MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · JULY 18 · SS Exodus (1947)ON THIS DAY · 18 JULY 1947
SS Exodus
18 Jul 1947 — Off Haifa, the Royal Navy boards Exodus, a former Chesapeake Bay steamer carrying about 4,500 Jewish refugees. Three people are killed. The passengers are sent back to France and refuse to land; in September they are forced ashore in Hamburg. The spectacle swayed opinion while the UN debated Palestine.
18 JULY 1947 · UPROOTED: REFUGEES IN EUROPE 1945–1960 AND INDOCHINA 1975–1990 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · Geoportal Berlin: official locality polygons · Berlin State Heritage Office: four sectors1945–1948 · The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall · Cliopatria v0.2.1 historical polities · Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 · Occupation and reconstruction of Germany, 1945–1948 · Natural Earth v5.1.2 country geography · Natural Earth administrative references · 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy, Articles3,11,22 · Potsdam Protocol: administration and population transfers · UNHCR: The State of the World’s Refugees2000 · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: displaced persons · Polish Institute of National Remembrance: Operation Vistula · Cliopatria v 0.2.1 — dated political boundaries · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — German territorial expansion · IGM Fiume, 1:25,000, sheet53B II SE — boundary established in1924 · Yugoslavia (1929–1939) location map — international frontier and Adriatic coast · Treaty of Rome (1924), division of Fiume and west-bank boundary
Source details Geoportal Berlin / ALKIS Berlin Ortsteil. Datenlizenz Deutschland Zero2.0 Berlin State Heritage Office: four sectors1945–1948. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or text reproduced US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY 4.0 · Selected dated records; documented component selection, unions and shared-edge extraction. US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication National Army Museum. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced Natural Earth contributors. Public domain · Full source components and holes retained; documented historical unions and repairs. Natural Earth contributors. Public domain 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy, Articles3,11,22. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or text reproduced Potsdam Protocol: administration and population transfers. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or text reproduced UNHCR: The State of the World’s Refugees2000. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or text reproduced United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: displaced persons. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or text reproduced Polish Institute of National Remembrance: Operation Vistula. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or text reproduced Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY4.0 · Dated polity and constituent territory selections; campaign-dependent occupation overlays reconstructed separately. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Historical dates consulted; no prose or image copied Istituto Geografico Militare, Fiume (printed1946; 1927 survey with1931–1940 updates), reproduced by Istituto regionale per la storia della Resistenza e dell’Età contemporanea nel Friuli Venezia Giulia. Independent reconstruction from graticule coordinates and boundary observations; archive page reserves artwork rights.. Geographical-fact reconstruction; original archive artwork not distributed NordNordWest/Wikipedia. Converted from the published SVG to WGS84; eastern Italian regional territory extracted. Source cites Velhagen & Klasings Großer Volksatlas (1938).. CC BY-SA 3.0 Germany 1924 agreement interpreted alongside the regional history institute and City of Rijeka’s explanation of the Donja/Gornja Drenova division.. Historical geographic facts; citation only Territories and displacement hatching are reconstructed from published source geometry. The hatched areas locate historical regions; ethnicity, displacement and control were not necessarily uniform at every point within them.
The layer records give the full source geometry and date choices. Arrows remain schematic routes, using the lesson’s existing volume categories.
Where a 1945 vector was unavailable, German occupation/state boundaries use the nearest 1949/1950 sources. Berlin’s sector-area reference uses official later locality boundaries, leaving small historical exchanges unresolved. The 1961 wall view uses actual 1989 wall segments as an explicitly later reference.
Prewar German, Polish, Finnish and Italian source polygons identify regions of transfer and expulsion. For Istria, the reference combines the published 1929–1939 Italian eastern outline and an IGM Fiume reconstruction with postwar Yugoslav geography. It shows the 1943–1956 exodus region, including the later 1954 Zone B adjustment. The 1947 peace treaty entered into force in September; the hatch does not show a treaty-day or April 1947 sovereignty line.
Chapter narrative date: 1947.55; each selected source records its own reference interval.
proxy: Later administrative references to1947affected regions · proxy: Natural Earth v5.1.2 geographic reference · reconstruction: 1937territories / postwar successor references · reconstruction: 1938-10 · reconstruction: 1945–1947, near-date 1949 exterior reference · reconstruction: 1945–1949, later state-union reference · reconstruction: 1945–1949geographic reference · reconstruction: 1945–1990eastern sector; later locality perimeters · reconstruction: 1945–1990western sectors; later locality perimeters · reconstruction: 1945–1991 · reconstruction: 1945–1991 geographic union · reconstruction: 1949–1952 · reconstruction: 1950–1957 · reconstruction: Postwar Yugoslav reference
Layer records and reconstruction methods
The moment in context For millions of people, repatriation—the return to their country of citizenship—offered a quick end to displacement. French, Belgian and Dutch workers went home within weeks. By the end of September 1945 nearly six million people had left Germany’s western zones. Soviet citizens presented a harder problem. Britain and the United States had agreed at Yalta in February 1945 to return them, but Stalin regarded people who had lived under German rule with suspicion.
From Displaced persons camps after WW2 , chapter 4 of Uprooted: Refugees in Europe 1945–1960 and Indochina 1975–1990 (1947).
The place: SS Exodus — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes Why it happened — Yalta’s promise of return. The Allies’ Yalta agreement promised the return of one another’s citizens. Repatriation also seemed the practical answer to millions of foreigners…The turn — The Harrison Report, August 1945. Nationality was an inadequate guide to what a Jewish survivor needed. A Polish Jew could be placed with Polish Catholics, some hostile, and expected…What it changed — Survivors to Israel. The end of the British Mandate in May 1948 opened a destination for Jewish DPs: the new State of Israel admitted them, and most of the camp…Then ask the room: Why did the Western Allies abandon forced repatriation by 1947, and what does the change reveal about how refugee protection is created? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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