Refugee

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the Holocaust, war, violent war crimes, and suicide.

Due to the antisemitic policies of the Nazi party and the rise of violence against Jewish people, many Jewish people in Nazi Germany attempted to emigrate between 1933 and 1939. A series of pogroms on November 9-10, 1938 (featured in the opening chapter of Refugee) called Kristallnacht formed part of the Nazis’ attempts to accelerate emigration and force Jewish people to leave Germany. Jewish emigration took many forms; over 100,000 Jewish people went to the United States, and the United Kingdom carried out a rescue effort of thousands of children called the Kindertransport. In May 1939, 937 Jewish passengers set sail from Hamburg on the MS St. Louis in an attempt to reach Havana in Cuba; the majority wanted to go on from there to the United States. It was commanded by Captain Gustav Schröder, a German who was not a refugee yet committed himself to attempting to find asylum for his passengers. Their voyage was widely publicized.

However, many nations, including the United States, were not willing to admit lots of Jewish refugees. There were several signs before the MS St. Louis arrived in Cuba that the voyagers would be refused asylum. Although the passengers had Cuban landing certificates or transit visas, the president invalidated them before the ship sailed. Right-wing groups in Cuba put pressure on the government not to admit Jewish refugees, partly because the country was still recovering from the Great Depression and partly because Nazi propaganda claimed that Jews fleeing Europe were communists. Forty thousand people held an antisemitic demonstration in Havana before the MS St. Louis set sail (“Voyage of the St. Louis.” Holocaust Encyclopedia).

Only 28 passengers from the MS St. Louis were allowed into Cuba, despite legal support from the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JJDC). One passenger attempted suicide and was sent to a Cuban hospital; while Josef is a fictional character, this is Josef’s father in Refugee. The ship then sailed to the US, and while some news outlets bolstered sympathy for the passengers among American people, no one was allowed to disembark due to limitations set by immigration quotas. Antisemitic and xenophobic sentiment meant that few people opposed these quotas.

Eventually, the ship had to return to Europe, though Captain Schröder was adamant that he would not return the passengers to Germany. The JJDC negotiated to allow 288 passengers to go to Great Britain, 181 to the Netherlands, 214 to Belgium, and 224 to France. Ultimately, 532 of these people were trapped as the Nazis began to take over parts of Europe, and 254 died in the Holocaust (“Voyage of the St. Louis.” Holocaust Encyclopedia). This is the fate of Josef and his mother in Refugee.