When Jews were illegal immigrants in Israel

How is like to be an illegal immigrant everywhere, including your own homeland?

Jews between 1939 and 1948 (the official founding of Israel as an independent state) largely had to sneak into Israel. The White Paper of 1939 greatly limited Jewish immigration into the Land of Israel. Jews who did not leave Europe by 1939 got de jure trapped just as the Nazis were taking over and the Holocaust was starting. Chaim Weizmann said this of the time: "the world seemed to be divided into two parts – those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter". Jews who managed to escape Europe went through great hardships to evade the British on the way to Israel. Those who managed to escape to Israel between 1939 and 1947 were called the מעפילים ma'apilim. The word is ancient Hebrew and roughly translates to "defiant people", a word that for thousands of years always referred to Jews who defy restrictions not to settle in the land of Israel.

My grandfather and grandmother from my mother's side were ma'apilim. They snuck in using a small boat from Turkey. When they arrived they camped out in tents for many months, eventually joining a kibbutz.

Though serendipity, I found this TV series Palmach by Teen Nick Israel about ma'apilim. It's in Hebrew with no English subtitles, but I winded it to a pretty intense part so you may share in their feeling: