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

Anti-Semitic Paranoid J. Edgar Hoover; FBI Director

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

John Edgar Hoover b: January 1, 1895 d: May 2, 1972
only 5'7" but practiced secret abuses of power and kept secret files
on activists and political leaders by using illegal methods.

America's 1st FBI Director was J. Edgar Hoover, who was deeply anti-Semitic; so anti-Semitic that he was paranoid about it.  This Republican took office on May 10, 1924 and nobody dared to get rid of him in this position.  He died in office on May 2, 1972, a threat to  presidents Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.    These presidents feared his intimidation and threats.  He kept secret files of people's sex lives and so used the fear of scandal and blackmail against Washington.
                                                                               

AKA Edward de Valera 

His paranoid against Jews showed up in the 1920s in that he always thought that Jews were subversives so ordered an investigation of the Irish nationalist politician, Eamon de Valera.  His grounds were that he was a "suspected Jew!"

This New York City born Irishman, Eamon de Valera,  became  the 3rd President of Ireland from 1959 to 1973.  He was a political man, but not Jewish.  In fact, he believed in the Catholic church and that it was most important to Irish identity.

My grandfather lived in Dublin for a very short time after immigrating from Lithuania, a hotbed of anti-Semitism when Nathan Goldfus turned 18 in 1888.  He got to England, then thought things would be better in Ireland, as many Jewish Lithuanians also thought.  They were all escaping war and being forced to be on the front lines being Jewish, pogroms where they were beaten up or faced possible death there.  This became the era when Jews immigrated to the USA in greater numbers and life under Russia was unbearable.  Many had made aliyah to Palestine starting in 1880.

Hoover's FBI became his secret police force, similar to the Gestapo used by the Nazis.  He started his own illegal wiretap in the 1920s until Roosevelt's assistant attorney general ordered him to stop in the late 1930s.  He had bugged congressmen and cabinet members during the Roosevelt administration.  For that, Roosevelt looked the other way when the British wiretapped Hoover's office in the Justice Department.  It was the British Sir William Stephenson who leaked wiretap information on pro-Nazi American businessmen to Hoover.  The Rockerfeller building was bugged on several important floors.  Clubs, law firms, shipping agencies did not escape his wire tapping,

As it turned out, Hoover wouldn't go after American Nazis, causing Stephenson  to murder a few as he would not act on those he learned about.  Instead, he went after communists.  He formed his own view that far too many Jews were Red sympathizers, and spread this to the people who worked for him.  He was paranoid about it, and the British took advantage of it.  They kept extensive electronic surveillance facilities in the USA during WWII and kept them in place when the war ended.  Great numbers of American Jews were spied on and this was all passed onto Hoover.
                                                                       

Hoover and his machine gun

The FBI had the British intelligence on the American Jews who favored in independent Jewish state in Palestine and had been helping financially or otherwise.  Remember that this had already been voted on by the League of Nations who had established the 30 year mandate for the British on Palestine that would free Jews there to establish Israel on May 14, 1948, the date the British would leave.  When the Jews announced on that date the establishment of Israel, Truman would vote yes in the United Nations.

     "British Intelligence authorities have advised that the above captioned individual.....left Palestine for the United State November 21, 1947, in contravention of the Supervision Order in force to prevent his departure.
     ........ has for several years been suspected of membership in Irgun Zvai Leumi, an underground Jewish terrorist group.  It is believed that he is at present inactive in this organization due to ill health.  British authorities reported that his address in the United states will probably be in care of Carmel Rabbinical College, 441 Garrison Boulevard, Baltimore, Maryland. "  
                                                                                    

Stanley Goldfoot of the Stern Group, called Stern Gang
by the British, was a reporter.  His most famous piece is
"Letter to the World."

This could have been about my 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot, who was the Chief of Intelligence for this group.  He lived in New York City and established a magazine about our Jewish state to be then.  He was born and raised in South Africa after his father's family had left Lithuania.  My grandfather shared a home in Dublin with his family.  He had good health, though, and was a great writer.  Hoover most likely had a dossier on him, too.  
                                                                                 

Ben Gurion, who became Israel's 1st president, had sent agents to the USA but didn't realize that they would be under surveillance before they ever got off the boat!  Golda Meir's arms-for-Israel campaign caused the FBI to listen to her and her colleagues in their spying.  
                                                                                   

The FBI kept spying on Jews from 1946 onward to convince President Truman that the Jews were supporting the "Zionist-Communist terrorists" in Palestine .  He was of the opinion  fed by the British that the Soviets were backing the this Jewish-Communist conspiracy.  He was convinced that there was a worldwide Jewish-Communist conspiracy.  From late 1947 on for several years, the FBI found large stockpiles of ammunition and explosives collected by prominent American-Jewish businessmen destined for Palestine, which makes me want to cry.  I know how hard it was for these valiant Jews to collect this and get it to Palestine, as it was so much needed in order to carry out the promise of the League of Nations that they were to be awarded their Jewish Homeland.  That the British were ordered to help them and see that they did everything to impede this grant makes me ill.

                                                                          

Jewish Haganah fighters with Bren gun 1948
The British refused to defend Jews from Arab attacks so they had to contrive ways of defending themselves or die.  Haganah was created as a clandestine organization for Jewish self defense in Palestine.  In 1948 it became Tzeva Haganah le-Israel.  It was all volunteer.  This became most important after the 1929 Arab riots when the British merely appeased the Arabs.  The Stern Group was a branch that broke off and was a little tougher.
  

At this time, the buying of surplus weapons was legal.  Hoover caused his own war against the Jews by doing this, and then he had the audacity to take it to the press.  The British made both groups, Jews and Arabs,  conflicting promises. But, more and more Jews arrived, buying land, starting businesses, and many Arabs wanted Britain to stop the influx. In their efforts to keep violence off the table, Britain forbade the Jews from arming.

In 1929, rumors spread that Jews were desecrating Arab Mosques in Jerusalem. Throughout Palestine, Jews were attacked. At the time, Haim Slavin was an engineer working for the Palestine Electric Corporation. Slavin set up to produce grenades. When the violence ended, hundreds of Arabs and Jews were dead
throughout Palestine.

                                                                           

Haim Slavin, Haganah arms expert,
1946 couldn't speak English,  and didn't know anything about America
"Chaim Slavin, a Russian-born electrical engineer widely regarded as the father of Israel’s military industries, died of a heart attack July 1980 at the age of 72. He came to Palestine 56 years ago and was employed in hydroelectric projects until the late David Ben Gurion assigned him to organize underground arms production in the period before World War II."

 Hoover's spying had exposed  the fact that one of Ben-Gurion's chief American agents, this same Haim Slavin, had procured millions of dollars' worth of USA arms and equipment for the small amount of $800,000.  Small amounts that it was made from were paid for my many Jews' donations of $18, our designated amount for donations-with the meaning of "for life!"  Haim had engineered the Dror rifle as well as much of Israel's military industries and worked secretly, he thought, in the USA and Canada, but now we know he was spied on by Hoover.  He managed to acquire hundreds of tons of machinery and weaponry needed anyway.  
                                                                   

   
Ben Gurion had said of the Palestinian Arabs, ""There is a huge difference between us and our enemies. Not only in capacity, but in morality, culture, sacredness of life and consciousness. They are our neighbors here, but it is as if a few hundred meters away there was a people that did not belong to our continent, our world, which really belonged to another galaxy. "  He spoke of a kibbutz, Tsvi Dar which was at the forefront of the Israeli militaire industries,  .. well before the creation of the state (of Israel) , several were called Maflan (factories of manufacture of arms), and were organized and managed by Haim Slavin.

Hoover's anti-Semitism spread throughout the state department and intelligence community so by December 5, 1947, after the UN General Assembly had approved the partition plan for Palestine, the US placed an embargo on arms shipments to the Middle East and the State Department "specifically forbade the issuing of passports to persons wishing to serve with armed forces not under the US Government.  This time it was the British wiretapping that stopped American Jews from giving more than just token assistance to their friends in Palestine, but the FBI claimed all the "credit."  The embargo affected both Arabs and Jews.
                                                                         

Jews who survived Hebron attack of 1929 when many were massacred in a town of 700 Jews,
now were refugees.  Those who returned later were again attacked in 1936-just before WWII.
Arabs were stirred against them by Nazis.  The population grew to 38,310 by 1967.  

The embargo came AFTER millions of dollars worth of American arms had been given to the Arabs.  All the Western allies followed the USA by arming the Arabs.  The British outdid the USA by sending more weapons but didn't join in on the embargo because they had more arms to deliver to the Arabs.  They even armed Iraq and Jordan "to the teeth" while Hoover kept the Jews disarmed.

The French got in on the action, too. They sent huge amounts into Syria and Lebanon to help the Arabs.  Then France and the US sent each other rumors of Jewish-Communist conspiracy to "bolster their bigotry."    If American Jews only knew that Hoover had worse plans for Jews.  They all were about to become the principal targets of FBI surveillance during the McCarthy era.  Even though the Anti-Defamation League of the B'Nai Brith had been helping by knowing who Nazi sympathizers were in the USA.  Hoover didn't like to ask Jews for this help.  Jewish informants were labeled by him as Premature Anti-Fascists and they all were under surveillance.  Anyone who voiced opposition to Hitler before December 1941 was a suspect by Hoover. and were called pinko PAFs or commie agents.                                                        

Rabbi Twerski at Harvard near Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Rabbi Levine 1926 in Brisbane, Australia Synagogue 

                                                                           

Hoover and his ilk believed that All Zionists were suspects as potential Communist terrorists.  If you gave money to Palestine they were terrorists or Communists.  I did in Sunday School.  We gave nickels and dimes we put  into a box called Karen amein which was charity.  If anyone emigrated to Palestine, they were labeled as a Soviet agent in disguise.  Poor rabbis who didn't know!

James Forrestal kept up the wiretapping of Jews behind President Truman's back who ordered such things shut down on September 29, 1945.


Resource:  The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus and Mark Aarons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89amon_de_Valera
http://www.sadefensejournal.com/wp/?p=3073 on Chaim Slavin, ammunition
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1691