Robert Hesse papers

Robert Hesse was born on 26 May 1895 in Gardelegen, Germany. He completed his schooling in Gardelegen and then entered an apprenticeship with a silk goods business in Frankfurt in 1912, and returned to Gardelegen as an assistant manager of a business there, where he worked until his arrest and imprisonment at Buchenwald following Kristallnacht in November 1938. After his release from Buchenwald in December 1938, he began making plans to emigrate, and was able to book passage on the S.S. St. Louis leaving Hamburg in May 1939. After the passengers of that ship were refused entry into Cuba and it returned to Europe, he disembarked in Southhampton, England in June 1939, and was subsequently interned at Camp Kitchener before being allowed to join the Auxiliary Military Corps. After being discharged for medical reasons in April 1940, he returned to Camp Kitchener, until he and other German emigres were rounded up and sent to the Isle of Man, and subsequently, by ship to Canada in July 1940.