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Plan to sue British government for turning away Holocaust
refugees greeted with mixed feelings
By Cnaan Liphshiz
A group of Israel-advocacy activists this week announced they
would file a class-action lawsuit against the British government
for "increasing the scale of the Holocaust" by refusing to allow
Jewish European refugees into British Mandate Palestine during
WWII.
People involved in British-Israeli relations expressed mixed
feelings about the intended civil lawsuit, which according to
its initiators is designed to counter the ongoing debate in
Europe about whether Israel has a right to exist, and Israel's
international delegitimization.
The lawyer preparing the suit, Tali Tamarin, said details about
it would be made available next week at a press conference in
Atlit, where the British detained thousands of illegal Jewish
immigrants. The motion is on behalf of the families of European
Jews who perished in the Holocaust after being deported back to
Nazi-controlled Europe by the British.
While there are no more than a few thousand documented cases of
Jews being sent back to Europe during the Holocaust era, the
group's team of researchers say that based on testimony they
estimate that up to 30,000 Jews trying to reach
British-controlled Palestine were forced to turn back to Europe
and eventually died during the war. The immigrants were either
caught in Palestine or in its territorial waters. Tamarin said
the suit "will be for recognition and not for damages."
Brenda Katten, former chairperson of the Israel, Britain and The
Commonwealth Association - which promotes British-Israel
relations - said she had mixed feelings about the initiative.
"It's not so black and white," she said. "On the one hand I
agree that there can be no doubt that the White Paper (a British
policy paper from 1939 limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine
) did result in the death of many Jews. On the other hand,
Britain took in 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied
Europe."
Brenda Katten's husband, John Katten, whose family came from
Germany, survived the Holocaust because he received refuge in
the U.K. as a boy. |
