Billy and the Joels--The American rock star and his German family story

by Steffen Radlmaier

  There was a lot to organize at the start. Karl Joel – up until recently a successful businessman and meanwhile 50 years old – faced another fresh start. And practically nothing was left of his former wealth. Nevertheless, they had just about enough to survive.

  Before leaving Germany, Karl had arranged with his brother Leon to meet up as soon as possible in Cuba. Karl now did all he possibly could to help his relatives and organize the necessary paperwork. This all required not only the right connections, but money too. Furthermore, the Cuban idyll proved to be rather deceptive, and 1939 brought with it dramatic developments for the Joels: In May of that year the tragedy of the German refugee ship “MS St. Louis” began in Havana, then Karl’s mother died in faraway Franconia, Germany. And in September of 1939, Adolf Hitler started the Second World War.

  The Odyssey of the St. Louis

  Günter (“Henry”) Joel in Franconia, 1935 · © Karl Sippold

  Back in Ansbach, Germany, businessman Leon Joel had prepared himself well for emigration, as indicated by a brochure that belonged to him: “Jewish Emigration. A brochure about emigration and colonization,” which was published by a benevolent society for Jews in Germany in 1937. Somehow or other the brochure, which had Joel’s ‘ex libris’ stamp on it, ended up in the ‘Streicher Library’, which was discovered on the Stürmer magazine’s premises at the end of the war. Julius Streicher had pilfered around 10,000 books belonging to Jews for his own private ‘library’. Nuremberg’s city library now looks after these books in its “Jewish Religious Community Collection” and tries to find the original owners as part of the “Lost Art” project.

  “Der Stürmer” headline, May 1939: “Jews emigrate”

  The anti-Semitic atmosphere in Ansbach had intensified considerably over the years. A sign at the railway station made things very clear for travelers: “Jews are unwanted here”. Since the shocking excesses of the Crystal Night on November 9, 1938, the Joels were no longer sure of their lives. The persecution of Jews in Germany had reached new heights: Synagogues, department stores, Jewish businesses and homes were burned down, vandalized and looted in numerous towns, including Nuremberg and Ansbach. Around 100 Jews – most of them businessmen – were murdered during this night; many others chose suicide out of sheer desperation. And businessman Leon Joel, who was now head of Ansbach’s Jewish congregation, must have feared for his life. His fate was recorded in very dry words on a filing card in Ansbach’s town archives: “The Jew Joel was arrested in Würzburg and, on the orders of the senior mayor, taken by Endress to Ansbach on November 10,1938, where, on December 12th, he was taken by the Gestapo to Nuremberg.”

  At this point in time only 107 Jews were still residing in Ansbach. The over-zealous Nazi town council ordered them to leave by January 1, 1939. This caused nearly all of them to flee the town and, for the most part, sell their apartments and houses at prices way below value. On his arrest on Crystal Night, Leon Joel was also forced to sell his house on Nürnberger Strasse. In the few remaining documents found in Ansbach’s town archives was a note stating that Joel’s mother, wife and son moved to Nuremberg on December 9, 1938. They were able to find temporary shelter at the home of their relatives, the Samsons, who lived in Sulzbacher Strasse 22. However, Leo Joel was firstly taken into ‘protective custody’, as the Nazis cynically called it. At the beginning of 1939 he moved with his family to Frankfurt as he thought it would be easier to get an exit visa there.

  Sara Joel, née Schwab, mother of Karl and Leon, felt she was too old for such stresses and strains, and stayed behind in Nuremberg. She died on August 10, 1939, at the age of 82, and was spared the rest of the family tragedy.

  Leon Joel did indeed manage to get tickets for himself, his wife Johanna and for his 10-year-old son Günther, for a passage on the infamous refugee ship, the MS St. Louis. It was the start of a grueling, almost three-year-long odyssey with a fatal outcome.

  The three of them took the train to Hamburg, Germany’s largest seaport and the last hope for many emigrants. A notice in the reception of the Reichshof Hotel in Hamburg from 1939 illustrates the anti-Semitic atmosphere and the increasing ostracism and discrimination toward Jews: “Guests of Jewish race are asked not to sojourn in the Hotel reception area. Breakfast will only be served in your rooms, and all other meals will be served in the Blue Salon next to the breakfast room on the mezzanine. The Management.” On the back of the notice was an advert for the Hotel’s travel agency, where one could buy “boat tickets to all corners of the world”: “You’ll travel well on the liners of the Hamburg-Amerika line.”

  The Hamburg-Amerika line’s MS St. Louis left Hamburg harbor on May 13, 1939, with 373 crew and 907 Jews on board. They were among the purported lucky ones who, despite all the difficulties, managed to get a valid visa for Cuba, and who could afford to pay for the passage. A ticket in the tourist class cost 500 Reichsmarks, and an extra 230 Reichsmarks had to be paid in case of a return journey. That was a great deal of money at the time, and there was also a lot of red tape to get through: A steep ‘Reich flight tax’ and duties for exporting household effects had to be paid, and one had to apply for a travel permit as well as a passport stamped with the red ‘J’ and the visa. Furthermore, each passenger had to transfer at least $150 in advance to the corrupt General Director of the Cuban immigration authorities, Colonel Manuel Benitez Gonzales, for a ‘provisional residence permit’. On leaving Germany, each passenger was officially allowed to take just 20 Reichsmarks with them, as well as wares to the value of 1,000 Reichsmarks.

  In May of 1939 in Nuremberg, the Stürmer – “Germany’s weekly paper for the fight for the truth” – reported on this special tour by the St. Louis. Under the headline “Jews’ Migration” was a cynical article about the ‘sneaky comedy capers’: “Jews paving the way for anti-Semites across the world […] suddenly they all want to be martyrs.” The Nazis actually wanted the refugee ship for their own propaganda purposes, and pass the buck onto other countries, with the aim of demonstrating just how unwelcome the Jews really were the whole world over. It doesn’t get much more cynical than that.

  Still, Leon Joel and his family – numbers 385 to 387 on the passenger list – were convinced the worst was behind them as the ship set off from Hamburg with the band playing the wistful German song of farewell, “Muss i denn, muss i denn”. Although still somewhat anxious, there was a sense of relief among the passengers, who were impressed by the unexpected friendliness of the crew and the lavish cabins on board the St. Louis.

  One passenger, Erich Dublon, wrote the following in his diary: “One can’t help thinking of a five-star hotel, and it’s all much bigger than expected. It will take days to find one’s way around and perhaps not have time to see all the rooms before the journey is over.[…] It would take too long to describe all the rooms, dining saloon, hall, reading room and smoking saloon, all very comfortable and elegantly furnished. And then there are bathrooms and hairdressing salons, a gym and so on and so forth.”14

  The Jewish emigrants – a third of whom had only recently got out of concentration camps – could hardly believe that, in this time of increasing terror, they were being treated as normal human beings again. And this on board a German liner flying the swastika. The St. Louis, which had previously been used by the Nazi leisure-time organization “Strength through Joy”, was under the command of Captain Gustav Schröder, a little man with a large sense of honor. He ordered his crew to treat the passengers with every possible respect. From the moment they set off, the atmosphere was that of a very normal holiday cruise. There were board games and dance evenings, and the service and food were excellent. For example, on the May 21st caviar on toast, fried sole, turkey with celery stuffing, roast beef, asparagus, ice cream and cheese were all on the menu.

  The 130 children on board were having their share of fun, and Günther Joel soon made friends. Perhaps he even got to meet the 15-year-old boy who went to school with his cousin Helmut in B
erlin. Whatever the case, fate brought them together upon the luxurious refugee liner, because Ludwig Greve and his family were also on board the St. Louis, hoping to find safety in Havana. He described the adventurous voyage and the peculiar mixture of hope and fear among the passengers in his memoirs.

  After a while, rumors started to spread that difficulties might be encountered concerning arrival in Havana, where the ship was due to dock on May 27th. What nobody on board knew – unlike the HAPAG shipping office in Hamburg – was that the Cuban president Bru had already declared the landing permits void on May 5, 1939, thus long before the ship had left Hamburg. The reason was the chaotic political situation in the country, as well as increasing anti-Semitism. Colonel Benitez had obviously unlawfully sold and issued the landing permits to the Jewish emigrants via Cuban consulates, lining his own pockets in the process. President Bru wanted nothing to do with this lucrative racket and prohibited further dealings by issuing Decree No. 937. Certain circumstances suggest that the German secret service had their fingers in the pie too.

  By the time the ship arrived in Havana on May 27th, the disappointed passengers of the St. Louis were probably well aware that they had been the victims of a cruel power game. Their documents were worthless and the ship was not permitted to tie up to the quay, but had to anchor out at sea. The refugees were not allowed to leave the liner, and the ‘life raft’ that was Cuba – although so tantalizingly near – was as far away as the moon. The harbor was the setting for heart-wrenching scenes: desperate passengers threatened to commit suicide or they jumped overboard, only to be picked up by the harbor police.

  Day in, day out, the St. Louis was surrounded by small boats containing friends or relatives of the passengers who had already made it to Cuba. Karl, Meta and Helmut Joel sat in one of these boats, waving to their relatives standing at the ship’s rail waving back. It was the last time the two families saw each other – tiny figures waving at each other as if playing out the farewell scene of a silent movie.

  The German liner had turned out to be a gilded cage, and while the atmosphere on board was getting more and more desperate, a grueling war of nerves had begun behind the scenes. Captain Schröder felt he was responsible for his passengers, and for days he negotiated with the Cuban authorities, in the hope of finding a solution. But even mediation attempts by U.S. Jewish aid organizations and the offer to pay more money could not change the minds of the Cubans. Only 23 passengers, who happened to possess valid visas, were allowed to disembark. The St. Louis had to leave Havana harbor on June 2, 1939.

  Nevertheless, Captain Schröder didn’t give up and headed for the Florida coast, hoping the Jewish refugees might be able to disembark there. They all knew that a return to Nazi Germany would only be a voyage into the arms of certain death. However, despite desperate pleas to President Roosevelt, the Americans would not budge, and the U.S. Navy was sent to prevent the St. Louis from nearing the coast. The hostile reaction of the U.S. government was supposedly due to the fear that such a large number of refugees and immigrants would present a threat to the national economy.

  Captain Schröder had no choice but to return to Germany, as ordered by the HAPAG cruise line in Hamburg. He wrote the following: “It seemed to me as if the world had rejected the entire St. Louis, and we would now have to try to leave this inhospitable planet entirely.”15

  The international press had been following the plight of the refugees for quite some time but, in the meantime, another problem had raised its ugly head: war now seemed inevitable. The following appeared in a New York Times’ article on June 9, 1939, under the headline “Man’s Inhumanity”: “It is hard to imagine the bitterness of exile when it takes place over a faraway frontier. Helpless families driven from their homes to a barren island in the Danube, thrust over the Polish frontier, escaping in terror of their lives to Switzerland or France, are hard for us in a free country to visualize. But these exiles floated by our own shore.

  Some of them are on the American quota lists and can later be admitted here. What is to happen to them in the interval has remained uncertain from hour to hour. We can only hope that some hearts will soften somewhere and some refuge found. The cruise of the St. Louis cries to high heaven of man’s inhumanity to man.”

  The refugees had been robbed of all hope, and the atmosphere on board the St. Louis was explosive: mass suicide and mutiny were two of the possibilities being considered as avenues of escape.

  The captain wrote the following in his log: “The only ones enjoying themselves during this difficult time are the children of the passengers. They’re happy to be staying on board a little longer and only really took notice of their fate in a playful way, by inventing a little game: called ‘Jews not allowed here’. They built themselves a barrier out of two chairs and two of the boys would stand there with stern, officious expressions, interrogating comrades who wanted to pass. When it was the turn of a little lad from Berlin, the ‘guards’ demanded gruffly: ‘Are you a Jew?’ When he meekly answered in the affirmative, he was rigorously sent away with the words: ‘Jews not allowed here!’ – ‘Oh please’ the little lad from Berlin begged, ‘let me through, I’m only a small one!’”16 Chances are, Günther Joel took part in this game too.

  The nearer the St. Louis got to Europe, the more nervous the passengers became.

  Captain Schröder did all he could to avoid having to set down his charges in Germany again. He was well aware of what that would mean. He planned to fake an accident at sea off the coast of England, so that the local rescue service would be forced to take the passengers off the ship and bring them onto dry land. But, once more, fate took another unexpected twist. Schröder received a wire from the Jewish aid organization’s Joint Distribution Committee: the governments of Belgium, Holland, France and England had at last decided they would take in the passengers, and the St. Louis was to head for the port of Antwerp.

  The refugees were allowed to hope again. On arrival in Antwerp, Captain Schröder was thanked by the passengers for his tremendous courage. After the war was over, he was honored as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” in the Yad Vashem memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Israel. He was also awarded the Federal Cross of Merit in Germany. How many of the Jewish passengers survived the Second World War is uncertain. Some optimistic estimates suggest half of the original number; others say that just a third – around 300 passengers – lived to tell the tale.

  Leon and Johanna Joel didn’t survive. Neither did Ludwig Greve’s father and sister. They were all among a group of passengers who, unluckily, chose France as their country of exile, where they were only able to stay in safety for a short while. A cargo ship took them from Antwerp to Boulogne-sur-Mer. From there they were taken to a refugee camp, where they were given residence permits that were valid for four weeks, with the option of an extension. This was where the refugees parted ways.

  Ludwig Greve eventually ended up with the French Résistance in the South of France. From there he was able to escape with his family to Italy, where they were hidden by mountain farmers. His mother also survived, but his father and sister were arrested in Italy in 1944 and deported to Auschwitz.

  Leon and Johanna Joel were able to put their son Günther into the care of a French underground organization, who hid him and, finally, managed to smuggle him over the Swiss border to Geneva and safety.

  The trail of Leon and Johanna ends in France, a favorite destination for those pursued by the Nazis. As recorded by historian Saul Friedländer, France was neither more nor less hospitable than other countries, but it wasn’t capable of so much as a symbolic gesture against the persecution of the Jews.

  Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, the situation changed drastically. Refugees from Germany were considered ‘hostile foreigners’ and incarcerated in camps. There were over 100 of these camps and conditions were sometimes catastrophic. Place names such as Drancy, Gurs, Laval, Le Mans, Mimes and Perpignan
were infamous during this time. Only a few of the interned were officially released.

  The situation for Jews became even more hazardous after 1940, when Germany and France signed the armistice treaty at Compiègne. While the north and west of France were under German military administration, the south was controlled by the government under Field Marshal Pétain. France’s Vichy regime readily collaborated with the Germans, and was only too willing to adopt their brutal methods for persecuting the Jews. And the anti-Semitism already inherent among the French population did little to alleviate these measures. In October 1940, a law was introduced that permitted the internment of Jews in special camps. By 1941, Jews were being imprisoned in these camps on a regular basis. The ‘death deportations’ from France to Hitler’s extermination camps in Eastern Europe began one year later. One of the transit camps on the way to the East was the notorious Drancy concentration camp. This was where Leon and Johanna Joel eventually ended up after being caught in the Pyrenees Mountains, attempting to escape across the border into Spain.

  The pursuit of Jews in France had reached new heights. The French administration at Drancy had to fulfill the quota that the Germans had set for every outgoing mass deportation – even if this meant including children.

  Meanwhile in Germany, scores were being settled with the Jews literally. A letter from the Ansbach tax authority was sent to the central tax authority in Nuremberg, dated June 2, 1942, under the heading “Entries of revenues obtained by the Reich from the administration and liquidation of assets through confiscation, expiration or similar undertakings by the Reich.” It contained the following, written in gruesome German officialese: “The Jew Leon Israel Joel migrated to Havana on May 6, 1939. Joel’s most recent residence in Germany was in Ansbach. He paid up all existing tax debts including the Reich flight tax before emigrating. The Reich’s demand for the fifth installment of the Jewish property tax to the sum of 4,100 Reichsmarks was made after the relocation from the usual residence to the foreign country. Due to this debt, the claim for issuance of removal goods warehoused by the Delliehausen company in Frankfurt has been impounded. Liquidation of the removal goods yielded net receipts of 5,741.41 Reichsmarks.” That meant that the Joels’ entire household, including all the furniture, was sold off by the Nazi authorities at a dumping price.