From 1939 onward, from fear of ethnic conflict between Arab and Jew, the British restricted the issuing of entry visas to roughly 1,500 per month. Nothing changed with the termination of the Second World War, which is why Palestine appeared virtually unattainable to the holocaust survivors. Even though President Truman called for the provision of 100,000 emigration certificates for Jewish DPs, nothing changed. The British Labour Government led by prime minister Clement Attlee retained its restrictive immigration policy.
Therefore, Jewish DPs concentrated their hopes on illegal emigration to Palestine, promoted by Zionist groups in the DP Camps. The Mossad le Aliya Beth movement (Emigration B) was founded at the end of the 1920s to take Jews illegally to Palestine. The Zionist underground organizations Mossad and Haganah took overall charge of illegal emigration.
In German DP Camps, in October 1945, David Ben Gurion, later Israel's first prime minister, demanded an increase in emigration. Politicians were aware, before the end of the Second World War, that with the assistance of the Jewish survivors of the holocaust, it would be possible to push ahead with the founding of a Jewish State.
Increasingly groups of Jewish DPs departed the camps to travel to one of the emigration centres in southern Europe, from where illegal emigration to Palestine was organised.