German ocean liner; "Voyage of the damned"
|
History
|
Germany
|
Name
| St. Louis
|
Owner
| Hamburg-America Line
|
Port of registry
| |
Builder
| Bremer-Vulkan Shipyards
in
Bremen
, Germany
|
Laid down
| June 16, 1925
|
Launched
| August 2, 1928
|
Maiden voyage
| March 28, 1929
|
Fate
| Scrapped in 1952
|
General characteristics
|
Type
| Passenger Liner
|
Tonnage
| 16,732
gross register tons
(GRT)
|
Length
| 574 ft (175 m)
|
Beam
| 72 ft (22 m)
|
Propulsion
| MAN
diesels, twin triple-blade propellers
|
Speed
| 16
knots
(30 km/h; 18 mph)
|
Capacity
| 973 passengers (270 cabin, 287 tourist, 416 third)
|
MS
St. Louis
was a
diesel
-powered passenger ship properly referred to with the prefix
MS
or MV, built by the
Bremer Vulkan
shipyards in
Bremen
for
HAPAG
, better known in English as the
Hamburg America Line
. The ship was named after the city 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 route
from
Hamburg
to
Halifax, Nova Scotia
, and New York City, and made cruises to the
Canary Islands
,
Madeira
, Spain; and
Morocco
.
St. Louis
was built for both transatlantic liner service and for
leisure cruises
.
[2]
During the build-up to
World War II
, the
St. Louis
carried more than 900
Jewish
refugees from
Nazi Germany
in 1939 intending to escape antisemitic persecution. The refugees first tried to disembark in
Cuba
but were denied permission to land. After Cuba, the captain,
Gustav Schroder
, went to the
United States
and
Canada
, trying to find a nation to take the Jews in, but both nations refused. He finally returned the ship to
Europe
, where various countries, including the
United Kingdom
,
Belgium
, the
Netherlands
and
France
, accepted some refugees. Many were later caught in
Nazi
roundups of Jews in the occupied countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands, and some historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them were killed in
death camps
during World War II.
[3]
These events, also known as the "Voyage of the Damned", have inspired
film
, opera, and fiction.
Background and early years
[
edit
]
Under construction number 670,
St. Louis
was launched on August 2, 1928 at the Bremer Vulkan in
Bremen-Vegesack
. She was 174.90 m long and 22.10 m wide and was measured with 16,732 GRT. Four double-acting six-cylinder two-stroke diesel engines (MAN type, built under license from Bremer Vulkan) each with an output of 3150 hp enabled a speed of 16.5 knots. Her sister ship was
MS
Milwaukee
, launched on February 20, 1929.
St. Louis
left Hamburg on March 28, 1929 for her maiden voyage to York City, and was then mainly used in the North Atlantic service from Hamburg to Halifax, and then to New York. In addition, however, she also undertook cruises of 16-17 days each to the
Canary Islands
,
Madeira
and
Morocco
, especially in autumn and spring. From 1934 she was also chartered in the summer by the Office for Travel, Hiking and Holidays (RWU) of
Strength Through Joy
(KDF) to travel to
Norway
with 900 holidaymakers at a time.
The "Voyage of the Damned"
[
edit
]
Under the command of Captain
Gustav Schroder
,
St. Louis
set sail from Hamburg to
Havana
,
Cuba
on May 13, 1939, carrying 937 passengers, most of them Jewish refugees
[4]
[5]
seeking asylum from Nazi
persecution in Germany
.
Captain Schroder was a German
[6]
who went to great lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers.
[7]
Food served included items subject to rationing in Germany, and childcare was available while parents dined. Dances and concerts were put on, and on Friday evenings, religious services were held in the dining room. A bust of
Hitler
was covered by a tablecloth. Swimming lessons took place in the pool. Lothar Molton, a boy traveling with his parents, said that the passengers thought of it as "a vacation cruise to freedom".
[8]
Upon reaching 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 by President
Federico Laredo Bru
, 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, four months before World War II began, Havana had abandoned its pragmatic immigration policy, by virtue of decree 937, which "restricted entry of all foreigners except U.S. citizens, unless authorized by Cuban secretaries of state [and] subject [to] a bond of US $500."
[9]
None of the passengers knew that their landing permits had been invalidated a few weeks earlier.
[6]
After the ship had been in the harbor for five days, only 28 passengers were allowed to disembark in Cuba.
[10]
[11]
Twenty-two were Jews who had valid United States visas; four were Spanish citizens and two were Cuban nationals, all with valid entry documents. The last admitted was a medical evacuee, a desperate passenger who attempted suicide, and was allowed hospitalization in Havana.
[4]
Records show American officials Secretary of State
Cordell Hull
and
Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Morgenthau
had made efforts to persuade Cuba to accept the refugees, quite like the failed attempts by the
American Jewish "Joint" Distribution Committee
, which pleaded with the government.
[11]
After most passengers were refused landing in Cuba, Captain Schroder directed
St. Louis
and the remaining 907 refugees towards the United States.
[12]
He circled off the coast of
Florida
, hoping for permission from authorities to enter the United States. Neither Hull nor U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
chose to intervene to admit the refugees. Captain Schroder considered running
St. Louis
aground along the coast to allow the refugees to escape but, acting on Hull's instructions,
United States Coast Guard
vessels shadowed the ship and prevented this.
[13]
After
St. Louis
was turned away from the United States, a group of academics and clergy in Canada tried to persuade Prime Minister
William Lyon Mackenzie King
to provide sanctuary to the passengers.
[14]
The ship could have reached
Halifax, Nova Scotia
in two days.
[15]
The director of Canada's Immigration Branch,
Frederick Blair
, was hostile to Jewish immigration and persuaded the head of government on June 9 not to intervene. In 2000, Blair's nephew apologized to the Jewish people for his uncle's action.
[16]
As Captain Schroder negotiated and schemed to find passengers a haven, conditions on the ship declined. At one point he made plans to wreck the ship on the British coast to force the government to take in the passengers 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 Jews in Europe.
[11]
The ship returned to Europe, docking at the
Port of Antwerp
(Belgium) on June 17, 1939, with the 908 passengers.
[17]
[18]
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. After much negotiation by Schroder, the remaining 619 passengers were also allowed to disembark at Antwerp. 224 (25 percent) were accepted by France, 214 (23.59 percent) by
Belgium
, and 181 (20 percent) by the
Netherlands
. The ship returned to Hamburg without any passengers. The following year, after the
Battle of France
, and the Nazi occupations of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands in May 1940, all the Jews in those countries were subject to high risk, including the recent refugees.
[19]
[20]
Based on the survival rates for Jews in various countries during the war and deportations, historians have 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
.
[21]
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.
[22]
[11]
Later research tracing each passenger has determined that 254 (29.2%) 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 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
Sobibor
; 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 alive at war's end.
[23]
Legacy
[
edit
]
After the war, the
Federal Republic of Germany
awarded Captain Gustav Schroder the
Order of Merit
. In 1993, Schroder was posthumously named as one of the
Righteous Among the Nations
at the
Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial
in
Israel
.
[6]
A display at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
in Washington, D.C., tells the story of the voyage of the MS
St. Louis
. The
Hamburg Museum
features a display and a video about
St. Louis ship
in its exhibits about the history of shipping 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 connection to the tragic voyage. The display is now a traveling exhibit in Canada.
[24]
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.
[25]
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.
[26]
It was first exhibited in 2011 at the
Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21
, Canada's national immigration museum in
Halifax
. After a display period, the sculpture was shipped to its fabricators, Soheil Mosun Limited, in Toronto for repair and refurbishment.
[27]
In 2012, the
United States Department of State
formally apologized in a ceremony attended by Deputy Secretary
William J. Burns
and 14 survivors of the incident.
[28]
The survivors presented a proclamation of gratitude to various European countries for accepting some of the ship's passengers. A signed copy of Senate Resolution 111, recognizing June 6, 2009, as the 70th anniversary of the incident, was delivered to the Department of State Archives.
[28]
In May 2017,
Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau
announced the Government of Canada would offer a formal apology in the country's
House of Commons
for its role in the fate of the ship's passengers.
[29]
The apology was issued on November 7, 2018.
[30]
Later career
[
edit
]
MS
St. Louis
was adapted as a German naval
accommodation ship
from 1940 to 1944. She was heavily damaged by the
Allied
bombings at
Kiel
on August 30, 1944. The ship was repaired and used as a
hotel ship
in Hamburg in 1946. She was sold and
scrapped
at
Bremerhaven
in 1952.
[31]
[
citation needed
]
Notable passengers
[
edit
]
Representations
[
edit
]
- Jan de Hartog
's play
Schipper naast God
(1942), translated in English 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 film directed by
Stuart Rosenberg
adapted from the Thomas/Morgan-Witts book
- Julian Barnes
's novel
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
(1989) recounts the trials of the MS
St. Louis
Jews in the chapter "Three Simple Stories"
- Bodie and Brock Thoene
's 1991 novel
Munich Signature
- Chiel Meijering
composed an opera,
St. Louis Blues
(1994)
- Denied Entry: A Survivor's 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's experience on the voyage.
ISBN
1-92-692040-6
- Leonardo Padura
's novel
Herejes
(2013) centers on the
St. Louis
incident.
ISBN
8-48-383755-2
- Nilo Cruz
's play
Sotto Voce
(2014), explores the tragedy of the ship's passengers in the present
- The German Girl
(2016), a novel by
Armando Lucas Correa
.
ISBN
1-50-1121146
- Refugee
(2017), a young adult novel by
Alan Gratz
.
ISBN
0-54-588087-4
- Die Reise der Verlorenen
, 2018 play by
Daniel Kehlmann
- The Good Ship St. Louis
, 2022 play by
Philip Boehm
- The St. Louis Refugee Ship Blues, Art Spiegelman recounts a sad story 70 years later.
by
Art Spiegelman
See also
[
edit
]
- SS
Navemar
, designed for 28 passengers, which carried 1,120 Jewish refugees to New York in 1941
- MV
Struma
, a schooner chartered to carry Jewish refugees that was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine on 5 February 1942
- MV
Mefkure
, a schooner carrying Jewish refugees that was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine on 5 August 1944
- Komagata Maru
, a merchant ship carrying Asian migrants that was denied entry to Canada in 1914
- SS
Quanza
, which carried over 300 refugees including at least 100 Jews to America and Mexico in 1940
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
"Photo Archives United States Holocaust Memorial Museum"
. Archived from
the original
on June 29, 2016
. Retrieved
April 24,
2014
.
- ^
"MS St. Louis German ocean liner"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
.
- ^
Madokoro, Laura (August 9, 2021).
"Remembering the Voyage of the St. Louis"
.
Active History
.
- ^
a
b
"Voyage of the St. Louis"
.
Holocaust Encyclopedia
. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- ^
Rosen, p. 563.
- ^
a
b
c
"The Righteous Among The Nations: Gustav Schroeder"
.
Yad Vashem
. Retrieved
January 29,
2017
.
- ^
Levine, p. 105.
- ^
Levine, pp. 110?11.
- ^
Levine, p. 103
- ^
Levine, p. 114.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Rosen, Robert (July 17, 2006).
Saving the Jews
(Speech).
Carter Center
(Atlanta, Georgia)
. Retrieved
July 17,
2007
.
- ^
"The Voyage of the
St. Louis
"
(PDF)
.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
. June 15, 1939
. Retrieved
January 29,
2017
.
- ^
"Holocaust Memorial Day Trust | The SS St Louis"
. Retrieved
May 2,
2024
.
- ^
"What was the Coast Guard's role in the SS St. Louis affair, often referred to as "The Voyage of the Damned"?"
.
United States Coast Guard History
. December 21, 2016
. Retrieved
December 22,
2022
.
- ^
"Maritime Museum Exhibit on Tragic Voyage of MS St. Louis"
. Government of Nova Scotia. November 5, 2010
. Retrieved
September 12,
2014
.
- ^
"Clergy apologize for turning away the
St. Louis
"
.
CBC News
. Retrieved
May 8,
2008
.
- ^
George Axelsson, "907 Refugees End Voyage in Antwerp",
New York Times,
18 June 1939
- ^
Levine, p. 118.
- ^
Rosen, pp. 103, 567.
- ^
"The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis"
. Retrieved
July 17,
2007
.
- ^
Thomas and Morgan-Witts (1974).
Voyage of the Damned
. New York, Stein and Day.
ISBN
9780812816945
.
- ^
Rosen, pp. 447, 567 citing Morgan-Witts and Thomas (1994) pp. 8, 238
- ^
Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie (2010).
Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust
. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 174?75.
ISBN
9780299219833
.
- ^
"Traveling Exhibit: MS
St. Louis
Ship of Fate"
Archived
June 30, 2018, at the
Wayback Machine
, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
- ^
Studio Daniel Libeskind
Archived
July 8, 2011, at the
Wayback Machine
, daniel-libeskind.com, 19 January 2011; retrieved 21 January 2011.
- ^
Taplin, Jennifer (January 21, 2011).
"Perpetual Memorial of Regret"
. Metro News Halifax. Archived from
the original
on March 10, 2016
. Retrieved
March 22,
2017
.
- ^
"Exhibitions", Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21
, pier21.ca; accessed 12 September 2014.
- ^
a
b
Eppinger, Kamerel (September 26, 2012).
"State Department apologizes to Jewish refugees"
.
shfwire.com
. Archived from
the original
on September 26, 2017
. Retrieved
September 26,
2017
.
- ^
"Trudeau to offer formal apology in Commons for fate of Jewish refugee ship MS St. Louis"
. Retrieved
May 11,
2018
.
- ^
"Trudeau apologizes for Canada's 1939 refusal of Jewish refugee ship"
. November 7, 2018
. Retrieved
November 7,
2018
.
- ^
"M/S St. Louis, Hamburg America Line"
.
www.norwayheritage.com
. Retrieved
January 27,
2021
.
- ^
Motulsky, Arno G. (June 2018).
"A German?Jewish refugee in Vichy France 1939?1941. Arno Motulsky's 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
.
PMC
6001526
.
PMID
29697901
.
- ^
"Obituary: Frederick Reif / Educator, author and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University"
.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
. Retrieved
June 18,
2022
.
Sources
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Abella, Irving
;
Harold Troper
,
None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948
,
Toronto, ON:
Lester & Orpen Dennys
, 1983.
- Afoumado, Diane.
Exil impossible
: L'errance des Juifs du paquebot St-Louis (L’Harmattan, 2005).
- Anctil, Pierre
; Alexandre Comeau. "
The St. Louis Crisis in the Canadian Press: New Data on the June 1939 Incident
."
Canadian Jewish Studies / Etudes Juives Canadiennes
,
31
, 13?40.
- Levinson, Jay.
Jewish Community of Cuba: Golden Years, 1906?1958
, Nashville, TN: Westview Publishing, 2005. (See Chapter 10)
- Morgan-Witts, Max
;
Gordon Thomas
(1994).
Voyage of the Damned
(2nd, revised (first in 1974) ed.). Stillwater, Minnesota: Motorbooks International.
ISBN
978-0-87938-909-3
.
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 Reply: A Jewish Child Aboard the MS St. Louis and the Ordeal That Followed
, Atlanta, GA, 2017
- Lawlor, Allison.
The Saddest Ship Afloat: The Tragedy of the MS St. Louis,
Nimbus Publishing,
2016.
ISBN
978-1771083997
External links
[
edit
]
- Robert Rosen, "Carter Center Library Speech" on "The S.S. St. Louis"
, July 17, 2006,
Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust
- "St. Louis affair"
, US Coast Guard's 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 back into the unseen vastness of the sea” - Fritz Buff's 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/10.23691/jgo:article-266.en.v1
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