Author: Thomas, Gordon and Max Morgan Witts,
Title: Voyage of the Damned.
Description: NY, Stein and Day, (1974). Book Club Ed. VG in VG DJ. On May 13, 1939, luxury liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, one of the last ships to leave Nazi Germany before WWII erupted. Aboard were 937 Jews, some of whom had already been in concentration camps, who believed they had bought visas to enter Cuba. The voyage of the damned had begun. Before the St. Louis was halfway across the Atlantic, a power struggle ensued between the corrupt Cuban Immigration Minister who issued the visas and his superior, President Bru. The outcome: the refugees would not be allowed to land in Cuba. In America, the Brown Shirts were holding Nazi rallies in Madison Square; anti-Semitic Father Coughlin had an audience of 15 million. Aboard the St. Louis, 937 refugees awaited the decision that would determine their fate. An hour-by-hour presentation of the voyage of the St. Louis, every word true: the German High Command's ulterior motive in granting permission for the "mission of mercy", the confrontations between the refugees and the German crewmen; the suicide attempts among the passengers, and the attitudes of those who might have averted the catastrophe but didn't.

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