Exodus

The British officers in charge of Cyprus—Brigadier Sutherland and Major Caldwell—meet with Major Allan Alistair, head of the information services. Alistair tries to warn Sutherland that the undercover Jewish agencies operating in Cyprus are working to pull off a plan, but with the details of the operation still fuzzy, Sutherland remains unconvinced, much to the chagrin of both Caldwell and Alistair. After their unsuccessful conference, Alistair tells Caldwell that he intends to go over Sutherland’s head, sending a letter to inform General Tevor-Browne of the situation on Cyprus.

Mark Parker sends a letter to his news agency in London with an unpublished story about the Mossad break-out attempt with the Exodus, only to be printed upon reception of a later telegram. Mark then meets with Kitty and expresses his concerns about her attachment to Karen Clement, which Mark views as an unconscious attempt to make up for the loss of Kitty’s daughter, Sandra. Kitty resists the idea, but their conversation is interrupted by Ari, who informs them that Dov Landau is holding up the operation, and that Kitty’s influence on him, via his friend Karen, might be needed.

Dov, the teenager whom Ari has been using to forge passports and official documents, expresses his frustration to Karen, who struggles to understand why he now refuses to keep working. Dov has figured out that the plan involves breaking 300 children out of the camps, but that his name’s and Karen’s do not appear on the list. He refuses to continue working until he is assured that they are included in any plan to go to Palestine. Eventually the adult leaders show up, and though they are initially inclined to resist Dov’s attempt to strongarm them, Ari acknowledges that Dov holds all the cards, and they agree to his terms.

The novel’s timeline shifts for another extended flashback series, this time concerning Dov’s experience of growing up under German occupation in Poland. Polish Jews had long been subject to neglect and persecution by their neighbors, but many nonetheless fought the Nazi invasions, including Dov’s father, who died in 1939. The Landau family, together with many other Jews, are forced from their homes to live in the Warsaw ghetto. Dov’s older brother, Mundek, works as a baker and provides for the family, all while meeting covertly with a group of revolutionary Jews.

Little by little, however, the Nazi regime begins taking Jews away to murder in their newly built systems of concentration camps, among whom are Dov’s mother and an older sister. Dov, though young, goes to work for Mundek’s group and becomes an expert at finding routes through the sewers and forging documents. As the Nazi’s “final solution” becomes evident, Mundek prevails on Dov to escape: “One of the Landau family must live. We want you to live for us all” (132). Dov slips out of the ghetto just before Mundek’s group stages a final uprising.

The Jewish resistance manages to raise a surprisingly strong defense against the Germans, pushing back their attempts to invade the ghetto several times. As German losses increase, Nazi officials become ever more desperate, but Mundek and his forces continue to find ways to inflict serious damage on every incursion. Dov sneaks back into the ghetto and assists the resistance efforts until the end, when his brother dies in a final stand. Dov then leads a last band of refugees out through the sewers, and for five months he lives a furtive life below ground, before finally being captured and sent off to Auschwitz.

As Dov nears Auschwitz, another set of flashbacks describe the Nazi hierarchy’s attempts to build the most efficient system possible for exterminating Jews and other undesired populations. Auschwitz is seen as the crowning achievement of that system, whereby its architect, SS Colonel Karl Hoess, analyzes existing concentration camps and streamlines their methods, making the gas chambers far more effective by introducing the façade of a shower system and using a new chemical, Cyklon B. Murder can now progress with the efficiency of an assembly line.

Dov arrives in Auschwitz and quickly discerns that the new arrivals are being split into groups for labor or extermination. He is pointed toward the line for the gas chambers, but he challenges the officer with a display of his forging abilities, and his quick thinking gets him transferred to the labor line.

He begins a grim life of starvation and deprivation in Auschwitz by working to make counterfeit American currency, but later is transferred to cleaning dead bodies from the gas chambers. After a year and a half of living in Auschwitz, Dov finally sees it liberated by the advancing Russian forces in 1945: “Dov Landau, aged fifteen, was one of fifty thousand Polish Jews who had kept alive out of three and a half million. He had kept his promise to his brother” (148).

The liberated captives from Auschwitz have nowhere to go amid the ongoing war, so many are forced to stay in place. Mossad agents eventually arrive with pledges to help them get to Palestine, but they meet resistance from Polish and British officials. This forces them into a long overland journey, aided by the willingness of sympathetic Czech officials to look the other way. They make their way into Italy, where the Jewish refugees are brought aboard the Gates of Zion, a ship being prepared to challenge British policy by heading toward the massive refugee settlements in southern France.

Captain Bill Fry, who had earlier navigated the Star of David to its successful beaching at Caesarea, is recruited to lead another mission in the Mediterranean. The goal is to get a ship in which the number of refugees is dramatically elevated from previous levels, and Bill finds an old American steamer that can do the job. Refitted and sailed across the Atlantic, the newly christened Promised Land catches the British by surprise, taking on thousands of Jewish refugees from southern France (including Dov’s group) and steering them out on the high seas toward Palestine.

The British are unwilling to let the ship even get close to the shore, and conduct an illegal raid on the high seas. The ship is turned around back to France, where a long standoff occurs, with the Jews onboard refusing to return to the camps. As Britain struggles under a wave of bad press on the global stage, they ship two-thirds of the Jews back to Germany before finally allowing the final set—Dov’s group—to disembark at the containment camps on Cyprus.

Newly arrived in the Caraolos camp, Dov acquires a reputation as sullen and unreachable, perhaps even dangerous. One young worker, however—Karen Clement—does not avoid him, despite his stubborn silences and outbursts of anger. Through patient persistence and by calmly standing up to his flashes of rage, she slowly gains his confidence. She suggests that he take an audience with Ari Ben Canaan, who hopes to set him to work forging documents for their escape attempt. Although Dov would have otherwise been unwilling, he agrees to consider it thanks to Karen’s influence.

Having concluded Dov’s flashback, the novel returns to the events of late 1946, with Ari’s plan about to be put into play. Ari and his fellow workers, having learned of Major Alistair’s suspicions, move the date of their attempt forward. When the day arrives, Mark and Kitty wait anxiously in the hotel for a telephone call, while Ari’s men, disguised as British soldiers, load the children into trucks and begin bringing them to the harbor.

When the phone call finally comes to Mark, signaling the plan’s enactment, he sends a telegram to London to release his news story, and then makes a covert call to Major Alistair to inform him of the escape attempt. The British forces race to the harbor, desperate to stop the breakout. The Jewish children are already onboard, but the Exodus is prevented from leaving the harbor by British guns. The standoff, which Ari planned as a propaganda coup, has begun.

Mark’s news story makes headlines all across the world, casting the British in a cruel light for preventing the passage of the refugee children. Since forcing the children to return to containment camps would be a further blow to their international standing, but still unwilling to let them go to Palestine, the British continue the standoff at the harbor.

General Tevor-Browne, and Humphrey Crawford, another official, meet with Cecil Bradshaw in London to decide what orders to send. Since sending the Jews to Palestine would disrupt their Middle Eastern policy with regard to Arab sentiments, they choose to let the matter play out: “We will not go on board, we will not send them to Germany, we will not sink them. They will sit in Kyrenia until they rot” (182).

Mark’s stories continue to be published in international papers, giving an appalled global audience a direct view of the events in the harbor. He also conducts an interview with Ari, in which the Jewish leader is able to make his case to a sympathetic global readership and a hostile British regime: “I say the same thing to the Foreign Minister that a great man said to another oppressor three thousand years ago—LET MY PEOPLE GO” (185). As General Tevor-Browne makes his way to Cyprus, Mark appeals personally to Ari to end the standoff, having already made his point in dramatic fashion. Ari resists, even furthering the situation by starting a hunger strike.

The hunger strike on the Exodus gets underway, with Ari playing directly to the international news. Any child who faints from hunger is brought up on deck to be displayed to the British forces onshore. Even as protests rise against the British across the world, the officials in Cyprus refuse to capitulate.

Kitty goes onboard the Exodus to check on the children’s health, and she is reunited with Karen. Ari sends a declaration to the British that they will begin having volunteers die by suicide on deck every hour until the Exodus is released. This finally breaks the British resolve, and they give orders for the Exodus to sail for Palestine.