Editorial
The Voyage Of The Damned
By Dr. G.K.Busch 4/6/10
Jun 5, 2010 - 10:23:44 AM

Today is the anniversary of the expulsion of the refugee ship, the MV St. Louis from U.S. waters and the forced return of 963 Jewish refugees from Hitler’s’ Germany back to Europe where many of them perished in the concentration camps as Germany conquered its European neighbours. The story was captured in a book written in 1974 by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts entitled Voyage of the Damned, and was adapted for a film with the same title, released in 1976.

The passenger ship, the MV St. Louis was built in Germany and travelled the transatlantic route between Hamburg, Halifax and New York. Occasionally it would travel on to the West Indies. On this voyage, the Captain Gustav Schröder, a German Christian, was well aware of the cargo he carried and vowed to find a safe port in which to discharge his passengers. They had paid for a voyage to Cuba which said they would take the refugees and it was there that the vessel first travelled. When they arrived at Cuba the Cuban authorities would not recognise them as refugees but labelled them as tourists. That meant they had to buy tourist visas; at US$500 each. Only twenty-nine on board had that amount and they disembarked. The rest stayed on the boat as negotiations continued. Two passengers committed suicide when they learned that they were being expelled from Cuba.

The vessel and its passengers then set sail for nearby Florida and sought asylum. The US would not let them land and they stood off Florida. Key administration figures in the Roosevelt Government, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, tried to persuade the Cubans to allow them in but they refused. On 4 June 1939 the US sent the MV St Louis away from US waters. There was an abortive try by Canadian well-wishers to find them a place in Canada but the Canadian Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, refused his permission as he stated this would attract a flood of Jewish refugees.

Captain Gustav Schröder vowed he wouldn’t take the refugees back to Germany and tried to find some place that would take them. He sailed back to Europe and docked at Antwerp, Belgium. The United Kingdom finally agreed to take 288 of the passengers. These were picked up by other boats and transported to safety in the UK. The remaining 619 passengers were allowed to disembark at Antwerp; 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. Their safety was temporary. As Hitler’s’ troops marched across Europe the returnees were caught and met the fate of other European Jews. About 254 returnees perished in the camps.

After the war, Captain Schröder was awarded the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany and in 1993 Gustav Schröder was posthumously named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel in recognition of his heroism in finding safe haven for his passengers on the MV St. Louis.