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Selected Jewish Refugee Passenger Manifests

Introduction by: David Rosen

Background

In the year 1940, two modest-sized sister ships of the Furness-Withy line, the aptly name Newfoundland, and the Nova Scotia made eleven crossings of the Atlantic from Liverpool to Boston. The ships made intermediate stops at St. John's, Newfoundland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia carrying a total of 1052 passengers to their Boston destination. The majority of passengers were Europeans whose home countries, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, had been taken over by the Nazis.

Among these were 898 Jewish refugees, fortunate enough or far-seeing enough to have acquired travel documents in time to escape the impending holocaust. The previous year, 1939, the two ships had made a similar number of Liverpool to Boston voyages but did not carry any Jewish passengers. By 1941 the vessels had been converted for war time use by the British Navy. One became a hospital ship and the other a transport. Both were eventually sunk during the war.

Database

This database includes the names of 898 Jewish refugees. The fields for this database are as follows:

• Surname
• Given Name(s)
• Age
• Country of Birth
• Ship Name
• Date Arrived in Boston

Acknowledgments

The information contained in this database was indexed from passenger manifests that can be viewed in their entirety on Ancestry.com (subscription service) and FamilySearch.org. The database was created by David Rosen.

In addition, thanks to JewishGen Inc. for providing the website and database expertise to make this database accessible. Special thanks to Avrami Groll for his continued contributions to Jewish genealogy. Particular thanks to Nolan Altman, Director of Special Projects - Holocaust Collection.

Nolan Altman
Director of Special Projects - Holocaust Collection
August 2020

Searching the Database

This database can be searched via the JewishGen Holocaust Collection or via the JewishGen Unified Search.