By Mike Matejka
Imagine 900-plus refugees, fleeing an oppressive government that has vowed to kill them, waiting at America’s shore. Do we let them in?
Am I talking about Syrians? No, I’m talking about an infamous ship sailing, the S.S. St. Louis, which left Hamburg, Germany on May 13, 1939, four months before World War II began. 937 refugees were on the ship, 900 of them German Jews, escaping the Nazis. The ship sailed for Cuba, the refugees with tourist visas.
Cuba quickly passed a new law, requiring a financial payment and permission to enter. On May 8, 40,000 Cubans had demonstrated against their entry, spurred by a Cuban movement sympathetic to the Nazis. When the ship landed in Havana, no one was allowed to leave. On June 2, the ship was ordered to leave Havana and sailed for Miami.
The St. Louis, guarded by the Coast Guard, was not allowed to dock. Telegrams to President Roosevelt went unanswered. Official U.S. policy at the time was that there was a quota for people from each country to enter the U.S., and letting these refugees in would break the quota. The reality of Nazi treatment of Jews was not discovered with the concentration camps. The world was well aware of the brutality and the discrimination. But no nation wanted to take Jewish refugees. Eventually the ship returned to Europe, the refugees split between Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Their respite was short-lived, for many died when the Nazis over-ran Europe. Why were they not allowed in? Was it because of anti-Semitism? In the U.S., there was those who denied there was a problem with Nazis. In December 1938 a Detroit rabbi approached Henry Ford to see if he would grant employment to Nazi refugees. A minor controversy erupted; in attempting to clarify, Ford’s spokesman, Harry Bennett, said, that Mr. Ford, and I quote here, “did not know whether was any persecution, but that if there was any he didn’t believe the German people or the German government were responsible, but an organized few, the war makers and the international bankers” were.
The term “international bankers” was code words for Jews. Anti-Semitism was alive and well in the world in 1939, and not just in Germany.
Today we can shake our heads and wonder why our country did not make room for these Europeans, fleeing oppression. In 70 years, will other Americans wonder why we did so little for refugees from Middle Eastern conflicts? Certainly, any one entering this country should be screened – right now it’s a three-year process to gain U.S. entry from a Middle Eastern refugee camp. There are good people uprooted by war. Perhaps we need to find responsible ways to accommodate more than a trickle. American caring and benevolence might do more to fight ISIS than drones and bureaucratic tangles.
Mike Matejka is the Governmental Affairs director for the Great Plains Laborers District Council, covering 11,000 union Laborers in northern Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. He lives in Normal. He served on the Bloomington City Council for 18 years, is a past president of the McLean County Historical Society and Vice-President of the Illinois Labor History Society.
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