“Of course I’ve heard of Kristallnacht. Some Nazi thing, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, some Nazi thing,” Shapiro replied. “After Kristallnacht, the handwriting was on the wall for German Jews. They knew they had to get out, but getting out had gotten harder, and, it turned out, getting into any other country also became harder.
“The St. Louis was a German passenger ship. Nine-hundred-thirty-seven Jews managed to bribe their way on board. The ship sailed to Cuba, where the Jews expected to wait until they could get into the US.
“But it didn’t work out that way. The Cubans wanted half a million dollars to let the Jews off the ship. They couldn’t raise the money and the ship sailed for Florida, a ship with nearly a thousand Jews, old people, women, children. Things were so desperate the passengers formed a suicide committee to keep people from killing themselves, they were so afraid of being sent back to Germany. Remember, this is 1938. Franklin Roosevelt, the great liberal, is president. So guess where the St. Louis landed in the United States.”
“Stop. Enough,” Sally said, her voice rising. “I don’t want to hear about Nazis. Nazis have nothing to do with what’s happening now. This is America. There aren’t Nazis here. Nazis were history. I don’t know where the ship landed, Ben,” she said, acid slipping into her tone, “but I am sure you are aching to tell me, so go right ahead.”
“Nowhere. That’s where in the United States of America the St. Louis passengers got off that ship. Nowhere. We shut the door. Wouldn’t let them in. The St. Louis sailed back and forth near Miami and we sent the Coast Guard to make sure nobody tried to swim to shore. So guess where the thousand Jews went? Back to Europe. The St. Louis delivered its passengers right back to the Holocaust. To the camps.
“Two years later Congress voted to change the immigration laws to allow twenty thousand additional people into this country. Guess who they were. Jews? No, they were twenty thousand English school children sent here by their parents to keep them safe. Don’t you think the St. Louis passengers could have used a good lawyer?”
She knew better than to answer. She turned her back and walked away from her husband, leaving him alone in the living room, thinking he’d won another argument.
CHAPTER 10
How many “cousins” paying surprise visits, “cousins” who spoke little English, could suburban Boston accept? Four thousand frightened people could not be hidden for long, no matter how quixotic their rescuers hoped to be. The cleverest ones landed on shore and never stopped running, catching planes and trains and buses heading anywhere, ducking police and immigration authorities as best they could. Most of the people off the two ships, however, were smuggled into finished basements and attic bedrooms in houses in Boston suburbs.
These houses were not fitted with secret doors and hidden rooms like Anne Frank lived in. No underground railroad had been established to smuggle illegal Jewish immigrants. Instead, Jewish doctors, lawyers, businessmen, woken from their beds by late-night telephone calls, had to make snap decisions.
“Can you take somebody in?” the caller would ask. “Just for a day or two until we sort things out. There’s really no risk to you. Nothing will happen to you. Don’t worry.”
How could they refuse, just for a day or two?
Cold, wet, terrified, hungry people, sometimes an entire family, were dropped at nice houses in nice neighborhoods, 4,000 people scattered and hidden before the sun rose the next morning. They were treated not quite as guests, not quite as fugitives. They weren’t foreign exchange students, an accepted category of foreigners who showed up once in a while. They certainly weren’t au pairs; neither were they foreign business visitors. They certainly couldn’t be fugitives from the law. Good people would not hide criminals.
People didn’t know how to handle these sudden visitors. Could the neighbors be told or not? Did they distinguish between Jewish neighbors and non-Jewish neighbors? Were they only staying at Jewish homes? Suddenly the distinction between Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends took on a new significance.
Roselyn Lowenstein was called to the principal’s office at Swampscott High School the day after the escape from the ships.
“Roselyn, I have some serious questions to ask you,” Principal Warren said.
Roselyn was a National Honor Society member and co-captain of the school’s state championship debating team. Principal Warren knew Roselyn and her parents well. Roselyn was never called to the principal’s office for causing trouble. This time, however, she was nervous, fidgeting while Principal Warren spoke to her.
“Roselyn, somebody told me you were talking at lunch about visitors at your house. I’ll be blunt with you. I heard you told people you have a family from those ships hiding at your house. Is that true?”
For a seventeen-year-old girl who should have been worrying about whether she should apply early decision to Harvard because, after all, it was Harvard, or to Columbia, because imagine going to the Columbia School of Journalism, hiding illegal refugees was the last problem Roselyn Lowenstein expected to have to face. She did not want to deal with it now. In fact, she did not want to give up her bedroom for four people who barely spoke English. And Mr. Warren wasn’t the enemy. He was okay. He’d promised to write a great college recommendation letter for her.
“It’s a secret. We’re not supposed to tell,” she whispered, laying the drama on thickly.
Warren removed a yellow filing folder from a desk drawer. Peeking, Roselyn could see her name was typed across the tab.
“I have a very important letter to write for you,” the principal said, looking closely at the young woman. She stared at him for no more than five seconds, then glanced again at the file folder.
“Okay. It’s only for a few days. Maybe the school newspaper should be covering this. Lots of other kids have them at their houses, too, you know.” He could hear the excitement in her voice.
Warren watched the local TV news while eating breakfast that morning. He watched the bodies of young coastguardsmen lifted from the water. He watched footage of the flaming remains of the two patrol boats. Like many people, he was ambivalent about letting the refugees off those two ships. Sure, they needed someplace to go, but hadn’t the US just deported all those South Americans and Haitians and Asians? You couldn’t start making exceptions for white people; fair was fair.
And now ten Americans were murdered by these Jews. That sealed it for Warren.
When Roselyn left his office to return giggling to her Spanish class, where she huddled with half a dozen friends who also had instant relatives at home, Warren searched the telephone book for the Massachusetts State Police number, picked up the telephone and dialed quickly.
“I don’t know how many other families are also hiding people,” he told Detective Lieutenant Francis O’Brien, “but there is an awful lot of whispering in the halls, and it’s mostly the Jewish kids doing it. I suspect there are a lot of them in town, a lot of them. So what are you going to do about this?”
CHAPTER 11
Lt.Chaim Levi applied the last brushstrokes of WEST System epoxy to the water storage tank under the main cabin settee, then scrambled up the cabin ladder into the boat’s cockpit, drawing deep breaths of fresh air after inhaling epoxy fumes in the closed cabin all morning. He regretted losing the forty gallons of water storage from the starboard water tank; he’d have to find someplace to put collapsible plastic water bags for the crossing, but he was terrified of what filled the tank now.