The S.S. St. Louis And The Jewbano Thing

Reunions of one kind or another are not uncommon at resorts like the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach.  Hundreds of lavish weddings, anniversaries and other comemorative celebrations are held there every year.   There was a recently held reunion that was not a lavish affair in any way.  It was a small, somber gathering, only 33 people attended.  Those who attended  were the survivors of an incident that had been almost forgotten in time.  They were part of a 938 passenger contingent that sailed from Hamburg, Germany to Havana, Cuba back in 1939.  This was the infamous “Voyage of the Damn,  the Tragedy of the S.S. St. Louis.  

The passengers, who were all Jewish, had been expelled from Germany.  They were allowed to board the St. Louis as a last ditch effort to escape Nazi tyranny.  Upon arrival in Havana Harbor, and after much negotiation, the passengers were not allowed to disembark.   Many other countries refused to accept the ship’s human cargo, including the United States.  No one is exactly sure what were Cuba’s true reasons for denying entry.  However, this denial gave Adolf Hitler the reason he needed to begin the extermination of the Jews of Europe.

Though there was much anti Semitism in the world at the time of this incident, there is no reason to believe that this was the case in Cuba. There had always been a large Jewish community in Cuba.  Jewish ancestry in Cuba goes back to the late 15th. century, when they fled the Spanish Inquisition.  Their community grew and thrived on the island up until Castro’s take over.  At one time there were over 15,000 Jews and five synagogues in the city of Havana.  Today there is only one synagogue with no rabbi.

When Castro’s communist government nationalized the businesses in Cuba the majority of the Jewish population emmigrated to the United States or other Latin American countries.  South Miami Beach has a large Jewish community that is largely made up of Jewish Cubans, or as they like to be called Jewbanos.  Though Americans may consider it a derogatory name, the Cuban American Jews  use the term Jewbano as a form of identity, an identity that they are proud of.

The S.S. St. Louis incident left some deep scares in the American conciousness.  The purpose of the reunion at the Eden Roc was to comemorate the event that occurred 70 years ago by signing copies of Resolution 111.  This resolution, that was sponsored by Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin., acknowledges the suffering of the 938 passengers of the St. Louis that was caused by the refusal of the United States, Cuban, and Canadian governments to provide political asylum.