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'Exodus' still a riveting read, nearly 50 years after
it was first published
By Megan Roe
December 21, 2005 | Movies and books
in American media often tell us about the terrible suffering
the Jewish people encountered during the Holocaust.
Yet, many of us don't realize that Jews were persecuted
for thousands of years before World War II, and their
persecution continued in displacement camps and Palestine
after the war.
Exodus, by Leon Uris, is a fictional novel
describing historical events in post-World War II Middle
East, about a young American Christian nurse, Kitty
Fremont, and her struggle to understand the Jewish fight
for Zion. The novel, which was published in 1958, begins
as Fremont is working on the island Cyprus in an orphanage.
Jewish freedom fighter Ari Ben Canaan contacts the recently
widowed nurse to see if she will help in an elaborate
plan to transport Jewish children from displacement
camps on the island, to Palestine -- a land off-limits
because of British blockades, but home to millions of
Jews who made the exodus to their holy land.
Because of her sudden attachment to a young Jewish
girl in the detainment camp and her mysterious liking
to Ben Canaan, Fremont warily accepts the invitation
and helps the young Jews reach Palestine. From there,
the story rewinds to hundreds of years of Jewish persecution
in lands like Poland, Russia and Germany. The tales
follow several young Jews from each separate culture,
their persecutions, their journey to Zion and their
efforts in creating and protecting Israel.
In the late 1800s two teenage brothers, Yossi and
Yakov Rabinsky, find persecution in Russia so terrible
that they must leave the country in order to survive.
They travel over high mountains and long plains to see
the place they have always dreamed of is just full of
ugly swamplands. So, through hard sweat and toil, they
turn the swamplands into fields that yield amazing crops.
They begin to create Israel.
As a small Jewish child in Nazi Germany, Karen Clement
is quickly sent away by her family to a family in Denmark.
She lives through the war as a talented young woman--
no one knows she is a Jew. After the war, her longing
to find her real father -- the only family member she
knows isn't dead -- and Palestine's attractive power,
pull her away from her family in Denmark and toward
Zion.
Dov Landau, a Polish Jew, lived through both the Warsaw
ghetto and Aushwitz concentration camp. As a bitter
young genius, he finds himself fighting for the only
thing that matters to him -- Zion.
While following the stories of each separate pilgrim,
you get the feeling that their paths will cross one
day. And each of their stories intertwine as they fight
to protect the Jewish nation that they worked so hard
to obtain.
Uris was of both Polish and Russian Jewish decent
and his book is definitely biased against those of Arabic
origin. The book also mixes fake characters in events
with real characters and it can often get confusing
to decipher who is real and who is not.
But Uris explains at the beginning of his book that
Exodus is fiction. The important thing is that
many of the events described in the book actually happened.
Uris told each story so well that I found myself reading
Exodus at 2 a.m. with unfinished homework due the next
day. His descriptions of characters and their dialogue
makes the characters seem so life-like. Uris also offered
more realistic romances in Exodus, as they were definitely
not picture-perfect because of the characters backgrounds
and ongoing strife. The histories of tradition and strife
in the book makes the reader want to find out more about
the Jews and really help explain why the Jewish people
would suffer so much for a piece of land.
This book opened my eyes to the hardships the Jewish
people faced through the creation of a Jewish homeland
and the drive that they had to protect Israel at any
cost -- even if it meant their own lives.
NW
MS |
