MS St. Louis captain's hat

Herbert Karliner was born on September 3, 1926, in Peiskretscham (Silesia) Germany (now Pyskowice, Poland), on Sept. 3, 1926, to Josef and Martha Weissler Karliner. Herbert had an older sister, Ilse, born in 1923, an older brother Walter, born on August 11, 1924, and a younger sister Ruth, born 1927. The family owned a grocery store, which Martha managed much of the time while Joseph was engaged in the horse trade. In 1933, the Nazi regime came to power and began systematically persecuting the Jewish population. The family’s grocery store was destroyed on Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938. Herbert’s father was arrested and imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp. He was released two month later after Martha got him a travel visa for Shanghai, China. They also sought ways for the entire family to flee Germany. They purchased tickets on the Hamburg-America luxury liner, MS St. Louis, sailing to Havana, Cuba, leaving Hamburg on May 13, 1939, and arriving in Cuba on May 27. Nearly all of the 937 passengers were Jewish refugees hoping to escape Nazi dominated Europe. Cuban authorities denied entry to all but 28 passengers. Despite urgent pleas to the United States government, the US President and Congress chose not to make any special exceptions to the stiff US quota limits and the refugees were denied permission to enter the US. Captain Schroeder took the ship within sight of the Florida coast, before heading back to Europe on June 6. Twelve year old Herbert saw Miami Beach and promised himself that he would live there some day. Jewish aid organizations had negotiated with four European governments, Belgium, Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands to admit the passengers rather than return them to Germany. Herbert’s family was assigned to France. His parents and Ilse were given an apartment in Mirabeau. Herbert, Walter, and Ruth were placed in an Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) children's home, Villa Helvetia, near Paris. In May 1940, Germany invaded and occupied France. The children’s homes were no longer safe, and they were sent to Chaumont home in Creuse. Walter worked for a cabinet maker and Herbert for a baker. Ruth returned to her parents and older sister in Mirabeau. In 1941, Walter moved to Montintin, another OSE home, to study cabinetry. In August 1942, French gendarmes informed OSE that all boys over the age of sixteen would be deported to Germany. Herbert assumed a false identity and worked on farms and lived in hiding the woods until liberation in the fall of 1944. Walter fled and spent the next two years hiding where he could, including a mental asylum in Narbonne and a farm in Castelsarrasin. In 1943 or 1944, the Eclaireurs Israelites de France underground sent Walter to Saint Junien [Haute Vienne] to live at a home for boys run by the Vichy paramilitary youth movement, Moissons Nouvelles. Approximately six hidden Jews lived among the eighty boys at the home. After France was liberated in the fall of 1944, Herbert and Walter were reunited in Paris. They were the only survivors of their family. They learned that in October 1942, their mother and sisters had been held in Drancy internment camp in Paris and then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered. Their father met a similar fate a year later. The brothers went to live at the Hotel du Moulin, a home for boys run by the Eclaireurs Israelites in Moissac, where Walter worked as an instructor in cabinetry. In December 1946, the brothers emigrated to the United States. Herbert was drafted into the United States Army in 1950 and served overseas. Herbert married Vera, also a Holocaust survivor. They settled in Miami Beach and had two daughters.

The hat was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1991 by Herbert Karliner.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Herbert Karliner