Трагедия судна «Струма» в Черном море (1942)

1942 maritime attack in the Black Sea

Strumas 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 inoperative 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, on the morning of 24 February, the Soviet submarine Shch 213 torpedoed her, killing 781 refugees but the current figure is the result of a recent study of six different passenger lists.

Struma had been built as a luxury yacht The Mossad LeAliyah Bet intended to use her as a refugee ship but shelved the plan after the Germans had entered Bulgaria. The exact number is not certain, but a collation of six separate lists produced a total of 791 passengers and 10 crew. Romanian Prime Minister Ion Antonescu's government approved of the voyage. Since the waters off Constanţa were mined, a Romanian vessel escorted her clear of the minefield. She then drifted overnight while her crew tried vainly to start her engine.

Negotiations between Turkey and Britain seemed to reach an impasse. On 23 February 1942, a small party from the Turkish police tried to board the ship, but the refugees would not let it aboard. A larger force of about 80 police officers came then surrounded Struma with motor boats, and after about half an hour of resistance, it boarded the ship. The police detached the ship'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 that were visible to those who lived on the banks of the strait. Despite weeks of work by Turkish engineers, the engine would not start. The Turks denied its entry and the British forbade it from proceeding to Palestine, the unseaworthy vessel was forced to leave harbour. 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 Soviet submarine Shch 213, which 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.

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 that and several other wrecks in the area but could not positively identify any as Struma since the wreck that had been 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 and British and American delegates, but David Stoliar chose to not attend for family reasons.

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 have helped to identify the wreck were missing because of damage to the submarine, it took divers until 2010 to identify her as Shch 213.