As the St. Louis steamed toward Havana from Hamburg, Germany, with nearly 1,000 Jews fleeing the Nazis aboard, Recha Weiler desperately nursed her dying husband, Moritz. While other passengers enjoyed the elegance of the civilized cruise after the repressions and humiliations of Germany, Weiler spent most of the voyage in her cabin with Moritz. But her efforts failed. The university professor died aboard the ship and was buried at sea.
An estimated half of the passengers were to die later, after both the US and Cuba rejected their pleas for refuge and the cruel 40-day journey sent them back to Europe to face the Nazis. Some 59 years after the St. Louis's desperate passage back and forth across the Atlantic, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and its Survivors' Registry are trying to trace the fates of its passengers, including Recha Weiler, the 61-year-old widow originally from Cologne.
Voyage of the Damned - Holocaust Ship of Shame.
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