Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust
Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust
by Sarah A. Ogilvie and Scott Miller
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006 Cloth: 978-0-299-21980-2 | eISBN: 978-0-299-21983-3 | Paper: 978-0-299-21984-0 Library of Congress Classification DS135.G5A156 2006 Dewey Decimal Classification 940.53180922
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | EXCERPT | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In May of 1939 the Cuban government turned away the Hamburg-America Line’s MS St. Louis, which carried more than 900 hopeful Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany. The passengers subsequently sought safe haven in the United States, but were rejected once again, and the St. Louis had to embark on an uncertain return voyage to Europe. Finally, the St. Louis passengers found refuge in four western European countries, but only the 288 passengers sent to England evaded the Nazi grip that closed upon continental Europe a year later. Over the years, the fateful voyage of the St. Louis has come to symbolize U.S. indifference to the plight of European Jewry on the eve of World War II.
Although the episode of the St. Louis is well known, the actual fates of the passengers, once they disembarked, slipped into historical obscurity. Prompted by a former passenger’s curiosity, Sarah Ogilvie and Scott Miller of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum set out in 1996 to discover what happened to each of the 937 passengers. Their investigation, spanning nine years and half the globe, took them to unexpected places and produced surprising results. Refuge Denied chronicles the unraveling of the mystery, from Los Angeles to Havana and from New York to Jerusalem.
Some of the most memorable stories include the fate of a young toolmaker who survived initial selection at Auschwitz because his glasses had gone flying moments before and a Jewish child whose apprenticeship with a baker in wartime France later translated into the establishment of a successful business in the United States. Unfolding like a compelling detective thriller, Refuge Denied is a must-read for anyone interested in the Holocaust and its impact on the lives of ordinary people.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Ogilvie is director of the National Institute of Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Scott Miller is director of the Benjamin and Vladka Meed Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
REVIEWS
“Thanks to the publication of [this book], the world knows with certainty the fates of each and every passenger onboard, often in heart-wrenching detail.”—Andrew Cohen, Forward
“Ogilvie and Miller successfully bring the harrowing story up to date; their meticulous and persistent research deserves accolades and congratulations.”—Morton I. Teicher, Buffalo Jewish Review
“Prodigiously researched and generously illustrated with photographs. . . . This valuable contribution to Holocaust studies provides emotionally satisfying closure as the authors, staffers at [the United States] Holocaust Memorial Museum, track the passengers and give a human face to mass tragedy.”—Publishers Weekly
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Illustrations
Museum Director’s Foreword
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 A Mystery Beckons
2 Fateful Voyage
3 Kaddish
4 Archives, Answers, and Anomalies
5 The First Israeli Survivor
6 A Total American
7 It Depends What You Mean by “Survived”
8 Reluctant Witness
9 Shadows
10 Frankfurt-on-the Hudson
11 Graveyards
12 Cruel Calculus
13 Washington Heights Portrait: The Fortunate
14 Washington Heights Portrait: Exile in America
15 Sowing in Tears
16 States of Insecurity
17 Displaced Persons
18 Kew Gardens Portrait: A Song at Auschwitz
19 The Missing
Afterword
Notes
Index
The St. Louis Passengers
EXCERPT
"Irrespective of what we think of America's action, we now know that the statement 'we will never really know' what happened to the other passengers is simply wrong. [At last] the final stage in the saga of these very unlucky passengers has been rescued from oblivion."--Deborah Lipstadt, from the preface
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