This story is published in the edition of the Jerusalem Report dated 28 June 2021
Young Eli was intrigued by the naval museum that was
half a ship. Ships and the sea were not
things he had grown up with. My grandson was a child of the desert.
When I came to settle in Israel late in 1949, it was way
down south in the Negev that I started a small business, taking my Hebrew name
from the most important town in the area.
So it was as Avraham Ramon that I married a girl I'd known as a child in
the old country.
When our grandson, Eli, reached his thirteenth birthday
in 1988, I wanted to give him the biggest barmitzvah treat I could. A week’s holiday in Haifa was something he’d
never experienced – he’d never been so far north before in his life.
It was on the second morning of our holiday that Eli and
I came across the odd‑looking building with its rather unusual sign.
“What do those words mean, grandpa?” he said.
I spelled them out for him.
““Illegal Immigration and Naval Museum.”
“What’s illegal immigration?”
“It means coming into the country unlawfully.”
Eli knew what I was talking about.
“It’s all those stories you used to tell me, about when
you were young. Let’s go in, grandpa.”
As we entered, the sun’s heat was transmuted into air-conditioned
comfort, and the glare into a shadowy, greenish light. Buying the tickets, I asked the man at the
desk the name of the ship that had been integrated into the museum.
Grizzled, bearded, he looked at me intently.
“The Af Al Pi Chen,”
he said, “one of the vessels that used to bring illegal immigrants into the
port of Haifa under the noses of the British.”
“Can I go and explore, grandpa?” said Eli.
“Yes, off you go.
I’ll never keep pace with you.
I’ll go round in my own time.”
He raced away and I turned to the man at the desk, his
face half in shadow.
“It seems like a very good place to bring children.”
“Oh, kids love scrambling about the ship,” he said. “For
them it’s an adventure. But the story we
tell here – that’s a different matter.
That’s no fairy tale.”
“I know,” I said.
“I was in the middle of it all,” said the man. “First the
Haganah in the '30s, and then again after the war. But by then I was searching
for someone I wanted to find. So I
looked for a job where I could go on searching.
This was ideal.”
“Who are you searching for?”
“I'll tell you. Have
you time for a chat?”
“Why not?”
I took a seat.
“Where to begin? After the war our people, the pitiful remnants who had survived Hitler's camps, were still in camps – refugee camps – and yearning to come here, the only possible haven. We had to bring them in. The Haganah bought, borrowed, chartered, whatever vessels we could, and we brought them across the sea – to within sight of the land. And then we faced the British blockade. So we had to smuggle them in – or try to.
“In the autumn of
1947 I was appointed leader for one particular voyage. We were about to set
sail when I received instructions by radio that a co‑leader from the Palmach
had been assigned.
“Now I was uneasy from the moment that man arrived on
board – tall, thin, fair‑haired, blue‑eyed and clearly a native German
speaker. He looked like the archetypal
Aryan. I didn't beat about the bush.
" 'I don't trust you,' I said. 'Understood?’
“ ‘Couldn't be clearer,’ he said. ‘So treat me as a refugee. You’re in charge. All right?’
The man at the desk
looked across at me.
“But in the end I wasn't able to do without him. We were just over the horizon from Haifa when
the radio packed up. That meant we
couldn't contact the reception committee, back on the mainland, waiting to
organise the run into shore and the disembarkation. So I just had to turn to
the man from the Palmach.
“ ‘You'll have to row to shore,' I said, 'and contact
the reception committee. There's no
other way. You'll set out at five
p.m. At eleven we'll begin to edge
towards the coast. I expect to see the Haganah
welcoming message by Morse lamp from the top of Mount Carmel during the night –
in good time for us to get to the beach and disembark our passengers. Is that all understood?'
“ ‘Aye, aye captain,’ he said. ‘Just one thing. I'm Palmach.
What’s the Haganah code?’
“I
could scarcely believe my ears.
“ ‘Are you telling me you were sent as co‑leader on this
trip without being told the coded reception message?’
" ‘Strange as it may seem.’
"This confirmed my worst
suspicions.
“ ‘Well, if they didn't trust you with it, neither will
I. They'll know it on shore. All you have to do is to make contact.’
“But he wasn’t
prepared to take that.
“ ‘Understand this – if I'm not given that message, I
don't leave this ship.’
“So I gave him what
he wanted. ‘The coded message I expect to see is: Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.’
" ‘Right," he said. 'And that's what you will
see. That I promise you.’
“And that's the
message I did see. About
For the first time since he’d begun his story, I
interrupted him.
“But wasn’t that the message you’d asked to see – that
you’d expected to see?”
He thumped the desk in front of him
“No, no, no! I
hadn't trusted Hans Utterman, not from the start – he could have been a spy
infiltrated by the British. The Haganah cypher
was changed at irregular intervals, so I gave him the old one. It all seemed so
simple. If Utterman was genuine, the reception committee would know the current
code and use it. If he was a spy he’d go
straight to the British ‒ so if I saw the message I'd given him, the thing to
do was to turn round as quickly as possible and head straight out for sea.”
“But good heavens!”
I said. “Didn’t you consider a third
possibility?”
“Not till he’d gone.
Only then I realised what a problem I’d given our friends on shore. Suppose this Utterman was genuine and told
the committee that I was expecting to see Vengeance
is mine, says the Lord – that he’d promised me faithfully that this would
be the message I'd see. What would the
committee do? – flash me the code I said I was expecting? Or flash the one I ought to be expecting?”
“So you saw the wrong message,” I said. “What did you do?”
The old man looked
anguished.
“The wrong thing.
To my eternal shame. That message, shining out from the top of
“I gave the order to move forward. We inched ahead, closer and closer. Suddenly...lights, brilliant lights, flooding the ship from stem to stern. And that voice, that British voice I hear still in my dreams, my nightmares...
“ ‘Stand to, the Miriam. You will be boarded
shortly. My men have orders to fire if
there is any resistance. Keep calm and
no‑one will be hurt.’
“We
were interned, every last one of us, first on shore, then in Cyprus, for over a
year. For myself I didn't care. But those people, so close, after so much suffering
– only to have the cup dashed from their lips. It was heart‑breaking. As soon as I got back, I set myself the job
of tracking down that German spy. Years
passed, and I never saw or heard of him.
Then I took this job in the Illegal Immigration Museum. I felt that, if
he was still alive, one day the museum would draw him. For twenty years I've sat here, searching the
faces – always in vain. Until… “
“Until
today,” I said. “That's right isn't it,
Uzzi? You recognised Hans Utterman the
minute he walked through that door.”
“Of
course,” said Uzzi Tal. “Age, weight, an
accent – what are they? The man is in
the eyes. At last.”
A second later a revolver was pointing directly at me.
“I'm
sorry about your grandson, Herr Utterman.
He’s innocent. But the time has
come to pay for your betrayal.”
I made
no move of any sort.
“Put
your gun away, Uzzi. Listen to what I
have to say.”
“You
think you can talk your way out of this?” he said. "One of the great betrayals of the
Jewish struggle?”
“But you've
got it all wrong. Do you want to hear
the truth? Can you bear it?”
Uzzi Tal kept his gun pointing straight at me.
“Tell
me.”
“That night,” I said, “I got to shore about one o’clock. I beached the boat¸ and walked across the
sand – straight into the arms of a British patrol. I was taken to British headquarters, and it
was quite clear that they knew the Miriam
was out there. She'd been tracked halfway across the Mediterranean. They'd
also broken the Haganah code – or so I’d believed until just this moment. Now I realise they didn't know it had been
changed.
“They decided to make things easy for themselves by flashing out to
the ship what they thought was the reception message. The closer to shore the Miriam came, the more likely they could board her and intern the
passengers without much trouble.
“You, my dear Uzzi, made two classical errors: you under‑estimated
the enemy, and you were too suspicious of your friends. If only you'd given me the right code in the
first place, the whole tragedy would never have happened. You’d have turned round. You could have got away.”
Tal lowered the revolver. In
the dim greenish light, I could see that his hand was shaking.
“How have you turned up after
40 years? Why could I never find you?”
“I was shipped by the British
straight back to
“Uzzi, you’ve been nurturing
vengeance in this place for twenty years. Vengeance is a plant that thrives in the
shadows. Let in the light, and it will shrivel
away. No, Uzzi, vengeance isn’t for us mortals.
Remember – “Vengeance is mine,
says the Lord”."
“Vengeance is mine”
Deuteronomy 32:35
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord”
Romans 12:19
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