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Curious Canadian History
S10E8 - The Voyage of the Damned - The MS St. Louis, Canada and the Holocaust
On the 7th of June 1939 a ship sailed for Cuba, on board were 907 Jewish refugees fleeing the violent antisemitic state that had become Nazi Germany. When arriving in Cuba, their visas were no longer accepted, and the passengers were told they could not disembark. The ship then sailed to the United States, where the passengers were once again refused asylum. Finally, the ship sailed to Canada in a last gasp effort for freedom…but they too were denied. Tragically, the ship returned to Europe and the passengers returned to a horrific fate.
Jeremy Maron is the curator of Holocaust and genocide content at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, where he has worked since 2011. In this role, Jeremy oversees content development in three of the museum’s core galleries – Examining the Holocaust, Turning Points for Humanity, and Breaking the Silence. He holds a PhD in Cultural Mediations from Carleton University, where his dissertation focused on the treatment of the Holocaust in Canadian cinema. His discussion of Victoria Beach in the episode has been written about here: The stain of antisemitism in Canada | CMHR and he was a contributor to a digital story about antisemitism in Canada here.
Don’t forget! You can pre-purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:
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