Bidspirit auction | An Israeli Flag from the

An Israeli Flag from the Cyprus Detention Camps and Important Accompanying Items - An Israeli Flag from the Cyprus Detention Camps and Accompanying Photographs - Menachem Begin. C. 1946. An Israeli flag made of fabric from the Cyprus detention camps. The Star of David in the center and the blue stripes are embroidered (not printed). Size: 146x85 cm. Stains and minor fraying. Photograph of Cyprus detainees waving an Israeli flag, apparently prior to their immigration to Eretz Israel. Two photographs of Menachem Begin alongside former Cyprus detainees, one of them showing him delivering a speech at an event held in their honor in Eretz Israel. An interesting item: a special photograph of a mother and her daughters - detainees in Cyprus, printed on the reverse of a cover leaf from a Passover Haggadah printed especially for the detainees in 1945 (Yavneh Publishing, Tel Aviv). The photograph is printed directly on the leaf and is not pasted onto it. The developer simply used the title-page leaf of the Haggadah, apparently due to a shortage of paper After the war. Following the Holocaust and the end of World War II, the British government established detention camps on the island of Cyprus in August 1946 in order to stem the flow of Jewish illegal immigrants attempting to reach Eretz Israel as part of the ”Bricha” and clandestine immigration movements. In total, more than 52,000 Holocaust survivors who reached the shores of Eretz Israel aboard 39 ships were deported to Cyprus and transferred there from Haifa aboard British deportation vessels. Conditions in the camps were harsh - the detainees were housed in tents and tin huts under the intense heat, surrounded by barbed-wire fences and guarded by British soldiers. Despite the suffering and overcrowding, the detainees maintained a vibrant communal life that included schools, cultural activities, vocational training, sports, and assistance from organizations such as the Joint and the Haganah. The camps operated for more than two and a half years, until their final closure in February 1949, approximately nine months after the establishment of the State of Israel, when the last detainees immigrated to Israel. Overall condition of the items is good.