Eva Wiener was born July 18, 1938 in Berlin, Germany.  Her parents were originally from Poland, and their families fled during the pogroms at the turn of the century, settling in Berlin – at first a very welcoming city.  That had changed by the time her parents met though, and with Hitler’s accession to power and the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws life quickly became unbearable.  Her father had been working at his family bakery but with Kristallnacht he became a victim of the Polen-Aktion and he was deported to Poland.  Eva’s mother worked hard to secure an exit visa, and she was able to obtain one from Siam before one from Cuba came through, and the family made the decision to leave (Eva’s father was able to return from Poland now that the family had that visa).  They booked passage aboard the MS St. Louis and headed to Hamburg, and from there the journey to Cuba began.  Eva was too young to have any memories of this, but her parents told her the journey was a joyful one.  Panic erupted in Havana harbour when the ship was not permitted to dock; the Cuban president infamously refused to recognize their papers, so the captain took the ship north to Miami.  They were refused entry there too; in fact no country in the Americas was willing to accept them.  The ship returned to Europe, where several countries had said they’d accept some of the refugees; Eva’s father wisely chose to leave the ship in England.  The family lived in London where her father found work in a bakery; they also endured the relentless bombing by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz.  Eva and her mother spent many nights in bomb shelters. One year after the war the family succeeded in getting visas to the United States, and they emigrated in 1946, first to Belmar, N.J. and later to Astoria, in New York’s Queens neighbourhood.  Eva grew up there, attending school and making friends, all the while finding her place in postwar America.  She eventually married and raised her own family, sharing her and her parents’ story with her own children and the world, as she has become a passionate educator about the MS St. Louis and its place in the history of the Shoah.  Eva Wiener was interviewed by Scott Masters at her home in New Jersey in July 2025.