Commander of the Exodus

by Yoram Kaniuk Narrated by William Sutherland

Overview

Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most inventive, brilliant novelists in the Western world,” Yoram Kaniuk turns his hand to nonfiction to bring us his most important work yet. It is the story of Yossi Harel, a modern-day Moses who defied the blockade of the British Mandate to deliver more than 24,000 displaced Holocaust survivors to Palestine, while the rest of the world-including the United States-closed its doors. Kaniuk pays homage to the young Israeli who was motivated not by politics or personal glory, but by the pleading eyes of the orphaned children languishing on the shores of Europe. Commander of the Exodus is both an unforgettable tribute to the heroism of the dispossessed, and a rich evocation of the vision and daring of a man who took it upon himself to reverse the course of history.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this unusual foray into nonfiction, the well-respected Israeli novelist Kaniuk (Confessions of a Good Arab) depicts the life of Yossi Harel, a Palestine-born Jew who, in the 1940s, defied the British and brought four boatloads of Holocaust survivors to Palestine. Basing the narrative on his interviews with Harel (now in his 80s), Kaniuk tells how Harel left his troubled family to join the Haganah (the Jewish militia) at the age of 14. Inspired by the revolutionary leader Yitzhak Sadeh, he fought the Arabs during the anti-Jewish riots of the 1930s and the Germans during WWII; then, after the war ended, he fought the British. Harel's first expedition brought 3,000 Jewish refugees from Yugoslavia aboard the Knesset Israel, but the British forbade their entry, and they ended up in Cyprus. Then, in 1947, Harel commanded the famous ship Exodus (an expedition later depicted in the novel by Leon Uris and a film starring Paul Newman), which sailed from France with 4,515 refugees. When the Exodus arrived, British destroyers attacked it, and the refugees went back to detention camps in Germany. Finally, in 1948, Harel commanded two more ships carrying 15,236 Jews--all of whom, due to a brokered compromise, went back to Cyprus, where they secretly boarded British ships bound for Palestine. Masterfully describing both Harel's biography and the suffering and determination of the refugees, Kaniuk portrays an ugly episode in history and provides much-needed historical depth to contemporary political debates. (It was, he argues, the global condemnation that came in the aftermath of Britain's heartless refusals that led to the birth of Israel.) (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

While the ship Exodus has been immortalized in the Leon Uris novel and Otto Preminger film (both of the same name), little was known about the ship's captain, Yossi Harel. In this capably translated book (first published in Hebrew in 1999), Israeli novelist Kaniuk (Adam Resurrected and Confessions of a Good Arab) fills in the many gaps in Harel's early career. The reader learns that the young "Zionist cowboy" served in both the Haganah (the Zionist military organization) and the British Army before commanding four expeditions (while still in his 20s) that transported over 24,000 refugees to Palestine, openly defying the British blockade. Kaniuk paints a vivid picture of the wretched conditions aboard the old ships and the violence of the British sailors. Based on interviews with the elderly Harel, the book has no footnotes or documentation, and Kaniuk notes that "some portions of this book blend historical truth with imagination it is not a traditional biography, but is absolutely based on the facts." Recommended for public libraries that have high reader interest in the subject. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/00.]--John A. Drobnicki, York Coll., CUNY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169664249
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/24/2005
Edition description:	Unabridged

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