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Illegal ImmigrantsDetention Camp, Atlit
Tamar Wisemon
(January 31, 2000) A cockney voice barks orders from a British army jeep, "Move along! Out of the way!" Triggered by electronic eyes, these echoes from Atlit�s inglorious past as a British detention camp for illegal immigrants during and after World War II intrude on my thoughts as I walk around the somber site with its guard towers, heavy iron gates and barbed-wire fences.
In a field stands a replica of a boat used to smuggle in 37 refugees under the noses of the British in 1945. Others were less fortunate, and between 1939 and 1948, 40,000 illegal immigrants were held in Atlit after their captured ships had been towed to nearby Haifa port.
Dedicated to Yitzhak Rabin, deputy-commander of a Palmah unit that engineered the escape of 208 detainees on October 10, 1945, Atlit has been restored with a thoughtful blend of authentic items and modern technology with a view to educating new generations of Israelis about the pre-state era.
Original wooden planks, carved with the names of refugees, who hoped relatives or friends would see them, are incorporated in the reconstructed barracks that ring with taped anecdotes about former inmates. A wooden hut houses computer-simulation games inviting kids to steer an illegal immigrant ship or organize an escape from the camp. Oddly out of place, behind a rusty washing machine in the tin-walled disinfection shack, stands a white-tiled mikvah installed for the religious immigrants who were housed here after independence, when the Atlit camp became an immigrants� transit center.
Tel.: (04) 984-1980 Fax: (04) 984-2814 Sun.-Thurs. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Fri. & holiday eves 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Sat. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Adults: 13 shekels Children 6-18: 11 shekels
Good Taste
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