The St. Louis: the ship no one would take
Nine hundred and thirty-seven refugees from Germany. Cuba refused, America refused, Canada refused. The ship went back to Europe.
On 13 May 1939 the St. Louis left Hamburg for Havana with nine hundred and thirty-seven passengers, nearly all Jews holding German passports and Cuban landing permits. While the ship was at sea Cuba declared the permits void: the official who issued them had been dismissed. Twenty-nine people were allowed ashore.
Captain Gustav Schröder, a German and not a Jew, took the ship towards the coast of Florida. The passengers cabled President Roosevelt; there was no reply. The State Department said the refugees must "await their turns on the waiting list". A Coast Guard cutter shadowed the ship to see that no one swam ashore. Canada refused as well.
Schröder brought the ship back to Europe but refused to enter Hamburg until the passengers were taken in: the Joint, guaranteeing half a million dollars, persuaded four countries. Britain took 288, France 224, Belgium 214, the Netherlands 181. Within a year three of the four were under German occupation.
By the count of researchers at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, 254 of those left on the continent were murdered. Captain Schröder was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations in 1993.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Passenger manifest of the St. Louis, Hamburg–Havana, May 1939 — 937 passengers holding Cuban landing permits
Scholarship
- Name-by-name study of the passengers' fate, US Holocaust Memorial Museum — 254 of those who remained in Europe were murdered
Basis: documents and evidence.