A Non-Traditional Haggadah. Kibbutz Givat HaShlosha 1946. Extensive Reference to the Struma Ship. Rare

A non-traditional Haggadah. Large illustrations, some over an entire page. Photocopied stencil printing. 

In additional to original texts is an interesting text with the title: "A Day in the Struma Told By One Who Reached Israel" in which a survivor of the ship describes the claustrophobia and suffering which he and others endured aboard the ship: "The morning began at four - five. Only men with a special license could go onto the deck to attain a little water for bathing. The women and children remained below deck. Four people slept on one bunk in the cabins, one hundred and twenty people per room...the children would receive half a cup of milk and one biscuit...the suffering was great, the helplessness became clearer every day, there were Turkish policemen on the boat all the time and the policemen were very excited..." This is followed by verses of a poem about the happenings upon the deck of the ship: "Plundered brothers with no shadow, without a home, the destroyed continent spat them out, imprisoned in naval containers, pushed away from any shores of hope..."

The Struma was an illegal immigrant ship which carried 768 Jewish refugees who tried to escape from fascist Romania and was sunk in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine. The sinking of all of its illegal immigrants and crew except one was the greatest tragedy in the history of the illegal immigration to the Land of Israel and one of the greatest tragedies of sinking of a civilian ship during the Second World War. The text before us has supremely important historical significance, as there were almost no known survivors from that ship, and it is not clear how this vibrant description of the events on the ship's deck reached the printers of the Haggadah.  

There are also texts about the Holocaust: "Now, when not one Pharoah has arisen against us to destroy us, how much more so. Now, more than in any other generation the voice of the suffering of the nation rises. His cry to be redeemed arises from the consuming fire which wrecks destruction upon the entire world... multitudes upon multitudes of oppressed and despondent people are engaged in backbreaking labor, yearning impatiently for redemption...", and more.

[1] 30 leaves. 22 cm. Double leaves. Creases and tears in the margins of the front and back bindings.

The body of the Haggadah is in fine condition.