The True Story of the MS St. Louis

Description

The Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach, Holocaust Teacher Institute at the University of Miami, The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies at the University of Miami, The George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Miami, Department of Social Sciences at Miami-Dade County Public Schools, 3GMiami, and Miami Beach JCC present "The True Story of the MS St. Louis: The Ship That Attempted to Bring Jews Fleeing Nazi Germany to Miami Beach" with Dr. Diane Afoumado.

Register here: https://jewishmiami.org/rsvp/true_story_of_the_ms_st_louis_free_rsvp/

Summary: In summer 1939 more than 900 Jews from the Reich boarded the M.S. St. Louis hoping to escape Nazi persecution. Most of them had legal documents to disembark in Havana, which they hoped would be a place of refuge before they eventually emigrated to the U.S. The St. Louis even came to the shore of Miami, hoping that America would let them in. But complicated Cuban, American, and international politics forced the passengers back to Europe. After disembarkation in Antwerp, the refugees dispersed between Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Great Britain. Dr. Diane Afoumado will present the St. Louis’ dramatic story using archival documents, photos, and artifacts from the collections of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, placing that tale into the larger context of the refugee crisis of the late 1930s.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Diane F. Afoumado is the Chief of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center in the David M. Rubenstein National Institute for Holocaust Documentation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She was a Museum fellow in 2003 and worked on a book project about the M.S. St. Louis and the refugee crisis in the late 1930s. Formerly Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Paris 10-Nanterre and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris, she worked for the two French Commissions related to compensation to Jewish victims (Office of the Prime Minister). She worked as a Historian for the Archival Division of the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine - Mémorial de la Shoah. Afoumado also worked for the Archival Department of the French Ministry of Justice.

She is the author of several books: Indésirables 1938 : La Conférence d’Evian et les réfugiés juifs, (Calmann-Lévy / Mémorial de la Shoah, 2018) ; L’affiche antisémite en France sous l’Occupation, (Berg International, 2008); Exil impossible. L’errance des réfugiés juifs du paquebot « St.Louis » (L’Harmattan, 2005), co-author with Serge Klarsfeld of La spoliation dans les camps de province, (La documentation française, 2000). She participated in the following publications: “ITS Research at the USHMM for Descendants of Holocaust Victims and Survivors », In : Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past and Present, volume 1, Edited by: Henning Borggräfe, Christian Höschler and Isabel Panek, (De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020); Introduction for France to the volume III of Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, Camps and Ghettos under European Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany, (p. 89-98), as well as the entry for Drancy (p. 134-136), 2017; “ The ‘Care and Maintenance in Germany’ Collection – A Reflection of DP Self-Identification and Postwar Emigration”, In: Jahrbuch des International Tracing Service, (Wallstein Verlag, 2014). Repicturing the Second World War. Representations in Film and Television, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Evoking Genocide. Scholars and Activists Describe the Works That Shaped Their Lives, (The Key Publishing House Inc, 2009), and wrote more than twenty articles related to the Holocaust.