My father's family tried to come to America 80 years ago. They were among more than 900 passengers on the M.S. St. Louis, a German refugee ship that was turned away from North American ports. The lessons from that saga are relevant today.
My family's journey began in 1935. My grandfather impersonated a Nazi official and removed the Jew-hating Der Sturmer newspaper from the newsstands of Fischhausen, a rural town in East Prussia. The following year my grandparents, father, aunt and uncle—known by their surname Motulsky—fled. They thought the relatively liberal Hamburg would provide safety. Their hopes for living a normal life in Germany didn't last long.
In June 1938, my grandfather was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After two months in the camp, he fled to Cuba. In November, Kristallnacht saw Jewish businesses sacked, synagogues burned to the ground, and Jewish men arrested en masse and some murdered.
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