Exile

Colonial mirages

After the failure of the Evian conference, Western countries, the Evian Committee and Jewish organizations are trying to find reception areas in their colonial territories, among other solutions (Tanganyika and Guyana for the English, Madagascar and New Caledonia for the French). The Evian Committee also turns to South American countries. President Roosevelt intervenes with Portuguese Angola. While commissions never stop studying these files, the outbreak of war puts an end to all these speculations.

Shanghai

Until October 1939, Shanghai was the only asylum land not to restrict immigration. 14,000 refugees, mostly from Germany, settled there before the war. Their number reached 17,000 in 1941 and included a large majority of Jews.
Helped by the small Jewish community of Shanghai and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, life is organized within five refugee camps. A number of these newcomers manage to create European-style businesses and shops. A religious, cultural and political life including a German-speaking press, radio and theatre productions quickly came into being. In February 1943, the evolution of the war in the Pacific changed the fate of these refugees who were all interned in a ghetto by the Japanese occupying power. As soon as the war ended, they were repatriated to Europe, while a large number of them decided to settle in Palestine.

The children of the Guette

After the violence of "Kristallnacht," a group of children – entrusted by their families to a committee chaired by the Baroness Germaine de Rothschild – managed to leave Nazi Germany in March-April 1939.
These one hundred and thirty children aged nine to fourteen, from Vienna, Berlin and the Palatinate, are housed at the Château de La Guette in Villeneuve-Saint-Denis, in Seine-et-Marne, owned by the Rothschilds.
With the beginning of the war, the team of educators fell apart and the oldest children were placed in boarding schools in the region. The German military victory forced the hundred remaining children at the castle to take refuge in La Bourboule, near Clermont-Ferrand, in a hotel rented by the Rothschilds. At the end of 1941, faced with many difficulties, the work of La Guette was dissolved and integrated into the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants). Germaine and Edouard de Rothschild managed to get some children to emigrate to the United States. In 1942, the OSE tried to distribute the children among private individuals, in Catholic or professional schools. Some are taken to Switzerland by a network created by the OSE and Georges Garel, but some children are turned back in France by Swiss customs officials while roundups multiply in the southern zone. Of the 130 children, 10 were arrested and deported from France. Among them, only one survived.

Le Saint-Louis

On May 13, 1939, in Hamburg, 937 passengers, including 931 emigrants, embarked for Cuba aboard the Saint-Louis. The Hamburg-Amerika-Linie, owner of the ship, had provided them with landing certificates which she herself had purchased from intermediaries of the director general of the Cuban immigration services. At dawn on May 27, the Saint-Louis is in the port of Havana, but passengers are prohibited from disembarking, as their visas have been fraudulently sold by the director of Cuban customs. Only 29 passengers will disembark in Havana.
Despite the interventions of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the German chargé d'affaires posted in Cuba, the ship was forced to set sail for Hamburg on 2 June.
The captain of the Saint-Louis is, however, lingering off the coast of Florida, hoping to disembark 743 passengers, out of the 907 remaining on board, who had already applied for visas for the United States. But the Washington government refuses to let them in, claiming that each candidate must wait patiently for their turn. The boat is surrounded by coast guard boats and must continue on its way.
In mid-June the Saint-Louis made his way to Europe and reached Antwerp on 17 June. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee who guarantees the financial support of the passengers, manages to get these refugees into different countries, 181 in the Netherlands, 214 in Belgium, 224 in France and 288 in the United Kingdom.

Jewish settlement projects. The Institute of Jewish Affairs, vol.1 n 4. New York, United States, November 1941
Collection: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC.

Jewish students on a street in Shanghai. Shanghai, China, 1941.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC.

The destruction of my uncle’s shop after November 10, 1938. Drawing by one of the children of Château de la Guette. France, 1939.
Collection: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC/fonds La Guette.

The Saint-Louis, at sea, transports German Jewish refugees to Cuba. 1939.
Cr says photographic: M morial de la Shoah/CDJC.