SS Struma

The Struma attack
250px Photo believed to show the Struma in Istanbul harbor, 1942
Date	February 24, 1942
Target	The ship Struma, carrying Jewish refugees from Romania to the British Mandate of Palestine
Attack type	Ship sinking
Weapon(s)	Torpedo
Death(s)	768 Jewish refugees
Belligerent(s)	Soviet Union, Turkey

The Struma was a ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to British-controlled Palestine during World War II. On 23 February 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, without food, water, or fuel. Within hours, it was torpedoed and sunk by the Soviet submarine Shch 213 on 24 February, killing 768 men, women and children, with only one survivor. It has been called "largest naval civilian disaster of the war".

History

See also: Romania during World War II

File:STRUMA memorial in Holon.jpg

The Struma Memorial in Holon, Israel

File:STRUMA monument in Ashdod.jpg

The Struma Memorial in Ashdod, Israel

The Struma, a Bulgarian ship sailing under the Panamian flag, 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. They included some Betar members but were mostly wealthy Romanian Jews who could afford to pay the high price of a ticket. The voyage had the approval of the Ion Antonescu government.

Most of the passengers were not permitted to see the vessel before the day of the voyage. 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 the ship had only two lifeboats. Passengers were not told that the engine was in even worse condition: it had been recovered from a wreck on the bottom of the Danube River.

The engine gave out several times after the Struma set sail from Constanţa, on the Black Sea on 12 December 1941. After three days, the ship 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. 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, who were allowed to continue overland. With the help of friends in high places, a few also managed to escape. One woman was admitted to an Istanbul hospital following a miscarriage.

On 12 February 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 transport to Palestine. The United Kingdom refused to send a ship, while Turkey refused to allow them to travel overland.

Towing to sea and sinking

While negotiations were still in progress and without notifying Britain in advance^{[citation needed]}, Turkey towed the Struma back into the Black Sea and abandoned it on 23 February. According to Canadian TV journalist Simcha Jacobovici, "It was no coincidence that the Turks decided to send the ship out to the Black Sea. They knew well that the Soviets would sink it- we've found clear evidence of this in Russian naval records. Several weeks earlier, the Turks, who had been completely neutral until that point, decided to join forces with the Nazis. The Soviets warned them that if the Turks went ahead with siding with their enemy, every ship that left the Istanbul port would be fired upon. The day before the Struma sank, another Turkish ship had been hit." 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. Despite weeks of work by Turkish engineers, the engine would not start, and the ship drifted helplessly.

On 24 February there was a huge explosion and the ship sank. It was later discovered that the ship had been torpedoed by the Soviet ShCh (Scuka) class submarine SC-213. 768 people were killed, among them more than one hundred children. Only one person survived, a man named David Stoliar who was found clinging to the wreckage, by crew of a rowboat sent out from one of the watchtowers along the Turkish coast, twenty-four hours after the sinking. Stoliar was imprisoned in Turkey for six weeks, then released and admitted to Palestine. Later, he moved to Japan and then the United States.

Aftermath

“	The Sc-213 submarine ... encountered on the morning of 24.2.1942 an unprotected enemy vessel Struma ... The ship was successfully torpedoed from a distance of [1,118 meters] and sunk ... Junior officers ... Unit Commander and non-commissioned officers ... and the Red Fleet sailor who fired the torpedo ... have shown courage.	”
—Soviet Military Archives

On 9 June 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 Führer, Adolf Hitler".

For many years there were competing theories about the explosion that sank the Struma. In 1964 a German historian discovered that a Soviet Shchuka class submarine, the SC-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.

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 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 the 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, as well as British and American delegates. There were no delegates from the former Soviet Union.

See also

• Mefkure - a similar sinking which occurred 5 August 1944
• Voyage of the Damned
• Exodus 1947
• Patria disaster
• Simcha Jacobovici Filmography

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

[[Commons: Category:SS Struma

| SS Struma

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• Struma: A Romanian Tragedy - Incomplete list of victims
• Greg Mossfeldt - diving the Struma
• The Struma at the Internet Movie Database, dir. Simcha Jacobovici
• www.struma.org