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Summary
Chapter Twenty-Seven
By beaching the Star of David, Bill Fry forced the British to open the camps in Cyprus. Now, Mossad wants to carry out an even more drastic mission. Bill buys a ship that can hold 6,500 people, one of whom will be Dov, and fills it with refugees. The British find out about the run and go aboard the Promised Land while it’s still in international waters, breaking the rules of the blockade. In a tense battle, fifteen Jewish refugees are killed as well as Bill Fry. When they arrive in Haifa, Palestine, there are prison ships to bring the refugees back to France. The refugees refuse to disembark the ships when they return to France. After a few weeks of protest, a Palmachnik swims to shore and tells the press the refugees’ side of the story. Finally, arrangements are made for two ships of refugees to go to Dachau camp. Dov’s ship goes to Cyprus and he is detained at Caraolos.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dov arrives in Caraolos and becomes even more withdrawn and full of hate. Then he meets Karen and thinks she’s beautiful and kind. Karen is determined to bring Dov’s humanity back. They become friends and one day Dov smiles again. Karen convinces Dov to start working for Ari by forging papers.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ari gathers his crew and the Palmach together to go over the escape plan, then he visits with Mark to finalize his role. Ari tells Mark that he wishes Kitty had not gotten so attached to Karen. Both men are on edge, and Mark is easily annoyed by Ari’s comments. As Mandria watches this mission play out, he and other Cypriots are inspired by the Mossad to consider their own underground movement against the British.
The next morning, the escape plan is set in motion. Ari frees the children from Caraolos with Dov’s forgeries, and they board Exodus. Mark calls his colleague in London and tells him to publish the news story and then he calls Alistair and tells him, while remaining anonymous, that three hundred children are escaping from the camp. Soon, the harbor by the Dome Hotel is teeming with British military. The British threaten to fire at the ship, and Ari announces over the loudspeaker that if a shot is fired, he will blow up the Exodus.
Chapter Thirty
General Sir Clarence Trevor-Browne feels responsible since he was warned by Alistair that Sutherland was not heading off an uprising. Now he meets with Major Cecil Bradshaw, from the Institute of International Relations. Bradshaw maintains that the ship is in British waters, and the British do not want the refugees going to Palestine. He favors waiting out the refugees. Trevor-Browne disagrees and thinks the British should let them sail to Palestine.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mark begins filing stories detailing the plight of the Exodus by day. Bradshaw tries to get reporters friendly to the British cause to counter Mark’s stories. Trevor-Browne comes to Cyprus to take over command from Sutherland, but there is not much he can do about the situation. Mark goes on board Exodus and tries to convince Ari to go to the dock but Ari refuses. The next day, Ari announces that the children will begin a hunger strike starts, which is troubling for Mark. Ari argues that the children were well prepared for what they might endure on board the ship.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The hunger strike begins, another huge blow to political optics for the British. Ari argues that the Jewish tradition is to fight for freedom. They have had to do this for thousands of years, and the children on board the Exodus are not going to back down. Kitty goes on board to help the malnourished children however she can with limited resources.
Sutherland wants to understand what drives the Jewish people to do things like the protest Ari is now staging. He decides he will live in Palestine after retiring.
Ari declares that ten refugees a day will commit suicide until they are all gone or else allowed to sail. Bradshaw has Arab sympathies for political reasons, but he is awe of what the refugees are doing. He begins to think there is a higher power protecting Exodus. After struggling with the decision for hours, he decides to let the Exodus sail to Palestine.
Analysis
As a counter to all the persecution endured by the Jewish people, there are certain non-Jewish people and groups in the novel who prove themselves to be friends. When Karen lives in Copenhagen, for example, after the German invasion of Denmark, the Nazis issue an edict requiring all Jewish people identify themselves by wearing armbands featuring a Star of David. The Danish respond by all wearing the armbands, making the Germans look foolish and forcing them to renege on the policy. The Auschwitz survivors now being held captive on board prison ships in France have only gotten this far because the Czechoslovakian Prime Minister allowed them over his border. Now, as these survivors try to get to Palestine, the French do not bend in their support either. At the risk of jeopardizing their diplomatic relationship with the British, they refuse to take the refugees on board the prison ships back into France by force, even supplying the ships with food and medical supplies. When faced with British threats, the Jewish people also refuse to bend. They are accustomed to privation, and they will not surrender the hard-earned progress they have made toward freedom in Palestine. Instead, the Jewish people do what they have always done in the camps and the ghettos. They set up schools and a theater and thrive in the face of complete oppression. The standoff is a foreshadowing of what will happen in the near future on board the Exodus.
Dov’s hatred of everyone around him only grows during the weeks on board the prison ship, but in Chapter 28, Karen reaches the boy in a way he hasn’t experienced since his family was alive. Karen is warned to stay away from him, but her kind nature and need to save Dov draws her to him. Dov is raw and animal-like, as he appears in Chapter Twenty-One. He has sudden, irrational outbursts as he slowly heals from the trauma that he has experienced, and Karen is patient with him. Karen was traumatized just by the stories of the concentration camps, and she knows that Dov survived Auschwitz. This gives her an appreciation for the strength and pride that others do not see in Dov. Karen brings back memories of a beautiful world for Dov that he has not thought about in so long. He has only known death and destruction for six years. Karen and Dov slowly become friends, even though Dov fears that he will contaminate Karen with his bitterness.
When the Exodus mission begins, the British are caught off guard and immediately look foolish. Even Sutherland, who quietly roots for the Jewish people, is angered by the display in the harbor of Kyrenia. Mark’s breaking news story, followed by several others, begin circulating around the world. They have the same effect as the news stories about the prison ships in the French harbor months earlier and serve to firm up support for the children on board the Exodus. Mark refers to the situation as ridiculous in his stories: an unarmed salvage tug sitting in the harbor, forbidden to leave. The British understand that Ari is trying to force them to roll back restrictive and hostile immigration policies to Palestine. It’s unclear whether the British make the connection, but the name of the ship is David’s clever reference to the book of Exodus in the bible that tells the story of the Jewish people escaping their bondage in Egypt. While trying to secure passage of Exodus from the oppressive British forces, Ari references Moses’s defiant demand to the Egyptian pharaoh to let his people go. The adults and children alike on-board Exodus are prepared for a long, hard standoff. The children have been trained for this moment and they know what is at stake. They are infused with the same determination as the adults on the ship to make it to Palestine, not only for their own interests, but because there are Jewish people all over the world awaiting the outcome of the Exodus mission.
The determination of everyone on board the Exodus provides a lesson for people around the globe on the importance of the Jewish return to Palestine. It is during the hunger strike in Chapter Thirty-Two that Mark is struck by the gravity of the situation. Even Major Bradshaw is impressed by the tenacity of the children on board Exodus. His initial miscalculation of the situation foreshadows the countless ways that the British will fail to understand the Jewish people as story progresses. Still, Bradshaw is tortured by the fact that he is now viewed as an oppressor since he understands why getting to Palestine is important for the Jewish people. Bradshaw, as opposed to Caldwell, has some humanity intact, despite his position, and cannot allow suicides to begin taking place on the Exodus. He cannot allow this, not just because the British would look bad, but because he is terrified of being seen as a modern-day Pharoah who will bring down the wrath of God if he does not let Exodus sail.
