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Home / St Louis Coming Back From the Brink With Art

St Louis Coming Back From the Brink With Art

High german sea liner that carried over 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Deutschland in 1939

SS St. Louis surrounded by smaller vessels in its home port of Hamburg

MS St. Louis in its abode port of Hamburg.[1]

History
Germany
Proper noun St. Louis
Possessor Hamburg-America Line
Port of registry
  • Weimar Republic Hamburg (1928–1933)
  • Nazi Germany Hamburg (1933–1946)
  • Allied-occupied Germany Hamburg (1946–1949)
  • West Germany Hamburg (1949–1952)
Architect Bremer-Vulkan Shipyards in Bremen, Germany
Laid down June 16, 1925
Launched August 2, 1928
Maiden voyage March 28, 1929
Fate Scrapped in 1952
Full general characteristics
Type Passenger Liner
Tonnage 16,732 gross register tons (GRT)
Length 574 ft (175 m)
Beam 72 ft (22 grand)
Propulsion Homo diesels, twin triple-blade propellers
Speed 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)
Capacity 973 passengers (270 cabin, 287 tourist, 416 third)

St. Louis was a diesel fuel-powered passenger send properly referred to with the prefix MS or MV, congenital by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen for HAPAG, better known in English as the Hamburg America Line. The transport was named subsequently the urban center of St. Louis, Missouri. Her sister ship, MS Milwaukee, was also a diesel powered motor vessel owned by the Hamburg America Line. St. Louis regularly sailed the trans-Atlantic road from Hamburg to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and New York City, and made cruises to the Canary Islands, Madeira, Espana; and Morocco. St. Louis was congenital for both transatlantic liner service and for leisure cruises.[2]

The "Voyage of the Damned" [edit]

Nether the command of Captain Gustav Schröder, St. Louis ready sail from Hamburg to Havana, Cuba on May 13, 1939, conveying 937 passengers, most of them Jewish refugees[3] [four] seeking asylum from Nazi persecution in Germany.

Captain Schröder was a High german[5] who went to bang-up lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers.[6] Nutrient served included items subject field to rationing in Germany, and childcare was bachelor while parents dined. Dances and concerts were put on, and on Fri evenings, religious services were held in the dining room. A bosom of Hitler was covered by a tablecloth. Pond lessons took place in the pool. Lothar Molton, a male child traveling with his parents, said that the passengers thought of it equally "a holiday prowl to liberty".[seven]

Bound for Cuba, the ship dropped anchor at 04:00 on May 27 at the far end of the Havana Harbor but was denied entry to the usual docking areas. The Cuban government, headed past President Federico Laredo Brú, refused to accept the foreign refugees, although they held legal tourist visas to Cuba, as laws related to these had been recently changed. On May 5, 1939, iv months before World State of war II began, Havana abandoned its pragmatic immigration policy, past virtue of Decree 937, which[ clarification needed ] "restricted entry of all foreigners except U.S. citizens, unless authorized by Cuban secretaries of land subject a bond of The states $500.-".[8] None of the passengers knew that their landing permits were invalidated retroactively.

Later the ship had been in the harbour for five days, but 28 passengers were allowed to disembark in Cuba.[ix] [10] Xx-two were Jews who had valid United States visas; iv were Spanish citizens and two were Cuban nationals, all with valid entry documents. The last admitted was a medical evacuee, a desperate rider who attempted a suicide, and was allowed hospitalization in Havana.[3]

Records show American officials Secretarial assistant of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau had fabricated efforts to persuade Republic of cuba to take the refugees, quite like the failed attempts past the American Jewish "Joint" Distribution Commission, which pleaded with the regime.[ten] After about passengers were refused landing in Republic of cuba, Captain Schröder directed St. Louis and the remaining 907 refugees towards the United States.[11] He circled off the coast of Florida, hoping for permission from authorities to enter the Usa. Neither Hull nor U.Southward. President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to intervene to acknowledge the refugees. Captain Schröder considered running St. Louis aground along the coast to allow the refugees to escape but, acting on Hull'south instructions, United States Coast Guard vessels shadowed the transport and prevented this.

After St. Louis was turned away from the Usa, a group of academics and clergy in Canada tried to persuade Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to provide sanctuary to the passengers.[12] The send could have reached Halifax, Nova Scotia in two days.[xiii] The director of Canada's Clearing Branch, Frederick Blair, was hostile to Jewish immigration and persuaded the caput of government on June 9 not to arbitrate. In 2000, Blair's nephew apologized to the Jewish people for his uncle's action.[14]

Equally Helm Schröder negotiated and schemed to discover passengers a haven, conditions on the ship declined. At ane point he made plans to wreck the ship on the British coast to force the government to accept in the passengers equally refugees. He refused to return the transport to Frg until all the passengers had been given entry to another country. US officials worked with Great britain and European nations to observe refuge for the Jews in Europe.[10] The ship returned to Europe, docking at the Port of Antwerp (Belgium) on June 17, 1939, with the 908 passengers.[fifteen] [16]

The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to take 288 (32 percent) of the passengers, who disembarked and travelled to the UK via other steamers. Afterwards much negotiation by Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers were likewise allowed to disembark at Antwerp. 224 (25 percent) were accepted by French republic, 214 (23.59 per centum) by Belgium, and 181 (xx percent) by the Netherlands. The ship returned to Hamburg without whatever passengers. The following year, afterwards the Boxing of French republic, and the Nazi occupations of Belgium, France, and the netherlands in May 1940, all the Jews in those countries were subject area to high run a risk, including the recent refugees.[17] [18]

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

Based on the survival rates for Jews in various countries during the war and deportations, historians accept estimated that 180 of St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium and 60 of those in the Netherlands survived the Holocaust.[nineteen] Including the passengers who landed in England, of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived the war and 227 died.[20] [10] Later research tracing each passenger has adamant that 254 [29.two percent] of those who returned to continental Europe were murdered during the Holocaust.

Of the 620 St. Louis passengers who returned to continental Europe, we determined that eighty-seven were able to emigrate before Federal republic of germany invaded western Europe on May 10, 1940. Ii hundred fifty-iv 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. Of the 288 passengers sent to Britain, the vast majority were live at state of war's end.[21]

The Dutch applied a special mark inside passports of those they accepted.

Legacy [edit]

After the war, the Federal Republic of Germany awarded Captain Gustav Schröder the Guild of Merit. In 1993, Schröder was posthumously named as one of the Righteous among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.[5]

A brandish at the U.s. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC tells the story of the voyage of the MS St. Louis. The Hamburg Museum features a brandish and a video about St. Louis send in its exhibits well-nigh the history of aircraft in the city. In 2009, a special exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, entitled Ship of Fate, explored the Canadian connexion to the tragic voyage. The display is at present a traveling exhibit in Canada.[22]

In 2011 a memorial monument called the Wheel of Conscience, was produced by the Canadian Jewish Congress, designed by Daniel Libeskind with graphic design by David Berman and Trevor Johnston.[23] The memorial is a polished stainless steel wheel. Symbolizing the policies that turned away more than 900 Jewish refugees, the wheel incorporates four inter-meshing gears, each showing a word to represent factors of exclusion: antisemitism, xenophobia, racism, and hatred. The back of the memorial is inscribed with the passenger list.[24] It was first exhibited in 2011 at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, Canada'due south national immigration museum in Halifax. After a display catamenia, the sculpture was shipped to its fabricators, Soheil Mosun Limited, in Toronto for repair and refurbishment.[25]

In 2012, the United States Department of Country formally apologized in a ceremony attended past Deputy Secretarial assistant Bill Burns and 14 survivors of the incident.[26] The survivors presented a declaration of gratitude to various European countries for accepting some of the transport's passengers. A signed copy of Senate Resolution 111, recognizing June 6, 2009 equally the 70th anniversary of the incident, was delivered to the Department of State Archives.[26]

In May 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appear the Government of Canada would offer a formal amends in the country's House of Eatables for its role in the fate of the transport's passengers.[27] The apology was issued on Nov 7, 2018.[28]

Later career [edit]

MS St. Louis was adjusted as a German naval accommodation send from 1940 to 1944. She was heavily damaged by the Allied bombings at Kiel on August 30, 1944. The ship was repaired and used every bit a hotel transport in Hamburg in 1946. She was after sold and was scrapped at Bremerhaven in 1952.[29] [ citation needed ]

Notable passengers [edit]

  • Arno Motulsky (1923–2018), medical geneticist[thirty]

Representations [edit]

  • Jan de Hartog's play Schipper naast God (1942), translated in English language as "Skipper next to God" (1945)
  • Voyage of the Damned (1974), a nonfiction account by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts
  • Voyage of the Damned (1976), a motion picture directed past Stuart Rosenberg adapted from the Thomas/Morgan-Witts volume
  • Julian Barnes'due south novel A History of the Earth in 10½ Capacity (1989) recounts the trials of the MS St. Louis Jews in the chapter "Iii Simple Stories"
  • Bodie and Brock Thoene's 1991 novel Munich Signature
  • Chiel Meijering equanimous an opera, St. Louis Dejection (1994)
  • Denied Entry: A Survivor'due south Story of Fate, Faith, and Freedom (2011), an autobiography and commentary by Philip S. Freund. ISBN 1-45-635148-6
  • To Hope and Back by Kathy Kacer (2011) is a young adult nonfiction account of two children'south feel on the voyage. ISBN 1-92-692040-6
  • Leonardo Padura'due south novel Herejes (2013) centers on the St. Louis incident. ISBN eight-48-383755-2
  • Nilo Cruz's play Sotto Voce (2014), explores the tragedy of the send's passengers in the present
  • The High german Daughter (2016), a novel by Armando Lucas Correa. ISBN ane-50-1121146
  • Refugee (2017), a young adult novel past Alan Gratz. ISBN 0-54-588087-4

Come across also [edit]

  • SS Patria, sunk by a Haganah flop on 25 November 1940 in the Port of Haifa.
  • SSNavemar, designed for 28 passengers, in 1941 the vessel carried 1,120 Jewish refugees to New York.
  • MV Struma, a schooner chartered to deport Jewish refugees that was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine on 5 February 1942.
  • MVMefküre, a schooner carrying Jewish refugees that was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine on 5 Baronial 1944.
  • Komagata Maru, a merchant send carrying Asian migrants that was denied entry to Canada in 1914.
  • SSQuanza, which carried over 300 refugees including at to the lowest degree 100 Jews to America and Mexico in 1940.
  • Refugee by Alan Gratz, a book about 3 refugees. I of said refugees rides on the St. Louis to escape Nazi Germany.

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ Photo Archives United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  2. ^ "MS St. Louis German ocean liner". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  3. ^ a b "Voyage of the St. Louis". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  4. ^ Rosen, p. 563.
  5. ^ a b "The Righteous Amongst The Nations: Gustav Schroeder". Yad Vashem . Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  6. ^ Levine, p. 105.
  7. ^ Levine, pp. 110–eleven.
  8. ^ Levine, p. 103
  9. ^ Levine, p. 114.
  10. ^ a b c d Rosen, Robert (July 17, 2006). Saving the Jews (Spoken communication). Carter Middle (Atlanta, Georgia). Retrieved July 17, 2007.
  11. ^ "The Voyage of the St. Louis" (PDF). American Jewish Articulation Distribution Committee. June fifteen, 1939. Retrieved Jan 29, 2017.
  12. ^ "What was the Declension Baby-sit's role in the SS St. Louis affair, often referred to equally "The Voyage of the Damned"?". United States Coast Guard History. Dec 21, 2016. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  13. ^ "Maritime Museum Exhibit on Tragic Voyage of MS St. Louis". Government of Nova Scotia. Nov 5, 2010. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
  14. ^ "Clergy repent for turning away the St. Louis". CBC News . Retrieved May 8, 2008.
  15. ^ George Axelsson, "907 Refugees Cease Voyage in Antwerp", New York Times, eighteen June 1939
  16. ^ Levine, p. 118.
  17. ^ Rosen, pp. 103, 567.
  18. ^ "The Tragedy of the Southward.South. St. Louis". Retrieved July 17, 2007.
  19. ^ Thomas and Morgan-Witts (1974). Voyage of the Damned . New York, Stein and Day. ISBN9780812816945.
  20. ^ Rosen, pp. 447, 567 citing Morgan-Witts and Thomas (1994) pp. 8, 238
  21. ^ Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie (2010). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 174–75. ISBN9780299219833.
  22. ^ "Traveling Exhibit: MS St. Louis Ship of Fate" Archived June 30, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
  23. ^ Studio Daniel Libeskind Archived July 8, 2011, at the Wayback Auto, daniel-libeskind.com, 19 January 2011; retrieved 21 January 2011.
  24. ^ Taplin, Jennifer (Jan 21, 2011). "Perpetual Memorial of Regret". Metro News Halifax. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  25. ^ "Exhibitions", Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 , pier21.ca; accessed 12 September 2014.
  26. ^ a b Eppinger, Kamerel (September 26, 2012). "State Department apologizes to Jewish refugees". shfwire.com . Retrieved September 26, 2017.
  27. ^ "Trudeau to offer formal apology in Commons for fate of Jewish refugee ship MS St. Louis". Retrieved May 11, 2018.
  28. ^ "Trudeau apologizes for Canada'southward 1939 refusal of Jewish refugee ship". Retrieved November seven, 2018.
  29. ^ "M/S St. Louis, Hamburg America Line". www.norwayheritage.com . Retrieved January 27, 2021.
  30. ^ Motulsky, Arno G. (June 2018). "A German language‐Jewish refugee in Vichy France 1939–1941. Arno Motulsky'southward memoir of life in the internment camps at St. Cyprien and Gurs". American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part A. 176 (6): 1289–1295. doi:10.1002/ajmg.a.38701. PMC6001526. PMID 29697901.

Sources [edit]

  • Levine, Robert Thou. (1993). Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Feel in Cuba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. p. 103. ISBN9781558765214.
  • Miller, Scott; Sarah A. Ogilvie (2006). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN978-0-299-21980-2. OCLC 64592065.
  • Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN978-1-56025-778-3. OCLC 64664326.
  • Whitaker, Reginald (1991). Canadian Immigration Policy. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association. ISBN0-88798-120-8.

Further reading [edit]

  • Levinson, Jay. Jewish Customs of Cuba: Golden Years, 1906–1958, Nashville, TN: Westview Publishing, 2005. (Come across Chapter 10)
  • Morgan-Witts, Max; Gordon Thomas (1994). Voyage of the Damned (2nd, revised (first in 1974) ed.). Stillwater, Minnesota: Motorbooks International. ISBN978-0-87938-909-3. OCLC 31373409.
  • Ogilvie, Sarah; Scott Miller. Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
  • Sampson, Pamela. No Respond: A Jewish Kid Aboard the MS St. Louis and the Ordeal That Followed, Atlanta, GA, 2017
  • Lawlor, A. The Saddest Ship Adrift: The Tragedy of the MS St. Louis, Nimbus Publishing, 2016. ISBN 978-1771083997
  • Irving Abella and Harold Troper'due south None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948

External links [edit]

  • Robert Rosen, "Carter Heart Library Speech" on "The South.S. St. Louis", July 17, 2006, Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust
  • "The St. Louis", US Coast Guard'southward official FAQ
  • "American Responses to the Holocaust - St. Louis", U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • "The Story of the S.S. St. Louis (1939)" American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives
  • "SS St Louis: The ship of Jewish refugees nobody wanted" BBC News
  • Matthias Loeber, "Swept dorsum into the unseen vastness of the sea" - Fritz Buff'due south account of his voyage aboard the ST. LOUIS, May and June 1939, in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, March 15, 2021, https://dx.doi.org/ten.23691/jgo:article-266.en.v1

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis