Letters, Apr. 24, 1939

• Share

Exasperating, Humiliating

Sirs:

I got into Cristobal this morning on the 14,000 ton Hamburg-American liner Caribia from Curaçao by way of Puerto Colombia and Cartagena. It is one of the most exasperating and humiliating things that can happen to a human being in the world today—to travel on a German ship loaded with Jewish refugees. ... At first, you find yourself enraged at the Germans for being so inhuman but gradually you take a deeper and more abstract view of the situation and, while you develop a sense of shame for the Germans, you come to suspect that their treatment of the refugees is just another indication of a reappearance in Germany of that peculiar quality which in the end will always bring defeat on the German nation. . . .

The Caribia left Hamburg three weeks ago with 400 refugees aboard—first, second and third class. All had to pay their way so the ship cleaned up on passage fare. They were shipped out with $4 apiece spending money when they reached their destination. Most of them were bound for Ecuador and Guatemala and many of them were highly educated, charming ladies and gentlemen. The lines between the Germans and the Jews and between the Germans and all other foreigners on board were drawn long before I got on in Curaçao. By the time I got on, the ship had divided into two groups with the Germans by themselves and all others on board—English, a few Americans, a few Irish, Venezuelans, Colombians, etc., all siding with the Jews. . . .

You should see what effect traveling on a German refugee ship had on the formal English. Within an hour, the English as well as the Jews were telling me about the voyage. Then I began to notice things myself. The Hitlerites did not show up at a gala dance in the saloon while the ship lay in Curaçao—the Jews were there and the Hitlerites would not appear on the same dance floor. . . .

The Hitlerites would not swim in the pool with the Jews. . . . The Germans ate their meals in solitary Nordic splendor—all by themselves. . . .

The Germans were angered beyond measure when we went ashore with the Jews at Cartagena and Puerto Colombia. . . .

I never was so glad as I was this morning to put foot on American soil.

BEN CALDWELL

Cristobal, C. Z.

Milestone

Sirs:

Add to TIME'S necrology:

Died. Ferdinand Lindemann, 87, who in 1882 at the age of 30 in Freiburg, Germany first established the transcendence of rr (ratio of circumference of a circle to its diameter= 3.14159265. . .); that is, showed that rr is not the root of any algebraic equation whose coefficients are whole numbers; thereby proved the impossibility of the squaring of the circle, classical problem of antiquity: given a circle, to construct by the use of ruler and compasses alone a square of equal area.

J. L. WALSH

Widener Library

Cambridge, Mass.

>TIME'S thanks to Harvard's able Mathematician Walsh for his TIME-worthy milestone.—ED.

Knox's Limerick' Sirs: