Plan to sue British government for turning away Holocaust refugees greeted with mixed feelings

http://www.haaretz.com/magazine/anglo-file/plan-to-sue-british-government-for-turning-away-holocaust-refugees-greeted-with-mixed-feelings-1.309132

A group of Israel-advocacy activists this week announced they would file a class-action lawsuit against the British government for "increasing the scale of the Holocaust" by refusing to allow Jewish European refugees into British Mandate Palestine during WWII.

People involved in British-Israeli relations expressed mixed feelings about the intended civil lawsuit, which according to its initiators is designed to counter the ongoing debate in Europe about whether Israel has a right to exist, and Israel's international delegitimization.

The lawyer preparing the suit, Tali Tamarin, said details about it would be made available next week at a press conference in Atlit, where the British detained thousands of illegal Jewish immigrants. The motion is on behalf of the families of European Jews who perished in the Holocaust after being deported back to Nazi-controlled Europe by the British.

While there are no more than a few thousand documented cases of Jews being sent back to Europe during the Holocaust era, the group's team of researchers say that based on testimony they estimate that up to 30,000 Jews trying to reach British-controlled Palestine were forced to turn back to Europe and eventually died during the war. The immigrants were either caught in Palestine or in its territorial waters. Tamarin said the suit "will be for recognition and not for damages."

Brenda Katten, former chairperson of the Israel, Britain and The Commonwealth Association - which promotes British-Israel relations - said she had mixed feelings about the initiative.

"It's not so black and white," she said. "On the one hand I agree that there can be no doubt that the White Paper (a British policy paper from 1939 limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine ) did result in the death of many Jews. On the other hand, Britain took in 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe."

Brenda Katten's husband, John Katten, whose family came from Germany, survived the Holocaust because he received refuge in the U.K. as a boy. Katten said she didn't know "whether suing