Doomed
You probably have not heard of the voyage of the SS St. Louis. It took place on the eve of WW II and was a sordid piece of history for all countries involved.
It started out thus:
The German propaganda ministry and the Nazi party conceived of a propaganda exercise which would demonstrate that Germany was not alone in its territorial, exclusionary hostility towards Jews as a permanent minority within the political economy of their state. The German propagandists wanted to demonstrate that the “civilized” world agreed with their assertion that Jews constituted a continuing “hidden-hand” of influence on national and economic affairs. They wanted to demonstrate that no other Western country or people would receive Jews as refugees. Firstly it would appear that the Nazis were allowing the Jewish refugees a new life in Havana.
The Nazis were aware of rising western antisemitism and correctly surmised that these Jews, traveling on tourist visas (not immigrant visas, which none of the potential host countries would likely have issued to them), would not be able to visit Cuba as tourists when in fact they were political/social refugees; who, for whatever reason, had been forcibly removed from Germany, their home country. Furthermore, having been refused entry into Cuba and other Atlantic nations, the plight of the refugees would force the world to admit that there was, as the Nazis characterized it, a “Jewish problem” that Germany, for all to see, was trying to resolve “humanely.”
With not one of the countries of the Northern Atlantic basin allowing the Jewish passengers entry, those countries would be in no position in the future to morally object when Germany dealt with its problem Jewish population.
With the stage set, the voyage unfolded:
The St. Louis sailed out of Hamburg into the Atlantic Ocean in May 1939 carrying one non-Jewish and 936 (mainly German) Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution just before World War II.
However, on the ship’s arrival in Cuba, the passengers were refused either tourist entry (which in theory was valid for their tourist visas) or political asylum (which was not the stated purpose for which the tourist visas had been issued) by the Cuban government under Federico Laredo Brú. This prompted a near mutiny. Two people attempted suicide and dozens more threatened to do the same. However, 29 of the refugees were able to disembark at Havana.
On 4 June 1939, the St. Louis was also refused permission to unload on orders of President Roosevelt as the ship waited in the Caribbean Sea between Florida and Cuba. Initially, Roosevelt showed limited willingness to take in some of those on board despite the Immigration Act of 1924, but vehement opposition came from Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and from Southern Democrats—some of whom went so far as to threaten to withhold their support of Roosevelt in the 1940 Presidential election if this occurred.
The St. Louis then tried to enter Canada but was denied as well.
The ship sailed for Europe, first stopping in the United Kingdom, where 288 of the passengers disembarked and were thus spared from the Holocaust. The remaining 619 passengers disembarked at Antwerp; 224 were accepted into France, 214 into Belgium and 181 into the Netherlands, safe from Hitler’s persecution until the German invasions of these countries.
Nobody comes off looking good. Roosevelt shows himself to be a man of such backbone, sacrificing the refugees for his own political expediency. And all of the countries show themselves to be so generous in taking on the refugees. All the passengers on the ship would have been a pittance for any one country to take on.
In the end, it is estimated that between 227 and 254 of the passengers ended up dying during WWII.
Full wikipedia article here.
SS St. Louis
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