Exodus (novel)
Exodus is the title of a 1958 novel by the Jewish-American writer Leon Uris about the genesis of the State of Israel .
Historical background
The novel was first published in New York in 1958 in English. The book has been translated into over 50 languages. The German edition in a translation by Hans Egon Gerlach was also published in 1958 by Kindler-Verlag.
It was named after the ship Exodus 1947 , with which over 4,000 Jewish refugees wanted to get to Palestine in 1947 . The name also alludes to the Book of Exodus , which describes the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt under the leadership of Moses and the return to the Promised Land . Other historical events that have influenced the plot of the novel include the La Spezia affair , the bombing of the King David Hotel and the Akko prison break .
In the main plot, Uris is based on the actual course of the story. However, he claims a great deal of literary freedom. Flashbacks describe the situation of the Jews in occupied Denmark, in Germany after Hitler came to power, in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Auschwitz concentration camp based on individual fates.
action
The action begins in November 1946 and ends in 1949 after the first Israeli-Arab war . In 1946, Jewish refugees were housed in a British internment camp in Cyprus . The main characters of the contemporary historical novel Ari Ben Kanaan and Kathrine Fremont, whose love story is told, meet here and the reader learns the most important details of their prehistory.
In the course of the plot, several secondary threads from the past of various actors are told. The father and uncle of Ari Ben Kanaan originally come from a shtetl from the former Russian Empire. They represent many Jews from this region who fled to the promised land out of desperation over the Jewish pogroms and tried to build a new life there. It also tells how Dov Landau and Karen Hansen Clement fared in the countries occupied by the Nazi regime in Poland and Denmark. In this way, the reader is given the basics of the history of European Jews since the end of the 19th century. The further fate of the main characters against the background of the establishment of the Israeli state is described later.
The main hero Ari Ben Kanaan's plan is to bring as many refugees as possible, including many orphans , to the British Mandate of Palestine . He succeeds in procuring the ship Exodus and bringing the refugees on board against the resistance of the English guards and ultimately to Palestine. This operation is done under the supervision of the Hagana .
The third part of the book takes place in Palestine, where building a new existence and fighting against the British mandate and the Arabs are at the center of the various storylines.
The fourth and fifth parts describe the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 and events from the war that followed.
main characters
- Ari ben Kanaan , born and raised in Kibbutz Yad El in the Chula Plain , becomes one of the main supporters of the Israeli independence movement. During the Second World War he was in the Jewish Brigade . He is largely behind the execution of the ship that gives the book its name from Cyprus to Israel with several thousand children on board. As an employee of the Hagana , Ari develops strategies to circumvent the immigration quotas set by the British and to bring as many Jewish immigrants as possible to the newly founded state. His role is based on the person of Jossi Harel .
- Katherine "Kitty" Fremont is a recently widowed US nurse who met Ari Ben Kanaan in Cyprus. Kitty develops a maternal relationship with the young Karen Hansen-Clement (see below). This relationship and her affection for Ben Canaan lead her to participate in Israel's struggle for freedom.
- Karen Hansen-Clement is a young German from Cologne who grew up in a middle-class family. In the seizure of power of Hitler was of her parents in Denmark sent and lived there for a while with the Hansens, her foster parents , before it was sent along with many others to Sweden to the handle of the German occupiers one to escape once and for all. Almost all of her clan members were killed in concentration camps . After Israel becomes an independent state, Karen meets her father again. But this reunion becomes a harrowing experience for Karen, because her father lives completely broken in an asylum and does not recognize her. Nonetheless, she retains her graceful nature, and in Cyprus, where she is housed with other displaced persons in a British internment camp, a love begins between her and Dov Landau, who survived the Warsaw ghetto and Auschwitz .
- Dov Landau is a quiet, withdrawn boy who lost his entire family in the Holocaust . His experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto and in Auschwitz have taught him to seize the moment. As a skilled forger , he narrowly escaped death in the gas chamber when he presented the doctor who made the selection with five comparisons of his signature and the doctor was unable to find the correct signature. In Auschwitz he was assigned to the Sonderkommando and had to blow up holes for mass graves, clean the gas chambers and dispose of their bodies. He was also sexually abused by the guard staff. He later joins a Jewish terrorist group - the Maccabees ( Irgun ) - led by Ari's uncle Akiba. For the Maccabees, he applies his knowledge of explosives that he acquired in Auschwitz. The only person he has any feelings for is Karen.
- Major Fred Caldwell is an anti-Semitic British major who claims he has nothing against the Jews but believes they are "troublemakers". He tries to prevent the Jews from reaching Palestine. Claims that he can spot a Jew two kilometers away. However, he does not realize that Ari is a Jew when he, disguised as a British officer, presents him with a fake order.
- Bruce Sutherland is a British military officer ( brigadier rank ) whose mother was Jewish. He is transferred to the internment camps in Cyprus and uses the formal, stiff language customary in the British aristocracy . Inwardly, he is split between his affection for the Jews he oversees and his duties as an officer in the British Army . Not least, he saw terrible things during the liberation of Bergen-Belsen . After 300 young people under the leadership of Ari ben Kanaan manage to flee to Palestine, he is released. He moves to Palestine and befriends Ben Canaan.
- Akiba Ben Kanaan is Ari's uncle and leader of the local Maccabees. His role is based on Menachem Begin . Because of his terrorist activities, Ari's family avoids contact with him. Ari accuses him of harming Zionism with his actions . Ari's father Barak has completely broken off dealing with Akiba and counts him among the dead on Yom Kippur . Akiba's men bomb the King David Hotel , killing 91 people. Then Akiba and Dov are caught by the British. They are then sentenced to death by hanging by a tribunal and await execution in an Akko prison . Thereupon Ari and his people offer the Irgun the cooperation to free Akiba and Dov from prison. The Maccabees initially distrust the Hagana, but both sides ultimately decide to give up their opposition to one another and work together because they believe that is the only way they can go in the upcoming Arab-Israeli war . Akiba and Dov can actually be freed through a sensational rescue operation, which falls back on the actual prison break in Akko . Akiba is shot while trying to escape and dies a short time later.
- Barak ben Kanaan is Akiba's brother. The two fled as adolescents because of the killing of an anti-Jewish teacher by Akiba from their hometown in what was then the Soviet Union on foot across the Caucasus to what was then the British Mandate. Later he becomes one of the key people when it comes to legal negotiations on the basis for the establishment of the State of Israel. He is one of the speakers and negotiators in the final vote for the conductors of the State of Israel at the United Nations on November 29, 1947 in Lake Success .
- Taha is the muktar of the Arab village of Abu Yesha, the neighboring town of Gan Dafna. He is a longtime friend of Ari and grew up with him. Taha's father was a large landowner who gave land to the Jews for the establishment of the youth kibbutz Gan Dafna and who was always interested in a peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews. Despite his childhood friendship with Ari, Taha allows his village to be drawn into the conflict on the part of the Arabs, which ultimately leads to his village being conquered and destroyed by the Jews. He himself is killed here,
Reactions
In many countries of the Eastern Bloc , u. a. in the GDR , the novel was on the index of the state censorship authorities . Ruth Gruber provided a historically more reliable eyewitness account of the Exodus in 1947 in: Die Irrfahrt der Exodus. An eyewitness reports , Pendo, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-85842-434-X .
filming
The novel was filmed in 1960 by Otto Preminger with Paul Newman in the leading role. Leon Uris worked on the script himself (see the article Exodus (film) ).
expenditure
- Exodus , New York, NY: Bantam books (Bantam books; 75c) 1958 (599 pp.) / Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958 (626 pp.)
- Exodus . Roman, Kindler, Munich 1958, licensed edition: Kaiser, Klagenfurt 1958; Eduard Kaiser Munich 1958.
- Exodus , Bantam Books, New York, NY 1986, ISBN 0-553-25847-8 .
- Exodus , Heyne, Munich 1991: ISBN 3-453-05052-5 ; 1998: ISBN 3-453-13834-1 ; 14th edition 2014, ISBN 978-3-453-13834-6 (= Heyne books , volume 13834).
literature
- Dörte Papra: On the function of trivial structures in the novel "Exodus" (1958) , Berlin 1989.
- Leon Uris: In the footsteps of Exodus , with 267 photos by Dimitrios Harissiadis (original title: Exodus revisited ), Kindler, Munich 1962, DNB 455189595 .