IF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO DISEMBARK IN PALESTINE

Chronicle (Levin), 6 August 1946, Page 5

IF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARE NOT PERMITTED TO DISEMBARK IN PALESTINE

Press Assn,

By Telegraph

-Copyright

Received Tuesday, 10.40 a.m. JERUSALEM, August 5. * Eight hundred illegal immigrants from the five ships- at Ilaifa, mostl'y women and children, landed to-day, ieaving approximately 1500 aboard. Prior to this disembarkation, the secret Jewish radio, "Voice of Israel," asserted that British troop reinforcements were being centred in the Haifa area. The radio threatened "countrywide action, backed by the entire Jewish community," if the immigrants aboard the ships were not permitted to Ddisembark.

Pressmen were to-day refused passes to visit tlie port. The tightened security measures are apparently the result of widespread reports in Jewish circles that the Jewish resistance movement, Haganah, might attempt to disembark the immigrants by direct aetion. David Horowitz,. a member of the temporary executive of the Jewish Agency, said the entire Jewish community would "resist" any attempt to prevent the landing of more than 2000 of the illegal immigrants aboard the five ships. He added that the insanitary conditions in which the immigrants were living made disembarkation imperative. Ships Floating Slums The Times' Haifa correspondent who went aboard the four immigrant ships said they were floating slums. Most of the Jews aboard eame from Rumania, Hungary and Poland, with some Russians. A few talked, but those who did were cautioned by others. A few looked ill and underfed. They made little effort to clean up the decks. No one on the ship Haganah seemed to be in command. The charts were holed so that no one theoretically knew where the voyage began and where it was to end. It was hard to tell which was captain, which was deck-hand, which was pilgrim and which was simply adventurer. There was only one lifeboat, and it was plainly unseaworthy. New Blows Planned The Irgun Zvai-Leumi broadcast a threat to launch "new and heavy blows against our British enemiesv even in the heart of their power." The terrorists declared in their first broadcast over their clandestine

radio station since the explosion at the King David Hotel that if another curfew was imposed residents would- be given orders to go into the streets at curfew time, and if the •British start shooting "there will be thousands of British vietims, too." It is offlcially announced in Jerusalem that all the bodies recoverec from the ruins of the King Davic Hotel have been cleared and all the mdssing accounted. for. The total number killed was 91 r and 45 are still in hospital.