In 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, bringing to the table an oppressive
political agenda that targeted Europe’s population of Jews. In an attempt to create a pure Aryan
race, he sought to imprison and exterminate anyone that was deemed unworthy of life.
The Jews that lived under the thumb of Nazi Germany risked discrimination,
harassment, public assault, and faced the threat of being executed at any time,
many were even sent to concentration camps where hard work, abuse, and starvation killed millions.
It was for this reason that Jews from across Europe attempted to make an escape,
they intended to flee to safer countries, the United States being among the most common safe
havens for them. In those days there were only two ways to get across the Atlantic, either by
Zeppelin, or more easily, by transatlantic ocean liner such as the RMS Queen Mary.
The Queen Mary is among the largest ocean liners ever built, she had her maiden voyage in March
of 1936 and was constructed not for pleasure, like a modern cruise ship, but for transporting
passengers across the sometimes dangerous North Atlantic. Besides her incredible size and speed,
one of the things that truly stood out about the RMS Queen Mary was how friendly she was
to her Jewish passengers, something which at the time, not many ocean liners could match.
The British were very much outspoken about their hatred of the Nazi party,
and the inevitable racism and prejudice the Nazis spread was something the United Kingdom resented.
And as a reflection of that, the British steamship company Cunard White Star Line was looking to
infuse their newest vessel with amenities to show their support of the Jewish passengers
that used their ships to cross the ocean. When the Queen Mary was built, she was the
first ocean liner to include a Synagogue in her construction plans. It was labeled the
scroll room, and was located forward on B deck adjacent to the third-class staircase.
Third-class passengers, made up mostly of refugees during the 1930s,
could only enter from the staircase door. Jewish passengers in First and Second classes would be
escorted by a steward to a side door entryway that directly accessed the first-class corridor.
The Synagogue was 12 feet by 15 feet in size or approximately 16 ½ square meters and seated 23
people. Inside, the walls were paneled in oak with matching cushioned pews and a matching podium.
There were curved decorative pilasters, and beautiful wood moulding trim along the edges
of the ceiling, lit brightly by a hanging brass lamp in the center. The whole room
was designed by architect Cecil Jacob Epril who was known for crafting other beautiful
Synagogues around Great Britain. But inside this humble scroll room was a furniture piece that
Epril had created to be the focal point, it was a beautiful Ark, made from oak and Macassar ebony,
and inside, the scrolls were protected by a gold-plated grill,
wrought in the shape of a menorah.
The Scroll Room was officially dedicated in 1936
by Britain’s Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, and it was more than just a place for passengers to worship,
it was a strike against prejudice and injustice.
The Queen Mary also featured another first, a dedicated Kosher Kitchen. Up until this point,
Cunard and a few other shipping lines offered Jewish passengers a kosher meal
that was cooked exclusively in a small food station in a corner of their main galley.
But the RMS Queen Mary was to be the first passenger liner to dedicate a separate pantry
of its own to cooking Kosher dishes for the growing number of Jewish passengers.
Of course, as always, the dinnerware itself was also kosher,
and labeled to ensure that certain dishes are always used for specific food groups.
Yes, the Queen Mary was a proud ship to travel aboard if you were a Jewish passenger,
you were treated the same as anyone else, which was often a stark contrast to life in Germany.
Unfortunately in the coming years, the political climate in Europe became more volatile
as mass genocide was committed by the Nazi party. In 1938, Ludwig Katzenstein, then only 13 years
old, was fleeing Germany with his family. His father had booked passage aboard the Queen Mary
which was to depart Cherbourg, France for the United States the very next day.
In the middle of the night, the family traveled by train but were stopped at the German border
by the Gestapo. Just a day prior, a new law had been put into place that all Jewish travelers
must have a red “J” stamped on their passports, but the family didn’t yet have the stamp. The
Gestapo took the family off of the train and placed them in jail cells. Ludwig’s father
had convinced the Gestapo to release him so he could get his family’s passports stamped.
Thankfully the task was a success and the family was allowed to get on the next train,
however, they were 6 hours behind schedule, and Cunard ships did not wait for late passengers.
Mr. Katzenstein asked the trainmaster to telegraph the captain of the Queen Mary,
and inform him that four of his passengers had been held by the Gestapo but were now on
their way and to request that he hold the ship for them to board.
Over in Cherbourg, the Queen Mary had finished boarding its 2,000 passengers and 1,000 crew
members ready for a speedy voyage to New York. Commodore Robert Irving always upheld
Cunard’s reputation for timely departures and fast transatlantic crossings. How could
he possibly hold up so many passengers for 6 hours, just for the sake of a small family?
Ludwig Katzenstein knew that if they missed the voyage, they would be forced to head back.
When the train arrived in Cherbourg, they were pleased to see the three gracefully
sweeping funnels of the RMS Queen Mary still lingering in the calm waters of the harbor.
Commodore Irving had held the ship for them. Tears of joy streaked down the cheeks of the
Katzenstein family. A 94-year-old Ludwig later recalled, “If Captain Irving hadn’t done that,
they would have sent us back to Germany and we would have been slaughtered. He saved our lives.”
Austrian immigrant Kurt Neufeld had escaped his small town with his family just as the Germans
took over. A family member had booked their passage to New York aboard the Queen Mary,
he described a sensation of great relief when they had boarded the ship. One moment the family
was fleeing for their lives, the next, they were enjoying a live performance of Jazz music in one
of the ship’s restaurants.
“The music created a sense of freedom, of relief...strong relief."
"It changed from a sense of fear and death...to joy.”
Kurt recollected his experience watching the ship enter New York harbor.
“Passing the Statue of Liberty was really a thrill, a thrill
that can’t be explained to people who haven’t done that."
"It was a very emotional moment.”
As the year 1939 wore on, it was very apparent that Europe was at the brink of war.
The number of refugees fleeing had overwhelmed the Queen Mary. The ship had a rough capacity of
2,300 passengers, but with the sheer numbers of people in need of escaping the continent,
Cunard had to allow more and more on-board, throwing out their comfortable capacity limit
and accommodating anyone that could fit. Those who were late to book a stateroom or
cabin were given a cot to sleep in the hallways or public rooms of the ship.
The Mary set sail from Southampton England on her last pre-war peacetime crossing on August 30th, 1939
She went to Cherbourg to pick up refugees, this time she exceeded her passenger capacity
by over 1,000 people. By September 2nd, she was finally at sea on her way to New York,
carrying a total of nearly 5,000 souls on board.
J.P. Morgan Jr was a passenger on this voyage
and after seeing the plight of the refugee families sleeping in the hallways,
he had offered his own stateroom to make a small number of people more comfortable.
The Queen Mary was also carrying over $44 million in gold bullion for safekeeping in
the United States. She was a target for German submarines, and so the captain had ordered the
stewards to douse the external lamps and paint all 2,000 of the ships' portholes black so that
no light would give away their position at night. The next day on September 3rd, everyone aboard
had gathered around the ship’s various radios and intercoms to hear British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain declare war on Germany. The rest of the voyage had been a dispirited one,
the future was now uncertain, and the hardships of war had only just begun.
The Mary arrived in New York on September 5th, and she would remain at the Cunard Line Pier
until the British Admiralty would order her to be converted into a troop carrier.
The RMS Queen Mary and her sister ship the RMS Queen Elizabeth
would go on to transport hundreds of thousands of soldiers across the oceans of the world.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill would later credit the valiant effort of the two ships
for shortening the war by a year, and he also said that they, in no small part, helped to win it.
Seven decades later, the grand old lady now sits here in the calm waters of Long Beach, California.
Purchased after her retirement in 1967 to be used as a tourist attraction, generating over
$290 million a year to the county of Los Angeles and driving 1/6th of the tourism for the entire area.
When she arrived in Long Beach it took several years to convert the ship into a working hotel
and convention center. Much of the interiors were thoughtlessly gutted and ripped out
to make room. The Kosher Kitchen remains today behind a wall of plumbing and ventilation ducts,
inaccessible to anyone. The scroll room was converted into a storage closet for hotel needs,
and much of the furnishings were donated to various Synagogues and remain unaccounted for.
The beautiful Torah Ark created by Cecil Epril has been used to start up other Jewish temples
and now sits restored but out of sight in the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.
There have been attempts to restore the Queen Mary’s Synagogue and return the precious
artifacts, but it never came to fruition. All that is left aboard the ship is some kosher dinnerware,
a single Torah scroll with breastplates, and a dusty storage closet near the staircase.
Many would agree that the Queen Mary is somewhat of a World Heritage site.
And in this case, she has proved herself of great importance to the Jewish community.
Tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants fled the Nazi regime aboard this ship
over the course of her three years of interwar peacetime service.
Many of them had peered up at her towering face and saw a light of optimism.
She represented safety,
safety from the oppression and death they faced at home, and...she represented security,
like that of a mother’s warm embrace.
The RMS Queen Mary lives on as a testament to the diaspora
of the Jewish refugees, and a war-time artifact of great importance to people around the world.