MS St. Louis

"SS St. Louis" redirects here. For other uses, see SS St. Louis (disambiguation).

MS St. Louis surrounded by smaller vessels, Havana, June 1939
History
Germany
Name	St. Louis
Owner	Hamburg-America Line
Port of registry	Hamburg (1928–33) Hamburg (1933–46) Hamburg (1946–49) Hamburg (1949–52)
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 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 most notable for a single voyage in 1939, in which her captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for 937 German Jewish refugees after they were denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada, until finally accepted to various countries of Europe. The event was the subject of a 1974 book, Voyage of the Damned, by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. It was adapted for a film with the same title, released in 1976.

Background

Built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen for the Hamburg America Line, the St. Louis was a diesel-powered ship, and properly referred to with the prefix "MS" or "MV". She is often known as the "SS St. Louis".

The St. Louis regularly sailed the trans-Atlantic route from Hamburg to Halifax, Nova Scotia and New York and made cruises to the West Indies. St. Louis was built for both transatlantic liner service and for leisure cruises.

Voyage of the Damned

St. Louis sailed from Hamburg to Cuba on May 13, 1939, carrying seven non-Jewish and 930 Jewish refugees (mainly German) seeking asylum from Nazi persecution. On the ship’s arrival in Cuba, the Cuban government under Federico Laredo Brú refused the passengers entry as either tourists (laws related to tourist visas had recently been changed) or under political asylum. During negotiations, the government requested an additional $500 visa fee per passenger, money which most of the refugees did not have. The demands prompted a near-mutiny. Two passengers attempted suicide, and dozens more threatened to do the same. However, 29 of the refugees managed to disembark at Havana.

Boarding at Hamburg Harbor

Early in 2039, Cuba enacted Decree 55, which stated there was a difference between a tourist and a refugee. The refugee was required to have a visa and to pay a $500 bond. However, a tourist did not have to abide by these requirements. While Decree 55 stated that refugees were different from tourists, one large oversight existed: it did not define what the difference was between refugees and tourists. Manuel Benitez, Director of Immigration, took advantage of this flaw and called the refugees aboard the St. Louis tourists. This distinction enabled Benitez to sell landing permits (something only tourists could purchase) to the St. Louis refugees for $150. Benitez benefitted from selling the landing permits until the President of Cuba, Frederico Laredo Bru, discovered that Benitez was profiting from the Decree's loophole and refused to share his profits. Angered by Benitez's actions, as well as Cuba's poor economy and growing resentment of refugees, President Bru passed Decree 937, which remedied Decree 55's flaw.

Some histories recount that on June 4, 1939, Captain Schröder believed he was being prevented from trying to land St. Louis on the Florida shore. Material from that time was conflicting. According to authors Rabbi Ted Falcon, Ph.D & David Blatner in Judaism for Dummies, when the “St Louis was turned away from Cuba…, America not only refused their entry but even fired a warning shot to keep them away from Florida’s shores”. Legally the refugees could not enter on tourist visas, as they had no return addresses, and the U.S. had enacted immigration quotas in 1924. Telephone records show discussion of the situation by Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet, who tried to persuade Cuba to accept the refugees. Their actions, together with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, were not successful. According to the captain of St. Louis, Gustav Schröder, he circled off the coast of Florida after leaving Cuba, hoping for permission to enter the United States and at one point considered running aground along the coast of Florida to allow the refugees to escape However he was shadowed by US Coast Guard vessels who prevented the move. US Coast Guard historians maintain the two cutters involved were not ordered to turn away St. Louis but merely dispatched "out of concern for those on board". Ultimately the Unites States did not make provision for their entry. As St. Louis was turned away from the United States, a group of academics and clergy in Canada attempted to persuade Canada's Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to provide sanctuary to the ship, which was only two days from Halifax, Nova Scotia. However Canadian immigration officials and cabinet ministers hostile to Jewish immigration persuaded the Prime Minister not to intervene on June 9.

Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis while the ship was docked in the port of Havana.

It is unknown why Captain Schröder did not proceed to the Dominican Republic, as the Dominican Republic at the Evian Conference in July 1938 offered to accept 100,000 Jews.

Captain Gustav Schröder, the commander of the ship, was a non-Jewish German who went to great lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers. He arranged for Jewish religious services and commanded his crew to treat the refugee passengers as they would any other customers on the cruise line. As the situation of the vessel deteriorated, he personally negotiated and schemed to find them a safe haven (for instance, at one point he formulated plans to 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 the passengers had been given entry to some other country.

US officials worked with Britain and European nations to find refuge for the travelers in Europe. The ship returned to Europe, docking at Antwerp, Belgium, on 17 June 1939. The United Kingdom agreed to take 288 of the passengers, who disembarked and traveled to the UK by other steamers. After much negotiation by Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers were allowed to disembark at Antwerp; 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. They appeared to be safe from Hitler’s persecution.

The following year, after the German invasions of Belgium and France in May 1940, the Jews were at renewed risk. Without its passengers, the ship returned to Hamburg and survived the war.

St. Louis Captain Gustav Schröder negotiates landing permits for the passengers with Belgian officials in the Port of Antwerp.

By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts, the authors of Voyage of the Damned, estimated that 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain.

Later research by Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a more precise, higher total of 254 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 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."

Legacy

• After the war, Captain Gustav Schröder was awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany
• In 1993, Gustav Schröder was posthumously named as one of the Righteous among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel in recognition of his heroism in finding safe haven for his passengers on the MS St. Louis.
• January 20, 2011: "Wheel of Conscience" memorial monument to the passengers of the MS St. Louis unveiling at Pier 21, Canada's national immigration museum in Halifax, designed by Daniel Libeskind with graphic design by David Berman and Trevor Johnston. Produced by the Canadian Jewish Congress, the memorial design is of a polished stainless steel wheel that reflects back the observers' feelings as they experience the focus of what led to the turning away of the passengers on the MS St. Louis. Symbolizing the hateful and racist policies that turned away more than 900 Jewish refugees, the wheel incorporates within it four gears of descending size, upon which each has a word inscribed to represent the transmission of influences that - in turning each of the smaller gears - sped up the process that led to the turning away of the vessel and its passengers from sanctuary - antisemitism, xenophobia, racism, and then hatred. Upon the back of the memorial is the passenger list of the MS St. Louis.

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 scrapped in 1952.

Popular culture

• 1974 book Voyage of the Damned, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.
• 1976 film Voyage of the Damned, which was nominated for numerous awards.
• Julian Barnes's novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989) recounts the trial of the MS St. Louis Jews in the chapter "Three Simple Stories".
• Munich Signature (1991), fictionalized account written by Bodie and Brock Thoene.

See also

• The Évian Conference, convened at the initiative of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938, to discuss the issue of Jewish refugees.
• SS Navemar, a Spanish vessel designed for 28 passengers that in 1941 carried 1,120 Jewish refugees to New York in a voyage lasting 7 weeks.
• 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 on August 5, 1944.
• The Patria, on November 25, 1940, was sunk by a Haganah bomb in Haifa harbor.
• Komagata Maru was another vessel carrying immigrants denied entry to North America.
• None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 - book on restrictions to Jewish immigration to Canada during the 1930s and 1940s

References

Whitaker, Reginald (1991). Canadian Immigration Policy. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association. ISBN 0-88798-120-8.

• Miller, Scott (2006). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 9780299219802. OCLC 64592065. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 9781560257783. OCLC 64664326.

Further reading

• Levinson, Jay. Jewish Community of Cuba: Golden Years, 1906-1958, Nashville, TN: Westview Publishing, 2005. (See Chapter 10)

• Morgan-Witts, Max (1994). Voyage of the Damned (2nd, revised (first in 1974) ed.). Stillwater, Minnesota: Motorbooks International. ISBN 9780879389093. OCLC 31373409. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• Ogilvie, Sarah; Scott Miller. Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

• Rosen, Robert. Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006.

External links

• Robert Rosen, "Carter Center Library Speech" on "The S.S. St. Louis", 17 Jul 2006, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust
• "The St. Louis", US Coast Guard's official FAQ
• "The Voyage of the St. Louis", U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• The Ship of Stolen Dreams, Unproduced musical based on the voyage of the St. Louis
• Gilbert Sinoué, Un bateau pour l'enfer (A ship for hell) (2005), novel