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My Father's Family Was Turned Away from America on the M.S. St. Louis
(Wall Street Journal) David Molton - My father's family were among more than 900 passengers on the M.S. St. Louis, a German refugee ship that was turned away from North American ports in 1939. In June 1938, my grandfather was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After two months, he fled to Cuba. In November, Kristallnacht in Germany saw Jewish businesses sacked, synagogues burned to the ground, and Jewish men arrested en masse. Left alone with three children, my grandmother spent much of her dwindling savings on a voyage to Cuba aboard the St. Louis. As the ship neared Havana in May 1939, the Cuban government announced it wouldn't honor the Cuban landing permits sold to passengers by a corrupt Cuban minister. My father recalled seeing the lights and hotels of Miami as the ship steamed up the Florida coast, but the American government had prohibited the St. Louis from docking at any U.S. port. Canada also turned the ship away. On June 6, the St. Louis headed back to Europe, where the passengers were allowed into Britain, France, Holland and Belgium. Nazi armies overran three of these countries within a year. My family - through their own cunning, the assistance of righteous Christians, and a good amount of luck - survived the Nazi invasion. My father, aunt and grandmother went underground after receiving deportation notices to Auschwitz. They traveled through France to sanctuary in Lugano, Switzerland. In 1946 the family finally reunited with my grandfather, who had come to the U.S. in 1940. Many of the other passengers from the St. Louis were not so lucky. The Germans killed 254 of the 532 who remained in Western Europe when Hitler's armies invaded.