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norfolk — Two years after its completion, a Newport News native’s documentary about refugees who fled the Nazis in 1940 and wound up in Norfolk via the steamship Quanza will premiere on WHRO, the local PBS affiliate.
Laura Seltzer-Duny started working on the film, “Nobody Wants Us,” eight years ago after answering a phone call from a relative she didn’t know she had. The voice on the phone, a cousin named Stephen Morewitz, shared an incredible family story.
“He told me the story of my great uncle and great aunt, and I had never heard it before,” Seltzer-Duny said.
Seltzer-Duny learned that the two, Jacob L. and Sallie Rome Morewitz, were maritime lawyers from her hometown who worked tirelessly to free more than 80 refugees stuck aboard the ship once it docked in Norfolk. The ship had been turned away by government officials in New York and Mexico.
Seemingly destined for a fate similar to the MS St. Louis — a ship that carried more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939 but was denied permission to land by the island, the U.S. and Canada before returning to Europe — the Quanza stopped in Norfolk to replenish its coal supplies for its return voyage across the Atlantic.
But the Morewitzes refused to let the ship and its passengers leave. Instead, Jacob Morewitz employed his legal expertise to delay the ship’s departure with the aid of his wife, Sallie. Eventually, the refugees were saved from further undoing and got off the ship.
Most made their way to New York, thanks to volunteer drivers from the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, Seltzer-Duny said.
In the documentary, Seltzer-Duny interviews three of the refugees her great uncle and aunt helped free, including Irving Redel, who was just 17 years old when he fled Belgium in 1940 and made his way to America on the steamship.
“We survived, but six million didn’t,” Redel, who has since passed away, told Seltzer-Duny during the film.
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Seltzer-Duny said that while her film is “not as much about the horrors as much as it is the heroes,” it presents an important question to viewers: What might have happened to these refugees if they had been turned away in Norfolk and sent back to war-torn Europe?
She began interviewing key players for the film in 2012, but paused when the project’s budget dried up. The Syrian refugee crisis in 2017 prompted her to get back to work.
“Things had gotten so bad with the refugee crisis then, and that’s when I thought there is no better time to tell this very relevant story because it shows how the United States historically responds to refugees fleeing countries,” she said.
Today, Syrian refugees are trying to do something similar to what Jewish refugees did some 80 years ago — flee war and escape spending the rest of their lives in displacement camps, or death camps.
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“Their story is so parallel to the WWII refugees,” Seltzer-Duny said. “We weren’t accepting refugees back then and we didn’t accept Muslim refugees now.”
Using the 44 minute film to educate school children comes next. She’s planning to have the film distributed to public schools so they can understand the plight of refugees everywhere.
Seltzer-Duny said she hopes children will be inspired to help refugees in the future instead of being bystanders.
“We have to educate our kids about the atrocities and the heroism of the past,” she said. “Whether we are teachers or mothers, we have to teach them to be up-standers and do what is right.”
For more information about the film, visit nobodywantsus.com.
On TV
“Nobody Wants Us” airs at 10 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, on WHRO-TV.
Amy Poulter, 757-446-2705, amy.poulter@pilotonline.com