Struma (ship)

"Struma" was a ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from officially Axis-allied Romania to British-controlled Palestine during World War II. On February 23, 1942, with its engine inoperable, the ship was towed from Istanbul through the Bosporus out to the Black Sea by Turkish authorities with its refugee passengers aboard, where it was left adrift. Within hours, it was torpedoed and sunk by the Soviet submarine "SC 213" on February 24, killing 768 men, women and children, with only one survivor. This was amongst the largest maritime losses of civilian life during World War II.cite web|url=http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206052.pdf|title=Struma|publisher=Yad Vashem]

History

"Struma" was commissioned by the Revisionist Zionist organizations in Romania, especially Betar, to carry Romanian Jews as immigrants to the Promised Land of Eretz Israel. Apart from the crew, there were approximately 790 passengers consisting of many Betar members but mostly of wealthy Romanian Jews who could afford to pay the high price of a ticket. The voyage had the approval of the Ion Antonescu government.D. Frantz, C. Collins, "Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II's Holocaust at Sea", HarperCollins, 2003, ISBN 0-06-621262-6.]

Most of the passengers were not permitted to see the vessel before the day of the voyage, and when they finally saw it they were shocked to discover it was far worse than they had imagined. Sleeping quarters were extremely cramped without enough space to sit up, and there were only two lifeboats. They were not told that the engine was in even worse condition: it had been recovered from a wreck on the bottom of the Danube.

The engine gave out several times after the "Struma" set sail from Constanţa, on the Black Sea on December 12, 1941. After three days it was towed to Istanbul where it remained at anchor while secret negotiations were conducted over the fate of the passengers. In the wake of violent unrest within Palestine, the British government was determined to uphold its policy of restricting mass Jewish immigration and urged the Turkish government of Refik Saydam to prevent the ship from sailing onwards, while Turkey refused to allow the passengers off the ship. After weeks of negotiation, the British agreed to honour the expired Palestinian visas possessed by a few passengers and these were allowed to continue overland. A few also managed to escape with the help of friends in high places, and one woman was admitted to an Istanbul hospital following a miscarriage.

On February 12, the British agreed that the children aged 11 to 16 on the ship would be given Palestinian visas, but then a dispute broke out over the means of their carriage to Palestine. The United Kingdom refused to send a ship, while Turkey refused to allow them overland.

Towing to sea and sinking

As negotiations over the ship's status were still in progress, and without notifying Britain in advance, Turkey towed the "Struma" back into the Black Sea and abandoned it there on February 23. As the ship was towed along the Bosporus, many passengers hung signs over the sides that read "SAVE US" in English and Hebrew, visible to those who lived on the banks of the strait. The engine would not start despite weeks of work that had been performed on it by Turkish engineers, and the ship drifted helplessly.

On February 24, there was a huge explosion and the ship sank. Only one person survived, a man named David Stoliar (Romanian: David Stoleru) who was found clinging to the wreckage, by a rowboat sent out from one of the watchtowers maintained along the Turkish coast. Stoliar was imprisoned in Turkey for 6 weeks, then released and admitted to Palestine. Later, he moved to Japan and then the United States.

Aftermath

On June 9, 1942, Lord Wedgwood opened the debate in the British House of Lords by urging that the mandate over Palestine be transferred to the United States, since Britain had reneged on its commitments. He stated with bitterness: "I hope yet to live to see those who sent the Struma cargo back to the Nazis hung as high as Haman cheek by jowl with their prototype and Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler". [ Sicker, Martin. Pangs of the Messiah : The Troubled Birth of the Jewish State. Westport, CT, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 2000. p 161.]

For many years there were competing theories about the explosion that sank the "Struma", but in 1964 it was discovered by a German historian that a torpedo from a Soviet submarine (SC-213) had been responsible. Later this was confirmed from several other Soviet sources. The submarine had been acting under secret orders to sink all neutral shipping entering the Black Sea in order to reduce the flow of strategic materials to Nazi Germany.

In July 2000, a Turkish diving team found a wreck on the sea floor at approximately the right place, and announced that they had discovered the "Struma". A team led by UK technical diver and a grandson of one of the victims, Greg Buxton, later studied this and several other wrecks in the area but could not positively identify any as the "Struma". [cite web|url=http://www.struma.org/|title=The Struma Project|publisher=www.struma.org]

On September 3, 2000, a ceremony was held at the site to commemorate the tragedy. It was attended by 60 relatives of "Struma" victims, representatives of the Jewish community of Turkey, the Israeli ambassador and prime minister's envoy, as well as British and American delegates. There were no delegates from the former Soviet Union.

ee also

*Mefkure - a similar sinking which occurred August 5, 1944
*Voyage of the Damned
*Exodus 1947
*Patria disaster

References

External links

* [http://www.sephardicstudies.org/struma.html Struma: A Romanian Tragedy - Incomplete list of victims]
* [http://www.vaxxine.com/nda/shipwrecks/sw2001/gm.htm Greg Mossfeldt - diving the Struma]
*imdb title|id=0326221|title=The Struma