From the Desk of Jeff King

Casualties of war

Jewish passengers aboard the German luxury liner SS St. Louis (U.S. Holocaust Muesum).

This entry was buried in my June 2004 archives and I wanted to share it again. May America never forget:

Thousands of visitors and veterans swarmed Omaha Beach on D-Day's 60th anniversary. World leaders stood on the bluff where 9,387 American soldiers are buried and gave moving speeches about honor and sacrifice.

But no mention was made of another June 6 anniversary – a failed landing that cost more than 200 innocent lives. On that date in 1939, five years before the Allied invasion, the German luxury liner SS St. Louis steamed slowly off the southeastern coastline of Florida. It carried 937 European Jews who were fleeing Nazi Germany.

The United States, Canada, Cuba and countries in Central and South America rejected the passengers' appeal for asylum. At 11:30 p.m. on June 6, German captain Gustav Schroeder received a cable from the homeland – RETURN TO HAMBURG IMMEDIATELY. According to the book Voyage of the Damned by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, Schroeder walked from his cabin to the bridge and ordered the helmsman to bring the ship onto the heading of east north-east, a course that would return the St. Louis to Germany. Schroeder, who felt deep compassion for the refugees, informed the Jewish passenger committee in private the next day. The Jews knew that returning to Germany meant a death sentence. Some had already spent time in concentration camps and witnessed the murder and torture of prisoners.

The book describes the passenger committee's reaction to Schroeder's news: "Some could not bear even to mention it to their wives and children. It was inhuman, degrading, and endured in private, but it cut deeply into one of the most basic of all human needs: the need to be wanted. Instead, they had been rejected. Even the New World did not want them; now they must rely again on the Old. The committee suffered in silence, knowing it was not just an anonymous group of people who had been turned down, but that they, individually, each one, had had the open door shut in their faces; through them, their entire race had been judged, and found wanting."

A breakthrough in negotiations days later granted the refugees temporary asylum in Great Britain, France, Belgium and Holland. The relief, however, was temporary. About a third of the St. Louis Jews died in the Holocaust after Germany invaded and occupied all but Great Britain. Books and movies have depicted the horrors of D-Day, but the suffering of the St. Louis refugees – as well as hundreds of European Jews who were denied entry on other ships – has largely been forgotten or ignored. Their cries have been silenced.

Yesterday the free world turned its attention to the beaches of Normandy, and rightfully so. D-Day was the defining moment of World War II and the sacrifice of our young men should be honored. But America should not let this day pass without some expression of remorse and repentance. Had we not hardened our hearts, the St. Louis would have reached our beaches without a single casualty.