I entered the Jewish Heritage
Museum in lower Manhattan, passing through the museum’s heavy doors and even
heavier security. After taking the
elevator to the floor dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims,
I sat down to watch a 15-minute video on the S.S. St. Louis. Since I had
already seen all the sickening newsreels on the Holocaust back in middle school, I figured I knew what I was
getting myself into.
I was dead wrong.
As her name might indicate,
the Saint Louis was a godsend to the
900 Jews who were fortunate to find themselves on the ship’s manifest in May of
1939. The passengers were refugees,
desperate to flee to Cuba in order to escape the tidal wave of terror that was about to
hit Hitler’s Nazi Germany. And for the
first half-hour of their voyage, they believed they had succeeded.
But then came a telling
telegram that warned the ship’s captain that he had better put the pedal to the
metal - because 2 other ships were headed to the same place for the same reason,
and there were no guarantees that Cuba, still in the throes of the Great
Depression, would put out the welcome mat for any or all of them.
Tragically, by the time
the ship finally found haven in Havana’s harbor, the immigration waters were so
muddied by Goebbels’ propaganda machine that the refugees were prevented from
disembarking until further notice.
Further notice never came, of course.
Hours turned into days, and days turned into an eternity. Like the chaise lounges on the ship's sun deck,
negotiations were opened and then closed, re-opened and then re-closed until
ultimately, by order of the President of Cuba, the St. Louis had to get the heck out of Dodge. ¡Inmediatamente!
The tearful and fearful
passengers found themselves waving goodbye to their waiting family and friends
on shore as the captain pointed his vessel towards, and
pinned his hopes on, the United States.
Surely the land of the free and the home of the brave would extend to
these exiles an invitation, he thought. Surely the
residents of E Pluribus Unumville would come to the rescue of these
refugees. Surely the president would
bring these innocent victims under the protection of his West Wing.
Alas, the world watched in
disbelief as the S.S. St. Louis found
no port in the storm of American anti-Semitism.
Eventually, dwindling provisions forced the captain to set sail for
“home” - Nazi Germany.
In a last ditch effort to
avoid delivering 900 innocent Jewish men, women and children back into
Lucifer’s lair, intense negotiations continued with immigration officials in
several European countries as the ship chugged across the Atlantic.
Of the 4 Allied nations who
finally agreed to receive these refugees, 3 of them would soon be occupied by
the very forces of evil from which the Jews were trying to flee in the first
place, and the fourth was nearly blitzkrieged to Kingdom come!
When the video ended, and my
15 minutes of shame was over, I went outside for a breath of fresh NYC
air. I found no relief there. Instead, I found myself staring straight into the big green
eyes of the world’s most beautiful woman – the Statue of Liberty.
I tried to apologize to her,
but before I could fully formulate an excuse commensurate with such egregious
sinfulness, this mother-of-all-exiles recited a line from a Jewish-American
poetess, saying for the 6 millionth time… “Give me your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
Let us never forget.
