Journey through the ‘Gate of Zion’: British policy, Jewish refugees and the La Spezia Affair, 1946

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ABSTRACTThis article explores the case of ‘illegal’ immigration at the end of the Second World War and, specifically, the events that unfolded at the Italian port of La Spezia. In April 1946, 1014 visa-less Jewish refugees, who were attempting to reach the British Mandate of Palestine, were detained on a vessel by Italian authorities under the instruction of the British. Rather than conceding to Whitehall’s rejection of entry visas, the Spezia refugees remained defiant, threatening collective mass-suicide and staging hunger strikes until passage was finally granted. The Spezia narrative has, however, remained on the periphery of academic scholarship, with the case of the ship Exodus 1947, which set sail the following year, dominating historiographical accounts. This article demonstrates the impact of the La Spezia Affair on post-war migratory movements and, most notably, the importance of refugee agency within the context of forced migration. Analysing the events at La Spezia from the port itself recasts the narrative through a ‘local’ lens, recovering the role of the refugees which has been largely overshadowed by state-level responses. In so doing, traditional perspectives from ‘above’ are confronted with those from ‘below’, reconfiguring our historical understanding of refugees and transnational migration in the twentieth century.