Part 5

(Continued from last week)

The passengers from the Wyoming were loaded on trucks and driven toward the Sahara Desert, destination an abandoned French Foreign Legion camp at Sidi el-Ayachi about 50 miles southwest of Casablanca. They were greeted by the camp commander on horseback with, “You are undesirables, we didn’t ask you here and we don’t want you here. You will have to behave yourselves and have discipline. You will work with your hands, not with your money.”

They were fed coarse bread with soup, with huge rats running around in the huts. Some men were sent to the nearby town of Azemmour to fetch supplies and milk for the smaller children. After a few days the huts became even more crowded when the passengers from another ship arrived. Soap disappeared completely. After three weeks a raging diarrhea epidemic broke out with long lines at the latrines day and night.

In mid July the camp commander announced that another way had been found to transport most of the internees to America. The Joint had found a way to get the passengers on a ship bound from Lisbon to New York. The M/S Nyassa would come to Casablanca for the additional passengers. The next day everyone was transported back to Casablanca and boarded the Nyassa to add to the 600 passengers that had already boarded in Lisbon.

Crossing the Atlantic was dangerous, with crew and passengers on the lookout for German U-boats. Five days out of Casablanca they were stopped by a British warship. After a brief inspection they were allowed to proceed. The ship arrived in New York on August 9.

I have mentioned in my talks and writings the danger of crossing the Atlantic in early 1941, but I also mentioned the danger of floating mines. Just like on the Nyassa, passenger and crew during my trip were on the lookout all day, but no one in 1941 ever mentioned to us any danger from the British Navy. The book is silent on how the passengers were able to enter the U.S. when they did since I am sure their visas must have expired during their stay in Morocco.

The less fortunate refugees, who had not been able to board the Wyoming were still housed in the former tile factory, “Les Milles,” where they had exchanged the mud and rain of Gurs for a fine red dust stirred up by the strong northwesterly wind that blew through all the cracks in the walls and roofs. The dust was everywhere, even in the soup. The toilet facilities were as bad as they had been in Gurs, with sometimes a hundred men waiting outside one of the 6 latrines. There was no flushing, no way to avoid the muck. No escape from the swarm of flies. Many were ill, all became so.

No visas had been issued for some time while the U.S. government organized the FBI inspections of the applicants. The purpose of the Les Milles camp was to get the internees nearer to their destination when they had to appear at a consulate or shipping company in Marseilles. The trip to town took four hours each way and you had to request special permission under special circumstances to be able to stay in town overnight. When a delegation of refugees went to see the consul to inquire about the stop in visa issuance, the consul replied that it was not anymore under his control.

Throughout the months of August to November 1941, many in Marseilles were successful in getting their papers in order, obtaining money for ships tickets and booking space on a ship out of Lisbon after obtaining transit visas from Spain and Portugal. After more than a year in the French transit camps it looked finally that they would be able to leave Europe.

FDR was having lunch with Harry Hopkins on Sunday, December 7, when he was notified that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. The overland border to Spain was closed to “aliens en route to North America” after the outbreak of the war with Japan. The Marseilles consul would not issue any visas to anyone since there was no way anymore to get to Lisbon. The problem was not Marseilles but Washington, which declared all German Jews as enemy aliens.

Although Germany had stripped all Jews of German nationality in November 1941, making them now stateless, the U.S. considered them “German natives.” After Germany declared war on the U.S., all German natives who were not yet U.S. citizens were considered as ”enemy aliens.” To solve this problem the refugees could appeal to the secretary of state in a cumbersome process involving multiple stages. German refugees had to submit a new application to be reviewed by an interdepartmental primary committee, and after approval there it was submitted to a secondary committee, who then, if approved, submitted it to a board of appeals from where it went back to the secretary of state. By early 1942 the State Department reported a backlog of 25,000 visa applications. By the time a favorable recommendation was forwarded to the State Department, it frequently was already too late.

(To be continued next week)

Norbert Strauss is a Teaneck resident and Englewood Hospital volunteer. He frequently speaks to groups to relay his family’s escape from Nazi Germany in 1941.