Description

Shengold Publishers [Published Date: 1984]. Hard cover, 205 pp. No other printings listed. Very good in very good dust jacket. Blue boards with gold lettering on spine. Light bumping to edges and corners. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has a few 1/4" or less chips and tears and light creasing to edges. Light overall scuffing, soiling and aging to jacket as well. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival quality Brodart cover. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Some black and white illustrations. [From jacket flaps] Despite It All, a history of "illegal" Jewish immigration to Palestine from 1930 to 1944, traces the genesis, growth, and triumph of a mass movement inspired by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, whose goals were the self-preservation and self-determination of Jews in Eretz Yisrael. The author focuses on four theatres of action, which converge in this riveting drama: the spread of Nazism across Europe, the perfidy of Great Britain's numerous White Papers, the raging debates that split the Zionist movement into hostile camps, for and against illegal immigration, and, most moving of all, the anguish of the refugees themselves who, despite it all, undertook a perilous voyage across the unknown to reach the shores of Palestine. The author depicts the ingenious and complex negotiations that preceeded the clandestine journey of each vessel. Bargains with the devil were struck to secure the Gestapo's approval of the illegal immigration to Palestine. Aboard the crowded vessels, tales of devotion and despair, courage and mutiny, are chronicled on the basis of eyewitness testimony. All the contingents faced hunger, thirst, stormy seas, and death. Despite it All is a tightly knit history that conveys the unrelenting tension that accompanied each voyage. Over 50 vessels had to evade the ever-watchful eyes of the Royal Air Force and the vigilance of the British intelligence network that operated in all Aliyah centers in Europe and the disembarkation centers in Palestine. "Illegal" immigration was the effort of a nation to shatter the walls erected by a foreign government in its homeland. Chaim Lazar's account of this movement contributes a crucial chapter in the history of the Jewish struggle for liberation and independence.