Exodus Ship Survivor Making Aliyah at Age 88

Exodus ship survivor France Goldberg, 88, of Pittsburgh, will be one of 210 new immigrants to arrive in Israel on Tuesday. The Nefesh B'Nefesh (NBN) flight is scheduled to arrive at approximately 7 a.m., and dignitaries and the press will welcome the olim (new immigrant) at the old Terminal One facility at Ben Gurion International Airport.

Mrs. Goldberg tried to come on aliyah in 1947 after having survived the Holocaust by fleeing from Poland to Siberia. She left a displaced persons camp in the middle of the night and boarded the Exodus for Israel.

The British army torpedoed and tear-gassed the ship, killing several passengers.

The others, including Mrs. Greenberg, were forced to return to France and then to Germany rather than arrive in Israel and increase the Jewish presence in Palestine, which it occupied under a League of Nations mandate.

The Nazis had wiped out her family. After returning to Germany, she met and married her husband Isak. She survived a nearly fatal illness, and the couple moved to Pittsburgh, where her sister lived, in 1949. They have two children, and her desire to move to Israel grew after her daughter married and moved to Israel 36 years ago. She was widowed a year ago and decided to make arrangements to be close to her daughter and grandchildren in the Jewish state.

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