And the Voyage of the Damned

KRISTALLNACHT

OVERVIEW

• Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for Germany's economic and social problems

• Discrimination through propaganda

• The ‘pure blood’ German was racially superior

• Laws were set into place striping the Jews of their rights

What happened?• Zindel Grynszpan and his family

had been deported back to Poland

• Zindel’s seventeen-year old son Herschel decided to avenge his family’s deportation and persecution of Jews

• He intended to assassinate the German Ambassador to France

• Injured the Third secretary Ernest vom Rath

NOVEMBER 7, 1938

What did he do? Who was he?

• Minister of propaganda

• Used the S.S St. Louis and the passengers in a propaganda plan

• Nazi propaganda hyped the passengers’ criminal nature- making them seem even more

• Sent agents to Cuba to stir anti-Semitism and organize protests

• His contempt for the human race in general and the Jews in particular, and cynicism were an expression of his own self-hatred

JOSEPH GOEBBELS

• Nationwide, state-sponsored pogrom conducted throughout Germany and Austria

• From the evening and night of November 9 through to the following afternoon

• Provoked by the assassination of a minor German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew,

Herschel Grynszpan.

• Mass destruction

• Concentration camps of had already been prepared weeks before for the influx of thousands of German Jews

KRISTALLNACHT

•Hundreds of synagogues were attacked, vandalized and looted and dozens were set ablaze and destroyed•At least 91 Jews died in the pogrom

NOVEMBER 9, 1938

Who was he?• He has been arrested on the night of Kristallnacht

and sent to Dachau

• The Nazis released Pozner on the condition that he

leave the country within 14 days.

• His wife and his two children could not accumulate sufficient funds to go aboard the ship

• He hoped that he could earn enough money after his arrival to bring them out of German captivity.

AARON POZNER

•The SS St. Louis was a German ocean liner most notable for a single voyage that set sail from Hamburg to Cuba in 1939, in which her captain, Gustav Schröder, tried to find homes for 915 Jewish refugees from Germany

SS ST. LOUIS

• Each refugee needed a visa and was required to pay a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of Cuba

• Tourists were still welcome and didn’t require visas.

• Manuel Benitez realized that it did not define a tourist or a refugee

• He sold landing permits which allowed refugees to land in Cuba by calling them tourists.

• Sold to everyone for $150

• Decree 937: closed the loophole to Decree 55.

DECREE 55

•They were denied entry to Cuba, the United States and Canada•Finally accepted into various European countries, which were later engulfed in World War II•181 could go to Holland, 224 to France, 228 to Great Britain, and 214 to Belgium• Of the Jewish passengers that were in the ship, 254 died in death camps as a result from the Nazi “Final Resolution” upon being denied passage into Cuba and returning to Western Europe

THE JEWISH PASSENGERS

What were they worried about?• Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Commander

E.G. Rose• Rose had been trailing the German ship

• Henry wanted to know it’s exact location

• Rose agreed to find information on the ships location

but was told by Henry to keep it secret

• Henry mainly wanted to treat the investigation as confidential so no one knew he was interested

AMERICAN COAST GUARD CONVERSATION

Rabbi Stahl suggested that the voyage of the S.S St. Louis was a stunning victory for Hitler

because it proved that “the Allied countries did not want Jews there just as much as Hitler didn’t

want them in his.”

RABBI STAHL

• In 2009 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution acknowledging the U.S. role in rejecting the ship and passengers but it wasn’t a formal apology• In 2000, Canada's religious community, members of the Canadian clergy apologized to the survivors of what became known as the "Voyage of the Damned“ in an Ottawa hotel•On April 25, 2000, approximately 1,500 Cubans marched from Ocean Drive and 10th Street on South Beach to the Holocaust Memorial in a silent march to ask for forgiveness

AN APOLOGY TO THE SURVIVORS

THE END