The Last Escape; The Launching of the Largest Secret Rescue Movement of All Time
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973. Presumed First Edition/First Printing. Hardcover. ix, [1], 518 pages. DJ has price present. DJ has some wear, soiling,and edge tears. Excerpt from KIRKUS REVIEW: Maybe not the largest, maybe not the most secret, but ... the most exciting -- at least as recollected by Ruth Kluger about her operations with the Mossad in World War II. That was a group of ten secret individuals (nine men and a woman) who tried to smuggle Jews out of Europe into Palestine as Hitler was making his final decision between deportation and incineration -- and every country in the world ""regretfully"" barred its doors. Unbelievable obstacles -- finding ship owners willing to lease vessels at premium in wartime; calming down passengers confined shipboard, endless baksheesh (bribes) to border officials, stationmasters, harbormasters, embassies (for phony transit or entry visas); evading British ships and border patrols which sent illegal immigrants (only 10,000 legal per year) back to where they came or, at best, to some Palestinian prison; and finally, money from rich Jews unwilling to believe their civilized world was collapsing all around them. This is truly a tragic, story no one, Jews, gypsies, or the great untouched, should ever forget. Ruth Klüger Aliav (née Polishuk) (April 27, 1910 – February 16, 1980 was a Ukraine-born Romanian and Israeli Jewish Zionist activist, assisting in the Aliya Beth before and after World War II. Ruth Klüger went to Palestine after her marriage in 1936 and later joined Aliya Beth, being sent on missions to Romania and other European countries. She was one of ten original members of the Mossad, a Zionist group dedicated to helping Jews escape the Holocaust in Europe. Fluent in 9 languages, she raised funds and helped organize the ships the "Tiger Hill" (September 1939) and the "Hilda" (January 1940) to carry Jewish refugees to Palestine. After Romania became an Axis Power, she escaped to Istanbul, Turkey and there together with other Mossad agents organized the dispatch of the ship the Darien II in March 1941. A full account of these deeds is in her autobiography The Last Escape, which was a best seller in 1974, and filmed as The Darien Dilemma 2005.
She was a Mossad agent in Cairo from 1941 to 1944. In 1944, with Charles de Gaulle's help, she arrived in a liberated Paris and was the first Mossad agent to contact survivors of the Holocaust. In October 1945, Klüger acquired a troopship, the Ascanious, from an American, Colonel Ernest Witte, of Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff. It was planned that the vessel would convey orphans to Palestine and it was soon crammed with 2,600 Holocaust survivors. On arrival in Haifa, the British government of Palestine had no choice but to let them in. The colonel wanted to repeat the passage, but it was vetoed by Eisenhower because of British pressure. In October 1945, David Ben-Gurion arrived in Paris and, to avoid eavesdroppers, he and Klüger Aliav went for a four-hour walk in the Bois de Boulogne. Ben Gurion wanted to know if the Holocaust survivors would be ready to sail in the cramped Aliya Beth "nutshell" ships. Klüger Aliav convinced him that after the Holocaust, the refugees would endure any hardship in order to reach the new homeland.
Peggy Mann Houlton was the author of more than 35 books and many magazine articles.
At a Congressional reception in 1985, Mrs. Houlton, who wrote under her maiden name, Peggy Mann, was honored as one of the nation's foremost authors.
Some of her books include ''Golda,'' a biography of Golda Meir, the former Prime Minister of Israel; and ''The Last Escape,'' about a woman's mission to smuggle Jews out of Nazi-occupied Europe into Palestine. Condition: Very good / good.
Keywords: Jews, Genocide, Anti-Semitism, Refugees, Palestine, Immigration, Rescue, Survival, Mossad, Zionism, Aliya Beth, Ascanious, Holocaust, Carol of Rumania
[Book #72637]
Price: $37.50