It became compulsory for Jews to report any property valued at 5,000 reichsmarks or more.
July 1938
Jews were no longer allowed in health spas.
September 1938
Jews lost the right to practice law.
October 1938
The Reich decreed that all German passports held by Jews would be invalid unless stamped with a “J.”
November 1938
The Reich shuttered all Jewish businesses.
The Reich prohibited Jewish children from attending public schools.
Jews were no longer allowed in cinemas, theaters, or sports facilities.
November 9–10, 1938
In an organized action called Reichskristallnacht, or the “night of broken glass,” Nazis destroyed synagogues, shops, and homes, killed more than ninety Jews, and arrested over twenty thousand of them, sending them to concentration camps.
February 1939
Jews were ordered to give the Reich all their gold and silver, with the exception of wedding rings.
Chronology is based partly on information from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: “Examples of Antisemitic Legislation, 1933–1939,” Holocaust Encyclopedia (www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007459, accessed October 17, 2008).
More information about anti-Semitic legislation and actions can be found at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site: www.ushmm.org.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The Other Half of Life is based on the true story of the MS (“motor ship”) St. Louis, which left Hamburg, Germany, on May 13, 1939, bound for Havana, Cuba. It carried 937 passengers, the majority of whom were Jews escaping Nazi Germany.
Among the people I spoke to during my research was a man who fled Germany with his family in 1938. He explained that someone who had not lived through his experiences could never understand or truly convey the mind-set of the period, which is so foreign to the climate of freedom we enjoy in America today. This is probably correct, but I still felt that bringing the voyage of the St. Louis back to life for a new generation was a worthy task.
What in The Other Half of Life is accurate and what is fiction? When it was possible, I stayed true to the events and timetable of the voyage. But there is plenty in these pages that I imagined or altered to fit my story.
The following are all true:
There were young people traveling alone aboard the ship, as well as a crew member who was hiding his Jewish identity. The captain was indeed a principled and ethical man who insisted on treating his Jewish passengers like anyone else. And there was a German underground group opposed to Hitler whose mission was to compile information on anti-Nazi sentiment and make it known to other countries. A Nazi spy from the Abwehr —the German intelligence organization—was aboard the ship, and he picked up secret papers in Havana and carried them back to Germany. While no one knows what the papers were, there is speculation that they held information on American military equipment.
Ultimately, the ship was turned away by Cuba and other Latin American countries, Canada, and the United States of America. After much negotiation, France, Holland, Belgium, and Great Britain agreed to take the passengers. Tragically, 254 of the 937 people on board the St. Louis perished in the Holocaust.1 Many of the surviving passengers eventually immigrated to the United States.
The St. Louis left an indelible legacy in helping to shape our country's humanitarian treatment of refugees, and influenced legislation such as the 1948 Displaced Persons Act and the 1980 Refugee Act. Because of the United States' history as a safe haven for people seeking freedom, it continues to struggle with the complex and controversial issue of how many refugees to admit.
1Bloomfield, Sara J., foreword to Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p. x.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the following people who helped me throughout my research and writing:
I owe a great debt of gratitude to Herbert Karliner for sharing the story of his family's journey aboard the St. Louis and his life afterward. Mr. Karliner also was kind enough to read the manuscript, and it means so very much to me that he was happy with it. Thank you also to Ed Goldstein for talking to me about prewar Jewish life and how his family decided to leave Germany; Lamelle Ryman for her expertise on Judaism; Luke Evans Calhoun of the Harvard University Chess Club for his amazing guidance in all chess matters; Professor Murray Schwartz of Emerson College for his vast knowledge of World War II and the Holocaust; Jack Putnam of the South Street Seaport Museum, which houses the collection from the Ocean Liner Museum; the Newton Free Library, where most of this book was researched and written; and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Thanks, too, to Rose Brock, librarian at Coppell Middle School West, Coppell, Texas, and Kenneth Kugler, young adult librarian at Queens Library, Jamaica, New York, for reviewing the manuscript. I would also like to thank my agent, Jeff Dwyer; my wonderful editor, Nancy Hinkel, who encouraged me to write this book; and the many other integral people at Knopf, including Allison Wortche, Jenny Golub, Artie Bennett, Barbara Perris, Alison Kolani, and Kate Gartner. My writing friends helped me every step of the way: Cara Crandall, Lynne Heitman, Mike Wiecek, and Samantha Cameron. Finally, on a personal note, I couldn't have written this without the support of Matt, my mom and my dad, Mary Flaherty, and Maggie O'Brien, who all made it possible for me to find time to write.
Selected Sources on the MS St. Louis
Books
Morse, Arthur D. While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1983.
Ogilvie, Sarah A., and Scott Miller. Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.
Thomas, Gordon, and Max Morgan Witts. Voyage of the Damned. Mattituck, NY: Amereon House, 1974.
Videos & DVDs
The Double Crossing: The Voyage of the St. Louis. Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois and Loyola University, Chicago. Distributed by Ergo Media, Inc., Teaneck, NJ, 1992.
Sea Tales: The Doomed Voyage of the St. Louis. Distributed by A&E Home Entertainment, New York, 1996.
Online Sources
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online. “Voyage of the St. Louis,”
www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/stlouis (October 17, 2008).
Sources on the Holocaust
Edelheit, Abraham J., and Hershel Edelheit. History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.
Edelheit, Hershel, and Abraham J. Edelheit. A World in Turmoil: An Integrated Chronology of the Holocaust and World War II. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. New York: The Penguin Press, 2005.
Schoeps, Karl-Heinz. Literature and Film in the Third Reich. Translated by Kathleen M. Dell'Orto. Suffolk, England: Boydell & Brewer, 2004.
Sources on German Resistance
Benz, Wolfgang, and Walter H. Pehle. Encyclopedia of German Resistance to the Nazi Movement. Translated by Lance W. Garmer. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1997.
Gill, Anton. An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933–1945. New York: Henry Holt, 1994.
Hoffmann, Peter. The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945. Translated by Richard Barry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.
Peukert, Detlev J. K. Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life. Translated by Richard Deveson. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
Thomsett, Michael C. The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938–1945. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1997.
Von Klemperer, Klemens. German Resistance Against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sources on Ocean Liners
Hansen, Clas Broder. Passenger Liners from Germany, 1
816–1990. Translated by Dr. Edward Force. West Chester, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1991.
Hunter-Cox, Jane. Ocean Pictures: The Golden Age of Transatlantic Travel, 1936 to 1959. London: Webb & Bower, 1989.
Maddocks, Melvin. The Great Liners. Alexandria, VA: Time Life Books, 1978.
Maxtone-Graham, John. Crossing & Cruising: From the Golden Era of Ocean Liners to the Luxury Cruise Ships of Today. New York: Scribner, 1992.
Maxtone-Graham, John. The Only Way to Cross. New York: Macmillan, 1972.
McAuley, Rob. The Liners: A Voyage of Discovery. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International, 1997.
Miller, William H., Jr. The Great Luxury Liners, 1927–1954: A Photographic Record. New York: Dover Publications, 1981.
Sources on Chess
Gelo, James H. Chess World Championships: All the Games, All with Diagrams, 1834–2004. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2006.
Hannak, J. Emanuel Lasker: The Life of a Chess Master. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959.
Lasker, Emanuel. Lasker's Manual of Chess. New York: Dover Publications, 1947.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim Ablon Whitney learned about the fateful voyage of the MS St. Louis and was immediately gripped by the heartbreaking story and what life on board must have been like: “From the first time I read The Diary of Anne Frank and Night, I have been interested in the events surrounding World War II and the Holocaust. When I first heard of the tragic story of the St. Louis, I knew I wanted to try to bring it to life for future generations.”
Kim has published two previous novels with Knopf: See You Down the Road and The Perfect Distance. She lives with her family in Newton, Massachusetts. To learn more about Kim, please visit www.kimablonwhitney.com.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical and public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are largely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the largely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Kim Ablon Whitney
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Whitney, Kim Ablon.
The other half of life : a novel based on the true story of the MS St. Louis / Kim Ablon Whitney — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: In 1939, fifteen-year-old Thomas sails on a German ship bound for Cuba with more than nine hundred German Jews expecting to be granted safe haven in Cuba.
eISBN: 978-0-375-85355-5
1. Jews—Germany—History—1933–1945—Juvenile fiction. 2. Holocaust, Jewish
(1939–1945)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Jews—Germany—History—1933–1945—Fiction.
2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Fiction. 3. Refugees, Jewish—Fiction.
4. Ships—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W61547Ot 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008038949
First Edition
Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
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