From the Desk of Jeff King

The ship nobody wanted

Darkness overtook the SS St. Louis as it approached the Florida coastline on June 3, 1939. The lights of Miami winked in the distance – a beacon of hope to more than 900 Jewish refugees aboard the German luxury liner.

The Jews, who had sailed across the Atlantic to escape growing persecution in Nazi Germany, were close enough to see hotels and automobiles along the beach. Peering through binoculars, 12-year-old Herbert Karliner could not take his eyes off the shoreline. "I'd never seen coconut trees in my life. I was very impressed," says Karliner, pictured below with his father Joseph aboard the ship.

But the attraction was not mutual. A Coast Guard cutter and military plane shadowed the ship to discourage it from entering American waters. Asylum was denied by the State Department, and telegrams sent by the passenger committee to President Franklin D. Roosevelt went unanswered. "The mood on board was grim," says Liesl Loeb of Elkins Park, Pa., who was 10 at the time. "The captain thought he could land the ship at night, but the shore patrol made sure we kept moving."

Seeking refuge in America was a desperate move by the St. Louis. Days earlier the ship had been denied entry into Cuba – her original destination – after the government refused to honor the passengers' landing permits. Most of the Jews had sold possessions to book passage, pay off corrupt German officials and buy visas. For five days the St. Louis sailed in circles between Cuba and Florida as refuge was sought for the Jews in North, Central and South America.

But the Jews could not find a friend anywhere. A New York Times editorial lamented, "We can only hope that some hearts will soften somewhere and some refuge be found. The cruise of the St. Louis cries to heaven of man's inhumanity to men." Except for the Jewish community, the crisis failed to rally support from the American public, including the church. The final rejection came from Canada and its anti-Semitic immigration director Frederick Blair, who bragged about his success in denying European Jews entry into Canada. Karliner remembers the feeling of rejection: "Nobody in the world wanted us."

Running low on fuel and supplies, the St. Louis was ordered to return to its homeport in Hamburg, Germany. The passenger committee tried to maintain calm, but behind closed doors many Jewish families planned to commit suicide. "That to me was a shocker," says Jules Wallerstein of Norwalk, Conn. "I was 12 years old and realized it was the end of my life. My parents knew if we went back the trains would be waiting for us."

Aaron Pozner had another exit strategy: launch a mutiny. He and several Jewish youths stormed the bridge and overpowered the watch, then sent for German captain Gustav Schroeder. Pozner and two men surrounded the captain when he arrived and demanded he sail to any country other than Germany. According to the book Voyage of the Damned by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Schroeder answered firmly, "The other passengers will not support you. You have not seized the engine room. My crew will overpower you. All you are doing is laying yourself open to a charge of piracy." The captain, who had compassion for the refugees, said he would overlook their criminal actions if they would leave the bridge, which they did. He promised the men he would do everything possible to land the Jews in England.

Pozner, a Hebrew teacher, already had been a target of Nazi brutality in Germany. During Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," he was dragged from his home and imprisoned briefly at Dachu, where he witnessed the murder of Jews by hanging, drowning and crucifixion. Pozner was released from camp on the condition he leave Germany within 14 days. As he traveled on foot to reach the St. Louis he was beaten and forced to sleep among bloody animal hides.

Schroeder kept his word by planning a daring rescue off the coast of England: running the St. Louis aground, setting it on fire and evacuating the passengers ashore. But an unexpected break kept the captain from taking those extreme measures. Four European nations – Great Britain, France, Belgium and Holland – granted temporary asylum to the Jews following exhaustive negotiations. The swing of emotions aboard the ship is captured in this telegram sent by passengers to Morris Troper, one of the chief negotiators: "907 St. Louis passengers who have been hanging between hope and despair for the past 13 days, today received your news, delivered on 6/13 that definitive arrangements have been made for all the passengers. Our gratitude is as immense as the sea that we have been sailing on since May 13."

The Jews, who had languished at sea for 40 days and 40 nights, disembarked in Antwerp, Belgium, and were moved to various locations. Relief for many of the Jews, however, was temporary as World War II erupted months later and trapped them in Nazi-occupied Europe. About a third of the St. Louis Jews, including Pozner, perished in concentration camps. Although many Jewish refugee ships were denied entry by western nations and forgotten, the St. Louis saga was well publicized and exploited by the Nazis for propaganda. The St. Louis snub helped convince Hitler he could launch his Final Solution without opposition from the West.

Karliner and a brother avoided capture by hiding in an unoccupied zone in France during the war. Karliner immigrated to America in 1947 and three years later was drafted into the Army, where he served as a translator in the Pacific. Today he lives in Miami. His parents and two sisters died at Auschwitz. On Kristallnacht, Herbert and his father watched helplessly as Nazis burned their prayer books and Torah scroll at the local synagogue. Joseph tried to rescue the scroll but was shoved back. The Karliner general store was vandalized and its windows shattered. Later, the gestapo rounded up Jewish men in town, including Joseph, and sent them to Buchenwald. Herbert says his father was unrecognizable when he returned from the prisoner camp three weeks later. The Karliners sold their business and home, purchased landing certificates for Cuba at an inflated price, and said goodbye to their homeland forever.

After landing in Britain, Liesl Loeb and her mother Lilli were allowed to book passage for New York. They left London during an air raid and sailed to America on a ship that was stalked by a U-boat. Jules Wallerstein and his family were living in a Brussels apartment when the Nazis invaded Belgium. They fled the country – receiving kind treatment from German soldiers along the way – and boarded a ship in Casablanca, Morocco, bound for America in 1941.

The St. Louis saga, one of the most shameful chapters in U.S. history, was immortalized in the 1976 movie Voyage of the Damned that received three Academy Award nominations, although Loeb says it was "a bad movie, very Hollywood." Books and documentaries were produced, but over time the subject has been buried and forgotten. The survivors are aging and their testimony is in jeopardy of passing with them.

But in recent years the Jews have received attention from an unexpected source. Christians in the United States and Canada, representing a church body that ignored their peril in 1939, are seeking reconciliation with public expressions of remorse and repentance. In November 2000, 250 Canadian Christians honored 25 surviving passengers at a private dinner at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa. During the banquet, Baptist pastor Doug Blair – great nephew of the immigration director who snubbed the St. Louis – offered an apology so tender that the Jews rose spontaneously to embrace him.

"I have come to beg your forgiveness for the deep, deep wrong that was done to you," he addressed the survivors. "I understand very well that my name is not one dear to your heart. . . . Will you forgive me and let me call you my friends?" Karliner was especially moved by a letter written by a Canadian child: "Dear Jew, I'm sorry we didn't let you in because you are the apple of God's eye."

Weeks before the banquet, Karliner was invited by David Demian, director of Watchmen for the Nations ministry in Vancouver, B.C., to speak at church gatherings across Canada. In Vancouver, 400 Christians – moved by Karliner's testimony – rushed the platform, knelt at his feet and asked for forgiveness. "I didn’t know what to do," Karliner says in his thick German accent. "I tried to lift them up, but I couldn’t lift 400 people. When I think about it I still get goose pimples. I knew Jews who were coming to the Ottawa dinner. I couldn't tell them what I saw and felt. Nobody would believe me." Karliner also spoke at a church in Ottawa, where hundreds of Christians formed a protective circle around Karliner and several Jewish friends. The Gentiles repeated the Old Testament vow that Ruth spoke to Naomi: "Your people shall be my people and your God, my God (see Ruth 1:16)."

Survivors also received a formal apology from American Christians and government officials at an international prayer gathering in June 2001 at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the location of the Coast Guard station that sent the gunboat to intercept the St. Louis. During the three-day All Americas Convocation, Christians and Jews laid a wreath off Florida's eastern coast. Many survivors threw roses into the water in memory of lost loved ones.

In the process of building new relationships, Christians are slowly earning the trust of the surviving passengers, who were skeptical when church leaders first contacted them. "Never in my wildest expectations could I imagine the church of Canada as a whole would repent and apologize to the Jews," Karliner says. "But in my heart I wanted to give it a try."

As Jews entered the grand hall for the banquet in Ottawa, Christians broke into thunderous applause. The blast of a ram's horn filled the room as tears streamed down the faces of Jews and Gentiles. One survivor remarked, "I never had much of a wedding. I felt like a bride walking up the aisle on her wedding day."

Postscript

The struggle aboard the St. Louis did not end when its Jewish passengers disembarked in Belgium in June 1939. After completing summer cruises in the Caribbean, the ship was at sea without passengers when war was declared Sept. 3. Captain Gustav Schroeder commanded two daring voyages to return the St. Louis to its homeport in Hamburg. He slipped past the British blockade to reach safety in Murmansk, Russia, and four months later set sail for Hamburg. He arrived in Germany on New Year's Day.

The St. Louis was heavily damaged by Allied bombs in 1944 and six years later sold for scrap. Schroeder, who never returned to sea, struggled to make a living as a writer following the war. His Jewish passengers sent him food and clothing, and helped acquit him of any Nazi collaboration. The West German government awarded him a citation and medal in 1957, two years before his death, for his part in saving Jewish lives during the 1939 voyage. He is honored as a righteous Gentile at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

Posted by Jeff King at August 15, 2003 06:34 PM