SS St Louis: The ship of Jewish refugees nobody wanted

By Mike Lanchin

BBC World Service

On 13 May 1939, more than 900 Jews fled Germany aboard a luxury cruise liner, the SS St Louis. They hoped to reach Cuba and then travel to the US - but were turned away in Havana and forced to return to Europe, where more than 250 were killed by the Nazis.

"It was really something to be going on a luxury liner," says Gisela Feldman. "We didn't really know where we were heading, or how we would cope when we got there."

At the age of 90, Feldman still clearly remembers the raw and mixed emotions she felt as a 15-year-old girl boarding the St Louis at Hamburg docks with her mother and younger sister.

In the years following the rise to power of Hitler's Nazi party, ordinary Jewish families like Feldman's had been left in no doubt about the increasing dangers they were facing. Jewish properties had been confiscated, synagogues and businesses burned down. After Feldman's Polish father was arrested and deported to Poland her mother decided it was time to leave.

So, armed with visas for Cuba which she had bought in Berlin, she headed for Hamburg and the St Louis. Tearful relatives waved them off at the station in Berlin. "They knew we would never see each other again," she says softly. "We were the lucky ones - we managed to get out." She would never see her father or more than 30 other close family members again.

By early 1939, the Nazis had closed most of Germany's borders and many countries had imposed quotas limiting the number of Jewish refugees they would allow in.

Cuba was seen as a temporary transit point to get to America.

When six-year-old Gerald Granston was told by his father that they were leaving their small town in southern Germany to take a ship to the other side of the world, he struggled to understand what that meant.

For many of the young passengers and their parents however, the trepidation and anxiety soon faded as the St Louis began its two-week transatlantic voyage.

On board, there was a dance band in the evenings and even a cinema. There were regular meals with a variety of food that the passengers rarely saw back home.

Under orders from the ship's captain, Gustav Schroder, the waiters and crew members treated the passengers politely, in stark contrast to the open hostility Jewish families had become accustomed to under the Nazis.

The captain allowed traditional Friday night prayers to be held, during which he gave permission for the portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging in the main dining room to be taken down.

Six-year-old Sol Messinger, who was travelling with his father and mother, recalls how happy everyone seemed. In fact, he says, the youngsters were constantly being told by the adults that they were now safe from harm: "We're going away," he heard people say again and again on that outward journey. "We don't have to look over our shoulders anymore."

But as the luxury liner reached the coast of Havana on 27 May, that sense of optimism disappeared to be replaced by fear, then dread.

Granston was up on deck with his father and dozens of other families, their suitcases packed and ready to disembark, when the Cuban officials, first came aboard.

It quickly became clear that the ship was not going to dock and that no-one was being allowed off. He kept hearing the words "manana, manana" - tomorrow, tomorrow. When the Cubans left and the ship's captain announced that people would have to wait, he could feel, that something was wrong.

For the next seven days, Captain Schroder tried in vain to persuade the Cuban authorities to allow them in. In fact, the Cubans had already decided to revoke all but a handful of the visas - probably out of fear of being inundated with more refugees fleeing Europe. The captain then steered the St Louis towards the Florida coast, but the US authorities also refused it the right to dock.

By early June, Captain Schroder had no option but to turn the giant liner back towards Europe. 

In the end, the ship's passengers did not have to go back to Nazi Germany. Instead, Belgium, France, Holland and the UK agreed to take the refugees. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) posted a cash guarantee of $8 million in today's money - as part of an agreement to cover any associated costs.

On 17 June, the liner docked at the Belgian port of Antwerp, more than a month after it had set sail from Hamburg. Feldman, her mother and sisters all went on to England, as did Granston and his father.

They both survived the war but between them they lost scores of relatives in the Holocaust, including Feldman's father who never managed to get out of Poland.

Messinger and his parents went to live in France but then had to flee the Nazis for a second time, leaving just six weeks before Hitler invaded.

Two-hundred-and-fifty-four other passengers from the St Louis were not so fortunate and were killed as the Nazis swept across Western Europe.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373131

Exercises:

1. Find the English equivalents from the list in the chapter:

Евреи; 10 рейхсмарок; непредвиденные обстоятельства; туристы, путешествующие в развлекательных целях; беженцы из нацистского государства; «Недолюди»; полдюжины гестаповских агентов; убрать из продажи предметы роскоши; разбегающиеся, точно крысы; капитан великодушно обошел эти приказы; не собирались возвращаться в Германию.

At 8 pm on Saturday, 13th May 1939, the liner St Louis left its home port of Hamburg. It was a cruise ship, and most of the 937 passengers booked on its transatlantic voyage carried visas confirming that they were `tourists, travelling for pleasure'. The words were an evasion, however, as was the purpose of their voyage. All but a few of them were Jews, refugees from a Nazi state which intended to dispossess, transport and exterminate them. Many, indeed, had already been dispossessed, since emigrants from Germany were permitted to take with them no more than a nominal ten Reichsmarks. This enforced poverty made them easier targets for propaganda: if they left with no more than their allowance, they could be portrayed as shabby Untermenschen scuttling away like rats; if they managed to outwit the system, then they were economic criminals fleeing with stolen goods. All this was normal. The St Louis was flying the swastika flag, which was normal; its crew included half-a-dozen Gestapo agents, which was also normal. The shipping line had instructed the captain to lay in cheaper cuts of meat for this voyage, to remove luxury goods from the shops and free postcards from the public rooms; but the captain largely circumvented such orders, decreeing that this journey should resemble other cruises by the St Louis and be, as far as possible, normal. So when the Jews arrived on board from a mainland where they had been despised, systematically humiliated and imprisoned, they discovered that although this ship was legally still part of Germany, flew the swastika and had large portraits of Hitler in its public rooms, the Germans with whom they had dealings were courteous, attentive and even obedient. This was abnormal. None of these Jews - half of whom were women and children - had any intention of revisiting Germany in the near future. Nevertheless, in accordance with the regulations of the shipping company, they had all been obliged to buy return tickets. This payment, they were told, was designed to cover `unforeseen eventualities'. When the refugees landed in Havana, they would be given by the Hamburg-Amerika line a receipt for the unused part of the fare. The money itself had been lodged in a special account in Germany: if ever they returned there, they could collect it. Even Jews who had been released from concentration camps on strict condition that they left the Fatherland immediately were obliged to pay for the round trip.

2. Translate the following sentences into Russian:

1) None of these Jews - half of whom were women and children - had any intention of revisiting Germany in the near future. 2) The St Louis was flying the swastika flag, which was normal; its crew included half-a-dozen Gestapo agents, which was also normal. 3) The Germans with whom they had dealings were courteous, attentive and even obedient. 4) And in the course of the voyage some passengers, particularly the younger ones, were able to make the remarkable transition from despised Untermensch to pleasure-seeking tourist. 5) Despite a warning to crew members from the Gestapo cell about contravention of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour, sexual activity continued as normal on a cruise. 6) Immigration, like emigration, is a process in which money is no less important than principles or laws, and often sounder than either of them. 7) The Cuban director of immigration had made a great deal of money from previous boatloads of Jews; the President of Cuba had not made enough money from them. 8) It was during this time that two passengers attempted suicide, one with a syringe and tranquillizers, another by slashing his writs and jumping into the sea; both survived. 9) Der Stürmer commented that if the Jews chose to take up their return passages to Germany, they should be accommodated at Dachau and Buchenwald. 10) In Antwerp a pro-Nazi youth organization had distributed handbills bearing the slogan: `We too want to help the,Jews. If they call at our offices each will receive gratis a length of rope and a long nail.'

3. Make up a rendering of the article:

Плавание немецкого океанского лайнера «Сент-Луис» служит ярким примером несчастий, которым подвергались многие бежавшие от нацистского террора. В мае 1939 г. 937 пассажиров, в основном еврейские беженцы, отправляются из немецкого порта Гамбург на Кубу. Большинство из них рассчитывало впоследствии эмигрировать в США и находилось в ожидании виз. У всех пассажиров были документы, разрешающие высадку на Кубе, но когда "Сент-Луис" достиг порта Гаваны, президент Кубы отказался признать документы действительными.

Покинув Гаванскую гавань, корабль направился к побережью Флориды и подошел к нему так близко, что пассажиры могли видеть огни Майами. Капитан взывал о помощи, но тщетно. Корабли береговой охраны США патрулировали воды, не позволяя пассажирам добраться до берега вплавь и препятствуя входу корабля в порт. «Сент-Луис» вернулся в Европу. Пассажиров приняли Бельгия, Нидерланды, Англия и Франция. Однако через несколько месяцев немцы захватили Западную Европу. Сотни пассажиров, высадившихся в Бельгии, Нидерландах и Франции, в конце концов пали жертвами нацистского плана «Окончательное решение еврейского вопроса».

КЛЮЧЕВЫЕ ДАТЫ

Суббота,13 МАЯ 1939 г.

Немецкий пассажирский корабль «Сент-Луис» отплывает из порта Гамбурга с 900 пассажирами на борту, в основном еврейскими беженцами, получившими разрешение на высадку на Кубе. 15 мая 1939 г. «Сент-Луис» делает остановку в Шербуре, Франция, чтобы принять на борт новых пассажиров. Общее число пассажиров достигает 937. Корабль направляется в кубинскую столицу Гавану. Однако ни капитан, ни пассажиры не знают, что правительство Кубы уже отменило все разрешения на высадку.

27 МАЯ 1939 г.

 «Сент-Луис» входит в порт Гаваны, но пассажирам не разрешают покинуть корабль. Президент Кубы Федерико Ларедо Бру отказывается признать действительными их разрешения на высадку. Менее 30 пассажиров отвечают новым требованиям для получения визы и допускаются на Кубу. Корабль остается на приколе в Гаванской гавани еще шесть дней в надежде, что беженцев все-таки примут. Проживающие на Кубе еврейские беженцы отправляются к кораблю на лодках, чтобы повидаться с членами своих семей. 2 июня 1939 г. президент Бру настаивает на том, чтобы «Сент-Луис» покинул Гаванскую гавань. Корабль плывет на север мимо побережья Флориды. Беженцы надеются, что США позволят им сойти на берег.

6 ИЮНЯ 1939 г.

После того как Куба и США отказывают пассажирам во въезде, «Сент-Луису» остается только вернуться в Европу. Беженцев соглашаются принять другие страны. Бельгия принимает 214 человек, Нидерланды — 181, Англия — 287 и Франция — 224. 17 июня 1939 г. «Сент-Луис» входит в бельгийский порт Антверпен, и пассажиров направляют в страны, предоставившие им убежище. Однако сотни пассажиров, высадившихся в Бельгии, Нидерландах и Франции, в конце концов падут жертвами нацистского плана «Окончательное решение еврейского вопроса».

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ru/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis-1