Thursday 13 May 2021 at 6pm. Register here for this free event.

The AJR is pleased to offer this event on the 82nd anniversary of the day the SS St Louis sailed from Hamburg to Havana, 13 May 1939. We will hear from Sonja Geismar and Eva Wiener, both passengers on the SS St Louis, who will be in conversation with Robert M. Krakow, Executive Director of the SS St. Louis Legacy Project

A link to a one hour documentary on the SS St Louis, Complicit, will be sent out a week before the event.

Most of the passengers—many of them children—were German Jews escaping increasing persecution under the Third Reich. The refugees had applied for US visas, and planned to stay in Cuba until they could enter the United States legally. Even before they set sail, their impending arrival was greeted with hostility in Cuba. On May 8, there was a massive antisemitic demonstration in Havana. Right-wing newspapers claimed that the incoming immigrants were Communists.

The St. Louis arrived in Havana on May 27. Roughly 28 people onboard had valid visas or travel documents and were allowed to disembark. The Cuban government refused to admit the nearly 900 others. For seven days, the ship’s captain attempted to negotiate with Cuban officials, but they refused to comply.

The ship sailed closer to Florida, hoping to disembark there, but it was not permitted to dock. As a last resort, the passengers appealed to the Canadian authorities for safe haven, but were refused.

Faced with no other options, the ship returned to Europe. It docked in Antwerp, Belgium on June 17. By then, several Jewish organizations had secured entry visas for the refugees in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Great Britain. The majority who had traveled on the ship survived the Holocaust; 254 later died as the Nazis swept through the continent.