Difference between revisions of "Category:Pentcho Ship (subject)"

Voyage of the Pentcho (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

The Pentcho, an old, malfunctioning Danube paddle-steamer, left Bratislava, Slovakia on May 18, 1940 with 400 refugee Slovakian and German Jews, including some former inmates of Buchenwald, bound for Palestine, attempting to escape Nazi persecution. The voyage was organized by Betar, the right-wing Revisionist Zionists, as part of the Aliyah Bet.

The voyage was greatly delayed by the various governments en route. The Pentcho wheezed and clanked down the Danube, picking up 100 more refugee Austrian Jews along the way. At the end it had a total of 514 passengers.

The boat finally sailed from Sulina, Romania, on 21 Sep 1940 to Palestine. During the arduous journey on October 9 her single boiler stopped working and the ship was wrecked north of Crete. The ship's boiler exploded causing the Pentcho to split in two.

The passengers, marooned on the deserted island of Kamilanisi (Chamilonesi, now called Nisos Khamili), were nevertheless able to get their supplies ashore. Having been spotted by a plane, they were eventually picked up by Italian authorities and brought to the island of Rhodes- during the war under Italian control- where they lived for the next 15 months in "concentration camp" San Giovanni, a sports stadium on the island of Rhodes, guarded by Italian soldiers but aided by members of the indigenous Rhodes Jewish community who brought them food and supplies.

All but two were transferred in January 1942 to Ferramonti internment camp in southern Italy, living among other "enemy aliens", until they were liberated by the British army in 1943 after the Allies captured Italy.

In June 1944 most of the refugees successfully emigrated to Palestine, traveling on the Polish liner Batory to Alexandria and then by train. A number of them went to the Fort Ontario refugee center in New York State in July 1944.