Samuel Schulman, the last surviving American crew member of the celebrated ship “Exodus 1947,” which attempted to bring thousands of Holocaust survivors from Europe to pre-state Israel, passed away Friday in Richmond, Virginia. He was 91.
From the end of World War II until the establishment of the State of Israel, “illegal” immigration — known by its code name the Aliya Bet — was the main way of getting around the United Kingdom’s strictly enforced policy at the time of allowing only several hundred Jewish refugees a month into British-controlled Palestine.