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As you can imagine there was a terrible mood. Everybody was very
depressed. A few people committed...tried to commit suicide as I
think uh the one man...he, I think he cut his wrists and they, he
was the only one who landed because they had to take him to the
hospital to...to tend to him. I don't know whether he stayed or
not. I think he did. He must have been the only one who stayed. But
you know, humans are always hopeful. You know, we always cling to
the hope something is going to happen. They're not going to let us
rot on the ocean. I mean, something had to happen to us. Of course,
the fear was that we would go back to Germany. That was the big
thing you know. So we...the food got worse and worse and the water
was...water supply, I mean we had water but we had to be careful,
and of course the parties were over. No more parties, no more, no
more fun. We were just sitting and waiting--what's going to happen,
you know, and uh here again the committee tried everything and sent
telegrams all over the world trying to get us in but it was....
Everyday they had like newsletters printed and put out on board to
tell us what's happening and everyday there was another country we
were supposedly going to go, but we never...and nothing came about
until finally at the--we were already--well, first we came to, to
the coast of Miami and we thought we could, you know--I heard later
that the captain had agreed that we make some kind of a forced
landing or something but we didn't know anything about it. We just
saw the uh Coast Guard boats surround us near Miami to make sure
that we wouldn't even come close to the border, to the...to shore,
so that was out. So we saw the lights of Miami. We saw the lights
of America and that was it. So we slowly sailed back to Europe. And
of course behind the scenes--you know--there was a lot of
negotiations going on with the United, the United Jewish Appeal and
there was a Mr. Tupper in Paris and he finally got it together that
we will be divided between Belgium and Holland and France and
England.
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