SS Rim 1939

SS Rim 1939

Overview

On June 30, 1939 an old ship named “Rim”, flying a Panamanian flag, stopped in Rhodes. It came from Constantsa, on the Black Sea, and carried about 600 Jews from Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary and Romania on their way to Palestine.

In Rhodes another 200 “foreign” Jews were taken on board because of the racial law of September 7, 1938 that forbade foreign Jews, the ones who came to reside in the Aegean possessions after January 1, 1919 to remain, revoked their Italian citizenship and forced them to leave the island within six months.

Rim sailed on July 3, but it soon caught fire in the waters of the nearby islet of Symi. Italian naval units intervened, saved all the passengers and took them back to Rhodes. The Italian authorities put the city stadium at their disposal, tents were pitched, the Rhodian community helped providing food and clothes and so did the Joint Distribution Committee. The shipwrecked Jews remained in Rhodes for months as it was difficult to find a vessel to take them to Palestine.

There were marriages, there were births. At last at the beginning of 1940, when Rhodes was still governed by De Vecchi a ship was found and they all left, taking with them a Sefer Torah, a gift of the Rhodian community. They reached Palestine and succeeded in landing in spite of the strict control of the British Royal Navy. A young Jew of Rhodes, Haim Levy, even succeeded in taking pictures for a reportage of that extraordinary adventure.

Source “A History of Jewish Rhodes” by Esther Fintz Menascé, 2014 publication, pages 155-156