Voyage of the Damned

Reaction for Voyage of the Damned

Writing for TV-Radio-Film

June 3, 2002

Voyage of the Damned was a film based on the true-life ship, The Saint Louis, which departed from Hamburg, Germany with over 900 Jewish passengers. Their final destination was Havana, Cuba, which is where they would live until they received visa's to enter the United States.

Before watching the film we read actual news articles from the voyage and wrote down facts that occurred throughout the couple of months the ship was at sea. Then when we viewed the film was compared the facts from the news articles and "fiction" from the film.

Many of the situations portrayed in the film were correlated to the articles. The departure of the ship, the amount of time spent on the ship, the problems with landing in Cuba, the amount of money each person needed to obtain visas', the man's suicide on the ship, and many other facts were accurate when relating this story from fact to "fiction". Overall, when taking into account what we read and what we saw, there were only minor differences in concluding which is fact and which is fiction. For example, in the articles, an elderly woman was granted permission to get off the ship when it was docked in Havana. In the movie two young children were granted permission to get off the ship.

Throughout this entire situation in both life and in the movie there were questions that needed to be answered. One of which was why were 1,000 Jews allowed to leave Germany? When they were on the ship, and weren't allowed to land in Havana, why didn't the captain just basically kick them off? This question was answered when the movie pointed out that the captain's family was threatened if he did 'dock' the passengers.

Overall, the movie depicted the actual events that occurred on the Saint Louis accurately. There were only minor differences in the articles and the movie, and, I believe, the differences were made to add to personal feelings or attachments the viewer would have about the characters.