Let Their Story Be Told

The Skotzki girls, Helga and Inge,

Fifteen and thirteen years old,

Boarded the SS St. Louis in Hamburg.

Let their story forever be told.

 

The girls' parents, Gunther and Charlotte,

Experienced with growing unease

The dangers of living in Nazi Germany.

The solution: to flee as refugees.

 

Nine hundred Jewish passengers

Aboard the luxury liner departed

In May of 1939.

For them a new life had started.

 

Or so they hoped. Two weeks later,

When they reached Cuba--the end of their trip--

Only twenty-eight of the people

Were permitted to leave the ship.

 

Discrimination and politics

Had suddenly played a deadly hand,

Affecting the fate of those who sought

Asylum in a foreign land.

 

Toward Florida the ship sailed.

The refugees begged for immigrant status.

The desperate cries refused to budge

The cold, political apparatus.

 

"We've already fulfilled our quotas."

"Careful! They might be Nazi spies."

Excuses emerged and rumors spread

With paranoid suppositions and lies.

 

The captain steered the ship back to Europe.

The refugees caught in a game of chance

Were spread among four countries:

The Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, and France.

 

Of the nine hundred passengers,

Two hundred fifty-four of them lost

Their lives while they were stuck in Europe

During the ghastly Holocaust.

 

Helga and Inge, along with their parents--

Probably struggled to comprehend

How politics could come before people.

In Auschwitz their lives came to an end.

 

We know we can't turn back the clock,

But we must do whatever it takes

To put people first and do what is right--

Or else we're doomed to repeat our mistakes.

 

(4-25-17) By Bob B