June 4, 1939: The MS St. Louis Is Denied Entry to the U.S.

June 4, 1939: The passengers of the MS St. Louis are denied entry into the United States. It becomes known as "The Voyage of the Damned."

Captain Gustav Schröder, the ship's commanding officer, set sail from Hamburg, Germany's 2nd-largest city behind Berlin, and its largest port, to Havana, Cuba on May 13, 1939, carrying 937 passengers, most of them Jewish refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution in Germany.

Captain Gustav Schröder

Schröder was a German who went to great lengths to ensure dignified treatment for his passengers. Food served included items subject to rationing in Germany, and childcare was available while parents dined. Dances and concerts were put on, and on Friday evenings, religious services were held in the dining room. A bust of Hitler was covered by a tablecloth. Swimming lessons took place in the pool. Lothar Molton, a boy traveling with his parents, said that the passengers thought of it as "a vacation cruise to freedom."

Bound for Cuba, the ship dropped anchor at 4:00 AM on May 27 at Havana Harbor. Cuba's President Federico Laredo Brú refused to accept the foreign refugees, except for 28. So Schröder set sail for the U.S., circling Florida, and contacting various people by radio to gain admission. But Secretary of State Cordell Hull, in charge of U.S. foreign policy, believed to have been acting on the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, refused to allow the St. Louis to dock anywhere in America, and sent U.S. Coast Guard vessels to block the way.

A group of academics and clergy in Canada tried to persuade Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to provide sanctuary to the passengers. The ship could have reached Halifax, Nova Scotia in two days. But Frederick Blair, the director of Canada's Immigration Branch, was hostile to Jewish immigration, and persuaded King not to intervene. So America wasn't the only negligent party.

As Captain Schröder negotiated and schemed to find passengers a haven, conditions on the ship declined. At one point he made plans to wreck the ship on the British coast, to force the government to take in the passengers as refugees. He refused to return the ship to Germany until all the passengers had been given entry to some other country. U.S. officials worked with Britain and European nations to find refuge for the Jews in Europe. The ship docked at Antwerp, Belgium on June 17, 908 passengers.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to take 288 of the passengers, who disembarked and travelled to the United Kingdom via other steamers. After much negotiation by Schröder, the remaining 619 passengers were also allowed to disembark at Antwerp. Of those, 224 were accepted by France, 214 by Belgium, and 181 by the Netherlands. The ship returned to Hamburg without any passengers.

The following year, after the Battle of France, and the Nazi occupations of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands in May 1940, all the Jews in those countries were subject to high risk, including the recent refugees.

Based on the survival rates for Jews in various countries during the war and deportations, historians have estimated that 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium and 60 of those in the Netherlands survived the Holocaust. Including the passengers who landed in England, of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived the war, and 227 died. Later research tracing each passenger has determined that 254 -- a little under 30 percent -- of those who returned to continental Europe were murdered during the Holocaust.

The St. Louis was adapted by the Nazi government as a naval accommodation ship in 1940. In 1946, she was converted into a hotel ship at her home port of Hamburg. She was scrapped in 1952.

After World War II, the Federal Republic of Germany awarded Schröder the Order of Merit. He lived until 1959, 7 years after the St. Louis was scrapped. In 1993, he was posthumously named as one of the Righteous Among the Nations at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Isarel.

In 1974, Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts published the book Voyage of the Damned, which told the story of the St. Louis and her passengers. In 1976, a film of the same title premiered.

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June 4, 1939 was a Sunday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 8-4 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Red Ruffing outpitched Dizzy Trout. Joe DiMaggio did not play. Red Rolfe went 3-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs. Hank Greenberg went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 4-1 at the Polo Grounds. Paul Derringer outpitched Carl Hubbell. Mel Ott went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* A doubleheader was split at Ebbets Field. The Pittsburgh Pirates won the 1st game, 7-3. The Brooklyn Dodgers won the 2nd game, 14-1. Oddly, not only was Paul Waner injured and unable to play in either game, but Lloyd Waner went 0-for-5 in the Pirates' win, and 3-for-5 in the Pirates' loss.

* The Chicago Cubs beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 9-4 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* A doubleheader was split at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The Cleveland Indians won the opener, 10-2. Bob Feller was the winning pitcher. The Boston Red Sox won the nightcap, 7-1. Over the 2 games, rookie Ted Williams went 3-for-6 with 2 walks and an RBI.

* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Chicago White Sox won the 1st game, 14-9. The Philadelphia Athletics won the 2nd game, 11-6.

* The St. Louis Browns swept a doubleheader from the Washington Senators, 5-4 and 11-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. It might have been the best day of the year for the Browns, who finished 43-111.

* And the Boston Bees and the St. Louis Cardinals were rained out at National League Park in Boston. The Bees won the 1st game, 10-4. The Cardinals were leading the 2nd game, 6-5 after 8 innings, when the game was called due to darkness. This was during the Boston team's experiment in rebranding (1936-40). It didn't take, and they went back to the old names for the team, the Boston Braves, and the ballpark, Braves Field.