A feature film is being developed about the SS Exodus, the boat that illegally carried Jewish emigrants from France to Palestine in the wake of the Holocaust.
The drama is to be based on the little-known 1983 autobiography of John Grauel, an American Baptist minister who joined the crew of the ship following the death of his wife and child. “We’ve always been drawn to inspirational stories about selfless individuals who give of themselves for something greater and this story certainly has those characteristics,” said Stuart Ari Savitsky, co-founder of Crystal City Entertainment, who will produce the film in collaboration with Chris Columbus’s company 1492. “Being able to show Rev Grauel’s ‘coming of age’ through this story makes for a compelling character that we are excited to share with audiences.”
The voyage took place in 1947 as part of Aliyah Bet, a program of illegal immigration into Palestine by Jews who had been displaced by the chaos of the Holocaust, many of them living in camps in Austria and Germany. The dilapidated ship President Warfield was bought by the Jewish paramilitary organisation Haganah and renamed Exodus 1947, and was retrofitted with barbed wire and other reinforcements to try and resist any potential boarders. It set off with 4,515 passengers (who had just 13 toilets between them), and was tailed by the Royal Navy which eventually boarded the ship by force, returning it to France. The immigrants were then controversially returned to Germany.
The high profile of the case helped create a conversation about the plight of Holocaust survivors and the creation of the Jewish state of Israel – Grauel himself later testified to the United Nations, campaigning for unrestricted immigration into Palestine. It makes a film about the story politically contentious, given that it comes amid the ongoing struggle between Israelis and Palestinians over the Gaza strip and elsewhere.
Exodus, a fictional film about the events of the period based on the bestselling novel by Leon Uris, was made in 1960 by Otto Preminger, starring Paul Newman as the captain of a ship secretly transporting Jews from an internment camp to Palestine.
