One of the first ships to carry legal immigrants to Israel was the SS Negbah. The ship left Amsterdam on 6 October 1948 with 670 passengers (from the Netherlands and other countries) who had survived the persecution of the Jews. Among them were over 500 Jewish children who had been taken care of in the Netherlands and Sweden. After 12 days, the ship arrived at Haifa, Israel. From then on, the ship sailed regularly back and forth between Amsterdam and Haifa.
During the first eight years after the Second World War, almost 4500 Jews left the Netherlands. Most of them went to the United States and Canada. Around 1500 of them went to Israel.
