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MS St. Louis

April 24, 2023

"SS St. Louis" redirects here. For other uses, see List of ships named SS St. Louis.

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]

MS St. Louis in its home port of Hamburg.[1]
History
Germany
NameSt. Louis
OwnerHamburg-America Line
Port of registry
BuilderBremer-Vulkan Shipyards in Bremen, Germany
Laid downJune 16, 1925
LaunchedAugust 2, 1928
Maiden voyageMarch 28, 1929
FateScrapped in 1952
General characteristics
TypePassenger Liner
Tonnage16,732 gross register tons (GRT)
Length574 ft (175 m)
Beam72 ft (22 m)
PropulsionMAN diesels, twin triple-blade propellers
Speed16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)
Capacity973 passengers (270 cabin, 287 tourist, 416 third)

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 anti-Semitic persecution. The refugees first tried to disembark in Cuba but were denied permission to land. After Cuba, the captain, Gustav Schröder, 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

Under construction number 670, St. Louis was launched on August 2, 1928 at the Bremer Vulkan in Bremen-Vegesack. It 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. The sister ship was the Milwaukee, launched on February 20, 1929

St. Louis left Hamburg on March 28, 1929 for her maiden voyage to New 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"

Under the command of Captain Gustav Schröder, 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 Schröder 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]

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 by 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, four months before World War II began, Havana abandoned its pragmatic immigration policy, by virtue of Decree 937, which[clarification needed] "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 harbour 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 a suicide, and was allowed hospitalization in Havana.[4]

 
Boarding at Hamburg Harbor

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 Schröder 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 Schröder 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.[citation needed]

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.[13] The ship could have reached Halifax, Nova Scotia in two days.[14] 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.[15]

As Captain Schröder 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.[16][17]

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 Schröder, 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.[18][19]

 
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 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.[20] 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.[21][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 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 alive at war's end.[22]

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

Legacy

After the war, the Federal Republic of Germany awarded Captain Gustav Schröder the Order of Merit. In 1993, Schröder 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.[23]

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.[24] 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.[25] 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.[26]

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.[27] 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.[27]

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.[28] The apology was issued on November 7, 2018.[29]

Later career

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.[30][citation needed]

Notable passengers

Representations

  • 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

See also

  • 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 Mefküre, 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

  1. ^ Photo Archives United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  2. ^ "MS St. Louis German ocean liner". Encyclopædia Britannica.
  3. ^ Madokoro, Laura. "Remembering the Voyage of the St. Louis". Active History.
  4. ^ a b "Voyage of the St. Louis". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
  5. ^ Rosen, p. 563.
  6. ^ a b c "The Righteous Among The Nations: Gustav Schroeder". Yad Vashem. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  7. ^ Levine, p. 105.
  8. ^ Levine, pp. 110–11.
  9. ^ Levine, p. 103
  10. ^ Levine, p. 114.
  11. ^ a b c d Rosen, Robert (July 17, 2006). Saving the Jews (Speech). Carter Center (Atlanta, Georgia). Retrieved July 17, 2007.
  12. ^ "The Voyage of the St. Louis" (PDF). American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. June 15, 1939. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  13. ^ "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.
  14. ^ "Maritime Museum Exhibit on Tragic Voyage of MS St. Louis". Government of Nova Scotia. November 5, 2010. Retrieved September 12, 2014.
  15. ^ "Clergy apologize for turning away the St. Louis". CBC News. Retrieved May 8, 2008.
  16. ^ George Axelsson, "907 Refugees End Voyage in Antwerp", New York Times, 18 June 1939
  17. ^ Levine, p. 118.
  18. ^ Rosen, pp. 103, 567.
  19. ^ "The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis". Retrieved July 17, 2007.
  20. ^ Thomas and Morgan-Witts (1974). Voyage of the Damned. New York, Stein and Day. ISBN 9780812816945.
  21. ^ Rosen, pp. 447, 567 citing Morgan-Witts and Thomas (1994) pp. 8, 238
  22. ^ Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie (2010). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 174–75. ISBN 9780299219833.
  23. ^ "Traveling Exhibit: MS St. Louis Ship of Fate" June 30, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
  24. ^ Studio Daniel Libeskind July 8, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, daniel-libeskind.com, 19 January 2011; retrieved 21 January 2011.
  25. ^ Taplin, Jennifer (January 21, 2011). . Metro News Halifax. Archived from the original on March 10, 2016. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  26. ^ "Exhibitions", Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, pier21.ca; accessed 12 September 2014.
  27. ^ a b Eppinger, Kamerel (September 26, 2012). "State Department apologizes to Jewish refugees". shfwire.com. Retrieved September 26, 2017.
  28. ^ "Trudeau to offer formal apology in Commons for fate of Jewish refugee ship MS St. Louis". Retrieved May 11, 2018.
  29. ^ "Trudeau apologizes for Canada's 1939 refusal of Jewish refugee ship". Retrieved November 7, 2018.
  30. ^ "M/S St. Louis, Hamburg America Line". www.norwayheritage.com. Retrieved January 27, 2021.
  31. ^ 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.
  32. ^ "Obituary: Frederick Reif / Educator, author and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Retrieved June 18, 2022.

Sources

  • Levine, Robert M. (1993). Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. p. 103. ISBN 9781558765214.
  • Miller, Scott; Sarah A. Ogilvie (2006). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-21980-2. OCLC 64592065.
  • Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 978-1-56025-778-3. OCLC 64664326.
  • Whitaker, Reginald (1991). Canadian Immigration Policy. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association. ISBN 0-88798-120-8.

Further reading

  • Afoumado, Diane. Exil impossible: L'errance des Juifs du paquebot St-Louis (L’Harmattan, 2005).
  • 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, A. The Saddest Ship Afloat: The Tragedy of the MS St. Louis, Nimbus Publishing, 2016. ISBN 978-1771083997
  • Irving Abella and Harold Troper's None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to St. Louis (ship, 1929).
  • 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

April 24, 2023
louis, louis, redirects, here, other, uses, list, ships, named, louis, diesel, powered, passenger, ship, properly, referred, with, prefix, built, bremer, vulkan, shipyards, bremen, hapag, better, known, english, hamburg, america, line, ship, named, after, city. SS St Louis redirects here For other uses see List of ships named SS St Louis 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 MS St Louis in its home port of Hamburg 1 HistoryGermanyNameSt LouisOwnerHamburg America LinePort of registryHamburg 1928 1933 Hamburg 1933 1945 Hamburg 1945 1949 Hamburg 1949 1952 BuilderBremer Vulkan Shipyards in Bremen GermanyLaid downJune 16 1925LaunchedAugust 2 1928Maiden voyageMarch 28 1929FateScrapped in 1952General characteristicsTypePassenger LinerTonnage16 732 gross register tons GRT Length574 ft 175 m Beam72 ft 22 m PropulsionMAN diesels twin triple blade propellersSpeed16 knots 30 km h 18 mph Capacity973 passengers 270 cabin 287 tourist 416 third 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 anti Semitic 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 Contents 1 Background and early years 2 The Voyage of the Damned 3 Legacy 4 Later career 5 Notable passengers 6 Representations 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Sources 10 Further reading 11 External linksBackground and early years EditUnder construction number 670 St Louis was launched on August 2 1928 at the Bremer Vulkan in Bremen Vegesack It 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 The sister ship was the Milwaukee launched on February 20 1929St Louis left Hamburg on March 28 1929 for her maiden voyage to New 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 EditUnder 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 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 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 abandoned its pragmatic immigration policy by virtue of Decree 937 which clarification needed 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 harbour 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 a suicide and was allowed hospitalization in Havana 4 Boarding at Hamburg Harbor 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 citation needed 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 13 The ship could have reached Halifax Nova Scotia in two days 14 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 15 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 16 17 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 18 19 St Louis Captain Gustav Schroder 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 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 20 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 21 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 22 The Dutch applied a special marking inside passports of those they accepted Legacy EditAfter 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 23 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 24 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 25 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 26 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 27 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 27 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 28 The apology was issued on November 7 2018 29 Later career EditMS 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 30 citation needed Notable passengers EditArno Motulsky 1923 2018 medical geneticist 31 Frederick Reif 1927 2019 physicist at University of California Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University 32 Representations EditThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message 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 10 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 BoehmSee also EditSS 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 1940Notes Edit Photo Archives United States Holocaust Memorial Museum MS St Louis German ocean liner Encyclopaedia Britannica Madokoro Laura 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 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 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 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 EditLevine Robert M 1993 Tropical Diaspora The Jewish Experience in Cuba Gainesville University Press of Florida p 103 ISBN 9781558765214 Miller Scott Sarah A Ogilvie 2006 Refuge Denied The St Louis Passengers and the Holocaust Madison University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 978 0 299 21980 2 OCLC 64592065 Rosen Robert 2006 Saving the Jews Franklin D Roosevelt and the Holocaust New York Thunder s Mouth Press ISBN 978 1 56025 778 3 OCLC 64664326 Whitaker Reginald 1991 Canadian Immigration Policy Ottawa Canadian Historical Association ISBN 0 88798 120 8 Further reading EditAfoumado Diane Exil impossible L errance des Juifs du paquebot St Louis L Harmattan 2005 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 A The Saddest Ship Afloat The Tragedy of the MS St Louis Nimbus Publishing 2016 ISBN 978 1771083997 Irving Abella and Harold Troper s None Is Too Many Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933 1948External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to St Louis ship 1929 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 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title MS St Louis amp oldid 1149394913, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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