Category:MS St. Louis (subject)

MS St. Louis (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

On May 13, 1939, the Hamburg-Amerika luxury liner, MS St. Louis, sailed for Havana, Cuba, carrying 937 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany (including 200 children). The plan was to wait there for permission to enter the US.

All passengers bore legitimate landing certificates for Cuba. However, during the two-week period that the ship was en route to Havana, the landing certificates granted by the Cuban director general of immigration in lieu of regular visas, were invalidated by the pro-fascist Cuban government. As a result, when the St. Louis reached Havana on May 27, 1939, Cuban authorities denied entry to all but 28 of the passengers. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) dispatched Lawrence Berenson to Cuba to negotiate with local officials but Cuban president Federico Laredo Bru insisted that the ship leave Havana harbor. After a week, the ship sailed to the American coast, but was denied entry.

The US government likewise refused to make any exception to the quota limits. On June 6, 1939, the ship was forced to head back to Europe. While the ship was en route to Antwerp, Belgium, Jewish aid organizations negotiated with European governments to admit the passengers rather than return them to Germany (287 to Great Britain; 214 to Belgium; 224 to France; 181 to the Netherlands). The ship docked in Antwerp, Belgium, on June 17, 1939.

Only those who were accepted by Great Britain found relative safety. The others were soon to be subject once again to Nazi rule with the German invasion of western Europe in the spring of 1940. A fortunate few succeeded in emigrating before this became impossible. In the end, 227 of the 619 St. Louis passengers who found temporary refuge in Belgium, France and the Netherlands died at the hands of the Nazis, but the majority survived the war.

The Children

Group portrait of children on the deck of the MS St. Louis. Pictured in the front row, from left to right are: Herbert Karliner, Harry Guttmann, Hans Schelansky. In the second row: Eugene Moser, unknown, Erich Stein, Walter Karliner, and Hans Fischer.

External links