Journey of 900 jewish refugees aboard the cruise liner ss st. Louis that departed hamburg germany may 13, 1939. The ship was denied landing in cuba, the United States and canada and ultimately forced to return to europe. This is about one hour and ten minutes. Welcome to todays program cosponsored by the Library Services at the library of congress and the library of congress professional association of the language table. The program is presented today in honor of the 75th anniversary of the sailing of the st. Louis. One of the passengers of the st. Louis is with us today. Eva is sitting right there and im wondering if there are any other passengers or families of passengers that are here with us today and if so, could you sta stand. There is another one. [applause] i would like to think that u. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum who is the reason that the program is here today. She arranged the speakers and then have the idea for the program. Roberta schaefer of the librarian of congress, Audrey Fisher and the staff of the Public Affairs office. She let us have the wonderful pavilion, and from the ij section. Also marchant held and the panelists. Martin goldsmith and diane. I will be stepping aside as soon as i introduce him and he will take over the program. Marvin talbot spent 30 years as an awardwinning reporter and cbs news and nbc news. He has written and coauthored 11 nonFiction Books and the two Fiction Books and hes currently working on a new book the soviet spring arrives and the challenge of puttings russia. He is a nonresident senior fellow with the foreignpolicy programs at brookings and as a Senior Adviser to th advisor tor center on crisis reporting. He focuses on the impact of media and on public politics, policies and politics and is an expert on National Security with a focus on u. S. Relations with russia, europe and the middle east. With great pleasure i introduce marvin kalb. [applause] scenic thank you all for coming to the program. Very quickly to set the stage, hitler came to power in germany, 1933 in five years later in the fall of 1938 there was when the 90s decided to destroy as best they could do synagogues and they got the message very quickly. In st. Louis i know the title of the voyage of the st. Louis and of course the entire journey has been written about in the book and the movie as the voyage. They never were able to land in cuba. The destination have to go back and roughly i dont know the exact numbers, two thirds of them somehow managed to survive world war ii. A third of them did not. They went back to their deaths at different times in different places. We are privileged to have two people that know about the subject and will talk to us about it. One of them is martin goldsmith. Martin is the host and Classical Music programmer on the serious Xm Satellite Radio and hosted the reform today. Hes the author of two books, the inextinguishable symphony. He can tell you about that and i hope he wealth and the second is alex is week which has to do with his grandfather and his uncle. Also joining us today, doctor diane received her phd in contemporary history from the university of paris and she had a fellowship at the Holocaust Museum. Shes written extensively on the subject and shes conducted research especially on the st. Louis odyssey through the eyes of the captain. I would like to ask martin to pick it up after that. [applause] thank you very much. First of all i want to thank the organizer. Thank you for putting this program together. And thank you i really want to thank my colleague and my dear friend for organizing this. Im going to present a powerpoint to you and try to summarize in 20 minutes the whole story of the st. Louis. So please come if you have any question i can talk more about this at the end. So. Just before world war ii the Jewish Population in germany before the war was about 1 of the population of germany. And as you know, you mentioned this already but as you know the jewish refugees flowed through half of them mostly between 1938 and 1939 and especially after the conference. And you can see one of the photographs of the Conference Bear on the powerpoint. The conference in july 1938 basically tried to serve the problem of the refugee crisis that ended up being sort of a failure, and im going very fast here because theres a lot to say about the conference. But roughly in 1938 and 1939 there were not many options for the refugees that could go mostly to shanghai and cuba so you could imagine that when you were from germany that wasnt the first choice in shanghai or cuba. That is the only choice you basically have when you were thinking of massive immigration. And im not talking about an individual immigration. Before i start telling the whole story. The company in the 1930s there were many others, there were many other companies in france or Great Britain, and the netherlands, and most of them actually carried those that were trying to free germany in 1938 and 1939. What im trying to say is that the company wasnt the only one. And the refugee crisis really touched all of those companies of cruise liners at the end of the 1930s. It was created in 1847 and it was mostly a commercial fleet that was totally destroyed during world war i that we dont afterwards, and it reached the golden age in the 1920s. So imagine the company that. Its one of them at the time. What is interesting is in order to emigrate to cuba in the 1930s at the end of the 1930s you needed a lot of documents. Im not going to go through the whole list but it was actually a lot of documentation that you have to gather for the ticket on the boat. So this is an example of the identification. This isnt a visa per se. That is what most of the passengers have. This is a photograph of some of the passengers and i like this photograph because it gives me a chance to talk you more about the passengers themselves in the world that they are stepping in. Both of the passengers born at f the 19th century and the 1980s im not good at dates and numbers. Thank you for correcting me. The youngest passenger was in 1839. But im trying to say is that we are not in illegal immigration here. This is perfectly legal immigration. They have legal documents to emigrate so they were leaving germany with their whole family. And also, what is interesting is that by going to st. Louis they are going to step into a world of luxury. They didnt have access to it even the wealthiest passengers belonged to most of the categories, social categories of the jews in germany and austria and even the most wealthy passengers didnt have access anymore to that kind of luxury because of the persecutions in germany. So this is basically what they are going to see. I shouldve photograph on purpose because of course there are many other locations on the votes that were actually photographed by the passengers, but this is one of the most beautiful photographs of the dining room in st. Louis. So just imagine a very luxurious vessel. Imagine the titanic in the 1930s. Just to make it short. And there will be a lot of possibilities to try to enjoy the voyage but you can add genetic screen to be difficult for them because they go from the persecution to this kind of atmosphere by just boarding the boat after 24 hours for some of them they are going to try to relax and enjoy as much as possible the pleasure of that journey. I want to say a few words about the crew on the st. Louis captain. This is a photograph of the st. Louis and you have to imagine the crew is about 200 people. The captain of the boat is a german who is very proud of his country. I usually define him as a german because he is in love with germany. He loves the country and he hates the nazis and what they are doing to germany. And he is the captain on board so he gathers the crew just before the departure of the st. Louis to tell them that on the board it is out of question to persecute those passengers because they are jewish. They dont have any room on board. The crew will be at the service of the passengers like david b. At the service of any other passengers who would go on the cruise even if this isnt a cruise per se that they would be at the service of the passengers in st. Louis so it would serve them like anyone else. And you also give the crew members the choice to leave the boat if anyone left. And they are at the service of the passengers and the passengers are going to be able to enjoy the facility on the boat including the menus and this is one of the menus on the boat and they were absolutely outstanding. They can also relax by dancing in the ballroom you can see people dancing and trying to do the best they can to enjoy as much as possible. Others would play shuffleboard but what is interesting an in he is that we have documentation about both of the passengers and two of my colleagues at the museum each of them are the st. Louis and so we know exactly what happened to them and so here you can see they are playing shuffleboard on the but he wa was to the voyage arrested most likely to the concentration camp and in that document for the International Tracing Service collection that we have at the museum you can see that he is in a number on the top of this card coming and he has the card sai so she was e to leave the camp under one condition it wasnt too returned to germany after. So this is just to show you all of the categories of the passengers were on the st. Louis. There were also about 200 children on the st. Louis and i specifically enjoy the photograph with the Swimming Pool because that gives me a chance also to tell you what happened in germany during the 1930s they were not allowed in Swimming Pools in germany, so those children who are enjoying swimming inevitable Swimming Pools for the youngest ones they probably didnt even know how to swim because they never had a chance to learn. So you can imagine that this is very important and everything would be done on board thanks to the captain and the crew tunic that journey as enjoyable as possible. So when they arrive on ma may 271939, this slide actually gives me the chance to talk about the political crisis in cuba. When the st. Louis arrives in cuba the passengers cannot disembark but no one tells them why they cannot disembark because there is a critical crisis in cuba and also no one explains anything to them. But the crisis is in the following so you probably dont know much about the cuban president because you have no reason to know anything about him but youve probably heard about batista maybe not in the 1930s but he was already doing something. So, the permits the passengers acquired were actually sold thanks to the huge traffic of documents that were organized by the secretary of immigration and by the political opponent. So he was trying to stabilize the president in order to reestablish the political power the president wanted to put an end to immigration said he decided to issue a decree just a few days before the st. Louis actually left. This is not against the passengers. The president didnt even know anything about the st. Louis passengers. They were just immigrants or just legal passengers among those that would come to cuba. But he wants to put an end to immigration so that y. If she was a decree. So no one would disembark legally in cuba and facing the crisis the American Jewish joint Distribution Committee decided to send on vacation one of its representatives to negotiate with the cuban authority. Authority. But nothing would happen, and even the captain of the st. Louis would actually put on civilian clothes and try to negotiate with the cuban authorities but nothing good would come from this. So basically the captain cannot do anything that you could imagine that for the family members and friends of the st. Louis passengers were already in cuba is very difficult because they dont do anything. They dont know what is going on and they try to communicate with their families on board. So they would hire little boats like this one and they would try to go around the boat and try to communicate with families and friends trying to bring them exotic food and try to give them some news about whats going on. This is also another photograph of the votes. Im going quickly because i want to move onto the next step is to st. Louis. And after a whilafter a while, s were probably over in cuba. The premise of the captain received the order to leave the cuban waters, but it is ours to navigate between cuba and the United States because more than seven more than 700 passengers were actually registered on the lease of immigration in the United States that means that any time it could be a question of months or years a numbe the number would p so eventually the final destination would be the United States. For the captaiso the captain bro st. Louis in front of the Miami Harvard the passengers can see the town trees, but there is for the United States im going to give you a little view of the general political context so you can understand why the United States didnt like the passengers in. You have to understand that it would have been just 900 plus people so its not a big deal to welcome those people that just imagine if the country had opened the doors to those people thousands of hundreds of people of them by anticipating that the situation would have opened the door to the massive immigration into the government didnt want to do this, plus in the United States, dont forget that there was the immigration act of 1924 and so the quota was out of question to make an exception and to raise the number to accept more refugees. When you read the correspondence between the state department you can realize that they were very much afraid of welcoming more because they were associated with communism and the columns. So i am just giving you several reasons. I dont want to talk much about this. Isome of this and lewis had to o back to germany to become us between you can imagine on the way back that yes it is no longer the same. But on the way back they would negotiate with some European Countries and in that case it was belgium, france, Great Britain and holland. And it is its a very long and complicated initiation because the six negotiation and its basically a race against the clock to have the countries agree on accepting more refuge refugees. To make a long complicated story short especially those associations, eventually belgium, france, Great Britain and holland would accept the passengers and they would be disbursed almost equally between the four countries, but just imagine that, you know from the moment that cuba refused to st. Louis passengers to disembark they became ill legal immigrants because they had legal documents to immigrate into cuba so they would be in europe with basically the illegal documents and they couldnt work without moving, without giving anything but legal status changed and they would become ill legal immigrants. So they would become almost refugees i want to give you one example of how the st. Louis passengers ended up in those countries except for those who actually went to england, Great Britain. Youre in june of 1939 and the war is at the door. So for those that actually ended up in those three countries, france cant belgium and holland they were on the all the refugees that found refuge in the three countries during the 1930s. So we can see for example here for the press, very beautiful photographs of the liner on the boat on the deck of the st. Louis, and smiling. You can see her also here talking to some other passengers. And on the other for the graph on your left, this is a photograph that was taken because you have to remember that those people were held by judicial organizations because they couldnt support themselves. So, she is there and she is almost safe since she is in france in the home. France was occupied and was also headed the government it was very very antisemitic. So they had to face not only the antisemitism of the germans but also with the government. So come here we know that after being on the st. Louis and going to cuba and miami in the coming at france and was rounded up in november of 1942 and she her name is on the lease and she was deported in 1942 in auschwitz. Just two more flights to finish. And you can read the numbers. 231 passengers of the st. Louis actually perished during the holocaust. They returned to germany after the sevenmonth cruise and was totally destroyed in 1944 after being bombed by the Royal Air Force and st. Louis no longer exists but on the photographs, postcards or leaflet. I want to show you a picture of the captain wearing the hat and you can see the photograph. We have had at the museum and you can imagine that when i was a fellow at the museum that for everybody its like its his hat. By looking at this photography and looking at the hat i dont even think about touching it because it is very emotional for me but just by looking at the hat i can tell you the whole story. I dont need other slides or photographs and this is the book that he actually wrote. And this is a signed copy. He died in 1959 and was awarded a medal in west germany by 1957 just two years before he died for helping the passengers of the st. Louis. And he was also honored in 1993. If you want to know more, you have a paper outside with some links these are two links that actually we have on the website on the online exhibition with two of my colleagues, but it is in french and im sorry when i started that i wrote this in french and i still write in french and i try to write in english, but so this is the book that tells the whole story of the st. Louis. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much. Its a fascinating report. Martin, we would like to hear your reports. Thank you. Thanks so much mr. Kalb into the wonderful colleagues at the Holocaust Museum who are of such an incredible help to me as i did my research for my book. I do not have a powerpoint to share with