Page 3 of the June 23rd, 1939 issue of The American Jewish Outlook
The article “There Is A Ship…” ran in the June 23rd, 1939 issue of the weekly Pittsburg based newspaper The American Jewish Outlook. The author of the article, Heyward Broun, takes a very strong stance regarding the treatment of the MS St. Louis and her passengers. The MS St. Louis was a ship which was full of 908 Jewish passengers who were seeking political asylum in the western hemisphere, which was outside of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime’s reach. After being turned away by Cuba, they next tried the United States. The explanation the US government offered was that that they were turned away because they only had tourist visas, but there was no return destination. This was in spite of Jewish Americans appealing to the president to forgo the immigration quota system and grant an exception. The greater American public was against immigration due the job market being damaged by the Great Depression. According to Broun, no matter the reasons, by turning a blind eye to these people, the U.S. has effectively surrendered their humanitarian ideals. Despite the pleas of many Jewish American groups, there was never an exception granted to political refugees, such as the Jews of Europe.
The editor’s note mentions that “temporary havens” had been created in England, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands for the passengers. Before the end of the war, all of those nations would be under Hitler’s control, excluding England. It is estimated that a quarter of those passengers would be systematically killed in concentration camps.
