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The Patria disaster occurred on the 25 November 1940 on the shores of Palestine next to Haifa.
Killing 267 people and badly injuring 172 Jewish refugees from the Nazis of occupied Europe. Most of them came from Czechoslovakia.
At the time of the sinking, Patria (French-built ocean liner) was carrying about 1,800 Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, most from Czechoslovakia. Upon apporach to the port of Haifa, the British authorities planned to deport them from Mandatory Palestine to Mauritius because they lacked entry permits. Zionist organizations opposed the deportation, and the underground paramilitary Hagana group planted a bomb intended to disable the ship to prevent it from leaving Haifa.
The Hagana claims to have miscalculated the effects of the explosion. The bomb blew the steel frame off one full side of the ship and the ship sank in less than 16 minutes, trapping hundreds in the hold. The British allowed the survivors to remain in Palestine on humanitarian grounds. Who was responsible and the true reason why Patria sank remained controversial mysteries until 1957, when Munya Mardor, the person who planted the bomb, published a book about his experiences.
In September 1940 the ZjA chartered three ships, SS Pacific, SS Milos and SS Atlantic, to take Jewish refugees from the Romanian port of Tulcea to Palestine. Their passengers consisted of about 3,600 refugees from the Jewish communities of Vienna, Danzig and Prague. Pacific reached Palestinian waters on 1 November, followed by Milos a few days later. The Royal Navy intercepted the ships and escorted them to the port of Haifa. Warned in advance of the ships' arrival, the British Colonial Office was determined to refuse entry to the immigrants. With the security situation in the region improving following British successes in the Western Desert Campaign, the Colonial Office decided it was less risky to provoke Jewish anger than to risk an Arab revolt, and that an example would be made to dissuade other potential immigrants from making the attempt. The British High Commissioner for Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael, issued a deportation order on 20 November, ordering that the refugees be taken to the British Indian Ocean territory of Mauritius and the Caribbean territory of Trinidad.
The refugees were transferred to another ship, SS Patria, for the voyage to Mauritius. Patria was an 11,885-ton ocean liner dating from 1913 that the French company Messageries Maritimes ran between Marseille and the Levant. She had reached the Port of Haifa shortly before Italy declared war on France and Britain, and then remained in port for safety. After the French surrender to Nazi Germany the British authorities in Haifa first detained Patria and then seized her for use as a troop ship. As a civilian liner she was permitted to carry 805 people including her crew, but after being requisitioned she was authorised to carry 1,800 troops (excluding the crew). She still only had enough lifeboats for the original 805 passengers and crew, so these were supplemented with liferafts.
The refugees from Pacific and Milos were soon transferred to Patria. Atlantic arrived on 24 November and the transfer of eight hundred of its 1,645 passengers began.
221 of the Patria victims are buried in Haifa. 19 victims were unidentified. Many were not found and couldn't be brought to burial.
Some of the survivors volunterred to the British or Czechoslovakian military. About 150 children were sent to various youth institutions in Palestine. The rest of survivors were released from the Atlit camp towards the end of 1941.
https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_advance_search.php?SourceId...
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