Rijnkaai – The Dock of the Voyage of the Damned

Standing here at the Rijnkaai, it's hard to imagine that this same riverbank once offered a lifeline to over 900 desperate people. On June 17, 1939, the MS St. Louis, a grand German passenger ship, docked right here in Antwerp, carrying Jewish refugees who had already been turned away twice.

Their story had begun months earlier. Fleeing Nazi persecution, they had boarded the St. Louis in Hamburg with Cuban visas in hand. But upon arriving in Havana, those visas were declared invalid. The ship then sailed north along the American coast, hoping the United States would take them in. That door closed too. For weeks, more than 900 men, women, and children lived in a state of suspended dread, unable to go ashore anywhere.

Then Europe stepped in. Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom agreed to share responsibility for the passengers, and the ship finally docked here, in Antwerp. For a brief moment, it felt like the nightmare was over.

It wasn't. After Germany occupied Western Europe, many of these same people were caught up in the Holocaust. Around 250 of them did not survive.