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If you have not read AN ABHORRENT TRAGEDY Please go to my site Lovingcritters, and read it first, or this poem will make no sense to you.Backup.

Here, Big Hearted Belgium has offered them
refuge. Just think how happy you would be
if this had happened to you?

WHAT BECAME OF THE SURVIVORS?

On June 17, 1939, the president of the
United States, Franklin Roosevelt, refused
to let the S.S. St. Louis dock on US land.
937 men, woman, and children were forced
to again return across the Atlantic, unplanned.
For nearly 60 years it was assumed
that the survivors fate was sealed
in Nazi's camps of killing.
A young woman, Virigina-born, historian
Sarah Ogilvie, would not accept that ruling.

Ogilvie, not a Jew herself, was made the
director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Many of the survivors came to register solemn.
In her spare time she began
research to find survivors.
After 7 long years she was joined by the director.
Scott Miller, they became quite expert searchers.
They searched Social Security Indexes,
cemetery burial cards, and old phone books.
They found Arthur Hamburger in Boise, Idaho, one of the most unlikely places to look!

Some had been drafted into the U.S. Army
of the Korean War, one was taken prisoner,
and was the first American POW to be
exchanged in 1953.
They found family members who didn't know
what had happened to their close relatives.
One woman found out her brother-in-law
had a twin and he lives.
They heard poignant stories of those that
escaped.
One man and his 5-year old daughter walked
all the way across the border into
Switzerland, their lives reshaped.
One family, Leon, Johanna and Guenther Joel
found they were related to the singer
Billy Joel.

What moved Olilvie and Miller most, was hearing
stories of those that had known them,
and even hidden them from harm's way.
Judith Koeppel was a baby aboard the St. Louis, after they landed, she tells how her
father held her hand until a stranger
came and took her away!
Both of her parents were killed in
Auschwitz the very next day!
Ruth Mandel will tell how her parents never
got over being turned away by the USA.
Another very bitter, Ilse Marcus, now 88 and
living in washington D.C., was a brand new bride.
Her husband, and parents were killed,
She was never remarried, but is bitter,
and the memory still will reside!

Herbert Karliner in the picture above, now of
Miami, was only 12 when they sailed.
"I had always wanted to come to the US," he says,
"We couldn't understand why a big country like the U.S. wouldn't let 937 people in, they failed!
He also remembers when the Coast Guard
rescued 125,000 Cubans in the Mariel
boat-lift in 1980.
"It hurts," he says, "We were only 937."
"My parents and my sisters could have been
alive," he says calmly.

How can we help? There are still two
passengers not accounted for, perhaps
you can open their secret door.......

ANNA GOLDBAUM (maiden name Marien) born Dec. 12. 1875, in Wreitzen, Germany. She was a widow and sent to Belgium. Her son, Eric Goldbaum, was born Jan 15, 1899, in Berlin. He came to the US in the 1930's, changed his last name to Godal and worked for Pictorial Publications in Manhattan. After the war, he returned to Germany as a graphic artist using the name Guy deLaurence. he died in 1969.

ROSALIE MOSER (madien name: Moses) born April 12, 1877, in Horn, Germany. She and her husband, Edmund, who was born in Helmstedt, Germany, lived in Prague and were Czech citizens. After the St. Louis returned to Europe, the Mosers were sent to France. Edmund survived the war, arrived in New York City in 1947 and died in 1948.

If you, or if you might know of anyone that could give more information on these people please email smiller@ushmm.org or write Scott Miller, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallengerg Place, SW Washington D.C. 20024.

This poem was written from and article I read
in the Denver Post and Rocky Mtn News.
It was written by Lyric Wallwork Winik
The article was entitled
"WHAT BECOME OF THEM?"

"May their precious souls rest in peace,
until the day of reckoning. He will not forget
one single one of them, and those that
brought them so much agony will be
brought to justice in his own due time!"

Created by
Cheri Cam LeBren
December 2003

"He counted
every single one
of their tears,
and will never
forget!"

Copyright © lovingcritters ... [2003-12-12 22:42:53]
(Date/Time posted on site)

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