The Voyage of the Saint Louis

In May 1939, a luxurious cruise ship of the Hamburg-America Line departs the port of Hamburg, carrying close to one thousand Jews who had permission from the Nazi regime to sail to Cuba. Director Bahari interviews survivors, who fifty-five years after the facts gather on a cruise ship near Florida, and a German sailor, who tells he was not allowed to accept tips from Jews. Bahari also reads from the captain's diaries. With a lot of archive material, consisting of photographs and footage, as well as an explicative voice-over, he offers a chronological reconstruction of the dramatic boat trip. After the war, the German captain Schröder, who was labelled as a war hero by the Nazis, would escape persecution by the Allies because his passengers testified to their decent reception. They were treated with the same respect as ordinary cruise guests and swam, danced and dined like them on the luxurious ship. But after the SS St. Louis was unexpectedly refused access in Havana, the refugees embarked on a nerve-wracking journey. The United States ignored the vessel, Canada barred it and eventually the ship set sail to Europe again. In the end, England, the Netherlands, France and Belgium admitted the exiled people, three quarters of whom would not survive the war, after all.