sunk the ship themselves (the version recounted, for example, by Arthur Koestler). For years Britain believed the Irgun was probably responsible. The Haganah's role was finally publicly disclosed in 1957 when Munya Mardor, the operative who had planted the bomb, wrote an account of his activities in the Jewish underground. He recounted, "There was never any intent to cause the ship to sink. The British would have used this against the Jewish population and show it as an act of sabotage against the war effort". He said that it was in the highest interest of the Haganah to fight the sanctions of the British White Paper of 1939, and the primary objective was to avoid casualties. The British estimated 267 people were killed, but neither the Jewish Agency nor the Haganah could establish how many people escaped the sinking and how many had died. Munya Mardor continued to work at the port in order to remove suspicion from himself. The Haganah also put up an investigative body to find out why such a relatively small amount of explosives could create such a large hole in the ship. The Haganah investigators concluded that the boat's superstructure was in poor condition, and therefore unable to withstand the pressure of the explosion. Rudolf Hirsch, a Jewish-German writer who had emigrated to Palestine in 1939, was a close associate of Arnold Zweig there, and later remigrated with Zweig to East Germany, published a novel about the incident, Patria Israel, in which he also explicitly refers to Mardor's account. See also Aliyah Bet Struma disaster Malchiel Gruenwald (1882–1958) was allegedly implicated in the Patria affair References Other sources Further reading Explosions in 1940 1940 in Mandatory Palestine Maritime incidents in Israel Maritime incidents in November 1940 Jewish immigrant ships Ship bombings Migrant boat disasters British Empire in World War II Mandatory Palestine in World War II Migrant deaths Haganah