Studia Maritima (Jan 2022)
Establishment and Activity of the Jewish Marine School for Officers in Civitavecchia (1934–1938) in the Pages of the Revisionist Zionist Press
Abstract
The Jewish Marine School was established in 1934, with the consent of Benito Mussolini, on the basis of the Italian Naval School for Officers in Civitavecchia. It was set up on the initiative of Beitar, a Revisionist Zionist movement led by Vladimir Jabotinsky. The three courses organised by the main lecturer, Capt. Nicola Fusco and the head of the Maritime Department of the World Beitar Headquarters, Capt. Yirmeyahu Halperin, were attended by 17 to 23-year-old cadets from Europe (mainly Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia and Germany) as well as Palestine and Africa (Egypt, Somalia and Rhodesia). Despite suggestions from Beitar leaders not to interfere with local fascist politics, the cadets expressed public support for Benito Mussolini’s regime by marching alongside Italian soldiers and supporting the Italo-Abyssinian war as well as collecting scrap metal for the Italian arms industry. They saw Italian nationalism as a perfect contemporary example of a formerly great culture gradually regaining its role in the world through the affirmation of national power and pride. In January 1938, the training ship “Sara I,” a four-master purchased with the funds obtained from “Keren Tel Hai” and a private donation of the Kirschners from Paris, entered the Haifa port, and its crew then visited Tel Aviv, officially greeted by Mayor Israel Rokach. On the way back, off the coast of Corsica, the vessel sank, and this catastrophe largely contributed to the closure of the school just before the start of the fourth course. In the years 1934–1938, the institution educated nearly 150 graduates (seamen, mechanics and fishermen). In addition to the school in Civitavecchia, Beitar also established a smaller educational facility in Riga, which offered courses to local Revisionist Zionists on the training vessel “Theodor Herzl.” The ship made cruises on the Baltic Sea, touching in, among others, at the ports in Wismar and Gdynia.
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