Homecoming

Through the misty dawn, they could see the land they had fled in horror--Germany. Two months ago, they had left the Continent aboard a leaky old tub called Exodus '47, bound for Palestine (TIME, July 28 et seq.). Now they returned, aboard the Ocean Vigour and two other British transports, bound for German D.P. camps where the British had finally decided to take them. At 6:20, a loudspeaker asked the passengers to go ashore. On the battered Hamburg pier, the cordons of British troops and German police tensed.

Loneliest Night. The first refugee came down the Vigour's gangplank peacefully. They kept coming for three hours. British soldiers helped them carry their bundles. Then, suddenly, in one of the holds refugees broke into their song Going Home ("Never say that we are treading our last path, our grey days will become sunny days . . ."), and refused to budge. The British soldiers tried to push or carry them off the boat. They got tougher with some recalcitrants, but the British later declared that casualties had been negligible.

Down the gangplank the Tommies dragged kicking, screaming, spitting men & women. As one soldier felled a refugee a call went out for doctors. Throughout, the loudspeaker kept relaying jazz music. One selection: Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week. Aboard the trains to Poppendorf Camp, refugees crowded around the windows, crying:

"This land is a bloody graveyard!" Clusters of Germans watched curiously from a nearby hillside as the refugees moved into the camp. Refugee children refused food because, they sobbed, it was being offered them by German hands. British official?; explained that the food handlers were D.P.s, but the children still refused to eat.

Peace in Our Time. Jews throughout the world reacted bitterly. The most sensational reaction--and perhaps the saddest because of its mixture of childishness; and hate--came from Paris, where a rabbi had plotted a fantastic raid on London.

At a small airport near Versailles, French police (disguised as mechanics) last week arrested Rabbi Baruch Korff of New York City just as he was about to board a private plane. Korff had planned to drop leaflets over England: "To the people whose Government proclaimed 'peace in our time,' this is a warning. Your Government has dipped His Majesty's Crown in Jewish blood and polished it with Arab oil. . . . We will carry the war to the very heart of the Empire."

At the same time, reported the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune rather ominously, six crude, homemade bombs were found in Paris, their chief ingredients coming from a brand of French fire extinguisher called "Knock-out." Paris authorities refused to confirm the bomb story, but Britain took it seriously. A feeling of anger swept the country like the one over the recent hanging of two British sergeants in Palestine. London announced that Britain's air defenses had been alerted.

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