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re an American. It’s different with Jews in America.”
“Everybody is trying to make something noble out of me.” He patted his pockets and pulled out some cigars. They were ruined by the water. “The Aliyah Bet came around and saw
me. They said they needed sailors. I’m a sailor … been one all my life. Worked my way up from cabin boy to first mate. That’s all there is to it. I get paid for this.” “Bill…” “Yeah …” “I don’t believe you.”
Bill Fry didn’t seem to be convincing himself either. He stood up. “It’s hard to explain, Karen. I love America. I wouldn’t trade what I’ve got over there for fifty Palestines.” Karen propped up on an elbow. Bill began pacing the tent and groping to connect his thoughts. “We’re Americans but we’re a different kind of Americans. Maybe we make ourselves different … maybe other people make me different … I’m not smart enough to figure those things out. All my life I’ve heard I’m supposed to be a coward because I’m a Jew. Let me tell you, kid. Every time the Palmach blows up a British depot or knocks the hell out of some Arabs he’s winning respect for me. He’s making a liar out of everyone who tells me Jews are yellow. These guys over here are fighting my battle for respect … understand that?” “I think so.”
“Well, damned if I understand it.”
He sat beside Karen and examined the lump on her head. “That don’t look too bad. I told those Limey bastards to take you to a hospital.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said.
Later that night the Palmach staged a raid on the Atlit camp and another two hundred of the refugees escaped through a gaping hole blown in the barbed wire. Karen and Bill Fry were not among the escapees.
When the full report of the Star of David episode reached Whitehall the British realized they had to change their immigration policy. To date, the illegal runners had brought in loads of a few hundred. This ship had carried nearly two thousand, and the greater part of them had escaped in the beaching at Caesarea and the subsequent raid on Atlit. The British were faced with the fact that the French government openly supported the Jews and that one out of every six Jews in Palestine had entered illegally.
And so the British were caught in a tangle. They were as far away from a final answer on the Palestine problem as they ever had been, and so it was decided that the Jews must be turned away from Palestine and not kept at Atlit. The camps on Cyprus were established as a direct result of the pressure of illegal immigration and specifically of the success of the Star of David expedition.
Karen Hansen Clement was sent to the island of Cyprus on a British prison ship and interned in the Caraolos camp. But
even as the Karpathos/Star of David lay wedged in the rocks off the shore of Caesarea and the surf pounded her to bits, the Mossad Aliyah Bet speeded up their operations, planning for more ships and larger numbers of refugees to follow in the wake.