St. Louis Poem A TRIBUTE DENIED ENTRY By Belle Anne Freund, wife of SS St. Louissurvivor, Retired Colonel . Phil Freund
The time had come to leave our home, To start our travels and then to roam. We traveled on for 40 days and 40 nights; We felt like sheep, we had no rights. The call of Miami Beach was there; We had to leave, it was not fair. Cuba had said no to us so few; The time would come, this day they had rue.
Because of them so many died; They made a promise, then they lied. The blood of many is on their hands. Of all of those who wore Jewish bands. Now today the time has come, That repentance is made to only some. But what about those who are not here? Their memory should always be very dear.
Never again, we say loud and clear, Or this could happen again, we fear. Never again, to all we will tell, As we try to mend and be well. Our dear Christian friends here care so very much. As they reach out to us with love and touch.
You felt the sins your for bearers made, And learn of the sacrifices of which we paid. Whole families were wiped away, In unmarked graves so many lay.
And many do not have a place of their own, Where we can mark them with a stone. So never forget those not here, The six million Jews all those so dear.
They paid a price that we may live, Their memory to our children we continue to give. We thank you so very much, For caring about generations lost.
Of the valuable contributions that could have been made, What a horrible price to have paid. Who knows what discoveries would be. What beautiful art that we would see;
Or the music that we would hear, So lovely that in our eyes would be a tear. So much lost and for what reason? It is too late, it is already done.
They made the world so much better. They followed the rule to the letter. We cannot imagine the hopelessness they felt; Those in the camps with which they dealt.
They prayed to God and went to their fate, The liberation for too many came too late. 937 passengers could have been saved. Of them the Cubans could have raved.
Then 6 million would not have been killed; But it was not in the cards it was not willed. So, today, at our feet you lay, But what a horrible price to pay.
Yet we are honored and forgive, For because of the others our life we live. We will always remember this date, And thank God for our fate.
To live our lives. For those who died.
This poem is a powerful expression of how those who experienced the SS St. Louis felt about the actions of those who had rejected them. Belle Anne Freund expresses the consequences of the rejection and the strong connection that she has to those who sacrificed their lives as a result of being sent back to Europe.
I decided to include this source when looking at this topic because I think it has a powerful message that shows the willingness of victims to move on. The incident of the SS St. Louis was not just an example of Canada's rejection of Jewish refugees, but also of many other countries in the world who did not see a place for the Jews in their nations, including the United States.
What Freund tries to say about the SS St. Louis is that it happened, it was bad and it was an example in history of things that could have been done differently. However, she does not hold on to the resentment; she indicates the need to move on, learn from the past and to forgiveness.
To me, this poem is a powerful portrayal of historical perspective. At the beginning of the poem, Freund speaks of the Cubans and it seems to me that there is a level of hurt still there. However, she explains directly what happened. As I moved through the poem, I understood it to be her way of trying to understand the past and the fact that the past cannot be changed. There is a lesson to learn from the events in which occurred. To me, that lesson is represented in the idea of historical thinking. We try to understand the past so we can move forward and be critical today; just as we are of the past.