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70 years on, Jewish survivors detained in Cyprus remembered

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A woman looks the photos of the British camp in a recreation of a semi-circular, corrugated iron hut that housed detainees, at the Cypriot military camp in capital Nicosia, on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016. Dozens of people born to Jewish refugees interned in Cyprus after World War II have marked the 70th anniversary of the start of such detentions at a ceremony on the east Mediterranean island. A memorial commemorating the event was unveiled at a Cypriot army camp that formerly housed a British military hospital where hundreds of Jewish infants were born. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

NICOSIA, Cyprus – Dozens of people born to Jewish refugees interned in Cyprus after World War II have marked the 70th anniversary of the start of such detentions on the east Mediterranean island.

A memorial commemorating the event was unveiled Wednesday at a Cypriot Army camp that formerly housed a British military hospital where hundreds of Jewish infants were born.

One of them, 69-year-old Nechema Friedman, says the British-run camps helped nurture the hope of a return to Palestine. Friedman was among several Israelis born at the hospital who travelled to Cyprus for the ceremony.

Friedman’s parents, Moshe and Gita Weissler, were among the 52,000 Holocaust survivors who were detained in a dozen camps in Cyprus and prevented from reaching Palestine by the British, who then controlled the territory that would become Israel.

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