MS St. Louis

MS St. Louis was a diesel-powered ocean liner built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen for Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). She was named after the city of St. Louis, Missouri. She was the sister ship of Milwaukee. St. Louis regularly sailed the trans-Atlantic route from Hamburg to Halifax, Nova Scotia and New York City, and made cruises to the Canary Islands, Madeira, Spain, and Morocco. St. Louis was built for both transatlantic liner service and for leisure cruises. In May 1939, St. Louis carried more than 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany intending to escape antisemitic persecution. The refugees first tried to disembark in Cuba but were denied permission to land. After Cuba, the captain, Gustav Schröder, went to the United States and Canada, trying to find a nation to take the Jews in, but both nations refused. He finally returned the ship to Europe, where various countries, including the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, accepted some refugees. Following the German occupation of France, Belgium and the Netherlands during World War II, many refugees were persecuted during the Holocaust, and some historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them were killed in death camps. These events, also known as the "Voyage of the Damned", have inspired film, opera, and fiction.

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