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SS St. Louis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MS St. Louis was a German ocean liner built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen, Germany, being completed in 1929 for the Hamburg America Line.
The ship sailed transatlantic routes, from Hamburg to New York, but during the Great Depression turned to cruising to make revenue. The ship is most famous for a single voyage in 1939 immortalized by the motion picture Voyage of the Damned.
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The St. Louis sailed out of Hamburg into the Atlantic Ocean in May 1939 carrying one non-Jewish and 936 (mainly German) Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution just before World War II.[1][2]
The ship arrived in Cuba seeking asylum. The boat was kept waiting offshore while the Cuban government disagreed on how much they could charge the passengers to come ashore. A small boat armada formed to keep people from jumping off and swimming ashore, and searchlights guarded it at night. The ship was then refused asylum, prompting a near mutiny. Two people attempted suicide and dozens more threatened to do the same. However, 29 of the refugees were able to disembark at Havana.[3]
On 4 June 1939, the St. Louis was also refused permission to unload on orders of President Roosevelt as the ship waited in the Caribbean Sea between Florida and Cuba. Initially, Roosevelt showed limited willingness to take in some of those on board, but vehement opposition came from Roosevelt's Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and from Southern Democrats — some of whom went so far as to threaten to withhold their support of Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential election if this occurred.
The St. Louis then tried to enter Canada but was denied as well.
The ship sailed for Europe, first stopping in England, where 288 of the passengers disembarked and were thus spared from the Holocaust. The remaining 619 passengers disembarked at Antwerp. 224 were accepted into France, 214 into Belgium and 181 into Holland, safe from Hitler's persecution until the German invasions of these countries. [4][5] The ship without the passengers eventually sailed back to Hamburg, Germany. By using the survival rates for Jews in these countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimate that 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, along with 152 of those in Belgium and 60 of those in Holland survived the Holocaust, giving a total of 709 estimated survivors and 227 killed of the original 936 Jewish refugees.[6] [7]
Julian Barnes's novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters recounts the trial of the St. Louis Jews in the chapter entitled Three Simple Stories.
The ship became a German naval accommodation ship from 1940 to 1944. It was heavily damaged by the Allied bombings at Kiel on August 30, 1944, but was repaired and used as a hotel ship in Hamburg by 1946. The ship was eventually scrapped in 1952.
| Owners: | Hamburg-America Line | |
| Builders: | Bremer-Vulkan Shipyards, yards in Bremen, Germany | |
| Port of registry: | Hamburg, Germany | |
| Laid down: | June 16, 1925 | |
| Launched: | May 6, 1928 | |
| Maiden voyage: | June 15, 1929 | |
| Fate: | Scrapped in Hamburg, Germany, 1952 | |
| Specifications | ||
|---|---|---|
| Gross Tonnage: | 16,732 GRT | |
| Displacement: | 22,060 Long Tons | |
| Length: | 574 ft | |
| Beam: | 72 ft | |
| Number of funnels: | 2 | |
| Number of masts: | 2 | |
| Construction: | Steel | |
| Power: | M.A.N. diesels, meaning that the ship is officially a motor ship, thereby, the MS St. Louis and not the SS St. Louis because it was not powered by steam | |
| Propulsion: | Two triple blade propellers | |
| Service Speed: | 16 knots | |
| Passenger Accommodation (Upon completion): | 973 passengers: 270 cabin class, 287 tourist class, 416 third class | |
- Evian Conference
- Struma
- Voyage of the Damned, the 1976 movie about this event
- A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, the novel by Julian Barnes.
- Un bateau pour l'enfer, the 2005 novel by Gilbert Sinoué.
- ^ UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM COMPLETES TEN-YEAR SEARCH TO UNCOVER THE FATES OF ST. LOUIS PASSENGERS. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
- ^ Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 563. ISBN 1-56025-778-4.
- ^ Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 103. ISBN 1-56025-778-4.
- ^ Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 103, 567. ISBN 1-56025-778-4.
- ^ The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.
- ^ Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 447, 567. ISBN 1-56025-778-4. citing Morgan-Witts and Thomas (1994) pp.8, 238
- ^ Robert Rosen (July 17, 2006). Saving The Jews (speech at the Carter Center). Retrieved on 2007-07-17.}
- Miller, Scott; Sarah A. Ogilvie (2006). Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-21980-1.
- Morgan-Witts, Max; Thomas, Gordon (1994). Voyage of the Damned, 2nd, revised, Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International. ISBN 0-87938-909-5.
- Rosen, Robert (2006). Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 1-56025-778-4.
- The Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis - Jennifer Rosenberg, Jewish Virtual Library, The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise
- The S.S. St. Louis - Robert Rosen
- The Voyage of the St. Louis - The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum