SS St. Louis
The SS St. Louis was a passenger ship with Jewish refugees that was denied entry to Havana and was forced to return to Europe. On May 5, 1939, one week before the SS St. Louis set sail from Hamburg, the Cuban government had passed a decree that required shipping companies to obtain authorization in writing from the secretaries of state and labor to allow aliens to disembark in Cuba.
It also required all aliens, except U.S. tourists, to post a $500 bond in order to land. This change in the statutes was meant to slow Jewish immigration into Cuba, and the St. Louis was to be the “guinea pig,” along with two other ships in similar circumstances (the SS Flandre, a French ship with 132 passengers who lacked visas, and the SS Orduna, a British ship with 72 passengers who lacked visas).The Cuban government was concerned about sufficient employment for Jewish refugees and worried that they would become public charges. These concerns were exacerbated by the draconian immigration measures imposed by the Third Reich, which severely restricted the amount of money immigrants were allowed to take with them. In addition, as Jewish refugees arrived in Cuba in greater numbers (totaling over 4,000 by May 1939), violence and antisemitism were more prevalent.
On Saturday, May 27, 1939, after a thirteen-day journey, the St. Louis sailed into Havana, Cuba, with 937 passengers on board, almost all of whom were Jewish refugees from Europe. These refugees all possessed landing permits, which they had purchased for $160 apiece, issued by the director of immigration in Havana, Colonel Manuel Benitez Gonzalez. These fees were not part of official immigration procedures, and 907 of the refugees lacked official visas and the newly required permission of the Cuban departments of state or labor. Therefore, they were denied admission, and the steamship lay at anchor in the harbor for a week.
The American consulate general in Cuba, Coert du Bois, was kept appraised of the situation and communicated extensively with the U.S. Department of State as it progressed. In the United States, Jewish groups unsuccessfully lobbied the government to obtain safe landing in Cuba for the refugees.In the meantime, as the ship lay at anchor, conditions worsened. The ship sailed out of Havana on June 2, 1939, and wandered around the area, several times sailing close enough to Miami to see its lights. The U.S. government clearly stated that the St. Louis would not be allowed to land. The Cuban government renewed negotiations to ensure that these refugees, if they were allowed to land, would be self-sufficient. The Cuban president, Laredo Bru, requested a bond of $453,000 ($500 per passenger) and guarantees of adequate food, clothing, and housing from American Jewish organizations, and stated that his requirements needed to be met by the following day, June 6, at noon. The American Jewish agencies were unable to meet this deadline, and the Cuban government still refused to let the refugees land.
Shortly before midnight on June 6, the St. Louis began its return to Germany. The passengers tried a last-ditch effort to gain admittance to the United States by sending a telegram to the White House. But neither this telegram nor the 233 messages sent to the U.S. Department of State were enough to alter U.S. immigration policy. The quotas established by the U.S. Congress in 1924 remained firm (25,957 German immigrants per year), and U.S. public opinion, while sympathetic to the plight of these refugees, remained consistently against altering immigration laws and quotas. In fact, in April 1939, Fortune magazine published a poll stating that 83 percent of Americans were opposed to any increases in immigration quotas. As with Cuba, antisemitism, fear of the impact of refugees on employment, and desire to keep out populations who may need economic assistance from the government all played a role in these opinions.
By the second week of June, U.S. diplomats and Jewish leaders began negotiations with various European governments (Belgium, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands) to secure refuge for these passengers. Each government stipulated that this was a special case, and that it did not constitute a precedent for allowing additional Jewish refugees to land in the future. On June 17, the ship docked in Antwerp and arrangements for further resettlement were made. In the end, 287 received asylum in Great Britain, 181 in the Nether
lands, 224 in France, and 214 in Belgium. However, the story does not end there. With the Nazi occupation of western Europe, hundreds of the St. Louis passengers were later deported to concentration camps and to the killing centers in Poland.
Laura Hilton
See also German Jewish Migration to the
United States; World War II
References and Further Reading
Gellman, F. “The St. Louis Tragedy.” In
American Jewish History. Volume 7: America, American Jews and the Holocaust.
Ed. Jeffrey Gurock. New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 57-70.
Mendelsohn, John. The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes. Volume 7: Jewish Immigration: The S.S. St. Louis Affair and Other Cases. New York: Garland, 1982.
Thomas, Gordon, and Max Morgan Witts.
Vyage of the Damned. New York: Stein and Day, 1974.
Wyman, David. Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941. New York: Pantheon, 1985.