The actual count on board was 982, and as the real Gruber learned, even that number was a miracle. The United States, and other countries, just said no. So when Franklin Roosevelt finally said yes to 1000 refugees in 1944, Gruber was ecstatic. Now suddenly there was hope. Working in Washington as special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, Gruber begged her boss for the chance to chaperone the refugees.
Somebody has to take their hand.
Gruber's fluency in German and Yiddish made her the logical candidate. Genuine liberty was more elusive. For Manya Begleiter, that was the hardest part. A survivor of five concentration camps, the young woman had last seen her father and two brothers in France as they were herded onto Nazi cattle cars. The refugees were led into Fort Ontario, an old Army barracks in upstate New York, where they spent the rest of the war behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.