Wandering Jews

Because most countries turned their backs on Jews fleeing Germany, Germany’s rulers (like Josef Goebbels) felt that this justified their argument that murder was the only way to deal with the “Jewish problem.”

In 1938, only the Dominican Republic – out of 32 nations – agreed to accept Jewish refugees after an international conference on the subject in Evian, France. The reason: Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the island, supposedly wanted to “whiten” the indigenous race. But although 100,000 Jews were allowed admission, only 645 Jews immigrated. They set up a prosperous agricultural cooperative in a former jungle area, Sosua. (Today, few Jews live there.)

The St. Louis, a German ocean-liner, had seven decks that held 400 first-class passengers and 500 tourist class passengers. The cost was high, and first-class passengers had to pay 33 percent more.

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Of the 937 passengers on the St. Louis, the majority were women. All were Jewish, with just one exception.

The St. Louis set sail on May 13, 1939. The trip to Cuba and back to Europe, to Belgium, took 40 days – to June 17. It was the November 1938 pogrom, which the Nazis called Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass,” that persuaded Jews like Buff that Germany was no longer a place for Jews to live.

Captain Gustav Schroeder was posthumously named a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Herbert & Vera Karliner

Gustav Schroeder, captain of the St. Louis, made sure the crew treated the passengers with respect. In 1993, Yad Vashem recognized him, posthumously, as Righteous Among the Nations. (He died in 1959.)

U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was against letting the Jews enter the United States, apparently because Southern Democrats – anti-immigrants – threatened to stop supporting Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election.

While the St. Louis passengers were awaiting their fate, the Wagner-Rogers bill died in committee. It would have let 20,000 Jewish children from Germany come to the United States. Asked for her opinion of the bill, Laura Delano Houghteling, wife of the commissioner of immigration and a cousin of Roosevelt’s, said that “20,000 ugly children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.”

Some passengers with visas were able to debark in Cuba or the United States. When the 620 remaining passengers returned and debarked at Antwerp, Belgium, some went to the United Kingdom, some to France, some remained in Belgium, some went to the Netherlands. Of the 620 remaining passengers, 254 who debarked in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France were eventually killed by the Nazis. Some 364 survived the war.

Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, helped passengers on the St. Louis find refuge in Britain. Although he would sometimes make anti-Semitic remarks, his efforts to help Jews led the Arab National League to call him a “Zionist Charlie McCarthy.”

The St. Louis itself was badly damaged by Allied planes and was scrapped in 1952.

“Riding the Storm Waves” was edited by Maryann McLoughlin of The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s Holocaust Resource Center. Of the 160 pages, 37 are devoted to the diary. With its plentiful notes, the book is meant to be used in schools, from grades five through college. Paul Winkler, executive director of the New Jersey Holocaust Education Commission, was instrumental in seeing that the book was published. It can be purchased online at www.ComteQpublishing.com, or by calling (609) 487-9000.