In 1943, with the encouragement of her mother and father, Esther joined the U.S. Navy Waves. She received extensive medical training as a pharmacist’s mate, serving in Boston and Portsmouth and in New Hampshire Navy hospitals. Her training went beyond that of nurse and included minor surgery. This training was to be crucial in her decision to become a Haganah volunteer.
After Esther’s discharge from the U.S. Navy, she was sent by Habonim to organize youth groups in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was also a recruiter for “Land and Labor” for Palestine, a Haganah front organization which was enlisting volunteers to serve in the Haganah or to sail Aliyah Bet ships smuggling Jews into Palestine despite the British blockade. With the massacre of the physicians and nurses on their mission of mercy to the hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem in January 1948, Esther thought it was high time for her to leave for Palestine.
After arriving at Le Havre on a former liberty ship, Esther traveled with her group to St. Jerome and Grandes Arénas, camps for displaced persons on the outskirts of Marseilles. There, volunteers from all over the world were gathering and mingling with refugees from Romania, Austria, Algeria and Morocco. Subsequently they sailed for Israel aboard the “Pan York,” later renamed “The Independence” (Ha’atzmaut). In a burst of Zionist hyperbole, they were told it was the “best ship American money could buy” – one of the more shameless exaggerations of the century. It was a voyage from hell and one she will never forget. There were 5,000 refugees and a score of volunteers aboard a ship meant to hold, at the very best, cattle.
The stench was unforgettable, for there were no latrines and no fresh water. There were no amenities available for menstruating women or for the 500 babies on board. It was either suffocate below deck or burn topside. The only foodstuff available was canned peaches and stale hard tack (British Navy biscuits).
At Haifa, where only the old, the sick, and the children were allowed to disembark, the volunteers actually hid from U.N. scrutiny in a cesspool that had gathered in the bottom hold. During the night, the ship moved out to sea and approached Bat Galim, where all were ordered to jump off the ship and swim to shore. Israelis were waiting there to rescue them, forming a human lifeline and rowing small skiffs to bring the volunteers to shore.
Esther, far from robust and not much of a swimmer, was getting into some serious difficulties as she tried to make her way to shore in the treacherous riptides off Israel’s coast, when a young sabra grabbed her and carried her to safety. Once on shore, he told her his name was Menachem and then ran back into the surf to help the others. Esther did not see him again until she bumped into him some four years later. She finally learned his family name when they got married, and Esther Shawmut became Esther Shawmut-Friedman.
Esther joined the Medical Corps as a combat medic, serving with the 8th Armored Brigade in the battle for Beersheba.
“This was the greatest experience of my life,” she says. “Greater than being in the U.S. Navy during World War II, getting married, or having a child.”
Source: American Veterans of Israel Newsletter: March 1996, and
New Jersey Jewish Standard: 6th May, 2011