Jewish refugee killed in 1948 Cyprus detention camp identified in Israel

Israeli authorities have identified the remains of Shlomo Haimson, a Jewish refugee who was killed in September 1948 while attempting to escape from the British detention camp at Karaolos in Famagusta, Cyprus. Haimson was shot by camp guards just months after the establishment of the State of Israel. Following his death, he was buried at a Jewish cemetery in Margo, Cyprus. In 1970, the remains of those interred at the Margo site were exhumed and relocated to Israel, where they were reburied in Haifa, often without individual identification markers.

A collaborative investigation by the Israeli army’s missing persons directorate, the military rabbinate, the ministry of defence, and the association of Jewish prisoners in Cyprus successfully located Haimson’s remains. Analysts confirmed he was buried in grave number 11, located in the second row of the Jewish immigrant section at the Haifa cemetery. This development sheds light on the often overlooked post-World War II period, during which tens of thousands of Jewish survivors and refugees were held in British detention camps on the island while attempting to reach Mandatory Palestine.