Guentehr Krebs: A Survivor of the Voyage Of The Damned

Atrocities come in many forms. Typically, they are acts of commission but, occasionally, they are an act of omission. Such is the case of the Voyage of the Damned, as indicated by the excerpt from a recent article by Irv Osterer below:

Among the most infamous events that preceded the Holocaust is the incredible story of the MS St. Louis, which left Hamburg on May 13, 1939, with 935 Jewish passengers hoping to find refuge in Cuba. Günther Krebs was on the MS St. Louis as it wandered the Atlantic seeking refuge from the Holocaust for its Jewish passengers.

While in Cuban waters, the police were ever present, making escape impossible, and although those on board could see and hear friends and family on shore, no one was permitted to leave the ship. Günther’s facility with Spanish would have crystallized events. He understood that mañana would never come and that the passengers on the St. Louis were in serious trouble.  Ultimately, after much lobbying by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, four countries agreed to accept the St. Louis passengers.

Günther’s ordeal had not ended. Amid fears of a fifth column of enemies, he along with many German speakers in England were detained as undesirable aliens for 2½ years, much like many of our own Japanese and Italian citizens. He was sent by the British to internment camps — first on the Isle of Man and then to Île aux Noix, not far from Montreal. Prime Minister Mackenzie King had not been interested in accepting any Jewish refugees, but relented after politicians and Jewish organizations pressed for their release.  Gunther was not a bitter or resentful man — but like many of his generation, never forgave Germany for murdering his mother.  He refused to set foot in that country or to speak its language — even to his father with whom he was reunited with in New York after the war.  In a surreal twist, after 1944, son and father communicated only in English, the language of freedom that afforded Günther passage to Southampton rather than a probable demise in Rotterdam, Antwerp or Boulogne sur Mer.

Those 935 passengers could have used a friend like Corrie Ten Boom and her family.  Concerned about God’s chosen people and the land He has promised them, the Ten Booms held weekly prayer meetings for over 100 years to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Then, when more direct actions were needed, they opened their home to those the Gestapo was pursuing.  The results of that effort was chronicled in Corrie’s book THE HIDING PLACE. To learn more about this, go here  and take a virtual tour of the Ten Boom home in Haarlem, Holland that now serves as a museum.  At the same time, make sure you don’t fall guilty of a faux pas of omission - - rather, make sure that you, as the Ten Booms before you did, pray according to the dictates of Ps. 122:6 and pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

To read Irv Osterer’s article in its entirety, go to: A survivor of the Voyage of the Damned