MS St. Louis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 MS St. Louis surrounded by smaller vessels, Havana, June 1939 |
|
| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | St. Louis |
| Owner: | Hamburg-America Line |
| Port of Registry: | Hamburg, .svg){kind=small} Germany |
| Builder: | Bremer-Vulkan Shipyards in Bremen, Germany |
| Laid down: | June 16, 1925 |
| Launched: | May 6, 1928 |
| Maiden voyage: | June 15, 1929 |
| Fate: | Scrapped in Hamburg, Germany, 1952 |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 16,732 gross register tons (GRT) |
| Length: | 574 ft (175 m) |
| Beam: | 72 ft (22 m) |
| Propulsion: | M.A.N. diesels, twin triple-blade propellers |
| Speed: | 16 knots (30 km/h/18 mph) |
| Capacity: | 973 passengers (270 cabin, 287 tourist, 416 third) |
The MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen for the Hamburg America Line. She is often known as the "SS St. Louis", but this is incorrect as she did not have a steam engine; as a diesel-powered ship she should properly be referred to with the prefix "MS" or "MV".
St. Louis originally sailed the trans-Atlantic route from Hamburg to New York, but during the Great Depression turned to cruises to make revenue. She is most notable for a single voyage in 1939, which was dramatized in the 1976 motion picture Voyage of the Damned.
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[edit] Voyage of the Damned
St. Louis sailed from Hamburg in May 1939, carrying one non-Jewish and 936 (mainly German) Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution.[1][2]
On the ship’s arrival in Cuba, the Cuban government under Federico Laredo Brú refused the passengers both entry as tourists or political asylum. This prompted a near-mutiny. Two passengers attempted suicide and dozens more threatened to do the same. However, 29 of the refugees did manage to disembark at Havana.[3]
On June 4, 1939, the St. Louis was also refused permission to land her passengers under orders from President Roosevelt as the ship waited between Florida and Cuba.
The St. Louis then tried to enter Canada but was denied permission as well.[4]
Captain Gustav Schröder,[5] the commander of the ship, was a non-Jewish German and an anti-Nazi who went to great lengths to assure dignified treatment for his passengers, arranging for Jewish religious services and commanding his crew to treat his refugee passengers as they would any other customers of the cruise line. As the situation of the vessel deteriorated, he personally negotiated and even schemed to find them a safe haven (for instance, at one point he formulated plans to intentionally wreck the ship on the British coast to force the passengers to be taken as refugees). He refused to return the ship to Germany until all of the passengers had been given entry to some other country.
The ship returned to Europe, first stopping in the United Kingdom, where 288 of the passengers disembarked. After much negotiation and pressure from Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers disembarked at Antwerp; 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 into the Netherlands. They were thus safe from Hitler’s persecution until the German invasions of these countries in May 1940.[6][7] Without its passengers, the ship returned to Hamburg and survived the war.
By using the survival rates for Jews in the various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimated that about 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, plus 152 of those in Belgium and 60 of those in the Netherlands survived the Holocaust, giving a total of roughly 709 survivors and 227 slain of the original 936 Jewish refugees.[8][9]
Later, more detailed research by Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has given a slightly higher total of deaths:
"Of the 620 St. Louis passengers who returned to continental Europe, we determined that eighty-seven were able to emigrate before Germany invaded western Europe on May 10, 1940. Two hundred and fifty-four passengers in Belgium, France and the Netherlands after that date died during the Holocaust. Most of these people were murdered in the killing centers of Auschwitz and Sobibór; the rest died in internment camps, in hiding or attempting to evade the Nazis. Three hundred sixty-five of the 620 passengers who returned to continental Europe survived the war".[10]
Captain Schröder himself was later awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany and was named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel in recognition of his heroism in attempting to rescue his passengers.
Julian Barnes's novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters recounts the trial of the St. Louis Jews in the chapter "Three Simple Stories".
[edit] Later career
The ship became a German naval accommodation ship from 1940 to 1944. It was heavily damaged by the Allied bombings at Kiel on August 30, 1944, but was repaired and used as a hotel ship in Hamburg by 1946. The ship was eventually scrapped in 1952.
[edit] See also
- The Évian Conference, convened at the initiative of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees.
- The Struma, a Romanian vessel chartered to carry Jewish refugees that was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine on February 5, 1942.
- The Mefkure. a schooner vessel which was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine while carrying Jewish refugees in August 5, 1944.
- The Patria in November 25, 1940, was accidentally sunk by a Haganah bomb in Haifa harbor.
[edit] Notes
- ^ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2006-10-06). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum completes ten-year search to uncover the fates of St. Louis passengers. Press release. http://www.ushmm.org/museum/press/archives/detail.php?category=07-general&content=2006-10-06. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
- ^ Rosen, p. 563.
- ^ Rosen, p. 103.
- ^ Clergy apologize for turning away the St. Louis. CBC website. Retrieved 2008-05-08.
- ^ http://yad-vashem.org.il/righteous_new/germany/germany_schroeder.html
- ^ Rosen , pp. 103, 567.
- ^ "The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis". http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
- ^ Rosen, pp. 447, 567 citing Morgan-Witts and Thomas (1994) pp.8, 238
- ^ Rosen, Robert. "Saving the Jews" Carter Center (Atlanta, Georgia) (2006-07-17). Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
- ^ Miller and Ogilvie, pp. 174–175.
[edit] References
- Miller, Scott; Sarah A. Ogilvie (2006). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299219802. OCLC 64592065.
- Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 9781560257783. OCLC 64664326.
[edit] Further reading
- Morgan-Witts, Max; Gordon Thomas (1994). Voyage of the Damned (2nd, revised ed.). Stillwater, Minnesota: Motorbooks International. ISBN 9780879389093. OCLC 31373409.
- Levinson, Jay. Jewish Community of Cuba: Golden Years, 1906-1958, Westview Publishing, Nashville, TN. 2005. (See Chapter 10)
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: SS St. Louis |
- The S.S. St. Louis — Robert Rosen.
- The US Coast Guard's official FAQ on the incident.
- The Voyage of the St. Louis — The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- The Ship of Stolen Dreams — An unproduced musical based on the Voyage of the St. Louis.
- Un bateau pour l'enfer, the 2005 novel by Gilbert Sinoué.
