In 1964 my mother, Erna Rubinstein (Gruenberg) traveled to Romania in order to meet her brother the journalist Dan Barladeanu who was living in Bucharest. It was an opportunity for her to meet also all her relatives who were still living there including her cousin whose first name was also Erna. She told my mother about the sad story of Medeea who was a first cousin of hers and produced a lengthy letter that Medeea had sent to her from the Istanbul hospital where she had been under medical care, a short time before the sinking of the Struma.

    This letter that my mother read carefully in 1964 – and that contained a realistic description of the bitter fate of the passengers on the ship, some of whom lost their minds from suffering, hunger and despair and raced about the deck in distress - was eventually destroyed. Even though the letter was personal rather than political, my mother’s cousin, fearing the Securitate, decided eventually to dispose of this valuable document before emigrating. My mother considered taking the letter to the Embassy of Israel in Bucharest, but she and her cousin were deterred, and justifiably so, by fear of the Securitate. Several years later my mother’s cousin was allowed to emigrate to the USA, thanks to Medeea’s financial help, but she didn’t take the risk of carrying the letter with her.

As soon as my mother’s journey to Romania was over she returned to Israel and recounted to me the bewildering content of the ten-page letter. These were the circumstances in which I became familiar with Medeea’s tragic story and I was eager to bring her story out for publication. However Medeea was still alive in Paris and by publishing her story I had no intent to stir up her tragic past.

Medeea Marcovici was born in 1919 in Bucharest. She was the daughter of Jean Marcovici, who was a cloth dealer from the town of Targu-Ocna, and her mother was Cecilia Fischer, the daughter of a fish wholesaler from Galati. Her parents met in Bucharest and Medeea was their only child. Medeea was 11 years old when her mother passed away and her father remarried to a woman whose name was Fani. These events were to be a turning point in Medeea’s life. The new couple didn’t have children probably because of the father’s age. The stepmother started to behave rudely towards Medeea, as she envied her youth, beauty and her sharp intelligence. However Medeea managed to finish her studies in Bucharest  in 1937 and thanks to her knowledge of foreign  languages (she knew English, French and German) she got a position with an architects’ office in Bucharest and shortly she became head secretary of the office.

During 1940 Medeea became acquainted with a young Jewish man, whose name was Nezu Salmovici, they found out that they had a lot in common and decided to get married. As soon as they made this decision a chain of predicaments started to happen. Nezu’s mother could not come to terms with the idea that her son, whose father was a wealthy textile trader in Bucharest, would marry a poor young lady, who was also an orphan. Although Nezu’s father and sister (who had become a close friend of Medeea’s) agreed to the marriage, the mother was bluntly opposed to it and she didn’t come to the wedding. In spite of all odds, Nezu’s father decided to buy a flat in Bucharest in the Calea Mosilor, where the couple’s dream of setting up a family became true. However their life couldn’t go on unhampered. Nezu’s mother never agreed to the marriage even after Medeea became pregnant. That was why Nezu’s father who was informed about the departure of the Struma decided to provide them with the necessary tickets hoping that it would be better for them to start a new life in Palestine. This piece of good news was followed by more hatred.

One day before the train departure from Bucharest to Constanta, given the stress and strain she was at grips with, Medeea’ lost her baby. Before departing she bid farewell to her cousins, Nini, Erna and Dida and presented them with some valuable items, namely her crystal glasses and her Rosenthal china dishes. Before leaving off and probably at the request of Nezu’s father and sister, they made up their mind to pay a visit to the mother’s premises and seek reconciliation. A maid opened the door and as soon the mother was informed who the guests were she told the maid that she was unwilling to meet them. She also ordered the maid to give them “her good regards” and the curse she uttered, which words were minutely given by Medeea in the aforementioned letter to Erna, were to hang like a shadow over their sea-voyage: “May you suffer from cold, thirst for water and starve for bread!”

It was clear from the very beginning that given Medeea’s poor health she was not fit to travel even under normal circumstances, let alone the dire conditions the passengers aboard the Struma had to cope with. As the ship was approaching the Turkish coast she was suddenly taken ill by embolism. That was the reason why Medeea was the only passenger aboard the Struma (as far as I know) who was not carrying legal immigration documents and who was allowed however by the Turkish authorities to disembark and be transferred to a hospital.[23] The passengers aboard  the Struma who were holding legal immigration papers, namely Israel Frank-Dinari  and his wife Tina, his brother Brett Schneider and the Segals were duly allowed by the Turks to disembark in the Istanbul harbor.[24] Medeea insisted that she needed to be accompanied by her husband since she was so sick, but the Turkish authorities turned a deaf ear to her request.[25] Her husband remained aboard the ship and perished as did the rest of the passengers in the Black Sea.[26] As far as Medeea was concerned, she was taken to the Istanbul Jewish hospital and was looked after by the local Jewish community. In the atmosphere of general bewilderment caused by the sinking of the Struma, Medeea was granted an immigration visa through the Jewish Agency and was able to enter Palestine.[27] She lived in Tel-Aviv at the “Beit Hahalutzot” hostel and was helped to get a position as a diamond cutter. Several years later she was remarried to a wealthy businessman from abroad, left Israel and she passed away in 1996. It seems that her mother-in-law, namely Nezu’s mother, passed away shortly after her son’s death. Maybe her death was sped up by the qualms of consciousness in connection with her son’s death, maybe by the content of the letter her daughter-in-law had sent from the Istanbul hospital... Medeea wrote down the following sentence: “Tell her that every word uttered in her curse has been realized.”