Autobiography Essay

The story of Amando Lucas and his novel titled “ The German Girl”

It happens on 1939, were German ship St. Louis set sail from Hamburg for
Havana carrying more than 900 passengers, most of them German Jewish
refugees, escaping from the Nazi regime. That novel really was about what
happened to the 28 passengers of the MS Saint Louis who were allowed to
disembark in Havana. But what became of the other 900 Jewish refugees who
were forced to return to Europe? In this second novel, I wanted to explore the
fate of some of the passengers who ended up in France. Both novels required
years of investigation. For the first, I refused to speak to MS Saint Louis survivors
until I after I finished writing the book and traveled to Berlin, Auschwitz, and
Havana. I grew up in Cuba, and I remember when I was 10 years old my
grandmother would tell us at dinner that Cuba would pay very dearly for what
it had done to the Jewish refugees.

As I grew up, I understood she was referring to the Saint Louis tragedy,

something which is never spoken of in Cuba. My grandmother, the daughter of
Spanish immigrants, was pregnant with my mother when the Saint Louis arrived
in the port of Havana on May 27, 1939. Seeing how the bulk of the refugees
aboard were forced to return to Europe and faced their deaths in Nazi
concentration camps impacted her deeply. When I attended college in Havana
and worked on my thesis, I was given access to the National Archives and tried
to look up information about the Saint Louis. The librarian whispered to me that
there were three boxes dedicated to the Saint Louis, but they had disappeared
from the archives in the ’70s.

When I arrived in the U.S. in 1991, I began acquiring books, documents,

postcards, and photos related to the Saint Louis. I even purchased the diary of the
ship’s captain, autographed by him. Living in Cuba under communism is like
serving a claustrophobic jail sentence, heightened by the fact that Cuba is an
island. As teenagers, we would joke that all Cubans suffered Marco Polo
syndrome. I thought about writing a news article or a book of essays. I even
thought about including the interviews I did with the Saint Louis survivors and
historians. But I wanted to stretch outside of my comfort zone. And there are
already plenty of great nonfiction books, complete works, about that tragedy. So,
I started the creative process and let my imagination run free. I knew that a novel
would allow me, in the end, to reach more people, to create a stronger emotional
connection.

I get too emotionally involved in the stories I write like the story of the German Girl.
Writing to me is a very personal endeavor. I write and forget the world around me
exists. Writing is a form of meditation for me. Since my three kids were born, I tend
to cry very easily. It could be after reading a book, watching a film, even when I hear
a sad story. I must confess, although it may seem cheesy, that I cried when I edited the
English version of some of my own chapters.