The St. Louis amenities included a hairdresser and barber shop, well-stocked bars on every deck, and a shop that sold binoculars, cameras, books, postcards, and other souvenirs. Purchases had to be made using “shipboard money”—credits purchased from HAPAG up to the value of 230 Reichsmarks—that was good only at sea and could not be reconverted into real currency at the conclusion of the voyage. That shipboard money was necessary, as most of the refugees had been allowed to leave Germany with no more than 10 Reichsmarks in cash, only about four dollars, each.
Thirty-eight hours after departing Hamburg, at 9:30 on Monday morning, May 15, the St. Louis arrived in Cherbourg, France, to pick up a few more passengers and to bring aboard several crates of fresh fruits and vegetables for the ship’s kitchens. Early that afternoon, the St. Louis once again weighed anchor and glided out into the English Channel to begin the transatlantic portion of the voyage. With the newly added passengers, there were now 937 refugees on board. Almost all of them were, like Alex and Helmut, Jews fleeing the Third Reich under great duress. Most had been citizens of Germany, some were from Eastern Europe, a few were Spaniards seeking sanctuary from the Civil War. None of them was traveling for pleasure.
They experienced more rain, fog, and some choppy seas in the channel, but as the ship left the European continent behind, the sun broke through a bank of clouds that lay upon the western horizon. Captain Schroeder ordered the engine room to achieve the maximum speed of sixteen knots. At that moment, only the most pessimistic of the passengers could have felt anything other than hope and relief as the St. Louis assumed a steady southwest course.
But they were sailing in blissful ignorance. Members of the Cuban government in Havana, Nazi leaders in Berlin, the U.S. State Department in Washington, and Jewish relief and refugee organizations on two continents were already aware that something was amiss and that the passengers on board the St. Louis might encounter difficulties when the vessel entered Cuban waters.
A confluence of economic issues, blatant anti-Semitism, corruption, greed, and political power plays within the Cuban government had begun to shape events. Cuba was still trying to dig itself out from the effects of the worldwide Depression, and unemployment was high. Many Cubans thought that there were already far too many immigrants competing with native-born citizens for scarce jobs. The island’s four thousand Jews were an obvious target for the usual charges of international financial manipulations and shady behind-the-scenes string-pulling. An active Cuban Nazi Party encouraged the growth of anti-Semitism by publishing such pamphlets as Under the Jewish Communist Yoke.
Three Cuban newspapers, all of which were owned by Jose Ignacio Rivero, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler, Spanish Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, also encouraged such sentiments. Rivero had recently been invited to the Italian Embassy in Havana to receive an award for his tireless support of the fascist cause, and he had begun a campaign in his newspapers to restrict Jewish immigration to Cuba. One of his editorials declared, “Against this Jewish invasion we must react with the same energy as have other peoples of the globe. Otherwise we will be absorbed, and the day will come when the blood of our martyrs and heroes shall have served solely to enable the Jews to enjoy a country conquered by our ancestors.”
The flashpoint of resistance to the orderly arrival of the St. Louis, however, was a dispute among Cuban politicians involving those ancient obsessions, money and power. Manuel Benitez Gonzalez, the immigration officer who had sold his landing certificates to Alex, Helmut, and hundreds of other passengers, was a protégé of Army Chief of Staff Fulgencio Batista, who in a few years would become president of Cuba. But well connected though he was, Benitez was on the outs with the current Cuban president, Federico Laredo Bru. And Benitez had made other enemies within the Cuban government through his shameless profiteering. By selling his landing certificates without checking with other officials, he had managed to amass a personal fortune of nearly a million dollars. Some of those other officials demanded a share of the certificate racket; when Benitez refused, they resolved to kill his golden goose.
So it was that the forces opposed to Jewish immigration on economic or bigoted grounds and those who were determined to halt the lucrative sale of the Benitez certificates found common cause. On the morning of Thursday, May 4, one of Rivero’s newspapers reported that a ship would arrive in Havana later that month carrying a thousand Jewish refugees who had obtained permission to land from a rogue officer within the Bru administration. Later that day, a member of the Cuban congress took to the floor to demand that the president issue an ordinance “prohibiting repeated immigrations of Hebrews who have been inundating the Republic and prohibiting permits that are being issued for the entrance of such immigrants to Cuba, until this House can approve a proposed law imposing severe penalties upon fraudulent immigration that makes a joke of the laws of the Republic.”
Unfortunately for the refugees on board the St. Louis, President Bru chose this moment to demonstrate to his countrymen just who was in charge of Cuban immigration. On the day after the congressional demand, Friday, May 5, eight days before the St. Louis steamed out of Hamburg, Bru issued an order—coincidentally, given the number of passengers aboard the ill-fated ship, known as Decree 937—that invalidated all of the Benitez landing certificates. The order stipulated that only with written authorization from the Cuban secretaries of state, labor, and treasury, plus the posting of a $500 bond, could an immigrant gain legal entry into Havana. This announcement was for internal consumption only; though it was transmitted to high HAPAG officials, word never leaked down to the people most affected: the refugees themselves.
Two significant circumstances explain the Hamburg-America Line’s decision to keep news of the decree from spreading. To put it another way, HAPAG wanted the voyage of the St. Louis to proceed smoothly, but for two different reasons. The first was quite simple: the line needed the money. After months of falling revenue, this excursion that promised 937 customers paying fares ranging from 600 to 800 Reichsmarks each, plus the “contingency” fee, was simply too big a windfall to forgo.
Then there was the more shadowy reason that HAPAG wanted the voyage to proceed: espionage. Otto Schiendick, the second-class steward and Nazi provocateur, was traveling to Cuba as a courier on behalf of German military intelligence, the Abwehr. The plan was for Schiendick to meet in Havana with a Nazi spy named Robert Hoffman, who would deliver to him a cache of important documents on top-secret subjects ranging from military installations throughout Central America to the potential vulnerability of the Panama Canal—topics of intense interest to a German military already dreaming of possible adventures in the Western Hemisphere. After securing this information, Schiendick would return to Hamburg with all possible speed on the return journey of the St. Louis and make his delivery to his Abwehr superiors. The plan was simple and airtight, especially given Hoffman’s cover: assistant manager of the Havana offices of the Hamburg-America Line.
When HAPAG director Claus-Gottfried Holthusen learned of the existence of Decree 937, quite naturally he cabled Havana to ask for clarification of the situation. The next day, Luis Clasing, the manager of HAPAG’s Havana office, informed Holthusen that he had received the “personal guarantee” of the Cuban immigration director that all would be well when the St. Louis reached Havana. Thus reassured, Holthusen kept the news of Decree 937 to himself and informed no one else, least of all Captain Schroeder and his passengers, who left Hamburg with no idea that anything untoward was awaiting them.
The citizens of Cuba soon learned of both Decree 937 and the imminent departure of the St. Louis. On Monday, May 8, whipped up by another savage editorial in one of Rivero’s papers, forty thousand people attended a boisterous rally in downtown Havana. The organizers warned that this approaching boatload of new immigrants was yet another example of the worldwide Jewish threat. A speaker at the rally called upon his countrymen to “fight the Jews until the last one is driven out.”
/> Such words were sweet music to the ears of Joseph Goebbels. The propaganda minister was eager to show the world that it was not just Germany that had no use for the Jews. He and his colleagues in the German Foreign Office hastily issued a statement. “In all parts of the world,” it read, “the influx of Jews arouses the resistance of the native population and thus provides the best propaganda for Germany’s Jewish policy. In North America, South America, France, Holland, Scandinavia, and Greece—wherever the Jewish migratory current flows—a marked growth of anti-Semitism is already noticeable. It must be the task of German foreign policy to encourage this anti-Semitic wave.”
As the St. Louis steamed steadily onward, mounting internal and external pressures on the Cuban government threatened to prevent the ship from disembarking her passengers in a timely fashion. Such organizations as the London-based International Committee on Political Refugees, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee of New York, and the Jewish Relief Committee in Havana—all of which were following the progress of the journey—slowly came to the realization that trouble lay dead ahead.
The passengers on board the St. Louis, however, knew nothing of those matters and felt only giddy pleasure as they sailed ever closer to the warm waters of the Caribbean. Within a day or two of their departure from Hamburg, most of the adult refugees had cast off their sadness and began taking full advantage of the splendid amenities their vessel offered. A typical day began with a full breakfast that included everything from eggs and fruit to kippers and cheese. The older passengers would then enjoy a few hours reclining in deck chairs under the sun as they sipped from mugs of excellently brewed coffee. After retreating to the dining hall for lunch, they might engage in a game of shuffleboard or deck tennis or swim a few laps in the ship’s pool and attend an afternoon tea dance. Younger passengers enjoyed playing a horse-race game in which wooden horses advanced around a track in accordance with the throw of ivory dice. At night, following another sumptuous meal, there were dances, movies, and lectures to enjoy. The amusements must have seemed equal parts marvelous and amazing to those refugees, many of whom had recently spent time in concentration camps and all of whom had spent years as second-class citizens in their own land.
Twelve-year-old Herbert Karliner played the horses, swam in the pool, and also indulged his fascination with long-distance communication by hanging around the telegraph operator, watching him send messages. The operator was very friendly and didn’t object to Herbert’s presence, but one day the young man came face to face with Captain Schroeder, who told him kindly but firmly that he was not allowed in the telegraph room and would have to leave immediately.
Herbert Karliner, aged 12, poses with his father, Joseph, on the top deck of the St. Louis.
(Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
I have no firsthand report on how Alex and Helmut spent their days and nights on board the St. Louis. But I imagine that Alex, only five months removed from his ordeal in Sachsenhausen, took full advantage of the opportunity to eat his fill three times a day and simply relax in a deck chair or in his berth. And I can see my uncle, just seventeen years old, checking out a book from the ship’s library and reading lazily in the sun, or shyly making the acquaintance of some of the other young people aboard. Perhaps he exchanged a word and a smile or two with Ilse Karliner, Herbert’s older sister, who was fifteen.
Ten days out from Hamburg, however, even as the St. Louis passengers were growing accustomed to their nice new routines, death intruded into their floating Arcadia. Moritz Weiler had been a professor at the University of Cologne for many years before the Nazis forced him to resign in 1936. The shock of losing his position as a respected academic had taken a toll on his health, and the effort required to flee the country of his birth had weakened him further. As his shipmates enjoyed the many charms of the voyage, Professor Weiler remained bedridden in cabin B-108, visited frequently by the ship’s physician, Dr. Walter Glauner. Despite the doctor’s best efforts, Weiler died on the morning of Tuesday, May 23. His widow, Recha Weiler, declared her wish that her husband be buried in Cuba, but Captain Schroeder, already gleaning that there might be complications upon their arrival, convinced her of the necessity of a burial at sea.
Shortly after 10:00 that night, after a brief funeral on A Deck attended by Captain Schroeder, First Officer Ostermeyer, and a few refugees, Professor Weiler’s body was wrapped in his prayer shawl and then placed into a sailcloth shroud covered by the blue and white HAPAG flag. Then his body slid into the ocean. Remembering Weiler’s passing several months later, the captain wrote, “It broke his heart to feel that in his old age he had to leave the land where, all his life long, he had worked on the best of terms with his colleagues. Seeing him in his reduced state, I felt that his will to live had gone.” After the funeral, Captain Schroeder presented Recha Weiler with what would become for her a treasured memento: a map marked with the lonely spot in the Atlantic where her husband had been buried. There were now 936 passengers on board the St. Louis, most of whom had no idea that their number had been reduced by one.
Two nights later, on Thursday, May 25, the passengers enjoyed a costume ball in the ship’s nightclub, a party that traditionally signaled the impending end of a voyage. The band played a series of Glenn Miller tunes and, with everyone assuming that their “shipboard money” would soon be worthless, a great deal of liquor was purchased and consumed, contributing to a most convivial atmosphere. The party finally broke up at three o’clock in the morning. Within twenty-five hours, on Saturday, May 27, the St. Louis pulled into Havana Harbor, her horn blasting most of the passengers awake at 4 a.m. The breakfast gong sounded at 4:30, and despite the early hour, the dining rooms were soon full of sleepy, eager people, excited that their two weeks at sea were nearly at an end.
Passengers on board the St. Louis, some of whom had spent weeks in concentration camps six months earlier, enjoy a dance in the ship’s ornate ballroom. Note the Star of David affixed to the central column.
(Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
But as day broke, the passengers gradually became aware that something was wrong. The ship was still out in the harbor and hadn’t tied up at the dock. Late on Friday afternoon, Captain Schroeder had received a cable from Luis Clasing, HAPAG’s Havana director, instructing him to “not, repeat not, make any attempt to come alongside.” Cuban President Bru was standing firm behind Decree 937 and had let the Hamburg authorities know about it in the most unambiguous manner possible. On Friday night, however, Robert Hoffman, who had his own reasons for wanting the St. Louis to disembark its passengers, had met with Manuel Benitez Gonzalez, the immigration director, who uttered soothing words of reassurance. “My friend, Bru has to keep up a pretense. Tonight he lets the ship into Cuban waters. Tomorrow he allows it into the harbor. The next day it will be at the pier. Then off they will come, and our worries are over. I am a Cuban. I understand the Cuban mind.”
Early on Saturday morning, matters seemed to be moving forward as a white-suited Cuban doctor representing the Havana Port Authority drew up alongside the St. Louis and came aboard, to be greeted by Dr. Glauner and escorted to the bridge. There Captain Schroeder presented the Cuban doctor with the ship’s manifest, which listed every passenger, and signed a statement in which he swore that none of them was “an idiot, or insane, or suffering from a contagious disease, or convicted of a felony or another crime involving moral turpitude.” The Cuban doctor was unsatisfied, however, and insisted on a personal inspection. Every passenger was called to the social hall and filed slowly past the doctor, who made no comments but informed Dr. Glauner of his approval. When he left the ship and his launch sped back to land, everyone on board assumed that, the medical formality having been dispensed with, the St. Louis would now make her way to a pier. But she remained at anchor.
Over the next few days confusion reigned, as meetings and negotiations involving President Bru, Manuel Benitez Gonzalez, Captain Schroeder
, Luis Clasing, and Milton Goldsmith of Havana’s Jewish Relief Committee all failed to arrive at a satisfactory resolution. It was President Bru’s unyielding position that the Benitez landing certificates were invalid and thus the vast majority of the St. Louis refugees would be entering Cuba illegally should they be allowed to disembark in Havana. Twenty-eight lucky passengers—twenty-two Jews who were able to pay the additional $500 to obtain approved visas, plus four Spaniards and two Cubans—were allowed off the ship. But President Bru stood firm where the rest of the 908 refugees were concerned.
At one point in the discussions, Cuban Secretary of State Juan Remos met with President Bru to argue the moral implications of denying asylum to these victims of Nazism and to remind the president that his stance might cost him the disfavor of the United States. Unbeknownst to the secretary, the plight of the St. Louis refugees had indeed become a topic for discussion in official American circles, but so far the direction of those discussions did not, in fact, contradict the Cuban president’s position. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State George Messersmith wrote in a memorandum that it was his understanding that the United States would not “intervene in a matter of this kind which was purely outside of our sphere and entirely an internal matter of Cuba.”
The abiding strategy of the United States in regard to Latin America for the previous six years had been known as the Good Neighbor Policy (GNP). Formally announced during his inaugural address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and reaffirmed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull later that year, the Good Neighbor Policy held that “no country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” Since then, the GNP had led to the withdrawal of U.S. marines from Haiti and Nicaragua in 1934 and, in that same year, ended the lease agreement with Cuba permitting American naval stations on the island, with the exception of the base at Guantanamo Bay. By 1939, the GNP was viewed in Washington as a major foreign policy success story, winning wide support among Latin and South American nations, and a position not to be tampered with lightly. The saga of the St. Louis, therefore, would have to be settled by Cuban officials themselves without either overt or covert actions by the United States.
Alex's Wake Page 11
