While the European refugee crisis has captured the world's attention, Sol Messinger is one of the few who can personally relate to the harrowing images of desperate families fleeing to safety by sea. The 84-year-old retired pathologist from Buffalo was aboard the SS St. Louis, the famed trans-Atlantic liner carrying nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees from Germany in 1939 that was rejected by the United States and Cuba and forced to return to Europe. More than a quarter of the passengers ultimately perished in Nazi death camps and the ship's saga became a symbol of Western indifference toward the victims of Nazi persecution. Messinger, who eventually escaped from a French detention camp along with...
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