Sitting around an oval table, fifteen Nazis introduce themselves. The actor playing Reinhard Heydrich says, “We have a storage problem in Germany for these Jews.” He continues on, explaining that the Nazis “have created a Jew-free society and a Jew-free economy.” He adds, “We have indeed eliminated the Jew from our national life. Now, more than that, the Jew himself must be physically eradicated from our living space.”

My gaze flickers to Cade. He sits with his arms folded over his chest, watching the screen.

As the movie continues, Heydrich explains that the Nazis’ aggressive emigration policy for the Jews failed. “Who would take more of them. Who would want them was the policy’s ultimate limitation,” he says. “Every border in Europe rejects them or charges outrageously to accept them.”

I am shocked to learn countries expected compensation, but I’m not surprised when the Nazis comment that even America turned them away. A while ago, I listened to a podcast about the MS St. Louis, a ship filled with about nine hundred Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939, a half-year after Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. In an organized vicious attack throughout Germany, Nazis descended on seven thousand Jewish businesses, shattering storefront windows, destroying equipment and merchandise, torching over a thousand synagogues to ash. The German Jews on the MS St. Louis sought sanctuary in Cuba. For most, it was a temporary solution until their US visa applications were approved. When the ship arrived in Havana, however, the Cuban government refused entry to 97 percent of the passengers, even though the refugees had proper documents issued by a Cuban official. The captain had no choice but to sail toward Miami, hoping the United States would welcome the remaining refugees. But the US Coast Guard stopped the ship at sea. Some sent pleas to President Roosevelt, but the president never responded and the US government held fast to the strict immigration laws. With no safe haven, the ship was forced to turn back. Several Western European countries took in the refugees, but for nearly a third of the Jewish passengers, it was a death sentence.

How many more times has the United States turned away innocent people, forcing them to return to certain death?

Bile rises in my throat.

I return my attention to the movie. The Nazis debate the absorption of two and a half million Jews in Poland, discussing them as if they were rabid rats that needed to be exterminated from the planet.

How do you do that? With bullets. With poison. Carbon monoxide. Zyklon B.

I think about Cade’s grandparents. They came from Poland. His grandpa saved a Jewish boy, and though I don’t know the story, as I look at Cade, I see that this part of the movie has him riveted to the screen.

Chapter 11: Cade