Descendants of Holocaust survivors mark 76th anniversary of Cypriot internment camps’ closure

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Snunith Shoham says she was only a few months old in February 1947 when British authorities permitted her family to leave one of around a dozen internment camps in Cyprus that held tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors and head for “the homeland.” Cyprus was at the time under British colonial rule.

Shoham, a professor at the Israeli Bar-Ilan University who also chairs an organization representing Jewish people interned in Cyprus, flew to Nicosia to attend on Tuesday a ceremony marking the 76th anniversary of the internment camps’ closure in February 1949.

The ceremony was held at a Cypriot National Guard base that formerly housed a British military hospital where Shoham was born. About 2,200 babies were born in Cypriot internment camps that held some 52,000 survivors, in the aftermath of World War II, over the entire span of their operation of about four years, according to official records.

Shoham says conditions in the camps were so awful – especially for youngsters – that the British granted special dispensation to several hundred families with newborns and small children to make the trek in search of a new life. The influx of people making the journey was so big that British authorities tried to halt it.

At the time, ordinary Cypriots, who worked in the camps and sympathized with the plight of the survivors, helped in whatever way they could, says Shoham.

“The Cypriot workers did many small, yet significant services for the (camp) detainees,” Shoham said addressing the ceremony attendees. “We will never forget the assistance of the local Cypriots.”

Although the existence of the internment camps in Cyprus isn’t widely known, the 1960 Hollywood historical drama “Exodus” starring Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint shed light on the issue.

“On their path to their new homeland, Cyprus became a temporary haven for these survivors, offering them security and care in a world that had so often denied them both,” Cypriot Defence Ministry official Anna Aristotelous said during the ceremony.

Israeli Ambassador Oren Anolik called the internment camps “a fundamental link between Israel and Cyprus” that “forged an enduring bond between our peoples.”

One of those Cypriots who aided Jewish survivors was Capt. Paul Rossides who had volunteered as a harbor pilot at Famagusta port to guide refugee-laden ships where they were refueled and restocked.

Capt. Rossides’ daughter Irinoulas Loizou, 87, who also attended the ceremony, recalled the pots of coffee her mother prepared for her dad to keep him alert as he worked through the night piloting the ships in and out of the port.

“My father was a very courageous man who always offered his help to those in need regardless of the situation or potential risks to himself,” she said.

Loizou said her father’s work earned recognition from Israeli officials including a plaque he was presented with in July 1949 by Ephraim Gilan, the camp commander of the Jewish paramilitary organization the Haganah.

The plaque was inscribed with the words: “In recognition for outstanding services rendered to the internees of Karaolos and Xylotympou camps during the years 1946-1949.”