While we’re on the topic of the Holocaust, a group of Jews is reenacting the Exodus from France 60 years ago in one of the more embarrassing bungled attempts by the British to maintain harmony in Palestine. The episode was the inspiration for Herman Wouk’s Exodus, about the founding of Israel.

A boat sailed from Cyprus on Wednesday with 300 Jewish passengers aboard in a symbolic re-enactment of an attempt by European Jews to reach what was then British-run Palestine 60 years ago.

The story of the “Exodus”, intercepted by the British in 1947, helped draw world attention to the efforts of Jews to flee Europe after the World War Two Nazi Holocaust and became an important episode in the founding of the state of Israel.
Some 300 Jews, most of them French, boarded a vessel in the Cypriot port town of Larnaca, commemorating the departure of some 4,500 Jews from France on the original ship. New migrants to the Jewish state were among the passengers.
“We decided to leave France for Israel, to make the trip to coincide with the anniversary of the ‘Exodus’ mission,” said Samuel Nasicimento, 38, moving to the Jewish state with his wife and two daughters.
“This is a trip in honour of our brothers back then, and now I am fulfilling the wish of my father,” he said.