Josef

Josef Landau is a twelve-year-old boy living in Nazi Germany. On Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, seven Nazi Brownshirts (storm troopers) raid his home. Josef is dragged from his bed and thrown on the floor next to his six-year-old sister, Ruth. Josef’s father is arrested for being Jewish and practicing law. When Josef argues, the Nazis threaten to take him to a concentration camp. Josef’s mother, Rachel pleads with them, saying that he is still a boy. The family later learns that tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested on Kristallnacht. They do not want to leave without their father. Six months later, they receive a telegram: Josef’s father has been released from the Dachau concentration camp, but the family must leave Germany within fourteen days.

The Hitler Youth escorts Josef back to the Jewish car, bypassing a member of the Gestapo and choosing not to turn Josef in. When Josef expresses his thanks, the boy becomes embarrassed and leaves. Josef’s family arrives in Hamburg and heads to the docks, where they meet Aaron, Josef’s father. The sight of Josef’s father startles the family: his head and beard have been shaved, he is much thinner, and he is very paranoid.

While the family waits to board their ship, Josef’s father runs ahead, pushing past people in line. Josef is surprised that all of the ship’s crew, who are not wearing Star of David armbands, treat Josef and his family like normal people. Once the family is inside their cabin, which is clean and comfortable, Josef’s father tells them that it is a trick. Josef and his sister are sent to the promenade while his mother looks after his father. Josef wonders what happened to him, to change him so much.

The first class social hall is transformed into a synagogue, and Josef has his bar mitzvah, but his father does not attend. Before the event, when one of the rabbis asked to have a portrait of Hitler removed from the social hall, the captain complied, but some of the crew were obviously angered. 

Josef enjoys the bar mitzvah and wanders around the promenade. He runs into Evelyne and Renata, who are locking the doors to bathroom stalls, and reprimands them. As Josef passes by two ship stewards, he overhears them talking about the need to get to Cuba quickly, in case Cuba decides to stop accepting Jews. One of the stewards also states that Schroeder, the captain, has not told the crew everything. Joseph wonders what will happen if Cuba does not let them in.

After hearing that one of the passengers has died, Josef’s father insists on going to the funeral, saying that he saw too many men die in Dachau without funerals. Josef attends the funeral-at-sea with his father, where they observe several Jewish traditions, including tearing their own clothes and grabbing handfuls of sand. Before the body is dropped overboard, Schiendick says that German law requires that the body be covered by the national flag. When Schiendick presents a Nazi flag to put over the body, Josef’s father spits at Schiendick’s feet. Captain Schroeder breaks up the ensuing argument and tells Schiendick to take the flag and leave the funeral. Josef notices that the captain and first officer give normal salutes as the body goes overboard, instead of Nazi salutes.

Three days after the St. Louis reached Havana, two other boats with refugees are allowed to dock and then sail away. Schiendick grabs Josef and forces him to unlock his parents’ cabin, so that Schiendick and two other men can ransack the room and intimidate Josef’s parents. Schiendick spits on the floor before leaving the room, letting Josef’s father know that the visit was payback for the argument at the funeral. When Josef’s father says that Josef promised that they would not try to take him back to Dachau, Josef realizes that lying to his father during the medical inspection might have only created more problems.

There is a loud siren on the ship, and Josef yells for someone on the boat to help his father. One of the Cuban police officers removes his hat and gun and jumps overboard. A lifeboat is dropped from the St. Louis, and several boats are sent from the shore in response to the siren. The Cuban policeman helps Josef’s father into one of the shore boats, but Josef’s father struggles against them, yelling that he would rather die. The policemen subdue Josef’s father in the small boat, while Josef thinks that the man who returned from Dachau is not the father he remembers—that man is gone. 

Renata and Evelyne’s father, Dr. Aber, comes to the St. Louis and takes them from the ship. The other passengers become angry, but Captain Schroeder intervenes before there is any violence. He tells the passengers that they have been denied access to Cuba and that they must leave the next day. He promises the passengers that he will try to find somewhere for them to go other than Germany, starting with a cruise along the coast of the United States. Josef asks Officer Padron about his father. Officer Padron explains that Josef’s family cannot go ashore and must leave Josef’s father, because he is not well enough to return to the ship. When the St. Louis leaves Havana Harbor, Josef tears at his shirt collar just as he had done at the funeral, to mourn the loss of his father.

Believing that it is his responsibility to keep his mother and sister safe, Josef has agreed to help Pozner take the bridge. Carrying metal pipes, Josef and nine other men grab the first officer, Ostermeyer, and force him onto the bridge. They surround the few officers on the bridge and make them call the captain. When Captain Schroeder arrives, he speaks calmly. He tells the ten mutineers that his crew will not take their orders, and none of the mutineers know how to steer the ship. Captain Schroeder tells them that he will forgive their attempt if they go back to their cabins and do not try again; he also promises that he will do everything that he can to take them to England. Josef feels like arguing, but the other nine men agree.

Hiding with his mother and sister in a school in Vornay, France, Josef can hear gunfire and artillery shells. When he sees a map of Europe on the wall of the classroom, he thinks about how many countries on the map have been occupied by Germany. He hears Nazi storm troopers approaching the school and leads his mother and sister to a window. After breaking the window, they climb out and run to a nearby house. However, the storm troopers chase them down, search their pockets, and find papers identifying them as Jews from Berlin. The soldiers tell them that they will be taken to concentration camps. Josef’s mother offers them money, and then diamond earrings, which she had sewn into the lining of Ruth’s jacket. The soldiers tell her that there is only enough to save one of her children. Josef realizes that the soldiers are playing a cruel game: his mother must choose whether he or Ruth has to go to a concentration camp.