Alex's Wake

by Martin Goldsmith

  Visibly moved, Troper bent to kiss Liesl, then straightened to shake the hand of her father, the head of the passenger committee. But there was business to attend to and a deadline to reckon with; the 907 refugees had to be divided into the groups bound for the four countries, and everything had to be worked out in the short time it would take Captain Schroeder to steer the St. Louis down the estuary to Antwerp. At 7:00 p.m., a train was scheduled to leave for Brussels with the Belgian contingent of refugees aboard, so there was precious little time for idle pleasures.

  The ship’s first-class social hall became the site where each refugee would be assigned to one of the four countries. Troper and an assistant from the Joint, Emanuel Rosen, sat at a large table, flanked on one side by the representatives of Belgium and Holland, and on the other by those from France and England. The refugees were so delighted and relieved that they were finally on the verge of disembarking (and not doing so in Germany), that for the most part their destination was of secondary concern. Troper announced that he and his colleagues would do all they could to ensure that families were not broken up and to accede to special requests if a refugee insisted on being placed in a particular country. But for the most part, the selection was performed in a somewhat random manner, and thus, though Troper and his fellows had no way of knowing it, they casually if conscientiously made decisions that were to have profound implications for the lives of everyone on board.

  Alex and Helmut would have had a legitimate reason for requesting an assignment to England, as Bertha had made arrangements to immigrate to Leeds as a gardener. Either they made such a request and were turned down or they reasoned that it didn’t much matter where they disembarked, as the Nazis would no longer be a threat to them in any case. Had they been assigned to the English group, the odds are great that they would have survived to a natural old age. It’s highly possible that my parents would then have chosen to flee to England to join their family when they escaped Germany two years later. Thus I could very well have been born and raised in that green and pleasant land.

  But fate, or Morris Troper, determined that my grandfather and uncle would disembark in France.

  By the time the St. Louis tied up at Pier 18 in Antwerp Harbor, the selection committee had determined that 214 refugees would be assigned to stay in Belgium. By 9 p.m., after consuming great quantities of sandwiches, beer, and coffee provided by the ship’s kitchen, the selection committee had made its final determinations: 181 refugees would travel to Holland, 288 would go to England, and Alex, Helmut, and the six Karliners would be among 224 refugees bound for France.

  Before the Belgian contingent left the ship, passengers’ committee chairman Josef Joseph presented Troper with a Declaration of Thanks and Gratitude. It read, in part:

  Dear Mr. Troper, at this moment when the 907 passengers of the St. Louis are to be distributed to the hospitable countries of England, Holland, France, and Belgium, after a fantastic trip to the tropics and back, we have this to say to you:

  After we had to leave the harbor of Havana by order of the President, your intervention gave us the courage to believe that we had not been forgotten and left to our fate. Your act will be engraved forever in our hearts and in the hearts of our children and grandchildren. We shall never forget it. May God Almighty reward you and your colleagues in the JDC for what you have done. May it please God to bless your future work. And if in closing we ask you, dear Mr. Troper, not to forget the passengers of the St. Louis, we do this because we have all learned to love you and hope that you will think well of us.

  With our deepest respect and sincerest thanks, The Passengers of the St. Louis.

  Every one of the 907 passengers signed the declaration.

  That afternoon Belgian police scuffled with a Nazi-inspired group called the National Youth Organization, an ugly echo of the conditions that had forced the refugees to leave their homeland in the first place. The NYO was protesting the arrival of the St. Louis, distributing handbills on which was printed the cheery message: “We, too, want to help the Jews. If they call on our offices each one will receive free of charge a length of rope and a long nail.” After a few minutes of pushing, shoving, and shouting, the police confiscated the handbills and dispersed the crowd.

  Later that afternoon, the 214 passengers who were bound for Belgium were served a last meal on board the St. Louis, and then shortly after 5 p.m., they began to file slowly off the ship. After more than a month at sea, it was difficult for some of them to believe that they were actually disembarking, and several turned around frequently to wave to those still on board. A woman who was among the most enthusiastic wavers stumbled, fell heavily, and broke her leg. She was picked up by an ambulance and spent her first night on Belgian soil in a hospital. Troper slept that night at Antwerp’s Century Hotel. Before retiring, he sent a telegram back to the Joint in New York. “Work distribution 907 passengers completed believe everything OK 300 tons baggage and 5,000 pieces hand luggage going sleep after seventeen consecutive hours most trying ordeal I ever experienced regards Troper.”

  A portion of the list of St. Louis passenger signatures on the Declaration of Thanks and Gratitude presented to Morris Troper on June 17, 1939. Alex and Helmut’s signatures appear in the middle of the right-hand column.

  (Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

  At 5:00 a.m., Sunday, June 18, the 181 refugees who were headed for Holland were awakened and served a last breakfast. A riverboat, the Jan van Arckel, pulled alongside the St. Louis, and the Dutch contingent, carrying boxes of sandwiches and sweets from the purser, filed off the luxury liner and onto the little steamer. Accompanied by hearty cheers from the remaining St. Louis passengers, the Jan van Arckel slowly pulled away at 9:30 to begin her journey through the complex waterway system to Rotterdam. Along the way, she was followed by an escort of police boats—not unlike her escort out of Havana—and saluted by hundreds of well-wishers who lined the canals, waving, whistling, and welcoming the wanderers.

  That afternoon, Morris Troper, his “trying ordeal” of the previous day ameliorated by a good night’s sleep, returned to the St. Louis to oversee the final transfer of refugees. The 288 passengers bound for England and the 224, among them Alex and Helmut, accepted by France, would take another HAPAG ship, the Rhakotis. A 6,700-ton freighter christened the San Francisco when she was built in 1927, she’d been renamed Rhakotis in 1935. Outfitted to carry no more than fifty passengers, she was about to be boarded by ten times that many people. Representatives from HAPAG had hastily made preparations; the plan was to sleep men and women separately in double-decker steel bunks both fore and aft, with meals to be served at long tables amidships.

  Boarding began mid-afternoon on Sunday, and shortly before 4:00 the Rhakotis, now filled with its new human cargo, was towed upstream. The Antwerp port authority had ruled that she could not spend the night in the vicinity of the St. Louis. Captain Schroeder penned a personal note to Troper, thanking him for “organizing so efficiently the distribution of my passengers.” That evening, as scheduled, the St. Louis began another transatlantic voyage, destination New York City. Making her way up the estuary toward open water, she overtook the Rhakotis where the smaller ship lay at anchor. The refugees lined the rails as their former floating home passed slowly by, watching, in the words of one of them, “with one dry eye and one wet eye.” For their part, the crew of the St. Louis called out encouragingly, “Good luck to the Jews!”

  Nearly all of the 231 crew members had signed on for the return voyage to New York. One who hadn’t was the second-class steward Otto Schiendick, who left the ship in Antwerp carrying his hollowed-out walking stick, eager to be reunited with his Abwehr contacts in Hamburg.

  Captain Schroeder’s letter of appreciation to Morris Troper, dated June 18, 1939.

  (Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

  Alex and Helmut, the six members of the Karliner family, and their 216 fellow passengers on the Rhakotis steamed bac
k into Antwerp harbor the following morning and were served a hearty breakfast. There was some largely good-natured grumbling about the close proximity of the bunks and dining tables, with one refugee noting sardonically, “We practically had breakfast in bed.” But the food received rave reviews, as it included the first fresh eggs the passengers had enjoyed for weeks.

  At two o’clock that afternoon, Morris Troper returned for a final farewell to the refugees, who applauded and whistled wildly as he drove away from the dock to return to his office in Paris. An hour later, the Rhakotis weighed anchor and began its journey, first to Boulogne-sur-Mer and then on to Southampton. A heavy rain began to fall, dampening the spirits of the passengers, who surely must have felt that they’d been sufficiently tempest-tossed for one voyage. One of them confided to his diary, “I fear it is still possible for a cable to recall us to Germany.”

  The odyssey of the unhappy people who had boarded the St. Louis in Hamburg, those unwanted former citizens of Germany and Austria who had desired so desperately to gain security in the New World, only to find themselves—most of them—forced back to the uncertainties of the Old World, was nearly over. But the controversy surrounding their voyage has continued, unresolved, to the present day.

  The debate was originally joined in the American Jewish press. On June 13, as the St. Louis was steaming back toward Europe but before the deal brokered by Troper had been announced, Samuel Margoshes published an editorial in a newspaper known in Yiddish as Der Tog, but which called itself the National Jewish Daily. Margoshes headlined his editorial “The Doom of the 907,” and harshly blamed the Joint Distribution Committee and other Jewish organizations for the failure of the St. Louis to find a welcome port in the United States.

  The editorial began by quoting a frantic cablegram sent by the passengers’ committee: “It reads: ‘We are floating to our death. Where is your promise to save us?’ In my ears these words sound not so much as an appeal but rather as a terrible indictment of our entire Jewish leadership in America.”

  Margoshes then leveled his own indictment against the Joint, referring to the “horse-trading” of Lawrence Berenson: “Admittedly, the Joint Distribution Committee was in no easy financial position. On the other hand, can there be any doubt that had the Joint ransomed the prisoners on the St. Louis, that there would have been such an outpouring of gratitude and generosity on the part of American Jewry as to more than offset the sacrifice made by the JDC? Had the Joint rushed to the rescue, instead of counting its pennies and then haggling about the price of 907 Jewish lives, it would have today been the master not only of the heart but also of the pocket of American Jewry. Alas, it was not to be. ‘Cuba was lost for us by haggling,’ a committee of the refugees wired me the other day. It is not the first time in Jewish history that counting costs lost a Jewish battle.”

  In his conclusion, Margoshes denounced the lack of effort he perceived among the leading Jewish organizations—including the General Jewish Council, the American Jewish Committee, the B’Nai B’rith, and the American Jewish Congress—on behalf of the St. Louis refugees: “It is a bitter thing to say, and I say it not without pain, but the fact remains that as far as preventing or alleviating the tragedy of the 907, Jewish leadership in America might have just as well never existed or been away on a long vacation. Whatever was done for the rescue of the Jewish refugees was done in the dark and was shrouded in mystery. No wonder it failed. Its failure spells not only the doom of the 907 but also the bankruptcy of Jewish leadership in America.”

  Three days later, with Troper’s deal now public knowledge, the Jewish Daily Forward fired back with a front-page editorial of its own:

  Jews throughout the world have lived in a nightmare during the last two weeks, with the sufferings of the unfortunate refugees aboard the SS St. Louis constantly in mind. We lived with these refugees all the time that the boat was floating in American waters. When the refugees left the shores of Cuba to go back to Europe, our deepest sympathy went with them. And together with them, the JDC [the Joint], our most important Jewish relief organization, turned its entire attention to Europe, in order to rescue the refugees. “Five days and five nights,” as it was stated in the cable from Paris, “the European Director of the JDC, Morris C. Troper, was chained to his desk. He appealed to all democratic governments in Europe, and made every possible effort to rescue the refugees.” At last the JDC succeeded in rescuing the unfortunate victims of Hitlerism. For that we must be grateful. The rescue work of the JDC is an important chapter in Jewish history. The JDC spared no effort, ignoring the attacks that some Jewish newspapers directed against it. Evidently the JDC was bent upon rescuing the refugees and had no time to enter into discussions with irresponsible newspapers and writers.

  The Forward then called out The National Jewish Daily, the Jewish Morning Journal, and the Freiheit for what it called “shameless attacks” upon the Joint “at a time when the most complicated and delicate negotiations about the refugees were going on!” The editorial concluded, “The important work of the JDC deserves our gratitude and it deserves also a better and more sympathetic attitude on the part of the press.”

  But the debate about who was to blame for the fate of the St. Louis passengers extended beyond dueling Jewish periodicals. The failure of the United States to respond adequately to the crisis had serious implications for the moral standing of the U.S. as a civilized country in an increasingly dangerous world. One of the first to indict the United States for failing an ethical test in the choppy waves off the coast of Florida was a spokesman for another religious perspective. Bishop James Cannon Jr. of the Southern Methodist Church wrote a long letter to the editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch headlined “Shame of the St. Louis.” It read, in part:

  During the days when this horrible tragedy was being enacted right at our doors, our Government at Washington made no effort to relieve the desperate situation of these people, but on the contrary gave orders that they be kept out of the country. Why did not the President, secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of labor and other officials confer together and arrange for the landing of these refugees who had been caught in this maelstrom of distress and agony through no fault of their own? Why did not our Congress take action in accordance with the free and humane spirit which has characterized our people and our Government in the past?

  The failure to take any steps whatever to assist these distressed, persecuted Jews in their hour of extremity was one of the most disgraceful things which has happened to American history, and leaves a stain and brand of shame upon the record of our nation. The fact that the Dutch, the Belgians, the French and the British are reported to have arranged to admit these trapped refugees simply adds to the shame upon our own Government that we have known and seen their misery and have played the part of the priest and of the Levite rather than of the Good Samaritan, and that we have passed by on the other side and left these Jews to whatever fate might befall them on their return to Europe.

  Thus the larger argument was joined. On one side was the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which insisted that its hands were legally tied by the Immigration Act of 1924 and which was unwilling to establish what it considered an untenable precedent by admitting this particular ship when the world’s oceans were filling up with vessels carrying refugees from the four corners of an ever-more perilous world. On the other side were the advocates of those refugees, who looked to America to embrace its creed and provide a sanctuary for the homeless, hopeless, and desperate, to open the gates to its storied shining city on a hill and welcome these wanderers in their time of trouble.

  What should Mr. Roosevelt have done, given both the legal and political realities of 1939 and the danger posed to the 907 by a forced return to Europe?

  Among the most recent voices to join the debate are those belonging to American University professors Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman in their 2013 book FDR and the Jews. They argue first of all that much of the responsibil
ity for the failure of the St. Louis to find safe anchor in the Western Hemisphere lies with the government of Cuba and with Lawrence Berenson. In the matter of the president, Breitman and Lichtman find Roosevelt innocent of the charge of “indifference to Jewish refugees.”

  Rooted in a rich soil of isolationism, the U.S. Congress had passed three Neutrality Acts during the 1930s, essentially declaring that America should not and would not intervene in foreign affairs. The acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937 imposed an embargo on the sale of arms to any belligerent in any war anywhere. By the spring of 1939, as a large-scale war in Europe appeared ever more likely, President Roosevelt decided it was vital to repeal or revise the Neutrality Acts to give him greater flexibility in opposing Nazi Germany. The Democratic Party controlled both houses of Congress, but President Roosevelt knew that neutrality would be a hard sell to Democratic senators from southern states and he needed their support.

  Professors Breitman and Lichtman conclude that political calculations, neither idealistic nor craven but based on simple vote-counting arithmetic, are responsible for the president’s silence on the matter of the St. Louis. They argue that “Roosevelt could have admitted the St. Louis passengers to the United States only by exceeding the immigration quotas,” and thus alienating a certain segment of the Congress. “A quarrel with Congress over the St. Louis had the potential to doom his efforts to revise the Neutrality Acts and aid the nations resisting Hitler’s aggression. Had such events come to pass, posterity would have judged FDR far more harshly than it has in our time.”