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Temple Beth O'r/Beth Torah of Clark held its annual Edith and Mark Lief Memorial Lecture on Jan. 11, where Scott Miller, co-author of "Refuge Denied -- The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust," spoke about the story behind the book.

Miller, the director of curatorial affairs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., researched the history of the St. Louis boat with two other colleagues. The boat, which was filled with German Jews escaping the Nazi Germany, was turned away at Havana and Miami in May 1939.

The Liefs were longtime members of the shul, were active in all parts of the temple, and were Holocaust survivors who dedicated their life to the service of the Jewish people.

Miller said many of the passengers on the ship had waiting numbers which were needed to get into America, but also liberated them from concentration camps as well.

The St. Louis left Hamburg, Germany 13 days after Kristallnacht on May 13, 1939, Miller said.

"The captain on the ship was a man Gustav Schroeder, who treated the passengers with great respect," Miller said. "He told the crew, many of whom were members of the Nazi party, that these people paid for their tickets and were to be treated like any other German."

On the ship there was shuffleboard, a swimming pool, and three different temples for everyone to pray in, Miller said.

"On May 27, 1939 the St. Louis arrives at the port of Havana, they were greeted by Cuban police, and the policemen kept yelling out 'manana'," said Miller, using the Spanish word for tomorrow. However, 22 people were allowed off the boat because they had Cuban documents allowing them to stay there.

"The passengers on the St. Louis were considered to be the lucky ones, because they got to wait in Havana," he said. "One of the St. Louis passengers told me manana never came."

Miller said the file for the St. Louis at the Cuban national archives is missing; therefore it remains a mystery as to why Cuba turned away the ship.

The captain of the ship then decided to take the boat to the shores of Miami, thinking America would surely take them in, and most of the passengers had their paperwork to get into the country, he said.

The captain then cabled President Franklyn D. Roosevelt and the State Department, who denied the ship's entrance to the country, Miller said.

"The captain decided they had to go back to Europe because they didn't have enough fuel or food to go anywhere else," he said.

The captain then brokered a deal with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee allowing the passengers to be dropped off in Holland, France, Belgium, and London, he said. However, the majority of the passengers ended up back under Nazi control.

After looking at the archives and deportation lists at the museum, Miller said there were still 200 people from the ship unaccounted for.

"We changed our strategy from looking for documents to looking for people," he said.

Miller said they began looking for passengers by placing ads in newspapers looking for survivors of the St. Louis. After the ads were placed, Miller said he received an email from a man named Michael Barak -- who was originally known as Michael Fink -- saying he was on the ship.

The records showed that 5-year-old Barak and his parents were sent back to Holland where they interned at a camp called Westerbork, and they were then deported to Terezin. However, the museum had no idea what happened to them after that.

Miller said he met with Barak and found out that Barak, angry with America, had made aliyah with his mother.

"My father was off the coast of Miami Beach and he ended up dying in a cattle car, how did that happen?" Barak said. "America bears the responsibility for the death of my father."

Miller then spoke on NPR (National Public Radio) about Rudy Dinkfelder who was a child on the boat with his parents Johanna and Leopold Dinkfelder. Then a man from El Paso, Texas called up saying his ex-wife had a relative named Robert Felder, and he gave Miller the phone number to contact his ex-wife.

"We asked her was her husband Rudy Dinkfelder from the St. Louis? And she said 'yes he was -- that was my husband'," he said. "He and his parents arrived on the train to Auschwitz and they were pulled of the train by the SS men. He wore these huge thick glasses and Rudy's glasses went flying off when he got off the train and he was flailing around and he thought for sure he would be sent on the line to be gassed. However, all teenagers who were with glasses were sent on the line to be gassed, because of the stereotype you're weaker if you wear glasses. Because he wasn't wearing glasses they put him on the line for forced labor."

Miller said he and his colleagues also depended heavily on the largest Jewish city in the world -- New York City -- for help in finding survivors. He found that the majority of the German Jews and survivors of the St. Louis were in Washington Heights.

"Throughout that neighborhood, within a year we were able to unravel the fates of dozens of St. Louis passengers," he said.

Miller said from 1996 to 2006 they were able to find out what happened to all 937 passengers.

"Much to our surprise the majority of the St. Louis passengers survived the war, and those who survived also believed they were among the only survivors," he said.

Thelma Purdy, the chairman of the adult education committee at the shul, said hearing about the St. Louis reinforces the fact that every Jewish life is important.

"I thought he shed a great a great deal of light about a very important time in our history," Cantor Steven Stern said.