The Cyprus Detention Camps

Download or read book The Cyprus Detention Camps written by Yitzhak Teutsch and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in August 1946, stateless and visaless Jews—most of them survivors of the Nazi death camps—who sought to immigrate to the Land of Israel were intercepted by the Royal Navy and deported to the nearby island of Cyprus, where they were detained in camps surrounded by barbed wire. Despite occupying a dramatic and fateful position in modern history, this saga has remained largely inaccessible due to the widespread dispersal of the primary sources and the linguistic difficulties presented by them. To address these problems, this book scrutinizes the scholarly literature, consulting hundreds of primary sources—many of them previously unknown—on three continents, bringing together interviews with scores of eyewitnesses, and translating foreign-language terms into English. The result is a comprehensive, meticulously footnoted guide that uses such tools as maps, a detailed timeline, and biographical entries to make this riveting saga accessible to a broad audience of scholars and general readers.