SHIMON RUBINSTEIN

    Personal Tragedies as a Reflection
     on a Great Tragedy Called
  STRUMA


Drawing by
 Gretty Rubinstein

IV. The Views of Eduard Keith - Roach,
a Senior British Official
during The British Mandate in Palestine

          As a conclusion to the topic of this research paper I would like to bring forth the views of a senior British official on the tragedy of the Struma shipwreck.

Edward Keith-Roach was the Jerusalem District Governor before and throughout the Second World War and he referred to the Struma tragedy in his Memoirs, published in 1994:[28]

         Flying the Panama flag, the ship Struma had 769 Jews on board, intending to come without permits to Palestine. She was in Turkish waters, badly overcrowded, and considerable repairs were necessary. As admittance to Palestine was refused, the Turks decided to send the vessel back to the Black Sea. There was an explosion near the Bosphorus and only three survivors were picked up. There was bitter denunciation of anti-Jewish bias in the administration. Streams of pamphlets against the high commissioner were distributed. One had his photograph and underneath the words:

MURDER
 Sir Harold MacMichael
known as High Commissioner.
Wanted for Murder of 800 refugees
in the Black Sea

His comments on the Struma tragedy and the rage of the Jewish population of Palestine are given in a brief cold language, pervaded by little human understanding and sympathy. The description is even-handed and lacks any trace of emotion as if Keith-Roach were an outsider or a foreign news-reporter, not a senior official of the British administration. Given the high position he held and his numerous connections he could have taken a firm stand in the matter. For instance he had the option to stand down or threaten that he would do so, if the women, children and the elderly who were aboard the ship were not allowed to reach the land. Had Keith-Roach presented his resignation to the High Governor of Palestine without delay, while the Struma was off the Turkish coast and the continuation of its journey to Palestine was denied - his protest would have had a strong impact both on international relations and on public opinion in Britain and the United States. Neither Keith-Roach nor any other British senior official or British cabinet minister ever protested. Therefore one can come to the conclusion that no British high official either in Palestine or in the British government could ever claim that he didn’t really have a share of moral guilt in connection with the Struma tragedy. The fact that the tragedy occurred in time of war is an easy excuse and it cannot lessen the guilt of a British high-ranking official who after all was not an army officer. The horrific consequences of the Struma tragedy could have been avoided if the government of Great Britain had complied with the commitments it had agreed to in 1922, when it was granted the mandate over Palestine, that included the free immigration of the Jewish population to Palestine and the creation of a Jewish national homeland. In fact the British government had unilaterally cancelled this decision and limited Jewish immigration from Europe to Palestine in 1939 by enacting the “White Paper”. This policy was carried on throughout the Second World War although it was clear that by making it impossible for the Jews of Europe to reach Palestine, they could not escape the claws of the Nazi terror.

 However in the aftermath of the Struma tragedy Keith-Roach experienced a feeling of discomfort and he attempted to explain that he could not be held guilty himself and he put the full guilt on the shoulders of the High Commissioner of Palestine, Sir Harold MacMichael. Keith-Roach quoted the contents of a leaflet that was widely circulated in Palestine in the aftermath of the Struma tragedy stating that “MacMichael was responsible for the assassination of 800 Jewish refugees who had been drowned into the Black Sea.” It is not unlikely that Keith-Roach quoted this leaflet in order to prove in an evasive way that only MacMichael was guilty of this crime whereas the senior officials of the British Mandate in Palestine were innocent. By doing so he may have attempted to clear his own conscience. One might have expected him – if at the time he did not have the courage to admit his and his colleagues’ indirect responsibility for the crime of the Struma – to acknowledge 49 years after the end of the war that one of the absurd justifications given by the Mandate authorities in order to prevent the sailing of the Struma from Istanbul at all was that “enemy agents” were on board.[29]