Posted on Monday, March 17
New York.- By Susan Drucker and Gary Gumpert
Monuments help us to remember or prevent us from forgetting. We choose who and what to commemorate and the cumulative result constitutes our shared public memory. At a time when the Holocaust moves from lived experience to historical phenomenon in the memories of succeeding generations, the function and significance of memorials becomes increasingly important in the drive to “never forget.” Monuments and memorials serve to mourn, to honor the heroic, or to pay homage to martyrdom. They create a shared memory or version of a story or events in history.
For several years we have been researching monuments that preserve and shape collective memory. This work has spanned nations with diverse relationships to the Holocaust ranging from Germany and Holland to Greece, Italy, Brussels, Hungary, Austria, England, France, and Israel among others. Simultaneously, in a very different part of our research agenda, we began visiting Cyprus. We have come to appreciate the fact that Cyprus is a land that values its history, whose collective memory is sacred.
The importance of memory in Cyprus became very clear to us as we studied the role that communication plays in the current division of Cyprus. After many visits we were reminded that part of Exodus, the 1960 motion picture directed by Otto Preminger and starring Paul Newman, was filmed in Cyprus. Exodus is the story of one of the ships that attempted to carry its Jewish passengers from Europe to Palestine immediately after World War II.
Being in the midst of work on memorials and collective memory elsewhere, it seemed natural to ask a seemly simple question, “Are there any memorials to the Jews held in detention camps by the British on Cyprus?” The responses revealed that there was little to no memory of the Jewish presence on the island after WWII.
It is curious that most Cypriots and Cypriot Americans have not heard about this chapter in the islandʼs history. The few who remember have a vague sense that Cyprus had helped facilitate the transport of Jews who had survived the World War II death camps and later the displaced persons camps of Europe. These were the desperate displaced victims seeking a home in Palestine (later the state of Israel established in 1948).
We came to learn that the British authorities held Jewish “illegal” immigrants in detention camps on Cyprus from 1946 to 1949. This policy was part of an effort to deter Jewish immigration to Palestine, under British control, as was Cyprus. During that time over 53,000 Jews passed through the barbed wire camps, held against their will, with a quota of only 1,500 per month permitted to leave Cyprus for Palestine.
The Jews considered illegal immigrants by the British were intercepted by British naval forces and turned back from the shores of Palestine and escorted to Cyprus or temporarily imprisoned in Palestine (Atlit) before being deposited in the camps of Cyprus.
The two major camps were Caraolos, north of Famagusta, and in Dekhelia, outside of Larnaca. The compounds stretched for several miles. The story of these camps has been well documented as an episode in the history of the modern state of Israel. Museums and archives in Israel have extensively documented the camps. The United States Museum of Tolerance in California, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City have devoted exhibitions to this period. Yet, in Cyprus, memories are dim, if not forgotten of this traumatic period.
Some of the elderly do remember but have not shared their experiences and memories with the younger generations. On a hot summer morning last year one 73-year-old farmer who lived in Xylotymbou, the village adjacent to the camps, told us, “I never told my children about this.”
Anecdotes tell of Cypriots working in the camps, smuggling in potatoes to the undernourished internees, assisting in escapes from the camps through underground tunnels. Local Cypriots from laborers to doctors worked in the camps. Translators were British employees. The Jews were prisoners living in overcrowded tents and barracks under harsh conditions with inadequate food supply. The barbed wire camp was also a vibrant community with marriages, illness, deaths, and celebrations. 2,200 children were born in the camps during this period – pregnancy moved the family up on the Palestine waiting list.
But the relationship between Cyprus and the detention camps is more than a momentary historical inconvenience. The tale of the camps is entwined with the independence movements of Cyprus and Israel. They became the training ground for Jewish combatants who would eventually reach Palestine. Cultural workers were sent from Palestine/Israel to teach Hebrew, geography, history and culture of their future homeland and skills that would be valuable upon eventual release. Workshops teaching tailoring, carpentry and other trades were held.
Both Cyprus and Palestine were in the colonial grasp of the United Kingdom and the camps contained thousands of military age men British authorities were particularly concerned with detaining from entry to Palestine/Israel and who were of great interest to those groups in Israel fighting for independence. Groups from the Haganah, the militant Israeli faction, came into the camps to secretly train and drill the interned. There is evidence that by 1948 there was contact between A.K.E.L and members of the Haganah. Haganah personnel were smuggled into the camp to provide military training in the guise of organized sports activities that included drilling, calisthenics, throwing, marching and negotiating an obstacle course. While there is some question as to whether it was A.K.E.L. alone or whether the British identified anyone in Cyprus seeking independence as part of A.K.E.L., there is no question that relationship between Cypriots seeking independence and the activities in the camps did in fact come to the attention of the British administration of Cyprus.
British documents were kept secret as classified documents for many years; secrecy agreements prevented British employees from speaking. After 60 years many of these documents have been declassified and secrecy agreements have expired. Documentation is now available to support the intertwined relationship between the camps and Cypriot history.
In an interview with President Dimitris Christofias in 2005, at that time head of Parliament and General Secretary of A.K.E.L, Mr. Christofias pointed out that A.K.E.L. tried to help the Jews at the time and that the relationship between the camps and A.K.E.L. was part of the history of his party.
Returning to our initial question “Are there any memorials to the Jews held in detention camps by the British on Cyprus?”, we learned that in 1950 a group of former internees, by then citizens of Israel, expressed their gratitude, by funding a childrenʼs playground in Famagusta. The only other commemorative evidence is a plaque dedicated in 1998 in the port of Larnaca. A formal dedication of the plaque made by the Jewish organization Keren Hayesod in June of that year thanked the Cypriots for their friendship and particularly honored Prodromos Papavasilliou of Famagusta who played a major role in aiding the Jews in their flight to Palestine (Mr. Papavasilliou died in 2060. Few, even those working at the Larnaca port, are currently aware of its existence.
For those for whom this chapter of history was part of their personal recollections, the years are passing and most are in their late seventies and eighties. They remain willing to speak to those who know to ask about this time in history, but their story needs to be told and preserved. This is not merely a tale of the elderly and a time long past, but rather it is a memorial and indicator along the path to the independence of Cypriots and Jews.
The collective memory of Cyprus reveals the past and illuminates the future.
Gary Gumpert (Ph.D), Wayne State University) is Emeritus Professor of Communication at Queens College of the City University of New York. Susan J. Drucker (JD., St Johnʼs University School of Law) is a Professor in the School of Communication, department of Journalism/Mass Media Studies, Hofstra University. The will be presenting a talk on the Detention Camps at Cyprus House on March 26th at 6:30 p.m.
The British, the Jewish Detention Camps and the Cyprus Story