HAMBURG, Sept. 9 — More than 400 British paratroopers, infantrymen and military police backed by bludgeons and a fire hose today forcibly landed the last of the Exodus 1947 Jewish refugees in Germany.
In bloody battles which surpassed in intensity those seen yesterday when the first refugee ship docked, the Runnymede Park was cleared today after the Jews rejected a British ultimatum to come ashore.
Only the sick, elderly and very young voluntarily disembarked. "Every able-bodied man, woman and child had to be carried from the holds to the decks," an eyewitness of the hold melee reported.
This bitter afternoon fighting on the Runnymede Park came after the 1,481 refugees on the Empire Rival swiftly vacated their ship early today without incident.
Thirty-three of the refugees, including 20 men and 13 women, were injured, a British official announced. Five of these were taken to Hamburg hospitals. The British suffered three casualties, all of whom were hospitalized. The British did not announce immediately how many of the Jewish hospital cases were women. One of the soldiers sustained a broken wrist, one a split head and the third a cut eye.
Jewish resistance began shortly after 12:10 p. m. when the first contingent of troops boarded the ship, and lasted until 2:20 p. m. when the ship finally was cleared.
Many Jews fought all the way from the water-soaked holds of the ship to the grimy dock-side station where they left in guarded trains for barbed wire enclosures.
Troops entered the holds where the majority of the Jews were massed after army firemen turned a hose on the port staircase to clear it of Jews blocking the way.
On entering the holds the helmeted troops were met by a fusillade of tin cans, glass and bottles. In the ensuing fracas some Jews attacked with crude weapons fashioned from sticks and barbed wire. One knife was thrown by a Jew, according to one report.
Among the refugees on the Empire Rival was an American ex-GI, Okinawa veteran, who tonight was behind barbed wire in a DP camp. Calling himself Dov Mills, of Brooklyn, he said he would not ask for U.S. help but would stay with the other Jews so "I can continue to help my people get to Palestine." Another American, who gave the name "Sam," said he was from the Bronx. Both refused to identify themselves because they want to continue to help Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Those permitted to board the Runnymede Park after it had been cleared reported there were no beds or wooden berths and Jews were forced to sleep on the decks or the floors of the holds.
A correspondent for the London News Chronicle, who witnessed the hold battle, said that "at times I think the force used exceeded what was necessary, but it is difficult to say what one would do under such circumstances."
He said officers told troops to "manhandle women if they resist, but do not use truncheons."
This reporter saw six Jews with bloodied heads.
Down the gangways, which were in clear view of correspondents kept in a barbed wire pen, more then 50 Jews were carried, some of them by four soldiers. Some accepted defeat, but others kicked and struggled. Three were carried on stretchers. Three others carried by soldiers seemed unconscious. According to this reporter's count, six of those carried were women and 10 were children.
Jews on the Runnymede Park greeted Germany with anguish, calling it "a graveyard" and they spat such epithets as "Gestapo," "SS" and "Fascists" at the troops who forced them ashore. One man who walked down the gangplank with tears rolling down his face raised his arm in the Nazi salute and shouted: "Heil Hitler."
One woman shrieked out as she was being carried: "I don't want to go to Germany ..." One man who was dripping wet from a hosing sneered "Democrats" at the British.
