In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

37 First Name: Leah Also Known As: Lia Last Name: Kadden Maiden Name: Molton-Motulsky Date of Birth: August 29, 1929 City of Birth: Fischhausen, East Prussia Country of Birth: Germany My Voyage on the SS St. Louis and After Leah Molton-Motulsky Kadden I was born on August 29, 1929, the youngest of three children in Fischhausen, East Prussia. My parents owned a dry-goods store that my paternal grandfather had established. Few Jews lived in this small town of about six thousand inhabitants . There was no synagogue. My parents, observant Jews, kept a kosher home. In 1933, a religious teacher came to our house weekly to teach my brothers, Arno, ten years old, and Lothar, seven years old. Because I was only four, I had no religious instruction. In 1933, the Nazis came to power and anti-Jewish incidents occurred. Our store windows were smeared with swastikas. By 1937, the Germans gave my father’s business and property to a German Christian. My parents were able to keep their personal property. My paternal uncle had immigrated to Chicago two years earlier, and we had hoped to join the family there. Intending to immigrate to the United States, my parents moved to a large apartment at 39 Hegestrasse in the port city of Hamburg, where we lived for two years. My paternal grandfather came to live with us there. But in August 1938, the Germans arrested my father and sent him to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp thirty-five kilometers north of Berlin. By then the Nazi policy sought to create a Germany that was Judenrein, free of Jews— let Jews leave Germany but never return. Our relatives in the United States arranged to get my father out of Germany, but only Cuba was open to immigrants at that time. He received a visa to Cuba 38 Out of Chaos with the condition that he never return to Germany. In November 1938, my father arrived in Havana. Due to the restrictive United States immigration policies that prevented us from getting to the States immediately and our fear of the war, my family decided to join my father in Cuba. He was able to secure Cuban landing permits for my mother, my fifteen-year-old brother Arno and twelve-year-old brother Lothar, and me. I was nine when we boarded the ship. The Hamburg America Hapag Line advertised that passage could be booked for Cuba. My mother told us later that she paid for four passages and also had to pay an additional sum, a contingency fee, fully refundable, that might cover a return voyage to Germany should unforeseen circumstances arise. I don’t remember much about leaving our apartment in Hamburg and boarding the ship. Life on the ship was a real joy for all the passengers after leaving Hamburg harbor. I do remember a magnificent, large dining room that was also used to show movies. I had never seen a movie. I saw Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in the musical Maytime. To this day, I can still see the beautiful blonde in a white fluffy dress singing the high coloratura songs. I remember learning to swim in the little swimming pool on deck. There were organized play activities for children as well, but I don’t remember them. I do remember my mother insisting that we do English lessons together every day. We sat on the ship’s deck. Mother would read me German words, and I would copy them from an English dictionary into a small notebook. I felt quite proud to have had this advantage over my brothers. Not long ago, I found this notebook of my daily vocabulary lessons among my mother’s papers. Although I was unaware of it at the time, but learned years later, an internal power play was taking place in the Cuban government. A Cuban immigration officer, Manuel Benitez, had sold the landing certificates to the Hapag Line manager in Hamburg and had made a fortune for himself. He failed to inform any other government officials. He did not support the current Cuban president, Laredo Brú. A week before our ship sailed, Brú had issued an order invalidating all of Benitez’s landing certificates. The decree stipulated that only with written authorization from the secretaries of State and Labor and a $500 bond would Cuba accept refugees. The SS St. Louis pulled into Havana Harbor on May 27, 1939, with horns blasting at four a.m. We passengers awoke...

Share