UK - British established in Cyprus 12 concentration camps for Jews

UK - British established in Cyprus 12 concentration camps for Jews

During the Second World War, the British set up concentration 12 camps in Cyprus - Jews who had fled from Hitler and tried to reach Palestine. Surrealism was also in the fact that built the camp prisoners of the Wehrmacht, who lived close to the Jews.

It is a little-known chapter in the history of Cyprus is directly related with the formation of the neighboring state of Israel and the ancient fortress city of Famagusta, Northern Cyprus that has a direct relation to it. In the forties of the last century, as in the Second World War, and until 1949, the British set up concentration camps in Cyprus 12 Jews who fled Europe and were trying to reach Palestine. The British also rightly feared that the growth of the Jewish population of Palestine further exacerbate Arab-Jewish relations, catching refugees and sent them to Cyprus. Surrealism was still going on, and that in order to build camps on Cyprus drove about a thousand prisoners of the Wehrmacht, surrendering en masse in captivity in Africa after a disastrous battle for the Germans at El Alamein. Jews, who miraculously survived the Holocaust kept over the fence of the German prisoners on the island of Cyprus, in Famagusta. Incidentally, in the photo of the oldest Land Rover, the first series, released in the late forties and such cars operated by the British forces in Cyprus as the once in the period in question.

Famagusta has an ancient history, having been founded by the Greeks even the III century BC and still there is a huge luxurious fortress, perhaps one of the most impressive in the whole Mediterranean. Is that the Israeli fortress city of Acre, which is southeast of Famagusta, and just straight 200km could by power walls compete. And two neighboring cities are similar in that both were British camps and prisons during the colonial period. If Famagusta people simply kept in terrible conditions, but at least did not kill massively (the Nazis), but in Acre to execute the death sentences.

So in the year 1946 appeared a British concentration camp in Famagusta

 

Just 53 camps contained thousands of Jews who sailed to Palestine, but were intercepted by the British Coast Guard and taken to Cyprus. On this subject in 1960, was filmed a great movie "Exodus" (Exodus) with Paul Newman in the lead role. The film is not only interesting storyline, but staff still united Cyprus, where about any North Cyprus was not even mentioned. Here he kinopoisk

Pay attention to the mosque in the upper left corner, it will be in my report

 

In Famagusta best place to start a walk to the castle walls, surrounding the city on the perimeter

The port is a ferry plying between Famagusta and Mersin in Turkey

In the far background is seen the ghost town of Varosha, located in a closed military zone and inaccessible to the public. At the time, I was able to climb around and make a number of pictures, see. "Dead City Varosha".

Learn the very mosque that the picture from the movie? This original collection Catholic Cathedral, converted into a mosque in the Ottoman era

He is near

Classic British mailbox

The streets of the old Famagusta, where the abandoned Greek houses interspersed with houses still Crusader

A sad spectacle, but no less sad that abandoned Turkish houses on the Greek part of the island

Unfortunately, the British camp in Cyprus is not kept the word at all. British it was demolished in the same year 1949, when it was created by Israel and the prisoners were sent to camps in Haifa port. Another paradox - the Jewish state to 1949, there were already a few months and the UK had no legal or moral right to hold the people in the camps in Cyprus. Nevertheless, tens of thousands of Jews continued to reside in Famagusta behind barbed wire, as the British did not have a technical resource for the delivery of all of them in Israel. Moreover, the British even managed to shoot a few people who tried to escape from the camp.

At the same Israel, one of the British concentration camps survived and is in the seaside town of Atlit, south of Haifa, it's about the report, "The British concentration camp in Palestine."