The story of the passengers of the Atlantic

The question of deportation was the order of the day in October 1940, when three ships, the Milos, Pacific and Atlantic had chosen a course for Palestine. They had set off from the Romanian port of Tulcea, and were carrying around 3600 Jews, refugees from Germany, Austria, Danzig and occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia. As the organizer of the transportations was Berthold Storfer, who cooperated with Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung, and these people had been transported along the Danube by German steamers serviced by Deutsche Donau Schiffahrtgesellschaft (DDSG), the British did not rule out the possibility that enemy agents might be amongst the fugitives. In official proclamations London often explained that these groups – fugitives from Nazi occupied Europe – were susceptible to infiltration by enemy agents. This argument was put forth during the scarce allocation of immigration certificates and used to justify the firm policy line adopted in relation to Aliyah Bet.

The places taken into consideration as deportation destinations included Cyprus, British Honduras (Belize) and Trinidad in the Caribbean. The final decision fell on Mauritius, a British colony in the Indian Ocean, to the east of Madagascar. London hoped this drastic move would halt illegal immigration and that subsequent refugees would not risk being sent to a remote island in the tropics.

All three ships were flying under the Panamanian flag and all were overcrowded. It was to be the Atlantic, which had set off the earliest (the 7th of October, with the Pacific and Milos 4 and 12 days later), that was to arrive at the designated spot the last. The dramatic course of the voyage emerges from passenger accounts.