We are twelve again, and nobody can separate us. The day is not ending, Leo, it is about to dawn. Havana is still in darkness, dimly lit by the amber glow of the streetlamps. All we can make out are a few buildings in the midst of all the palms.
Then we hear the deafening blast from the ship’s siren.
We are in the same spot on the deck from where we first caught sight of the city. At an age when we could not understand why nobody wanted us. But now everything is silent. No one is pleading; there are no desperate voices shouting names into the empty air. Once again, my parents insist on separating me from you, dragging me against my will to a tiny stretch of land between two continents.
And I don’t cry out, I don’t shed tears, nor do I beg them to let me stay beside you, Leo, on the St. Louis, the only place where we were free and happy. I take mother’s delicate, smooth hand and, without a backward glance, allow them to launch me into the abyss.
And this time, I can say to you Shalom.
Author’s Note
At eight in the evening of Saturday, May 13, 1939, the transatlantic liner St. Louis of the Hamburg-Amerika Linie (HAPAG) set sail from the port of Hamburg bound for Havana, Cuba. The ship was carrying 900 passengers, the vast majority of them German-Jewish refugees, and 231 crew. Two days later, another 37 passengers boarded at the port of Cherbourg.
The refugees had landing permits issued by Manuel Benítez, the director of the Cuban Department of Immigration and provided by the HAPAG company, which had offices in Havana. Cuba was to be a transit point, as the travelers already had visas to enter the United States. They were meant to stay in Cuba while they waited their turn: a stay that could last between one month and several years.
A week before the ship set sail from Hamburg, Cuba’s president, Federico Laredo Brú, published Decree 937 (so called because of the total number of passengers aboard the St. Louis) invalidating the landing permits Benítez had signed. Only the documents issued by the secretary of state and labor of Cuba would be accepted. The refugees had paid 150 US dollars for each permit, and passages on the St. Louis cost between 600 and 800 reichsmarks. When they left, Germany had demanded that every refugee buy return tickets, and permitted them to take with them only 10 reichsmarks per person.
The ship arrived in the port of Havana at four in the morning on May 27, 1939. The Cuban authorities would not allow it to dock in the area corresponding to the HAPAG company, and so it was forced to anchor in Havana Bay.
Some of the passengers had relatives waiting for them in Havana, many of whom rented boats to go out to the ship, but they were not allowed on deck.
Only four Cubans and two non-Jewish Spaniards were authorized to disembark, together with twenty-two refugees who had obtained landing permits from the Cuban state department prior to the ones issued by Benítez, who was supported by the army chief, Fulgencio Batista.
On June 1, lawyer Lawrence Berenson, a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, met with President Laredo Brú in Havana but was unable to reach an agreement to enable the passengers to land.
The negotiations continued, and the next development was that the Cuban president demanded from Berenson a surety of 500 US dollars per passenger before they could disembark. Representatives of various Jewish organizations, as well as members of the US embassy in Cuba, held unsuccessful talks with Laredo Brú. They also tried to contact Batista, only to be told by his personal physician that the general had caught a cold on the same day that the St. Louis arrived in Cuba, that he had to rest, and could not even come to the telephone.
When Berenson made a counterproposal reducing the amount of money demanded as surety by $23.16 per passenger, the Cuban president decided to break off negotiations and demanded that the ship leave Cuban territorial waters by eleven in the morning on June 2. If this order was not obeyed, the St. Louis would be towed out into the open sea by the Cuban authorities.
The ship’s captain, Gustav Schröder, had protected his passengers ever since their departure from Hamburg, and began to do all he could to find a non-German port where they could disembark.
The St. Louis steamed for Miami, but when it came very close to the Florida coast, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government denied it entry into the United States. This refusal was repeated in Canada by the government of Mackenzie King.
The ship was therefore forced to head back across the Atlantic toward Hamburg. A few days before it arrived, Morris Troper, director of the European Committee for Joint Distribution, came to an agreement for several countries to take in the refugees.
Great Britain accepted 287; France, 224; Belgium, 214; and Holland, 181. In September 1939, Germany declared war, and the countries of continental Europe that had accepted the passengers were soon occupied by the armies of Adolf Hitler.
Only the 287 taken in by Great Britain were safe. Most of the remainder of the former St. Louis passengers suffered the horrors of war or were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps.
Captain Gustav Schröder commanded the St. Louis one further time, and his return to Germany coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War. He did not set to sea again but was given desk jobs in the shipping company. The St. Louis was destroyed during Allied air raids on Germany. After the war, during the denazification process, Captain Schröder was put on trial, but thanks to testimonies and letters in his favor from the St. Louis survivors, the charges against him were dropped. In 1949 he wrote the book Heimatlos auf hoher See, about the journey the St. Louis had made. In 1957 the federal government of Germany awarded him the Order of Merit for his services in the rescue of the refugees.
Captain Schröder died in 1959 at the age of seventy-three. On March 11 of that year, Yad Vashem, the official Israeli institution dedicated to the conservation of the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, recognized him posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations.
In 2009 the United States Senate passed a resolution “acknowledging the suffering of those refugees as a result of the refusal by the governments of Cuba, the United States, and Canada to offer them political asylum.” In 2012 the US State Department apologized publicly for what had happened to the St. Louis, and invited the survivors to its headquarters so that they could tell their stories.
The year 2011 saw the unveiling in Halifax, Canada, of a monument financed by the Canadian government and known as The Wheel of Conscience. It recalls and deplores the refusal by that country to take in the refugees from the St. Louis.
Until now, in Cuba, the tragedy of the St. Louis has been a topic absent from classrooms and history books. All the documents related to the arrival of the ship in Havana and the negotiations with Federico Laredo Brú’s government and Fulgencio Batista have disappeared from the Cuban National Archive.
Acknowledgments
To Johanna V. Castillo, my editor, who encouraged me to revisit the tragedy of the St. Louis. She was my first reader and the driving force behind this story.
To Judith Curr and the entire, fantastic team at Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books for believing in me, for your support, and for your thorough work on The German Girl.
To my grandmother Tomasita, the first person who told me, when I was a child, about the tragedy of the St. Louis, and sent me to have English lessons in Havana with a neighbor who had emigrated from Germany in 1939 and who was unjustly known in the neighborhood as “the Nazi.”
To Aaron, my Jewish friend in Havana.
To Guido, my Jehovah’s Witness friend at primary school.
To my aunt Monina, for her stories about being a pharmacy student at the University of Havana and for helping me get to know the life of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Cuba though her family.
To Lydia, “la madrina,” who relived for me her days as a student at Baldor during 1940s Havana.
To Scott Miller, head curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, an expert on the St. Louis tragedy, who provided access to more than 1,200 documents and put me in touch with survivors.
To Nick Caistor, my translator, for capturing the essence and voice of Hannah and Anna in the English language version. Thank you for an excellent translation.
To Elaine, for your meticulous revisions to the English language edition.
To Néstor and Esther María, for their meticulous work as copy editors.
To Ray, for his support and trust.
To Mirta, who believed in this project from the outset.
To Mirta’s mother, who didn’t allow Hannah to leave without Leo.
To Carole, who fell in love with my novel even before reading it, and encouraged me to write it.
To María, who was moved as soon as she met the German girl, and who made sure Hannah was not entirely unhappy in Havana.
To Annie Philbrick, with whom I traveled to Cuba after writing the book. Thank you for being the first to read it in English, for your kind words, and for being the godmother of The German Girl.
To Leonor, Osvaldo, Romy, Hilarito, Ana María, Ovidio, Yisel, Diana, Betzaida, Rafo, Rafote, Herman, Sonia, Sonia María, Radamés, Gerardo, Laura, Boris: my family and friends, who patiently endured my obsession with the St. Louis.
To my mother and sister, who were more than the protagonists of these pages.
To Gonzalo, for his unconditional support, and for taking care of the family when I needed time to write.
To Emma, Anna, and Lucas, the true source of inspiration for this story.
To the 907 passengers on the St. Louis who were denied entry into Cuba, the United States, and Canada, to whom we shall forever be in debt.
THE PASSENGERS OF THE ST. LOUIS
What follows is a reproduction of the original list of the 937 passengers who boarded the ill-fated St. Louis and photographs that capture their quest for freedom. The German Girl is dedicated to them.
The materials included in this section were generously provided by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Julie Klein, photo by Max Reid.
Elly Reutlinger and her nine-year-old daughter, Renate, pose near a dining area on the ship.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Renate Reutlinger Breslow)
Herbert Karliner poses with his father, Joseph, on the deck of the MS St. Louis. Herbert and his brother, Walter (not pictured), were the only members of their family to survive the war, immigrating to the United States in 1946.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Herbert and Vera Karliner)
Group portrait of Jewish refugee children. Among those pictured are Evelyn Klein (back row, center), Herbert Karliner (front row, left), Walter Karliner (front row, second from the left), and Harry Fuld (first row, far right). The Kleins were allowed to disembark in Cuba.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Don Altman)
Portrait of Gustav Schröder, captain of the MS St. Louis.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Herbert and Vera Karliner)
Ana Maria (Karman) Gordon and her mother, Sidonie, on deck, May 1939.
(Courtesy of Ana Maria Gordon)
Passengers aboard the MS St. Louis.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Dr. Liane Reif-Lehrer)
Fritz (now Fred) Buff and Vera Hess dance in the ballroom. After disembarking the St. Louis in Belgium, Fritz was later able to secure passage for New York in 1940.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Fred Buff)
Pictured in the foreground from left to right: Ilse Karliner, Rose Guttman, Henry Goldstein (Gallant), Harry Guttman. Behind, at the right: Alfred and Sophie Aron.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Herbert and Vera Karliner)
From left to right: Irmgard, Josef, Jakob, and Judith Koeppel, a German-Jewish refugee family. Irmgard and Josef later died in Auschwitz, and Judith was sent to live in the United States with her aunt and uncle.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Judith Koeppel Steel)
Passengers attempt to communicate with friends and relatives in Cuba, who were permitted to approach the docked vessel in small boats.
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park)
ARMANDO LUCAS CORREA is an award-winning journalist, author, and the editor for People en Español, the top-selling Hispanic magazine in the United States. Correa is the recipient of various awards from the National Association of Hispanic Publications and the Society of Professional Journalism. The German Girl is his first novel. Please visit ArmandoLucasCorrea.com.
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