Struma disaster

The ''Struma'' disaster was the sinking on 24 February 1942 of a ship, , that had been trying to take nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Mandatory Palestine. She was a small iron-hulled ship of only that had been built in 1867 as a steam-powered schooner but had recently been re-engined with an unreliable second-hand diesel engine. ''Struma'' was only long, had a beam of only and a draught of only but an estimated 781 refugees and 10 crew were crammed into her.

''Struma''s diesel engine failed several times between her departure from Constanţa on the Black Sea on 12 December 1941 and her arrival in Istanbul on 15 December. She had to be towed by a tug boat to leave Constanţa and to enter Istanbul. On 23 February 1942, with her engine still inoperable and her refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed ''Struma'' from Istanbul through the Bosphorus out to the coast of Şile in North Istanbul. Within hours, in the morning of 24 February, the torpedoed her, killing 781 refugees plus 10 crew, making it the Black Sea's largest exclusively civilian naval disaster of World War II. Until recently the number of victims had been estimated at 768, but the current figure is the result of a recent study of six different passenger lists. Only one person aboard, 19-year-old David Stoliar, survived (he died in 2014).

The ''Struma'' disaster joined that of SS ''Patria'' – sunk after Haganah sabotage while laden with Jewish refugees 15 months earlier – as rallying points for the Irgun and Lehi revisionist Zionist clandestine movements, encouraging their campaign against the British colonial government.

Voyage and detention

''Struma'' had been built as a luxury yacht, but was 74 years old and in the 1930s had been relegated to carrying cattle on the River Danube under the Panamanian flag of convenience. The Mossad LeAliyah Bet intended to use her as a refugee ship, but shelved the plan after the German entry into Bulgaria. Her Greek owner Jean D. Pandelis instead contacted Revisionist Zionists in Romania. The New Zionist Organization and Betar Zionist youth movement began to make arrangements but an argument over the choice of passengers left the planning in the hands of Betar.

Apart from the crew and 60 Betar youth, there were over 700 passengers who had paid large fees to board the ship. The exact number is not certain, but a collation of six separate lists produced a total of 791 passengers and 10 crew. Passengers were told they would be sailing on a renovated boat with a short stop in Istanbul to collect their Palestinian immigration visas. Ion Antonescu's Romanian government approved of the voyage.

Each refugee was allowed to take of luggage. Romanian customs officers took many of the refugees' valuables and other possessions, along with food that they had brought with them. The passengers were not permitted to see the vessel before the day of the voyage. They found that she was a wreck with only two lifeboats. Below decks, ''Struma'' had dormitories with bunks for 40 to 120 people in each. The berths were bunks on which passengers were to sleep four abreast, with width for each person.

On 12 December, 1941, the day of her sailing, ''Struma''s engine failed so a tug towed her out of the port of Constanţa. The waters off Constanţa were mined, so a Romanian vessel escorted her clear of the minefield. She then drifted overnight while her crew tried vainly to start her engine. She transmitted distress signals and on 13 December the Romanian tug returned. The tug's crew said they would not repair ''Struma''s engine unless they were paid. The refugees had no money after buying their tickets and leaving Romania, so they gave all their wedding rings to the tugboatmen, who then repaired the engine. ''Struma'' then got under way but by 15 December her engine had failed again so she was towed into the port of Istanbul in Turkey.

There she remained at anchor, while British diplomats and Turkish officials negotiated over the fate of the passengers. Because of Arab and Jewish unrest in Palestine, the British government was determined to apply the terms of the White Paper of 1939 to minimise Jewish immigration to Palestine. British diplomats urged the Turkish government of Refik Saydam possessed by a few passengers, who were allowed to continue to Palestine overland. With the help of influential friends ( Vehbi Koc), a few others also managed to escape. One woman, Madeea Solomonovici, was admitted to an Istanbul hospital after miscarrying. On 12 February British officials agreed that children aged 11 to 16 on the ship would be given Palestinian visas, but a dispute occurred over their transportation to Palestine. The British government declined to send a ship, while Turkey refused to allow them to travel overland. According to some researchers, a total of 9 passengers disembarked while the remaining 782 and 10 crew stayed on the ship. Others believe that there had only been 782 passengers initially, only Madeea Solomonovici being allowed to leave the ship.

Towing to sea and sinking

Negotiations between Turkey and Britain seemed to reach an ''impasse''. On 23 February 1942 a small party of Turkish police tried to board the ship but the refugees would not let them aboard. Then a larger force of about 80 police came, surrounded ''Struma'' with motor boats, and after about half an hour of resistance got aboard the ship. The police detached ''Struma''s anchor and attached her to a tug, which towed her through the Bosphorus and out into the Black Sea. As she was towed along the Bosphorus, 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. Despite weeks of work by Turkish engineers, the engine would not start. The Turkish authorities abandoned the ship in the Black Sea, about 10 miles north of the Bosphorus, where she drifted helplessly.On the morning of 24 February there was a huge explosion and the ship sank. Many years later it was revealed that the ship had been torpedoed by the , that had also sunk the Turkish vessel ''Çankaya'' the evening before.

''Struma'' sank quickly and many people were trapped below decks and drowned. Many others aboard survived the sinking and clung to pieces of wreckage, but for hours no rescue came and all but one of them died from drowning or hypothermia. Of the estimated 791 people killed, more than 100 were children. ''Struma''s First Officer Lazar Dikof and the 19-year-old refugee David Stoliar clung to a cabin door that was floating in the sea. The First Officer died overnight but Turks in a rowing boat rescued Stoliar the next day. He was the only survivor. Turkey held Stoliar in custody for many weeks. Simon Brod (1893–1962), a Jewish businessman from Istanbul, who during World War II helped to rescue an untold number of Jewish refugees who reached Turkey, arranged for Stoliar's meals during his two-month incarceration. Upon his release, Brod brought Stoliar home. He provided him with clothes and a suitcase, and a train ticket to Aleppo after the British government gave him papers to go to Palestine.

Aftermath

On 9 June 1942, Lord Wedgwood opened the debate in the House of Lords by alleging that the British government had reneged on its commitments and urging that the League of Nations mandate over Palestine be transferred to the United States. 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 ''Führer'', Adolf Hitler". Anglo-Jewish poet Emanuel Litvinoff, serving in the British Army at the time, wrote a scathing poem, mourning the loss of ''Struma''. Having volunteered in the British Army to fight the Nazis, he called the British uniform he wore a "badge of shame" in response to the incident.

For many years there were competing theories about the explosion that sank ''Struma''. In 1964 a German historian discovered that ''Shch-213'' had fired a torpedo that sank the ship. Later this was confirmed from several other Soviet sources. The submarine had been acting under secret orders to sink all neutral and enemy shipping entering the Black Sea to reduce the flow of strategic materials to Nazi Germany.

Frantz and Collins call ''Struma''s sinking the ''"largest naval civilian disaster of the war"''. Greater numbers of civilians perished in other maritime disasters of the war, including ''Wilhelm Gustloff'', '' Cap Arcona'' and '' Junyō Maru'', but there were also military personnel aboard those ships at the time.

On 26 January 2005 Israel's then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told the Knesset:

Wrecks

Struma

In July 2000 a Turkish diving team found a wreck on the sea floor in about the right place and announced that it had found ''Struma''. A team led by a British 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 ''Struma''; the wreck found by the Turks was far too large.

On 3 September 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, British and American delegates, but David Stoliar chose to not attend for family reasons.

Soviet ''Shch-213'' submarine

In November 2008 a team of Dutch, German and Romanian divers of the Black Sea Wreck Diving Club discovered the wreck of ''Shch-213'' off the coast of Constanţa in Romania. Since the registration markings that could help identify the wreck were missing due to damage to the submarine, it took divers until 2010 to identify her as ''Shch-213''.

See also

*Lord Moyne
* – a former US packet ship carrying 4,515 Jewish refugees who were denied entry to Palestine in 1947.
* – a Turkish ship carrying 350 Jewish refugees that was torpedoed and sunk on 5 August 1944 by USSR submarine Shch 215
* – a Spanish cargo liner designed for 28 passengers that took 1,120 Jewish refugees to New York in a seven-week voyage in 1941.
* – a German passenger liner carrying 937 Jewish refugees who were denied entry to Cuba, the USA and Canada in 1939.
* Le Grand Akshan
*List by death toll of ships sunk by submarines

References

Sources and further reading

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External links

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* (Incomplete list of victims)

MV Struma disaster
on Yad Vashem website

{{February 1942 shipwrecks

The Holocaust in Bulgaria
History of the Republic of Turkey
The Holocaust in Romania
Maritime disasters
International response to the Holocaust
Israel–Turkey relations
Jewish immigrant ships
Jewish Romanian history
Maritime incidents in February 1942
Romania in World War II
Romanian emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
Ships sunk by Soviet submarines
World War II shipwrecks in the Black Sea
The Holocaust in Bessarabia and Bukovina
Migrant boat disasters
February 1942 events