Miami Beach, FL – State Welcomes Holocaust Refugees It Once Turned Away

Miami Beach, FL – Seventy years ago, a prologue to the Holocaust unfolded off the Florida coast as Jewish refugees aboard the S.S. St. Louis were denied asylum in the United States. This weekend, 33 of them will gather to remember, to warn – and, by signing a congressional resolution, to leave their literal mark on history.

“I think this may be the last reunion,” said Herbert Karliner, of Aventura, Fla., who was 12 when he sailed on the ill-fated liner. “So many have already passed away.”

The gathering is at the Eden Roc Renaissance Beach Resort & Spa in Miami Beach, just two or three miles from the site where a Coast Guard cutter turned back the St. Louis. The ship was forced to return to a Europe that soon would be overrun by Nazi forces.

Coming from Israel, Canada, the United Kingdom and 27 American states, the survivors will hold a beachfront ceremony and a menorah-lighting for Hanukkah. And for history, they’ll sign Senate Resolution 111. Passed just this year, the resolution is the first U.S. acknowledgment of the St. Louis incident, advocates say.

About 75 people are left from the 900-plus Jewish passengers of the cruise ship that left Germany in 1939. Their destination to flee Nazi persecution was Cuba, where the passengers had valid visas. Instead, most were prevented from disembarking.

The St. Louis idled in Havana harbor, then circled off South Florida. But Coast Guard cutters from Port Everglades, Fla., turned back the ship when it was within sight of the coastline. Many of the passengers eventually perished in the Holocaust.

Karliner and others believe the rejection of the St. Louis paved the way for the Holocaust, by showing that Jews were considered expendable.

“I feel that very strongly,” said Karliner, who evaded the Nazis in France. “Nobody in the world wanted Jews. And German propaganda said that now, they could do with them whatever they wanted.”

The gathering will feature several speakers, including the Rev. Rosemary Schindler, a relative of industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved about 1,000 Jews from the death camps.

Following dinner will be a debut of “The Trial of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” by Boca Raton, Fla., playwright Robert Krakow. The play features the testimony of six leaders, such as the president and his wife, Eleanor. Six actual St. Louis passengers will serve as a jury, giving impromptu speeches on their own experiences.

“It will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear from the passengers as jurors,” Krakow says. “They’ll have a chance to express 70 years of emotions and the impact on their lives.”

Besides the survivors, the gathering will draw a lengthy list of leaders, such as Consuls General Ofer Bavly of Israel and Klaus H.D. Ranner of Germany. Also attending will be leaders from the National Archives, Yad Vashem, the Shoah Foundation, B’nai B’rith International and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

The St. Louis survivors also will see Krakow’s 1994 play, “False Witness: The Trial of Adolf Hitler,” at a private reception Monday at the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County in Boca Raton. That play asks whether other leaders – and historic figures such as Martin Luther and Henry Ford – helped set the stage for Nazism.

The Sunday gathering is the first project of the Boca Raton-based National Foundation for Jewish Continuity. Its president is Howard Kaye, who serves on the boards of the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Center, both of South Palm Beach County.

“Instead of victims, I wanted to portray them as people of heroism, those who survived,” says Kaye, 44, who owns a life insurance company. “I wanted to communicate to Jews the importance of their birthright.”

“Whatever your faith, there’s a reason you were given it,” he says. “And a reason to keep it.”

After the St. Louis event is finished, the foundation may develop programs on history and heritage for schools and community groups, Kaye says.