Struma disaster
1942 maritime attack in the Black Sea / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Struma disaster was the sinking on 24 February 1942 of a ship, MV Struma, which had been trying to take nearly 800 Jewish refugees from the Axis member Romania to Mandatory Palestine. She was a small iron-hulled ship of only 240 GRT and had been built in 1867 as a steam-powered schooner[3] but had recently been re-engined with an unreliable second-hand diesel engine.[4][5] Struma was only 148.4 ft (45 m) long, had a beam of only 19.3 ft (6 m) and a draught of only 9.9 ft (3 m)[6][3] but an estimated 781 refugees and 10 crew were crammed into her.[7][2]
Struma disaster | |
---|---|
Coordinates | 41°23′N 29°13′E |
Date | 24 February 1942 |
Target | The ship Struma, carrying Jewish refugees from Romania to the British Mandate of Palestine |
Attack type | Ship sinking |
Weapons | torpedo |
Deaths | 781 Jewish refugees,[1] 10 crew members (five Bulgarian, three or four Jewish, one Hungarian)[2] |
Perpetrators | Soviet Navy |
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 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 Shch-213 torpedoed her, killing 781 refugees[1] and 10 crew, which made 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,[8] but the current figure is the result of a recent study of six different passenger lists.[7] Only one person aboard, the 19-year-old David Stoliar, survived (he died in 2014).
The Struma disaster joined that of SS Patria, which was sunk after Haganah sabotage in a failed attempt to prevent the deportation of Jewish refugees from Mandatory Palestine.[9][10]