Crossing the Borders of Time (41 page)

As the
San Thomé
crossed the Yucatán Channel and drew closer to Cuba, the passengers read in the sun, played chess or cards, studied Spanish, debated the course of the war, and tried, if only for the sake of their children, to envision a new life with something resembling optimism. But for one couple, obsessed by memories of a similar trip three years before that had ended in nightmare, nervousness mounted. In May 1939, Arnost and Camilla Roth and their young son had sailed on the ill-fated
St. Louis
, almost all of whose 937 passengers were unaccountably barred from landing in Havana and then unconscionably shipped back to Europe. Most of them Jews who hoped eventually to settle in the United States, they had purchased Cuban landing permits in Germany at inflated prices through a racket headed by Colonel Manuel Benítez, Cuba’s corrupt immigration director. What they did not know, however, was that eight days before they set out, infighting among unscrupulous officials, in addition to political pressure against admitting more Jews, had led Cuban president Federico Laredo Brú retroactively to cancel permits and visas for all but twenty-eight of them.

When the
St. Louis
entered Havana’s outer harbor on May 27, 1939, it was not permitted to approach the dock and was shortly ordered to leave Cuban waters. Frantic telegrams to President Roosevelt and other world leaders proved unavailing. No country would offer asylum. Even with the
St. Louis
anchored off Miami Beach, the combined forces of anti-Semitism and isolationism chilled the American State Department, which refused to relent. To spare the imperiled Jews from returning to Germany, the Joint finally arranged—posting a cash guarantee of $500,000 (equal to almost $7 million today)—for France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Great Britain each to admit a share of them. Still, when war broke out the following year, only the 287 accepted by England were safe from the Nazis, and a quarter of the rest ultimately perished in internment or death camps.

Among the group admitted to France, the Roths had sailed again for Cuba, now on the
San Thomé
, relying on assurances that the island’s immigration restrictions had changed since their last diverted and harrowing journey. Inevitably, though, their story spread through the ship, terrifying the travelers holding visas for Cuba who had missed or forgotten the shocking headlines of three years before. As the
San Thomé
moved toward Havana, the refugees restlessly counted the days and waited to land, while a new specter of horror haunted the ship.

On Sunday morning, April 26, almost six weeks after the refugees sailed from Marseille, the
San Thomé
arrived at the tip of the port of Havana where the great Spanish fortress, the Castillo del Morro, has stood for centuries facing the sea, guarding the city and watching for pirates. But on that spring day, in a place far removed from the violence of war, the “pirates” were already ashore—mercenary Cuban officials looking for plunder under cover of law. Their attack on the refugee ship came by way of a special decree signed by the Cuban president, General Fulgencio Batista, on April 16, just as the
San Thomé
was dropping anchor in Veracruz.

While Cuba had already provided asylum for six thousand Jewish refugees up to that point—five thousand six hundred of them having arrived just within the previous year—now, abruptly, Batista cut off the island to those seeking safe harbor. It seemed the tragic experience of the
St. Louis
would be repeated, as his new regulations effectively revoked permission for the
San Thomé
refugees to land in Havana. They blocked entry to all natives or citizens of any enemy country and, moreover, of any country being occupied by an enemy power. (Although Cuba did not engage in the fighting, its government four months earlier had declared war on Germany, Italy, and Japan.) By denying admission to refugees not only from the three Axis countries but also from any part of the globe the Axis occupied, Batista’s decree banned refugees from virtually all of Europe and good deal of Asia. Described as a measure aimed “to avoid infiltration of enemy aliens into Cuba,” the decree resulted in only 40
San Thomé
passengers free to debark. Among those barred from entry, subsumed under the law as possible enemy spies, were 147 women and children. Just as in the
St. Louis
fiasco, the new law made no exception for refugees already at sea and heading for Cuba with visas in hand. To the contrary, the third provision of the new decree spoke directly and negatively to their situation: “All visas granted prior to this decree to persons who have not yet entered Cuba and are included in the above named restrictions, are hereby annulled.”

The Joint jumped into action even before the passengers learned of the crisis ahead. The agency sought help “on humanitarian grounds” from the American State Department and the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees; from the Polish, Czech, and British embassies; from top ranks of the Catholic church and Cuban officials. The American embassy in Havana cabled the State Department that “while the decree’s ostensible purpose was to prevent entrance of possible Axis agents,” it seemed the real purpose involved “an attempt to extract more money from Jewish relief societies” eager to see the refugees land.

Meanwhile, Cuban newspaper accounts compared the
San Thomé
to the
St. Louis
and begged that mercy be shown to the beleaguered “Hebrews.”

“It would be a cruelty to have refugees turned back to the Axis-controlled nations,” wrote
El Crisol
on April 18. “In this moment of drama and horror for humanity, all those persecuted by the Nazi-fascist monster are worthy of the respect and consideration of all free men.”

The paper
Finanzas
lauded the Batista government for guarding against the entry of enemy spies, yet it also denounced the injustice of voiding visas that Cuba had previously granted to the “unfortunates” already at sea. “Let not our Cuban government permit another spectacle such as that of the
St. Louis
; let it for the last time permit the disembarkation of this boatload of Hebrews who have fulfilled all the requisites of immigration before the issuance of this decree,” it suggested. If they are not permitted to land, “they will have to be returned to their ports of entry to be at the mercy of the fiendish Gestapo torments.” Still other editorial comments spoke in favor of granting the Jews permits to land on the grounds that they were “people of means,” likely to “add to the wealth of the country.”

For ten nerve-racking days, the
San Thomé
waited in limbo outside the harbor. Although there was no way for them to know, on April 19 the United States had rejected the Günzburgers’ applications for visas, so admission to Cuba was essential for them, as it was for most of the others on board. The Joint brought fresh supplies of food and water onto the ship and held meetings with a passenger panel that struggled to find an end to the impasse. The refugees’ panic and fear mounted each day, much like the garbage and excrement that overwhelmed efforts to maintain hygienic conditions on a ship that had now been at sea three times longer than initially planned. The course of the talks with Cuban officials was the only thing on the passengers’ minds, and rumors spread through the ship like a virulent plague.

Casablanca!
A fate overheard. God, no, the passengers wailed, was it possible the Cubans would actually ship them back there? In the face of despair, the understanding arose that the situation might change if only they could raise sufficient funds for a meaningful bribe. Janine would always remember that the figure demanded was $100,000—equivalent to almost $1.4 million today—but few of the refugees had any substantial money with them. There were, however, those who had diamonds. And Janine would also remember that the Orthodox Jewish merchants from Antwerp whom she had scorned at the start of the journey were the ones who helped pay for the passengers’ lives.

In a special bulletin when the crisis was over, the Joint would announce that for two weeks it had “worked incessantly” with Cuban officials and “interested public-spirited persons” before receiving a call at eleven forty-five p.m. on May 5 with the news that the Cuban government would admit all the
San Thomé
refugees still out in the harbor. Of the twelve thousand refugees who had sought shelter in Cuba since Hitler took power, these were the last, as the decree of April 1942 shut the doors of the island for the duration of war. Sizable bribes bought sanctuary for the persecuted who came in those years, helping to add to the staggering fortune that Batista took with him when Fidel Castro’s revolution forced him from power and required
him
to flee in the following decade.

“The nature of the problems which confront us in the Cuban situation do not permit us to give them publicity,” a confidential Joint memorandum noted that June. “You can readily understand that much that is done must go unsung.” But in a subsequent report it clearly explained that Colonel Benítez, Batista’s director of immigration, had “conducted a thriving trade in the sale of illegal landing permits,” and that refugees, once admitted, then became vulnerable to “squeezes” from other officials “using the threat of expulsion from Cuba.” When refugees lacked funds to pay, the burden fell on the Joint.

The resolution of the
San Thomé
story as presented for public consumption, however, in the
Havana Post, El País
, and other newspapers ascribed Cuba’s decision to admit this last boatload of Jews to an Allied agreement to help weed out any Axis agents hiding among them. American and British officials resolved the crisis by offering “to ‘cooperate with the Cuban Government’ in checking over the refugees’ documents, to determine whether they are political refugees in good faith or not,” the
Havana Post
said. It reported that the refugees, guardedly viewed as enemy aliens, were being transferred to the Tiscornia Immigration Station to await thorough investigation of their papers before being released into civic Havana.

Havaner Leben
, a Yiddish-language newspaper founded in 1932 to serve a large, settled Jewish Cuban population stemming from earlier waves of European immigration, explained that the American and British ambassadors had also promised to help verify which of the
San Thomé
passengers would eventually be able to proceed to the United States.

On May 7, on behalf of the Joint, its honorary chairman Paul Baerwald sent his thanks to Batista. “Your Excellency,” he wrote, “the lofty spirit of humanitarianism displayed in your action illuminates the dark chapter of man’s inhumanity to man. We beg to assure you that we are deeply appreciative of the hospitality of Cuba to these refugees and to the others now in your country.”

For those aboard ship, admission to Cuba at last put an end to unspeakable years of terror and loss, grief and despair that they had suffered in Europe under the Nazis. Whatever came next, at least they were safe. For Janine, however, throughout the bleak, restless days that still lay ahead—like the ones endured on the
San Thomé
while waiting to learn if the currents of war would save or destroy them—there was really only one thought in mind. One reason to land. She needed to get to the Havana post office and reclaim the letter whose promise of love would carry her over the borders of time, both back to Roland and ahead to still happier dreams of their future together.

FIFTEEN
INCOMMUNICADO

A
LMOST TWO MONTHS
after leaving Marseille, the
San Thomé
passengers disembarked in Havana. But as soon as their uncertain feet regained solid ground, the weary travelers were forced onto boats once again. The destination was no longer whispered: Casablanca. Not the teeming port they had left behind in Morocco. Rather, it would turn out to be a sleepy fishing village of the very same name, reflecting the fact that a white house
—casa blanca
—stood on the shore near its pier. Still, that did not alleviate the refugees’ fear and confusion, when instead of being released into the Cuban capital, they were ferried across the Bay of Havana, a channel so narrow it looks like a river. Landing in this unknown Casablanca, on the northeast side of Havana harbor, they were crammed onto buses that lumbered on unpaved streets past humble tin-roofed shacks and up a very steep hillside. At last at the summit, the refugees were shocked to be herded into a spartan detention camp called Tiscornia, which would serve as their home for as long as the Cubans decided to hold them.

In years to come, curiously, many of these refugees would remain baffled about where they were taken. Apprehension and unfamiliar surroundings so distorted their sense of the quick boat ride of less than a mile, from Havana across the sleeve of the harbor to the opposite shore, that it would loom in memory as long and mysterious. As a result, they would mistakenly claim that Tiscornia existed on some other island off Cuba’s coast. It was Cuba’s Ellis Island, they contended, a place removed from the mainland. From the vantage point of the camp, Havana had sparkled, a distant glimmer of freedom over the water. Once released from its confines, they had never returned. A small street sign on a rustic alley, Callejón Tiscornia, now provides the only indication of where the camp stood. Even in Cuba, its role in the war years has been forgotten.