There was a large crowd at Esra's Cinema Club showing of the English documentary "Waves of Freedom" on November 25.

This documentary, by Alan Rosenthal, is amazing as it contains actual footage of a group of young American men who went on a secret mission to bring 1,500 displaced persons (DPs) out of the bulging refugee camps of war-torn Europe to Israel. These volunteers had some knowledge of ships but were unprepared for the "rust-bucket" boat that the Hagana supplied them with. The boat was bought from the sale of jewelry and other valuable objects that American Jews brought to the Hagana to help buy the boat.

The film showed how the DP's painstakingly walked through the Austrian Alps, knee-deep in snow, to get to the rendezvous in Italy and how, on the other side, the volunteers had a terrifying journey across the Atlantic in that rusty old boat to Europe. Creating living space in the hold for their human cargo was also a massive job for those volunteers. The boat was Panama registered and flew a Panamanian flag and to all and sundry who asked their cargo would be "bananas".

One of the most poignant pieces of footage was the transfer of the DPs by lifeboats, in the darkness of night, to the boat which was anchored out at sea, showing the lifeboats as they went backwards and forwards to the boat picking up the DPs.

 Unfortunately, the British on their Palestine patrol duties caught sight of the boat as they neared Israel, boarded her and escorted her to Haifa Bay. The DPs fought like crazy not to be sent back but they were all sent to another DP Camp in Cyprus. It was a bitter blow to the young men who had tried to get their 'people' to Israel. The footage had British officers reflecting on their orders to hunt down these "illegal immigrants" and one had the feeling that they retrospectively felt their orders to be inhuman.

Eventually, a year later, the fledging State of Israel was born, and the DP camps in Cyprus were emptied and all were brought to Israel.

Two of the volunteers, now sprightly octogenarians, Harold Katz and Murray Greenfield, were there to answer any questions at the end of the film. They don't want to be recognized as heroes as they feel that they voluntarily wanted to help their fellow Jews get out from the devastation that was Europe and to make a fresh start in Israel. One of the audience shouted out to Murray that he had been on the re-named boat "Hagana" and said had it not been for men like Murray and Harold he would not have been here in Israel.

One thing that is very clear to me is that this film should be shown in as many countries and to as many people as possible as it is part of Israel's historic legacy. The DPs needed to be brought to a country that they could call their own to live as Jews without persecution and our little country welcomed them with open arms.

The "payback" on the hated British was that a few of the American volunteers smuggled explosives onto the prison ship that was eventually took them back to Israel from Cyprus and blew it up in Haifa Bay, after everyone had departed for their new lives in Israel.