Jews in British camps on Cyprus
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Jews in British camps on Cyprus during the 1940s was a result of the British not allowing Jews to enter the British Mandate of Palestine. In spite of the Holocaust and the plight of thousands of displaced Holocaust survivors, the British still adhered to the points of the White Paper of 1939 that called for limited Jewish immigration to the British Mandate of Palestine.
Jews were detained on the high seas by the British Royal Navy and those ships that did not sink (many were old and not sea-worthy vessels) were escorted to Cyprus where internment camps were constructed for up to 30,000 Holocaust survivors who were held at any one time to prevent their entry into Palestine.
Over time 50,000 people were imprisoned in the camps and over 2,000 children born there. After the creation of the state of Israel the British government continued to hold 8,000 Jews of "military age" and 3,000 of their wives in order to prevent them joining the fighting. They were eventually released in February 1949.
[edit] References
- Source: N. Bogner, The Deportation Island: Jewish Illegal Immigrant Camps on Cyprus 1946-1948, Tel-Aviv 1991 in Hebrew.
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