Panel 4: The Saint-Louis Pier

The Môle Saint-Louis 

In the 17th century, King Louis XIV sought to establish a harbour to shelter the royal galleys from the storms of the Gulf of Lion. He also wished to create a port for the export of Languedoc’s produce. Chevalier de Clerville, the king’s engineer, identified Cap de Sète – which had been uninhabited until then – as the most suitable site for building a port. The Canal du Midi thus found its outlet into the Mediterranean.

Work began on 29 July 1666 with the construction of the Saint-Louis breakwater, a 650-metre-long stone jetty which still protects the entrance to the old port today.

Completed around 1680, the breakwater was then fitted with a simple lantern to signal the harbour entrance to ships.

The storm of October 1683 swept away the pier’s square breakwater and its lantern. All that remains is a small stone islet, still visible today, known as an ‘estron’ or ‘pilon’. A new, rounded breakwater, facing north-east, was topped by a bastion with a battery of cannons. A round lighthouse tower was immediately rebuilt, rising to a height of 14 metres. At that time, the lighthouse was lit using wood and coal. It was not until the 1690s that it switched to oil lighting.

Land and maritime infrastructure

Exodus 1947, the ship of hope

The solidarity of the people of Sète and the courage of Commissioner Leboutet made it possible to save more than 4,500 survivors from the Nazi death camps.

On 11 July 1947, a ship flying the Panamanian flag, the President Warfield, set sail from the port of Sète with 4,554 men, women and children on board. The passengers, all Jews and survivors of the Holocaust, hoped to build a new life in the Promised Land, as Palestine was then under British mandate.

After five days at sea, and once outside French territorial waters, the President Warfield was renamed the Exodus 1947. The Israeli flag replaced the Panamanian flag and, that very evening, British reconnaissance aircraft flew over the ship as it approached the territorial waters of British Mandate Palestine, bound for Haifa.

The American commander of the Exodus 1947 sent a coded message to the Haganah* in Tel Aviv and continued on his way. As it entered Palestinian territorial waters, a British cruiser and five destroyers appeared, but the Exodus 1947 refused to comply with the authorities’ demand to stop the engines. Eventually, the British destroyers attacked 27 km off the coast.

The passengers on the Exodus resisted the boarding attempt by hurling various projectiles: bottles, tins, potatoes, etc. The struggle was so fierce, despite the makeshift projectiles used by the survivors, that the British decided to open fire, resulting in three deaths and over 200 injuries amongst the Jews who had escaped from the extermination camps set up by Hitler as part of the ‘Final Solution’ – namely, the mass murder of all Jews.

The expedition took a cruel turn when, instead of disembarking its prisoners at migrant camps on the island of Cyprus, Britain decided to send them back to their point of departure, in France, before returning them to Germany, from where they had been liberated by the Allies. The passengers were transferred to three British deportation ships, veritable prison vessels in which the passengers were ‘caged’.

When they arrived at Port-de-Bouc, all the prisoners refused to disembark. The French government informed the migrants on the Exodus 1947 that, with their consent, they would be granted asylum on French soil, where they would enjoy full freedom. Only 75 passengers, who were exhausted, accepted this French proposal; the others refused categorically. “We wish to go to Palestine; we will not disembark here unless we are dead.”

Finally, the British government ordered the three ships to sail to Hamburg via Gibraltar. Every precaution had been taken to receive the prisoners: military and police forces, fire hoses, tear gas grenades and Red Cross ambulances were mobilised for Operation Oasis. Once in Hamburg, trains fitted with wire mesh, crammed with migrants, set off for the camps at Pöppendorf and Amstau, near Lübeck.

The international press went into a frenzy, drawing parallels with the Nazi camps. The Manchester Guardian wrote on 10 September 1947: ‘Such behaviour was not expected from a British government, let alone a Labour government’. The story of the Exodus 1947 shocked world public opinion, which rallied to the cause of this wandering colony.

A turbulent journey to the Promised Land: The survivors were split into small groups and shunted between ports and camps. Some found temporary refuge in Europe before continuing their harrowing journey to the Promised Land.
On 14 May 1948, the State of Israel was established on its ancestral homeland, with the declaration of independence of the State of Israel.

On 28 July 1948, the Paris Herald Tribune ran the headline: ‘The Jews of the Exodus’ are finally home. The Haganah* declared that it had fulfilled its mission of bringing the Holocaust survivors back to Israel.
On 11 May 1949, the State of Israel became a member of the UN

* Haganah (הגנה) means ‘defence’ in Hebrew. The Haganah was a Zionist paramilitary organisation founded in 1920 and incorporated into the Israeli army in 1948, following the UN’s recognition of the creation of the State of Israel. Its original aim was to defend the civilian Jewish communities living in Palestine against possible Arab attacks (such as those in Jerusalem in 1920 or during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–1939 in Mandatory Palestine). Originally attached to the leadership of the Zionist trade union Histadrut, the organisation was transferred to the control of the Jewish Agency (the Zionist executive in Palestine under the British Mandate) in 1931. It then became its unofficial armed wing, as it was illegal in the eyes of the British Mandate authorities.

Commissioner Laurent LEBOUTET 

One of the key figures in the rescue of Holocaust survivors aboard the EXODUS, his courage earned him the title of RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS.
Without Laurent Leboutet, the special harbour master at Sète, the departure of the EXODUS – then known as the President Warfield – would have been impossible. This port commissioner, a man of determined character and profound humanity, demonstrated great compassion and exemplary courage when he took it upon himself to grant Captain Aronowicz all the necessary authorisations to allow the ship to set sail.

He facilitated boarding by issuing each passenger on the ship with an official safe-conduct document bearing an alias, a photograph and a visa stamp from the Colombian consul, as this was the ship’s official destination; and regardless of whether the photograph on the document matched the face of the person boarding, he validated the document, thereby allowing them to board! It should be remembered that these Holocaust survivors were escaping from the extermination camps set up by the Nazis and therefore had no identity documents.

Léonard Laurent Leboutet, known as Jean Le Breton, born on 20 September 1901 in Saint-Laurent-sur-Gorre, became a police commissioner in Montluçon in 1935. Appointed, during the Occupation, head of General Intelligence in Blois in the occupied zone, he was in charge of the checkpoint at Selles-sur-Cher, on the demarcation line, and was already organising an escape network there to help persecuted Jews.

On 2 May 1943, he joined the Turma-Vengeance Resistance network (Agent No. 91) and carried out missions for the Resistance in Switzerland. In June 1944, wanted by the Vichy police, he joined the maquis.

In July 1947, he devoted himself entirely to facilitating the embarkation, on a ship designed to carry 700 passengers, of more than 4,500 survivors of the ‘Final Solution’ implemented by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews. It was this ship that was later renamed the EXODUS.

After his efforts to facilitate the migrants’ departure from the port of Sète, he set up a small Exodus museum in his home, which he bequeathed to the State of Israel upon his death.

He was awarded the Legion of Honour, two Croix de Guerre and the Resistance Medal. On 27 February 1991, Laurent Leboutet was made an honorary citizen of the State of Israel and received the Righteous Among the Nations medal, the State of Israel’s highest civilian honour, awarded by Yad Vashem.