Otto Schiendick Character Analysis

As the St. Louis speeds toward Cuba, Josef and the other children on board are invited to take a tour of the ship. On the way to the engine room, they pass a room with several crewmembers, including the Nazi Party official on board named Otto Schiendick. Upon seeing the Jewish children, Schiendick insults them and calls them rats. Josef up to this point has believed that he has been living in a kind of paradise on the ship, away from the hatred of the Nazis back in Germany. But this incident reminds Josef of their cruelty, and serves as another example of how he and the other German Jews are dehumanized by the Nazis. Following this comment, Schiendick and the others begin singing a Nazi song celebrating violence against Jewish—Gratz thus draws a correlation between this assertion that Jewish people are equivalent to pests and animals, and their justification of their cruelty toward these human beings.

By including this episode, Gratz reminds readers of the stakes of Josef’s journey and why they are so desperate for Cuban aid. If Cuba decides not to accept their responsibility to resettle the Jewish passengers on board, as Josef fears, they will be forced to face even more cruelty and death at the Nazis’ hands. Thus, indifference to the Jewish refugees’ plight can be just as harmful to them as direct cruelty.