limited immigration. This limitation became nearly absolute after the White Paper of 1939 all but stopped legal immigration. During the War, Zionists organised an illegal immigration effort, conducted by "Hamossad Le'aliyah Bet" (the precursor of the Mossad) that rescued tens of thousands of European Jews from the Nazis by shipping them to Palestine in rickety boats. Many of these boats were intercepted and some sank with great loss of life. The efforts began in 1939, and the last immigrant boat to try to enter Palestine before the end of the war was MV Struma, torpedoed in the Black Sea by a Soviet Navy submarine in February 1942. The boat sank with the loss of nearly 800 lives. Many Jews joined the British Armed Forces, including some 30,000 Jewish volunteers from Palestine alone, some of whom fought in the Jewish Brigade. Many formed the core of the Haganah after the war. By July 1945, 228,000 troops of the Polish Armed Forces in the West, including Polish Jews, were serving under the high command of the British Army. Many of these men and women were originally from the Kresy region of eastern Poland and were deported by Soviet First Secretary Joseph Stalin to Siberia 1939–1941. They were then released from the Soviet Gulags to form the Anders Army and marched to Iran to form the II Corps (Poland). The Polish II Corps then advanced to the British Mandate of Palestine, where many Polish Jews, including Menachem Begin, deserted to work on forming the state of Israel, in a process known as the 'Anders Aliyah'. Other Polish Jews remained in the Polish Army to fight alongside the British in the North Africa and Italy campaigns. Around 10,000 Polish Jews fought under the Polish flag – and British High Command – at the Battle of Monte Cassino. All of them were eligible to settle in the UK after the Polish Resettlement Act 1947, Britain's first mass immigration law. See also Antisemitism in the United Kingdom Chuts (19th Century Dutch Jewish immigrants) Council of Christians and Jews Early English Jewish literature Emancipation of the Jews in the United Kingdom History of the Jews in Ireland History of the Jews in Manchester History of the Jews in Northern Ireland History of the Jews in Scotland History of the Jews in Wales Jewish Museum (Camden) List of British Jewish nobility and gentry List of British Jews Polish