Ralph Sutherland was a British Army General who commanded the British forces on Cyprus following World War II.
Biography[]
Ralph Sutherland was born in England, and he served in the British Army for several years, while also becoming an amateur archaeologist and writing about the Roman ruins in Cheltenham. During World War II, Sutherland served in the Middle East, and he acquired Zionist sympathies which resulted in several of his aides spreading rumors that he was of Jewish ancestry. After the war, Sutherland was assigned to command the British forces stationed on Cyprus, where thousands of Jewish refugees were interned while unsuccessfully attempting to enter Mandatory Palestine. In 1947, Kitty Fremont, the widow of a war correspondent who had been an acquaintance of Sutherland during the war, visited Cyprus and met with Sutherland, who invited her to volunteer at the Karaolos internment camp due to her nursing background. Fremont initially declined, as she felt strange around Jews due to her rural Presbyterian upbringing, but an anti-Semitic remark by Sutherland's aide, Major Freddy Caldwell, persuaded Fremont to change her mind. Fremont gradually grew close to the Jewish community and persuaded Sutherland to let her take out the young Jewish girl Karen Hansen Clement for lunch and, later, to bring her back to America with her. When the Haganah attempted to smuggle over 600 Jews out of Famagusta harbor aboard the Olympia (re-christened the Exodus by Captain Ari Ben Canaan), Sutherland initially ordered the harbor blockaded, but, when the Haganah threatened to dynamite the ship if the British boarded it, Sutherland compromised with the Jewish refugees by offering to feed them and supply them on their ship until they would voluntarily return to their internment camp. The Jews responded with a hunger strike, and a conversation with Fremont, in which she supposed that he was Jewish and should thus put a stop to thte inhumanity, made Sutherland realize the inhumanity with which the Jews were being treated. Sutherland decided to fly to London that same day and ask the Labour government to allow the Exodus to sail to Palestine, and he succeeded in obtaining permission, although he was relieved from command as a consequence.