About

St. Louis Manifest is a Twitter bot that recounts the tragic fates of German Jewish refugees who perished away in concentration camps under Nazi Germany after being denied asylum in the United States during their transatlantic voyage in May 1939. Upon its launch on the Holocaust Remembrance Day in late January 2017, the online memorial project immediately went viral on the social media for its poignant messages.

Origin

On January 27th, 2017, in observance of the Holocaust Memorial Day, a Twitter bot named St. Louis Manifest (@Stl_Manifest)^[2] began tweeting names and photographs of German Jewish refugees aboard MS St. Louis, a transatlantic liner which carried hundreds of asylum-seeking German Jews back to Nazi-occupied Europe after being denied entry by the U.S. Coast Guard in May 1939, using data from the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum (USHMM).^[4]

Spread

Throughout the day, the Holocaust memorial project was highlighted by various online news outlets, including CNN^[5], TIME^[6], The Atlantic^[7], Salon^[8], Mother Jones^[11], The Daily Dot^[12] and The Verge^[10], many of which underscored the poignancy of the tweets in observance of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, especially as its debut coincided with President Donald Trump's controversial executive order calling for an immediate suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and entry of any Syrian nationals into the American soil.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References