Exodus (by Leon Uris, 1958.)

This eminent text has to do originally with the refugee status of many Hebrew people everywhere after the end of the world war more than fifty years ago.  Many were in sordid and sub – standard conditions even for the poorest of the poor in the day due to their having been first pursued by the Axis powers that then sought to eliminate them completely.  The victorious Allies at the time as supervised by the Americans were given the dubious task of resettling these people wherever they could find a home and doubtless due to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, many of them preferred Palestine but could not or did not make it there.  In 1945, when the world war ended, Hebrew people from everywhere, especially in what were the final battlegrounds from the war, made their way to Palestine the best they could, often traveling by train and then by boat, both modes of transportation that at the time had become rickety and risky for passengers given the battleground military’s having taken most working infrastructure equipment for itself at the time and thus having left only some working transport for civilians there in Europe and neighboring territories. 

 

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The text in any event gives rich encapsulations for the reader of deportations, conditions in the camps, methods used by the Nazis to eliminate the Jews, the situation in the Warsaw Ghetto and related uprising, the situation of Jews in Russia, and that in the other major camps in Southern Poland and Germany, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere at the time.  The text uses these details as a backdrop for personal stories of many different personalities, all fictitious, and their lives as they unfold after the Allied victory.  The plot even goes into the first Arab – Israeli war in 1947, and examines the plight of Palestinian Jews making the attempt to emigrate to Israel at the time as well.  “Exodus,” the title of the book, is taken from a passenger ship with 300 Jewish children at the time making its way from Cyprus to Israel.  A highly recommended read for anyone.