Photo courtesy Seltzer Films
When the SS Quanza, a cargo ship filled with refugees from Nazi-controlled Europe, stopped in Hampton Roads in 1940, the passengers still aboard were out of chances. After being refused entry into the U.S. in New York and into Mexico at Veracruz, the ship was refueling in Virginia for a trip back to Europe and an uncertain future. The passengers couldn’t have known that a Jewish lawyer from Newport News would file a lawsuit and keep the ship in port for nearly a week, changing their fates. Their story is told in the new documentary “Nobody Wants Us.”
Stephen Morewitz, whose grandfather J.L. Morewitz used maritime law to stall the ship's departure, has worked to tell his family's story for several years. “These were war refugees ... fleeing Europe and it was very difficult,” Morewitz says. “They were very lucky to get on board that ship and because a lot of people didn't make it.”
Morewitz collaborated with producer Laura Seltzer-Dunya to create the documentary, which started production in 2012.
“At first I wasn't sure where the film was going to go, direction-wise,” Seltzer-Duny says. “But then so much started happening with [the] refugee crisis today in America, and so my film is really about America's response to these refugees.”
Seltzer-Duny says the film isn't a political statement but an example of how the American government treats refugees.
“Nobody Wants Us,” screens at 4 p.m. on Nov. 11 at the University of Richmond. A discussion with producer Laura Seltzer-Dunya and J.L. Morewitz' grandson Stephen Morewitz, follows. Free. Register here.