The Gulls of Havana

 The MS St. Louis was an ocean liner that left Germany in May of 1939 carrying 937 Jewish refugees.  After not being permitted to land in Cuba, USA, or Canada, the ship returned to Europe where 255 of the passengers were to die in the Holocaust.

"We just saw the coast guard boats surround us in Miami to make sure that we wouldn't even come close to the border, to shore, so that was out.  So we saw the lights of Miami, we saw the lights of America, and that was it."

Gerda Blachmann Wilchfort, St. Louis passenger and Holocaust survivor

"While every sympathy was felt with the unfortunate position in which the refugees in question found themselves, it was regretted that it was not possible to recommend their admission en bloc into Canada."

O.D. Skelton, Undersecretary of State for External Affairs

 For more information, please see:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/MS-St-Louis-German-ship

 

 

The Gulls Of Havana

Lyrics and music 2023 by Marion Parsons

Nineteen thirty nine on the MS St. Louis

Some nine hundred exiles to wander at sea

Adrift in the doldrums of law and suspicion

Forbidden to land on the shores of the free

Chorus:

The gulls of Havana were circling and wailing

The lights of Miami flung jewels on the foam

The Halifax harbour just two days beyond us

And we turned to go

We turned to go back

Go back to the havoc that once was our home

We'd felt the ground sinking, we smelled the storm coming

In pillars of smoke and in splinters of glass

We said our goodbyes and we made for the lifeboat

To save what we could of our lives and our past

Two weeks on the ocean and spirits were rising

"Mein Herr" from the captain, and Strauss from the band

Till May's gentle morning, a breath from the beaches

Our names on the list and our papers in hand

Tomorrow, they tell us, then maybe tomorrow

The promised land told us to get back in line

With sympathies due for unfortunate cases

They could not admit us en bloc at this time