This story is part of The Hidden Museum, a continuing series that explores remarkable artifacts from St. Louis museums, pieces of history rarely seen by the public. The St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum holds more than 660 artifacts in its collection, though only about 125 appear in the permanent exhibit. The rest remain in carefully preserved storage, waiting to share their stories.
A description that raised questions
“The description of an artifact in our collection caught my eye recently,” said Amy Moorman, director of archives and exhibitions at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. “It read, ‘Duck Sail Cloth Piece from Hitler’s Yacht ‘Ostwind’ with Certificate.’ I wanted to know more.”
So, Moorman got to work. The item itself is modest in size. A small square of sail cloth. But its identification carries enormous weight.
“Sure enough, the item was a small square of cloth identified as ‘an authentic relic from the Number One Mainsail of Adolf Hitler’s Yacht s.y. ‘Ostwind,’” Moorman said.
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What deepened the mystery were the materials stored alongside it. A certificate of authenticity, guaranteed in 1972, and a pamphlet advertising a historical attraction called the Ostwind Museum, once located in Jacksonville, Fla.
From yacht to museum attraction
“The certificate of authenticity is signed by Horace and Jody Glass, founders of the Ostwind Museum,” Moorman said. As she researched the artifact, a layered and unsettling history emerged.
“Further research yields a fascinating story about how ‘Hitler’s yacht’ found its way to Florida, and its ultimate fate,” she said.
According to documentation associated with the artifact, the yacht was seized by the U.S. Navy after World War II and used as a training vessel before being sold as surplus in the 1950s. In the 1960s, it was purchased by the Glass family, who spent decades attempting to restore it.
“Horace Glass attempted to restore the boat for decades,” Moorman said, “even, as the evidence in our collection suggests, creating a museum aboard the vessel in 1972.”
Promotional materials describe the Ostwind Museum as a family-friendly historical attraction and make a point of stating it was “not a shrine to the Third Reich.”
An ending that never settled
Later efforts to establish a museum aboard the yacht in Plymouth, Mass., in the 1980s were derailed after public outcry. But the vessel’s story continued.
“In 1989, the boat was sold to a group of Holocaust survivors,” Moorman said. “They intended to sink it off the coast of Miami and create a memorial to the victims of the MS St. Louis, whose passengers had been denied entry to the United States and a third of whom were later murdered in the Holocaust.”
That plan was never fully realized.
“Due to later hurricanes, the current location of the sunken ship is unknown,” Moorman said.
What remains
What survives instead is a fragment. A piece of sail cloth. A certificate. A brochure. Together, they raise difficult questions about memory, commercialization, and how societies reckon with the physical remnants of perpetrators.
Preserved in the museum’s collection, the artifact is not displayed as an object of admiration. It exists as evidence of a complicated afterlife, tracing a line from Nazi power to postwar America to survivor-led efforts to reclaim meaning and memorialize loss.
It is a small object. The story it carries is anything but.
How to donate artifacts
Families who wish to donate artifacts to the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum can contact the museum’s Archives and Collections staff to begin the process. The team gathers background information and conducts research before presenting items to the museum’s Collections Committee for approval. Accepted donors sign a Deed of Gift, after which items are cataloged and preserved in the museum’s storage facility.
More Hidden Museum
- She saved a Jewish family from the Nazis. St. Louis took care of her afterward
- The story of the Berwald Trunk, which escaped the Holocaust for a new life in St. Louis
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