Film Recounts Story of Doomed Refugee Ship
The U.S. State Department presented a program of speeches and a play highlighting the history of the MS St. Louis for about 200 people, including more than 30 survivors.
The highlight of the event was the play “The Trial of FDR.” That play is expected to be shown throughout the country to remind people of the story of the 937 German Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis, a German steamer that left Germany in 1939, heading for Cuba. The ship was denied entry there, and also was denied entry in the United States and Canada. It then sailed back to Europe, where about one-third of the passengers ultimately died in Auschwitz.
The theatrical presentation focused on the decisions faced by U.S. leaders at the time.
The program Sept. 24 was sponsored by Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Hannah Rosenthal, and Special Envoy for Holocaust Issues Douglas Davidson, and featured remarks by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and Foreign Service Director General Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
