Book Reviews

I have always had a fascination with the story of the St Louis, the ill fated ocean liner whose 1939 voyage from Hamburg to Cuba with 900 Jewish souls hoping to escape the tentacles of Nazi Germany. I have read countless reports, corresponded with officials at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and have published an article about the St Louis in the Ottawa Citizen. So when I picked up my copy of the German Girl, there were few historical surprises — but author Armando Luca Correa has crafted an incredible story that alternates between two narrators — a 12 year old Hannah Rosenthal, living in 1939 Berlin and 12 year old Anna Rosen, an American living in New York City in 2014.

Hannah describes how her privileged life in Berlin spiralled downhill after 1933, when the Rosenthals discovered they had suddenly become Jews, despite her family’s nonreligious, totally assimilated German lifestyle. The author paints an extremely accurate portrait of Berlin and its environs, and how a great European city was gradually consumed by Nazi ideology that was punctuated by the Kristallnacht in 1939. The Rosenthals only hope was to obtain papers from the Cuban consulate, and to leave Germany penniless while they still could by securing passage on the St Louis and hope for a second chance at life in the United States.

Anna’s New York sections are written in the wake of 9/11. Her mother is grappling with the loss of a her husband, and Anna longs for a father she never knew — when they receive a package of photographs from the now 87 year old Hannah Rosen, who was, along with her mother, one of twenty-two Jews on the St. Louis allowed to disembark in Havana.

Through the author’s creative storytelling, we learn that both Hannah’s mother and Anna’s mother shared the anxiety and pain of protecting a family. The final chapter of this compelling fiction, sees Anna and her mother travel to Cuba to meet Hannah and through the ensuing narrative we learn more about the family history, and how they are connected, giving Hannah some closure, and allowing Anna and her mother a way to move forward with their lives.

Even though all the passengers on the St Louis had the proper Cuban landing documents and US entry visas, and that Cuba was only intended as a transit point to the United States, the ship was denied entry and forced to leave Havana. The sympathetic captain was also denied access to Miami, and Canada and was forced to return to Europe. All on board were aware of the fate that awaited them. In the end, Great Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands accepted some of the passengers, but only the 287 that were accepted into England were relatively safe.

The story I published in the Ottawa Citizen, chronicled the life of Günther Krebs who was one of the fortunate St Louis passengers that was allowed to disembark in Southhampton, England. Kreb’s hobby as a youngster was to learn languages, and his fluency in German and English gave him currency with the English officials and ultimately saved his life. Most of the others passengers suffered the ravages of the second world war, and more than a quarter of them were murdered by the Nazis for the simple crime of being Jewish.

The author of The German Girl goes to great lengths to honour the memory of those that perished - by publishing the St Louis’ hand written ship manifest in the novel’s appendix. This book should serve to remind all of us of the dangers and deadly consequences of restrictive immigration policies and closed borders hopefully make us more sympathetic to the plight of refugees arriving at our doorstep and the difficulties and challenges faced by immigrants who have recently lost so much and are trying to start again.

Mr. Osterer