Ships Saving Lives: A Ship, Brought My (Bubby) from Lithuania To USA in 1903 and Others, from Europe in 1948

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

                                Steamships left Hamburg in 1903 for USA                            

                              August Victoria 

                               Front view of August Victoria

Our Bubbie, Zlata (Addie) Jermulowski,  had a hard time speaking in Yiddish and letting her family and the census taker that she came over on the ship, possibly the Altalena. She was illiterate and never did learn any English. She immigrated May 6, 1903 from Lazdijai, Suwalki, Lithuania. What ships were leaving Lithuania then?  None.  No, there were no direct shipping routes from Lithuania to the USA. The most common way used to be to go to Germany by train and board the ship there. Mr. Hellmrich to Mr. Peirce

Emigration to the United States via Hamburg

consulate-General of the United States,
Hamburg, Germany, October 8, 1903

Emigrants embarking for the United States at Hamburg should be divided into three classes, viz:

(A) Emigrants arriving from or via Russia
(B) Emigrants arriving from or via Austria-Hungary
(C) Emigrants arriving from other European countries

(A) Emigrants passing the Russo-German border are taken to one of the control stations at Bajohren, Tilsit, Eydtkuhnen, Insterburg, Prostken, Illowo, Otloczyn, or Ostrowo, maintained mutually by the Hamburg America Line and the North German Lloyd, under the supervision of the Prussian Government.  At these control stations emigrants are bathed, all their clothes and baggage disinfected and labeled accordingly, and the passengers themselves medically examined and placed under medical observation until their departure.

I just found a Hamburg American line:  

• 1903-08-22 SS Pretoria - Hamburg to New York
• 1903-08-27 SS Fürst Bismarck - Hamburg to New York  not like her name A or E.......

 7/30/03  I searched Ellis Island and could not find her ship starting with A....  The closest I could find was the Adria or Adriatic from Hamburg, but it went to Scandinavian Ports before coming to N.Y. One arrived on 3/6/1903.  That's the closest date I could find.  Could it be Aultman?   Finally!  Was she was trying to say the Altalena?  

She probably came over on a steamer.  "I deem it proper to divide the Hamburg America Line's and Sloman-Union Line's passenger steamers plying between Hamburg and New York (no steamers leaving from Hamburg for other ports of the United States with passengers) into four classes, viz;

1) Express steamers (Auguste Victoria, Columbia, Fürst Bismarck, Deutschland, Moltke, and Blücher).
2) Passenger steamers of the so-called "P" class (Pennsylvania, Pretoria, Graf Waldersee, and Patricia).
3) Steamers of the so-called "B" class (Bulgaria, Belgravia, and Batavia)
4) Steamers belonging to the Sloman-Union Line (Albano, Pisa, Barcelona, and Pallanza)."

By searching for my Bubby's ship, I bumped into another ship that was terribly important to the Zionist cause of which I have been writing about, and that was  bringing Jewish immigrants to Israel.  However, I was searching for a ship in 1903, and the Altanena was in 1948.

 

                                                 Model of the Altalena

This Day in Jewish History 1948:  The Altalena Arms Ship Reaches Israel, and Is Attacked With Friendly Fire:  By the end of two tragic days, pitting the newly created IDDF against the irgun, 19 people were dead.  

 Zeʾev Jabotinsky's Italian pen name was Altalena, the 1,820-ton landing craft was at first used to carry European refugees to Palestine. It became a transporter of arms for the Irgunists following the United Nations's (UN) partition resolution on 29 November 1947, which set off the first Arab–Israel War.                                   

 (1947–1948). On 1 June 1948, Menachem Begin, a leader of the Irgun, met with official military leaders of the newly independent state of Israel to sign an agreement for the incorporation of the Irgun battalions into the Israel Defense Force (IDF) but did not let the government know of Irgun's negotiations with France, which had agreed to supply the Irgun with arms materiel from war overstock. The arms—including 5,000 British rifles, 4 million bullets, 300 Bren guns, 250 Stens, 150 Spandau rifles, and 50 eight-inch mortars—would be transported on the Altalena, also carrying 900 trained Irgun recruits from Europe.

Purchased in Brooklyn, N.Y., for $75,000 by screenwriter Ben Hecht and novelist Louis Bromfield, the old ship was renamed Altalena in tribute to Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Zionist leader who had often used that nom de plume. A radical and fighter, Jabotinsky believed that the reborn Jewish state should be accompanied by blood, fire and bullets. Jabotinsky had died of natural causes in New York City, an exile from the country he sought to create. He left behind, however, a child of his teachings in the form of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (national military organization), led by Menachem Begin. What was the old name?  Altalena is a new name.  

Britain, the mandate ruler, was the Irgun’s enemy, and its members bombed theaters, attacked prisons to free jailed comrades and took British soldiers hostage to forestall executions of other prisoners facing death sentences. Like its Arab counterparts, the terrorist organization spawned an even more violent splinter group— known as the Stern Gang after its leader, Abraham Stern. That's the group that my 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, was chief of Intelligence.  Little did Zlata Jermulowske know she would be married to Stanley's 2nd cousin.

Altalena had been purchased by the Irgun; the volunteers aboard it were slated to become Irgun fighters; and when it put into Port-de-Bouc, France, in April 1948, it was slated to load munitions purchased by agents in the Irgun’s Paris-based European headquarters. If all went according to schedule, the ship could reach Tel Aviv and an Irgun-controlled dock by May 15, the day after the mandate expired.

The Altalena Affair was a violent confrontation that took place in June 1948 by the newly created Israel Defense Forces against the Irgun (also known as IZL), one of the Jewish paramilitary groups that were in the process of merging to form the IDF. The confrontation involved a cargo ship, the Altalena, captained by ex-US Navy lieutenant Monroe Fein and led by senior IZL commander Eliyahu Lankin, which had been loaded with weapons and fighters by the independent Irgun, but arrived during the murky period of the Irgun's absorption into the IDF.  ...Sixteen Irgun fighters were killed in the confrontation with the army (all but three were veteran members and not newcomers from the ship); six were killed in the Kfar Vitkin area and ten on Tel Aviv beach. Three IDF soldiers were killed: two at Kfar Vitkin and one in Tel Aviv.

The Altalena Affair exposed deep rifts between the main political factions in Israel, and is still occasionally referenced in Israeli media to illustrate the modern debate as to whether or not the use of force by the Israeli government against fringe Jewish political elements is legitimate. Proponents of Ben-Gurion's actions praised them as essential to establishing the government's authority and discouraging factionalism and formation of rival armies.

Resource:

https://www.archives.gov/research/immigration/overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altalena_Affair

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-altalena-affair

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2015-06-22/ty-article/.premium/1948-altalena-arms-ship-sunk-by-friendy-fire/0000017f-e3db-d568-ad7f-f3fb86860000

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Influential Zionist For Defense From Odessa, Ukraine

 

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky or Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky (17 October 1880--3 August 1940, was born into an assimilated Jewish family, dying at age 60, and was a writer, orator and Zionist leader of Russian birth in Odessa, Ukraine.    

His father, Yevno (Yevgeniy Grigoryevich) Zhabotinsky, hailed from Nikopol, Yekaterinoslav Governorate. He was a member of the Russian Society of Sailing and Trade.  His mother, Chava (Eva Markovna) Zach (1835–1926), came from Berdychiv, Kiev Governorate. Jabotinsky's older brother Myron died when Vladimir was six months old, and his father died when he was six years old. His sister, Tereza (Tamara Yevgenyevna) Zhabotinskaya-Kopp, founded a private school for girls in Odessa. In 1885, the family moved to Germany due to his father's illness, returning a year later after his father's death.   

Raised in a middle-class Jewish home, Jabotinsky was educated in Russian schools. Although he studied Hebrew as a child, he wrote in his autobiography that his upbringing was divorced from Jewish faith and tradition.  The Hasidic movements originated in the 18th century in Ukraine.  This was a center of Zionism in the 19th and 20th century.  It's always been an anti-Semitic center with pogroms in 1905, and 1918-1920.  

 His mother ran a stationery store in Odessa. and his father was primarily involved in wheat trading.

Jabotinsky dropped out of school at the age of 17 with a guarantee of a job as a correspondent for a local Odessan newspaper, the Odesskiy Listok, and was sent to Bern and Rome as a correspondent. He also worked for the Odesskie Novosti after his return from Italy. Jabotinsky was a childhood friend of Russian journalist and poet Korney Chukovsky.    Ze'ev served as the Rome correspondent for the Odessa newspapers under the pen-name of "Altalena, from 1898 to 1901. While in Rome he attended Sapienza University Law school but didn't graduate.  He spoke  Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew and fluent Italian.                                         

During the period of the British Mandate for Palestine (1918-1948), Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky was imprisoned in Akko (or Acre; now a museum). After the riots in Jerusalem, he, being the organizer of Jewish self-defense, was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor. He was subsequently exonerated.

Back in April 1902 he had been arrested for writing feuilletons in an anti-establishment tone, as well as contributing to a radical Italian journal. He was held isolated in a prison cell in Odessa for two months, where he communicated with other inmates through shouting and passing written notes.                            

                        Ze'ev, Anya and Eri Jabotinsky

 While in Odessa, Jabotinsky married Joanna (or Ania) Galperina in October 1907. They had one child, Eri Jabotinsky (1910-1969), who later became a member of the Irgun-affiliated Bergson Group.   Eri Jabotinsky briefly served in the 1st Knesset of Israel; he died on 6 June 1969 at age 59..

 Beginning his Zionist activities to Russia in 1903 at age 23, Ze'ev became a leading force in the struggle for Jewish self-defense units, civic and minority rights, and the revival of Hebrew.  

In World War I that started in 1914, he advocated the recruiting of Jewish regiments to fight on the Palestine front;  this led to the establishment of the Zion Mule Corps in 1915.  

He served in 20th Battalion of the London Regiment in platoon 16 from 1916-1917.                          

     Lt Jabotinsky in the uniform of the Royal Fusiliers

In 1917, the end of the war, the British government consented to the formation of Jewish battalions, in one of which Jabotinsky served.  He organized the 1st Jewish self-defense in Jerusalem and led it during the Arab onslaught in 1920.  For this he was sentenced by the British Military tribunal to 15 years imprisonment but was soon reprieved.Ze'ev jabotinsky served in platoon 16 of the 20th Battalion of the London Regiment between 1916 and 1917.  

He wrote when a lieutenant in the Jewish Legion which he had founded, "Not in Russia nor in Poland had there been seen such an intense and widespread atmosphere of hatred as prevailed in the British army in Palestine in 1919 and 1920.  1920's Spring was like 2022's Spring with Ramadan and Easter and Passover all falling at about the same time.  Attacks on Jews happened then, too, with mobs armed with clubs and knives, first looting shops,  Then they caught and beat up or killed Jews and raped Jewish women.  The Court of Enquiry of Brits said, "Jews were the victims of a peculiarly brutal and cowardly attack, the majority of the casualties being old men, women and children.  As for this year of 2022, "Jerusalem District Police Commander Nati Gur said that the Israel Police is preparing for a "worst-case scenario" on Jerusalem's Temple Mount during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan."

In 1921, Jabotinsky joined the Zionist Executive but resigned in 1923, accusing it of failing to oppose British policy with sufficient vigor.  In 1925, he formed the World Union of Zionist revisionists in opposition to official Zionism and later the youth organization of Berit Trumpeldor-Betar.  

When the Zionist Organization coopted non-Zionists into the Jewish Agency in 1929 and refused to define the aim of Zionism as a Jewish State in 1931, Jabotinsky began to advocate secession;  the "discipline clause,"introduced in 1935, precipitated the formation of Jabotinsky  of a dissident "New Zionist Organization."

From 1936, he urged the speedy evacuation of Eastern European Jewry to Palestine.  Jabotinsky became the spiritual father and nominal head of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi, which was the Jewish right-winged underground movement.   It became in 1936 an instrument of the Revisionist Party, an extreme nationalist group that had seceded from the World Zionist Organization and whose policies called for the use of force, if necessary, to establish a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan.  

It was this very group that Avraham Stern left of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue -British activities in Palestine during WWII.  He formed the Lohame Herut Israel-otherwise known as the Stern Group or the Stern Gang-as the Brits called it.  

When World War II broke out, he again demanded a Jewish army.  Jabotinsky wrote a great deal.  His influence on Israeli politics is profound through his closest protégé Menachem Begin's administration (1977–1983), consolidating the domination of Israeli politics by the right-wing Likud party; and through the administrations (1996–1999, 2009–) of Likud's leader (1993–1999, 2005–) Benjamin Netanyahu, the son of his former personal secretary and historian, Benzion Netanyahu.

           Ze'ev and wife were reburied here in Jerusalem  from New York, where he had died.

In 1964, his body was reburied on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky

https://kids.kiddle.co/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky

Battleground, fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz, p.60-61

Russia's Odessa, in Ukraine, and Why We Can't Forget It

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Odessa oblast is home to a number of other nationalities and minority ethnic groups, including Albanians, Armenians, Azeris, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Georgians, Greeks, Jews, Poles, Romanians, Turks, among others.  

 Up until the early 1940s the city had a large Jewish population. As the result of mass deportation to extermination camps during the Second World War, the city's Jewish population declined considerably. Since the 1970s, the majority of the remaining Jewish population emigrated to Israel and other countries, shrinking the Jewish community.

Through most of the 19th century and until the mid 20th century, the largest ethnic group in Odessa was Russians, with the second largest ethnic group being Jews.

The presence of the first Jews in Odessa dates back to the year 1789. Between the end of the eighteenth century and the outbreak of World War II, the Jewish population of Odessa grew to 180,000 (nearly 30% of the total population of the city).                                                  

Odessa Jews developed their grain trade, shopping and banking. It is a port city, and this port was only founded by September 2, 1794.   Up to World War I Jews controlled 90% of its grain trade and 50% of it's shop-keeping and banking.  

It was such a city of importance to our Jewish history.  A Jewish community was late in arriving by 1798 but was prominent in the town's development.  In the 19th century,, Odessa was a center of Russo-Jewish assimilation and simultaneously the focus of Jewish literary and nationalist life.

During the 19th century, Odessa was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw

Here was founded the 1st secular school for Russian Jews in 1824.                                                             

       The composer, Jacob Weinberg (1879–1956) was born in Odessa. He composed over 135 works and was the founder of the Jewish National Conservatory in Jerusalem before immigrating to the U.S. where he became "an influential voice in the promotion of American Jewish music".   He was a brilliant Russian-Jewish composer and concert pianist. Born in Odessa, he trained at the Moscow Conservatory of Music (1901-1906) and became a concert pianist and prolific composer. He wrote the first Hebrew Opera, "The Pioneers of Palestine" (1924).

The 1st Russian synagogue with a choir,

The 1st Russian Jewish newspaper, the Rassviet in 1860.  

The pioneer Hebrew newspaper in Russia, Ha-Melitz in 1860.  

Many of the great figures of modern Hebrew literature (Mendele Mocher Sephorim, Ahad Ha-Am, Bialik, Klausner etc, were active in Odessa. 

In the 1880's it was the center of Haskalah, Hebrew literature,, and the Zionist movement from 1890 to 1914.                                   

Ze'ev Jabotinsky was born in Odessa, and largely developed his version of Zionism there in the early 1920s.  whilst renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal lived in the city at one time.  Ze'ev Jabotinsky, MBE, was a Russian Jewish Revisionist Zionist leader, author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa. With Joseph Trumpeldor, he co-founded the Jewish Legion of the British army in World War I.

From the 1880s until the 1920s the Jewish community of Odessa was the second largest in the whole of Russia (after *Warsaw, the capital of Poland, then within czarist Russia) and it had considerable influence on the Jews of the country. The principal characteristics of this community, and responsible for its particular importance, were the rapid and constant growth of the Jewish population and its extensive participation in the economic development of the town, the outstanding "Western" character of its cultural life and numerous communal institutions, especially educational and economic institutions, the social and political activity of the Jewish public, the mood of tension and struggle which was impressed on its history, and the Hebrew literary center which emerged there.

                                                                        

        Leon Pinsker b:1821-d: Dec 9, 1891 in Odessa, Russian Empire-Leon (Yehudah Leib) Pinsker inherited a strong sense of Jewish identity from his father, Simchah Pinsker, a Hebrew language writer, scholar and teacher. Leon attended his father's private school in Odessa and was one of the first Jews to attend Odessa University, where he studied law. Later he realized that, being a Jew, he had no chance of becoming a lawyer due to strict quotas on Jewish professionals and chose the career of a physician.  He is well known for his Zionism.  Pinsker believed that the Jewish problem could be resolved if the Jews attained equal rights. In his early years, Pinsker favored the assimilation path and was one of the founders of a Russian language Jewish weekly He was a supported of equal rights under the law for Jews, but Pinsker's optimism was curtailed after the Odessa Pogroms. It was these events, first in 1871, and then in 1881, with greater intensity and lasting several years, after which Pinsker became active in the Hibbat Zion, a Zionist organization founded in 1881, in response to these pogroms. He was the founder and leader of the Hovevei Zion, also known as Hibbat Zion (Hebrew: חיבת ציון‎, Lovers of Zion) movement.

Political disagreements between religious and secular factions of the Odessa Committee, and Ottoman restriction on Jewish emigration, prevented Pinsker from resettling, and he died in Odessa in 1891. His remains were later brought to Jerusalem in 1934.

Pogroms occurred in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, and 1905.  The severest pogroms occurred in 1905, and the collaboration of the authorities in their organization was evident. In this outbreak, over 300 Jews lost their lives, whilst thousands of families were injured. Among the victims were over 50 members of the Jewish *self-defense movement. Attempts to organize the movement had already been made at the time of the pogroms of the 1880s, but in this city inhabited by Jewish masses it had formed part of their existence before then and on many occasions had deterred attempted pogroms. After the Revolution, during 1917–19, the Association of Jewish Combatants was formed by ex-officers and soldiers of the Russian army. It was due to the existence of this association that no pogroms occurred in Odessa throughout the Civil War period. Pinsker was trying to put a stop to Pogroms.  

The position of the Jews declined more after World War I.

Odessa was an important center of the Russian revolutionary movement. Under the Soviet regime it lost some of its importance. In October 1941 Odessa was occupied by the German and Romanian armies and was under Romanian military rule until its liberation in April 1944.     

The Odessa massacre was the mass murder of the Jewish population of Odessa and surrounding towns in the Transnistria Governorate during the autumn of 1941 and the winter of 1942 while it was under Romanian control.  Depending on the accepted terms of reference and scope, the Odessa massacre refers either to the events of October 22–24, 1941 in which some 25,000 to 34,000 Jews were shot or burned, or to the murder of well over 100,000 Ukrainian Jews in the town and the areas between the Dniester and Bug rivers, during the Romanian and German occupation. The primary perpetrators were Romanian soldiers, Einsatzgruppe SS and local ethnic Germans.                                               

Yaakov Dori, the first Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, and President of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, was born in Odessa,  He was born in 1899 and died on January 22, 1973, In Haifa, Israel.  He had the rank of rav aluf,, the highest rank of a General.                                               

 Prof. Israel Dostrovsky, Israeli physical chemist who was the fifth president of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Laureate of the 1995 Israel Prize in the exact sciences, and was born in Odessa on November 29, 1918.  . 

After the Nazi occupation of 1941, the community previously numbering about 180,000 fled or were annihilated.  26,000 were massacred from  October 23rd to 25th in 1941 alone.  The Jewish population for Odessa Province in 1988 was 120,000.   It's population today is :Population: 993,120 (2017) according to the UN.   It was then the second largest Jewish population in Ukraine, after Kiev. After World War II 108,900 Jews lived in Odessa (12.1% of the total) in 1959, and 86,000 (8.4% of the total) in 1979.

Today Odessa is still known as a port city on the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. It’s known for its beaches and 19th-century architecture, including the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater. The monumental Potemkin Stairs, immortalized in "The Battleship Potemkin," lead down to the waterfront with its Vorontsov Lighthouse. Running parallel to the water, the grand Primorsky Boulevard is a popular promenade lined with mansions and monuments. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00rq7v5MhJM

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odessa

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/odessa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1941_Odessa_massacre