Harboring Sad Memories of the St. Louis

The St. Louis was a luxury liner of the old school: fine orchestra, crystal chandeliers in the ballroom, elegant dining room. A portrait of Hitler was hanging in the grand salon, but passengers were allowed to take it down for their Sabbath services.

For an 18-year-old girl from Berlin, it was the voyage of a lifetime. After all, Ruth Gerber and her mother, Rosa, along with all the other refugees on board the German vessel, had managed to flee the Nazis. The sea air was invigorating, the crew accommodating and the dance floor enticing. In Havana, they planned to join Ruth’s brother and patch together their lives while waiting for permission to enter the U.S.

But their dreams were shattered when the Cubans abruptly refused to let the passengers disembark. When the U.S. also refused them entry, they were ordered back to Europe, where half the passengers would die in concentration camps. A small movie was made about the 1939 voyage of the St. Louis, but today it’s a neglected bit of history.

At her dining-room table in Camarillo, Ruth Gerber Fridberg said she’d rather forget the shameful saga. However, historians at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are trying to breathe life into it, to keep it fresh as a reminder of what happens when a country runs out of compassion.

“We’re trying to tell the passengers’ individual stories,” said Scott Miller, one of the museum’s researchers. “We’re trying to show the human consequences of bystanding.”

Over three years, they have tracked down people like Ruth--one of about 120 passengers still alive. They’ve scoured government records, inspected synagogue membership rolls and interviewed hundreds of relatives; this month they are visiting Los Angeles in an effort to find anyone who knew the dozen passengers still unaccounted for.

As she talks about shipboard life, Ruth pauses in mid-sentence and apologizes for her vagueness. After all, it was 60 years ago that the St. Louis steamed out of Hamburg. Holocaust researchers have contacted her about her time on the ship, but she doesn’t relish the memories: “I’ve tried so hard to cut all this from out of my mind for so many years. . . .”

Of course, she can’t.

She remembers the desperation that swept through the passengers when Cuban officials did their about-face and refused to let the passengers off in Havana.

Each day for a week, German Jews who were already living in Cuba hailed their relatives from skiffs in the harbor. Ruth’s brother begged her to marry one of his Cuban friends to gain entry.

“I told him I would never leave my mother,” she recalled. “Forget it.”

She remembers the lawyer who slit his wrists and jumped overboard rather than return to Germany and face the concentration camps. He was plucked from the Caribbean, and ultimately sent back.

She remembers the pleading telegrams the passengers sent to the White House. FDR never responded.

“In Germany, we had thought of him like a god,” she said, still embittered by his silence.

She remembers the terrible ache of being so close to freedom, so close she could see the swaying palm trees of Miami Beach. For two days, the ship drifted just offshore, shadowed by a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. Its passengers grew more despondent by the hour. Some had already endured the camps; as randomly as they had been seized, they were released by the Nazis in an ostentatious display of humanity.

Ruth wanted to be as far from Europe as she could get. The year before, Nazi soldiers had booted the once-prosperous family out of its 15-room apartment. A sister managed to escape with some money, but Ruth and her mother were allowed to leave for their new lives with only 10 marks--$4--apiece.

There had been so much terror: the roundups of the Jews, the destruction of their businesses, the looting of their homes.

“We can stay a little longer,” Ruth’s mother had told her, hesitating to leave. “They wouldn’t harm women.”

But despite frantic lobbying by American Jews, the St. Louis was barred from the U.S. Mindful of public anger over immigration, officials pointed to tight quotas. After all, the law was the law.

The atmosphere on the return trip was somber. “We thought it was the end,” Ruth said, “the absolute end.”

Finally, Belgium, Holland, France and Great Britain agreed to accept the refugees. But when the Germans overran Western Europe, many of them were doomed.

About half of the 937 passengers died in the camps.

Today, Ruth and her husband Charles--who also escaped the Nazis--talk about how lucky they are.

Ruth and her mother lost perhaps 50 relatives in the Holocaust but found safety in England. Charles, whose father was tossed from a window by the Gestapo, made it to the U.S. in 1938 and enlisted as a GI. Three days after his discharge, he met Ruth at a party in Hollywood.

The two are thinking about attending a museum presentation on the St. Louis at the University of Judaism on Sept. 28.

But maybe not.

“Who wants to hear these sad stories?” she asks.

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.