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Good Reading : December 2016 - January 2017
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W ithout realising it, I started wr iting my novel, The Ger man Girl, over 40 years ago. My maternal grandmother planted the seed in my mind, telling me about the tragedy of the St Louis. That story became a lifelong obsession. A little background first: my great-grandparents fled Spain in the first part of the 20th century. Their ship arrived in the port of Havana, but they were unable to disembark and ended up coming to shore on the eastern tip of the island, in Guantanamo, where my grandmother was born. On 27 May 1939, when the St Louis arrived in Havana, my grandmother was pregnant with my mom. When she saw that over 900 Jewish passengers were not allowed to disembark, it hit her very hard. After Fidel Castro came to power, my mother studied and worked while my grandmother took care of my sister and me. Every May, on the anniversary of the arrival of the St Louis, my grandmother would say that Cuba would pay very dearly for the next 100 years for what they had done to the Jewish passengers. One summer, before I started middle school, my grandmother found out that I would have to study Russian, not English, in class. Not happy, she decided to pay for English language classes for me. My teacher was a neighbour who all of us kids called the Nazi. In 1939 a ship carrying over 900 Jewish passengers left Hamburg, Germany. Foreseeing the impending doom for European Jews, the passengers sought refuge in Cuba, but they were refused entry not only in Havana but also in the US and Canada. The German Girl is a fictional account of the doomed voyage of this ship, and here author ARMANDO LUCAS CORREA tells of his personal connection to the real-life events. BEHIND THE BOOK started writing my novel, My maternal grandmother planted the seed in my mind, telling me about the Havana, but they were unable to disembark and ended up coming to shore on the eastern worked while my grandmother took care of my sister and me. Every May, on the anniversary of the arrival of the St Louis my grandmother would say that Cuba would pay a fictional account of the doomed voyage of this ship, and here author ARMANDO LUCAS CORREA tells of his personal connection to the Ship to GOODREADINGMAGAZINE.COM.AU GOOD READING DECEMBER 2016 / JANUARY 2017 28
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