Once he sailed on a ship of hope

Crewman of the Exodus 1947 recalls quest at sea for a Jewish homeland

By Bill Porter, Globe Staff  |  April 18, 2004

For Frank Lavine, the shooting started after the war ended. After World War II, with the Nazis tucked into some of history's bleakest chapters, the bespectacled Lavine and other US veterans, including Chelsea's big Bill Millman, provided a postscript of hope.

They were crew members on a ship that tried unsuccessfully to deliver thousands of Holocaust survivors through a British blockade to Palestine in 1947. The British, who administered the territory, were trying to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into Palestine. As the ship attempted to run the blockade, it was boarded by British troops. The crew and passengers resisted, and Levine and Millman were wounded.

But both survived to tell the tale, which provided inspiration for Leon Uris's novel "Exodus" and the movie that followed.

"It's not a coincidence that the book was called 'Exodus,' " said Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University. "There is no doubt that Uris was familiar with the story and used it as the basis for the book."

Lavine, who lives in Medford, turned 80 recently. "Eighty and nine days," he said earlier this month. "I count by days now. After 80, I figure every day is a bonus."

He walks each day to Medford Square to catch the bus to Davis Square, rides the Red Line to Park Street, and trudges up Beacon Hill to the Boston Athenaeum. A few hours later, he returns home and waits for his wife to come back from work. He walks and takes public transportation everywhere, doesn't drive. He's in good shape. "Clean life, lots of Geritol," he said.

Lavine, who is Jewish, ran Medford's library for decades, retiring 15 years ago. He and Millman each were part of a recent documentary written and produced by WBUR-FM on the attempt to run the blockade. The things Lavine saw in the summer of 1947 are as compelling as anything he's ever pulled from the shelf.

A volunteer crewman aboard a former pleasure ferry called the President Warfield, Lavine embarked on a futile mission to bring 4,554 Holocaust survivors to Palestine, before the state of Israel was established. The British considered the refugees illegal immigrants.

Nothing in Lavine's past had prepared him for the struggle. He had volunteered for the Army Air Corps in 1942 and was discharged in 1946. Throughout the war, he had remained stateside. "I worked mostly in the desert in Nevada, on a bombing and gunnery range," he said.

Part of Lavine's military training was in the Midwest. He attended a dance for Jewish soldiers at the University of Illinois campus in Urbana one weekend. "I met some kids there, Jewish kids -- they were learning agronomy," he said. "They were planning, when the war was over, to go to Palestine and work the land."

He told his new friends that he had sailed on the Charles River. Back home. About six months later, Lavine said, "I got a phone call that said 'I understand you're a sailor. Would you like to help the Jewish people?' I figured what the hell, sure. They said go to New York, take a physical. I did. A guy said, 'There's a ship waiting for you in Baltimore.' "

Lavine, a native of Boston's West End whose parents immigrated to the United States from Lithuania, told his mother he was going on a long vacation, and not to worry. "I went to Baltimore," he said. "The ship was the President Warfield, right out of the scrap heap."

The Warfield, later to be renamed "Exodus 1947," had been used by the British as a troop transport and saw action as a US support vessel for the invasion of Normandy. It was purchased by the Jewish underground military organization Haganah.

They sailed in February 1947 and hit a storm eight hours out. "We almost capsized," Lavine said. "We started taking on water and listing. We were escorted into Philadelphia by the Coast Guard."

The men spent a few weeks repairing the ship, and sailed again. They arrived in Marseille only to find it crawling with British. "We ended up in a shipyard in Portovenere, Italy, run by the Haganah," Lavine said.

There, they tore out the ship's interior fixtures and removed most of the furniture. "All we had left was a shell," Lavine said. "We started putting beds into the shell, row on row of wooden bunks. This ship originally carried 350 passengers. When we were through putting in the bunks, we had room for more than 4,000 people."

The British urged the Italian government not to let the ship leave port. "Here we were ready to shove off, and there's an Italian gunboat right over our bow," Lavine said.

But sympathizers were following the ship's progress as closely as were the British, and one day the gunboat vanished. Next stop: Sete, France. Trucks started arriving with refugees, people who had been living in displaced-persons camps in Europe, all survivors of Hitler's death camps. They climbed aboard.

Lavine said that French customs police wouldn't let the Warfield leave. The Americans sent a man ashore one night with a bottle of liquor to distract the police, and then they cut the ship's cables and shoved off. "And with our luck," Lavine said, "one of the cables wrapped itself around the propeller of the ship, and we spent most of the night diving over the side trying to loosen the cable. We finally got the cable off the propeller, got out, and hit a sandbar."

They were in the Mediterranean Sea bound for Haifa in July 1947 when the real trouble began. A British warship appeared on the horizon, then another. Before long, five destroyers and a light cruiser shadowed the Warfield. The British yelled across with bullhorns. Lavine recalled them saying: "We know where you're going. You can surrender now. We don't want to hurt anybody. We know you need medical attention, food, water."

Their warning ignored, the British stormed the ship, and the crew and many of the refugees fought them with everything they had. Men, women, and children started throwing things at the British: "Rocks from the ballast, nuts and bolts, and cans of kosher corned beef," Lavine said. "As soon as the British hit us, that's when [the Warfield] became the Exodus. We lowered the name boards so you could see 'Exodus 1947.' "

After four hours of fighting, the British opened fire, and the Exodus surrendered. According to Lavine, about 100 passengers were wounded and two were killed. One American crewman was killed in the fighting. Lavine bled profusely after being clubbed on the head. Millman was shot in the face. "It still smarts sometimes," said Millman, who lives near Las Vegas.

The Holocaust survivors and some of the crewmen, including Lavine, were placed on prison ships and, after refusing to disembark in Port-de-Bouc, France, were taken to a camp in the British-occupied zone in Germany. But eventually, most of the refugees settled in a new nation, Israel. Millman spoke not only for Lavine but perhaps for the rest of the Exodus crew when he said, "I helped create a country."

Lavine returned home, earned a master's degree in library science from Simmons College, and eventually went to work in Medford. He got involved in the city, serving on various committees.

"He's always been very interested in the community, both as a person and a librarian," said the Rev. Eugene H. Adams, 86, a former minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford, who is a longtime friend of Lavine's. "He's a great guy, a person of quiet conviction, and I'm very proud of what Frank did."

A member of Veterans for Peace, Lavine is troubled by violence in the Middle East and the war in Iraq. "When you're young, you're immortal," he said. "Nothing can touch you. It's not until you're in the action that you say to yourself 'This is death' -- and that's why I feel for these kids [in Iraq]. When you see a buddy of yours get whacked, it throws a whole new perspective on things. That's why I'm a veteran for peace, and also a supporter of the Peace Now movement in Israel."

Bill Porter can be reached at wporter@globe.com.