Murray Greenfield, just back from naval duty in World War II, was in synagogue when a friend suggested a new mission for him.
“He was an active Zionist,” Greenfield recalled. “I was not an active Zionist. I was just a nice Jewish boy. He said, ‘Hey, they’re looking for someone like you.'”
“They” referred to a humanitarian Zionist organization seeking experienced seamen to illegally transport 1,500 Jews from Italy to Palestine.
Looking into it, Greenfield asked, “‘Do you get paid?’ And they said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Then sign me up.'” This had to be an effort of the heart for him, not an employment opportunity.
Greenfield, who immigrated to Israel after the 1946 mission, will tell of the perilous operation at 7 p.m. Saturday at Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek.
Billed as “The Redemption of the Unwanted: Breaking the Gates,” the talk is sponsored by the congregation and the Israel Center of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay.
“When the war ended, some of the Jews tried to go back home but faced pogroms,” he said. “Neither Canada nor the U.S. wanted them. These people had no place to go. They had been abandoned.”
About one-third of the crew on the Tradewinds — later renamed Hatikvah — were American and all were World War II vets.
“We weren’t really recruited, we found our way there.”
He bellowed with laughter when asked if he was afraid at any point in the journey.
“We were young and dumb,” said Greenfield, now in his 70s and the grandfather of nine. “Thank God for the young and dumb.”
When the crew first saw the aging boat, docked in Lisbon, Portugal, “nothing worked,” he recalled.
“There was nothing modern, no proper equipment of any kind. When we heard we were going to have to make room for 1,500 we laughed, we scoffed at that. But we rebuilt the hold with wooden barracks down in the belly of the vessel, and we fit them.”
The Tradewinds set sail “in the middle of the night” for a rescue mission which Greenfield admits is “some story.”
But he waves away any suggestion that he and his seaborne mates were extraordinary.
“We were not the heroes,” he said. “The survivors were the heroes. They were ready to cross the mountains of Europe after all their travails, some having lost their entire families, to climb aboard a vessel they didn’t have any reason to believe would sail, off to a Palestine they didn’t know would accept them.”
Upon disembarking, all were promptly arrested by the British and interned in Cyprus Prison, including the crew members who transported the “illegals.”
“I found out what it is to be a refugee, even though you have a passport, and be kept behind barbed wire,” Greenfield said.
Americans sailed a total of 10 ships in the “secret fleet” and transported nearly half the Jews leaving Europe for Palestine.
“Personally, I think that embarrassed the British so much they gave up” their efforts to hold onto Palestine, he said.
Greenfield settled in Israel, married and raised a family there. Hemade a living in the investment business, and with his wife bought a string of art galleries.
If such an established life would seem to offer too little action, Greenfield doesn’t let on. He is still an energetic, passionate man who cherishes his American upbringing but is an unabashed “chauvinist when it comes to Israel.”
More recently, he swung back into action to help evacuate 12,000 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa in a secret airlift in 1985.
He is married to Hannah Greenfield, a Holocaust survivor and the author of “Fragments of Memory.” He, too, has written a book, “The Jews’ Secret Fleet,” and talks to groups about his experiences.
“Many, even those who fought in or lived through World War II, have forgotten,” he said. “American Jews, Americans in general. There’s such an emphasis on money. But volunteerism was one of our values, the values I was taught in American history — the Magna Carta, freedom.”
Many crewmates and ship passengers, he added, are still friends.
Greenfield was even invited to the 50th wedding anniversary party of two survivors who lost their entire families in the Holocaust, and met while making their way to the port where the Tradewinds was docked.
“They were both orphans, no families left,” Greenfield said. “They got married in Cyprus behind barbed wire.”
For his children and nine grandchildren, his days on the “secret fleet” are “more, much more than a story. They hear it as a part of life; we have sailors who come to the house to visit. They see the results of it all around them every day.”