On
May 13,
1939, the
ocean liner S.S.
St. Louis departed from
Hamburg, carrying 1128 refugees, mainly
Jewish, from
Nazi Germany to
North America. The destination was
Havana; the passengers had paid $160
each for the right to land and stay in
Cuba, though, for many of them, their intended ultimate destination was the
United States, and they were waiting for
US visas even before the ship departed from Germany.
Once they arrived in Havana, two weeks later, only about 25 passengers were
allowed to come ashore; it turns out most of the landing permits were bogus. The ship sailed to Miami, and just sat there for three days in early June.
The US immigration quota for Germany had already been filled (less than
halfway through the year) and President Roosevelt chose
to stick to that quota. The St. Louis returned to Europe, landing in
Antwerp on June 17. The passengers would eventually, after further delays
by the governments involved, find homes in Belgium, Great Britain,
France, and The Netherlands.
About 240 of them would die in concentration camps after the successful Nazi
invasion of Western Europe. Most of those turned away in Miami had actually
been eligible to enter the US, being part of that filled quota of Germans.