I never heard the second world war story of the German trans-Atlantic liner the St. Louis, but it does sound a tragic and very moving one which would make a great story on film.

It tells of a liner that set off from Germany in 1939 filled with almost a thousand Jewish refugees looking for asylum. Having been turned away from Cuba and the U.S., they returned to Europe to be caught up in the war and where many of the passengers were killed in the Holocaust.

Torsten Hilscher is currently writing a script based on the real life story of the St. Louis liner and the story of one of the survivors of the trip, Michael Fink. He was a mere four years old at the time and the story would be told out through his eyes and Variety tell us that the story would follow the group after they returned to Europe where he and his family were held in the Theresienstadt concentration camp where they were eventually freed by the Red Army.

The story of the ships voyage has already made it to the big screen in a film called The Voyage of the Damned in 1976, it starred Faye Dunaway, Malcolm McDowell, Orson Welles, James Mason and Max von Sydow, and I have to confess I've never seen it.

However I hope that just because there has been another film that they don't miss out the voyage in the story and head straight to the aftermath. Building the characters on the trip and highlighting that both Cuba and the U.S. rejected their claims for asylum, ultimately sending many people back to Europe to be murdered, would be make very strong plot points and make for a fascinating film.