Published: 13 December 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ALL CEMETERIES HAVE STORIES to tell, and the one on Mucurapo Road in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is no exception. Among the names carved on headstones are Irene and Oscar Huth, Erna Marx, Karl Falkenstein, Willi Schwarz and Otto Gumprich. Hebrew inscriptions are adorned with a Star of David.
Five years ago, Hans Stecher joined his mother, father and aunt in the Jewish section of Mucurapo cemetery. Aged 90 when he died, he was the last of about 600 Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who ended up in Trinidad as they sought sanctuary from persecution and violence.
Stecher arrived on the island as a 14-year-old in 1938. For him it was an adventure and a “dream come true”, according to his memoir; but for his parents, “everything was strange and somewhat frightening”. The boy went on to enjoy a happy and prosperous life on the island. In reporting his death, the Trinidad Guardian described him as a “giant of a man”.
Several thousand Jewish refugees went by boat to Caribbean islands, including Barbados and Jamaica, in the run-up to and during the second world war. Their almost-forgotten story has now been told in a new book. Most wanted to reach the US or Canada, but could not get entry visas. In their panic to escape the march of fascism, they were forced to take what they could get.
“It was a last-chance destination. The majority who ended up in the Caribbean lost members of their families who stayed in the Holocaust,” said Joanna Newman, author of Nearly the New World: The British West Indies and the Flight from Nazism 1933-1945.
FULL STORY Revealed: how the Caribbean became a haven for Jews fleeing Nazi tyranny (Guardian)
Photo: Group photograph of about 50 children with their Hebrew and Jewish religion teacher Fanny Lapscher in Port of Spain (Courtesy of Joanna Newman)
