The Illegals

A  text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

Low on dog food yesterday afternoon, I thought to go to Petsmart, and while there see a movie and escape the heat in an air conditioned cool theater...at the ticket window I asked what time it was, and tried to see what movies were about to start...confusing, as there are so many and the screen display is scrolling through them in a kind of green colored glowing text I can hardly read...I see one, 'No Escape'...I have no idea what it is about, and buy a ticket...I get a hot dog and a giant medium coke, and go down the dark hallways looking for the movie...can't find it, but see 'Transformers' over one door and go in...movies all cost the same, so wth...I take a seat, it's cool...Transformer movies are cool to, and I look forward...but it's not Transformers, and some violent execution scene is unfolding, and then the title of the move displays, 'No Escape'...and there is none...the theater is cool, and for that I pay the price of watching the movie, which is violence after violence...it is banned in Thailand where it was filmed...and the movie is about a coup in a fictitious South East Asian country and borrows much from that big Hotel takeover in India by assassins awhile back...so while a fiction tale, it borrows a lot from real events, which is maybe why it is being banned...governments are uneasy about movies showing rebels taking over governments...but the heroes of the movie, an American family trapped in the high rise hotel, from the moment of the opening attacks, become refugees fleeing...it's a movie, and their miraculous escapes from flying bullets, slashing machetes, whirling helicopter blades, are the stuff of Hollywood...things progress to where they are trying to jump from the hotel roof to a neighboring building roof....first the wife jumps and makes it...then the husband grabs one of the their two children and tosses the kid over to his wife...I see the kid's terrified expression while in flight...the wife's outstretched arms...and the power goes out and the big screen is grey, empty of imagery...I sigh, and say to myself, 'it's just as well, that was over the top awful' and pick up...in the lobby the lights are out...they're out everywhere in the shopping center...and it is hot...no escape...at home, I'm back at the computer, and look up the movie to see if the mom catches the kid...from a synopsis, I gather she does, and they all escape for a happy ending...

I had the thought to look up refugees at the end of WW2...the refugees from Syria are being compared to them....and I found a movie made at that time, 1947 or so, about how Jws left Europe and made their way to Palestine and Israel...it's called 'The Illegals'...and in it there's a scene where the fleeing Jews throw away any identification papers they are carrying at a border crossing...this would make them fall into the category of DP, Displaced Persons...not knowing where they were from, they would receive new papers from sympathetic authorities...Europe was a patchwork of nations with different rules about refugees, which were everywhere trying to get home, trying to get anywhere safe to start a new life...and I had just seen that scene of refugees throwing away their identity papers in the current news...

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A Pakistani identity card in the bushes, a Bangladeshi one in a cornfield. A torn Iraqi driver's license bearing the photo of a man with a Saddam-style mustache, another one with a scarfed woman displaying a shy smile.
Documents scattered only metres from Serbia's border with Hungary provide evidence that many of the migrants flooding Europe to escape war or poverty are scrapping their true nationalities and likely assuming new ones, just as they enter the European Union.

The big migrant passport scam
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11509101

The Illegals is a charming movie...not very long...story begins in Warsaw, in the ruins of the city, and as the heroes of the story, a young husband with his pregnant wife, travel, they pass other scenes of the war devastation, and the ruins aren't Hollywood sets or illusions, but the real thing, the movie having been made back then...the movie leaves off and ends with the refugees on board a ship that has been intercepted right at the shore of Palestine by a British warship, and they are to be escorted to the Island of Cypress where they will all be put in a refugee camp for Jews...escape can be difficult!, I'm thinking, and wondering how this movie would have  progressed had it been longer, I remember the 1960's movie Exodus...that had been about a ship load of refugees too, I recalled...I hadn't ever seen the movie, but recall the music...played it often in high school band...so, so, I do a youtube search, like I had done to find The Illegals, and youtube has the whole movie on line, and I was up untill like 3am watching Exodus...it's a long movie, and begins with the refugee camp on Cyprus...so I had my wish...I got to see what became of the husband and wife in the movie The Illegals!...the movie Exodus ends with the fighting that broke out when Israel was granted nationhood by the United Nations...actually it was shared nationhood...the land was to be divided into an Israeli nation and an Arab nation...and how the story of the husband and pregnant wife progress from the end of the movie Exodus, I, I can just read in the day to day current news!...

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The 345 men, women and children aboard Amr's boat know they are lucky to be alive. Most of them now live in a temporary camp in Kokkinotrimithia, just west of Nicosia, sleeping in plastic tents on a site that once served as a British jail.

Although safe for now, the refugees, who set out for western Europe, face a stark choice: apply for asylum in Cyprus or await a transfer elsewhere that might never come.

Many are reluctant to register, as receiving official status in Cyprus could prevent them from joining up with family in other European countries.

"We left with the aim of securing our future," said Basel Meshal, 17, a Palestinian from Damascus who had been aiming for Germany. "But getting legal papers (in Cyprus) as a refugee is very difficult."

Rescued Syria refugees living in Cyprus limbo

http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refdaily?pass=52fc6fbd5&id=547c1d4b8

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I'm guessing, but lemmesee where that once a  'British jail' site is...brb...

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During World War II and the Holocaust, Cyprus played a major role for the Jewish communities of Europe. After the rise of Nazism in 1933, hundreds of Jews escaped to Cyprus. Following the liquidation of the concentration camps of Europe, the British set up a detention camp in Cyprus for Holocaust survivors illegally trying to enter Palestine. From 1946 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the British confined 50,000 Jewish refugees on the island. Once the State of Israel was created, most of the refugees moved to Israel. About 2,000 babies were born on the island as they waited to enter Israel.

History of the Jews in Cyprus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Cyprus

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DavidDavid