Journey of the Doomed: Jewish refugees hoped to escape Cuba but were returned to perdition in Europe

On November 10, 1938, a series of anti-Semitic pogroms took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria and the Sudetenland, uprooted from Czechoslovakia: some 400 Jews were murdered and another 30,000 were sent to concentration camps. Three months later, most of the imprisoned Jews were released on the condition that they leave Germany.

That night went down in history as Crystal Night (Kristallnacht) due to the broken glass shards in the broken Jewish shops that lined the streets after the pogroms. After Crystal Night, Jews began to leave Germany in droves.

One way to escape the Nazis was for many to turn to a Cuban visa: Cuba remained almost the only state that agreed to accept Jews. The refugees gave away the last money for the permission to enter this country and a line ticket. There, in a calmer environment, they hoped to obtain an American visa: the figures of the American immigration quotas that allowed them to enter the United States in three years had 734 ships. Louis passengers.

A luxury cruise after an unfortunate life in Berlin.

Giselai Knepel (married last name Feldman) was 15 years old when she, her mother and her younger sister embarked on a voyage on the ship “St. Louis. Gisela went through the war and the Holocaust, and then told her story in more than one interview.

On the eve of Crystal Night, the Essenes arrested his Polish-born father in Berlin. Deportation awaited him.

Gisela remembered shards of glass on the sidewalks after a night of pogrom, smashed shops and burning synagogues. Her apartment was given to a German family, and she, her sister and her mother had to move in with her aunt, whose husband was also deported.

Gisela’s mother repeatedly tried to get a visa for any country just to get out of Germany. Then he learned that the Cuban embassy was selling entry visas and was able to obtain them the day before “St. Louis departure.

“When we got on the deck of the ship, I began to vibrate with relief. The food was amazing, we were served by the waiters! We have never lived in such luxury. There was a festive atmosphere, we enjoyed it, “said Gisela Knepel in an interview with The Jewish Chronicle.

Only Gisela’s mother was unhappy: she left her husband in Germany, despite her pleas not to leave him. In addition, he only carried ten German marks for three people.

“But we were kids, and there were cinemas, comfortable cabins, and a pool in the liner. This was in contrast to our unhappy life in Berlin! ”, Gisela Knepel remembers.

The captain went out of his way to make the trip pleasant. He allowed a portrait of Hitler to be hung on the wall of a room where passengers gathered for religious rites on Saturday. The women brought their own chandeliers and a really familiar atmosphere prevailed there on Friday night, Gisela said.

Captain Gustavas Schröderis

For the “St. Louis ”was directed by Gustav Schröder. He was the last captain of the transatlantic company Hamburg-America Lines, which did not join the Nazi party NSDAP (ed. – National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and did not wear a swastika tie. He fully understood what kind of passengers he was carrying and insisted that the team treat them with respect.

Thanks to Gustav Schröder, the passengers of the ocean liner managed to avoid the Nazi camps. He became her hero.

On May 23, the captain received a telegram saying that “St. Louis passengers will not be able to disembark in Havana. It turned out that the tourist visas they received with such difficulty were not valid.

Even before the ocean liner set sail, it was clear that Cuba’s immigration minister, Manuel Benítez González, had issued visas on his own initiative and had appropriated all the money received by them. Upon learning of the machinations, the Cuban government canceled the documents. But no passenger on the ocean liner knew before departure that the visas were invalid.

“St. Louis arrived in Havana on May 27. Only 22 passengers with a US visa were allowed to disembark. Others were strictly denied that permit. Fritz Buff, who was sailing on the ocean liner (he was 17 in 1939), said in an interview with the Jewish Standard in 2009 that the mood of the passengers had changed “dramatically and rapidly.” “It just came to our notice then. The ship’s infirmary was full of people. We were hoping not to go back to Germany, which would have been a disaster: we knew what would have been waiting for us there. “

One of the passengers attempted suicide. It was Max Loewe, a former lawyer from Breslau. At the age of 14, he managed to participate in World War I and win an award for heroism. In the late 1930s, he was incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp. When he was released, he felt constantly being tracked down by SS and Gestapo agents.

In Havana, his nerves no longer calmed down: the man pierced his veins and danced in the water. The sailor rescued him and Loewe was transferred from the ship to the hospital. Thus Max Loewe became the first refugee to reach Cuban soil. His wife and children were not allowed to disembark. Later, recovering, he was able to return to a family living in France at the time.

“St. Louis’s incursion on the Havana coast lasted four days and on June 1, 1939, Captain Schröder received the order to abandon Cuban territorial waters. For another five days, the ocean liner was off the coast of Cuba , waiting for the country’s government to change the decision.

At that point, the answer came from the United States: Secretary of State Cordell Hull advised President Franklin D. Roosevelt not to accept Jews from Europe.

Captain Schröder spun the wheels off the Florida coast and even considered a plan to float the ship off a shallow shore so the refugees could disembark and escape. But the ships of the United States Coast Guard prevented it: When the ocean liner approached Miami, the American ships blocked its way to the port of the city.

Another option for salvation could have been Canada. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, having received Louis passed the passenger’s asylum application to Frederick Blair, director of the immigration service, who was known for his hostility towards Jewish emigration. This persuaded the Prime Minister not to interfere in the story of the refugee ship.

1939 June 6, “St. Luis was forced to return to Europe.

There was panic on board and the passengers nearly rebelled. However, Captain Schröder assured everyone that the ship would not return to Germany until all the passengers had obtained asylum. In addition, he drew up a contingency plan according to which the ocean liner was to suffer an accident off the coast of England to force British officials to start rescuing passengers.

Fortunately, the American Jewish charity Joint was able to reach an agreement with several European countries at that time: refugees from St. Louis (181 people), France (224), Great Britain (288) and Belgium (214) agreed to accept Louis .

How did everything end

Passengers from St. Louis were finally able to disembark on June 17, 1939. They landed on the coasts of Antwerp and dispersed among the countries that agreed to receive them.

With the outbreak of the Second World War and the occupation of the Benelux countries by Germany until the early summer of 1940 and the capitulation of France, all “St. Louis’s passengers, in addition to those who took refuge in England, were once again in the hands of the Nazis.

Historians, who estimated survival rates for Jews in various countries during World War II, later estimated that 180 ocean liners refugees in France, St. Petersburg, were able to survive the Holocaust. Louis, 152 Jews in Belgium and 60 Jews in Holland. Including passengers who took refuge in Britain and escaped the fate of their compatriots in continental Europe, of the 936 refugees who returned to Europe (one who died on the journey), some 709 survived and 227 died. It turned out that 254 Jews returned to Europe. on a trip they died during the war.

Gisela Knepel, her mother and her sister met in Britain. His father was killed during the Holocaust.

Captain Gustav Schröder never sailed again after the 1940s. After the war, the captain was released from the denationalization process following the testimony of several surviving refugees from his former passengers. In 1949, he published memoirs about an unforgettable trip on the ship “St. Louis.

Gustav Schröder died in 1959 at the age of 73. In West Germany, he received the Order of Merit, and a street in Hamburg is named after him. In 1993, the Holocaust Memorial awarded Yad Vashem Schröder the title of Righteous Among the Nations after his death.

An apology after many decades

In 2000, a relative of Frederick Blair, director of the Canadian Immigration Service, apologized to the Jewish people for his uncle’s actions.

US Department of State Louis passengers apologized in 2012. The official ceremony was attended by Under Secretary of State William Burns and 14 surviving passengers on board.

In May 2018, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on Twitter that the country’s government would apologize for its actions that determined the fate of the ship’s passengers. An official apology was issued in November of the same year.