On June 27, 2001, I was surprised to receive a message via email from Prof. (emeritus) Samuel Aroni of UCLA, informing me that Mr. Michael Buxton (the father of Mr. Greg Buxton, who organized the diving expedition to locate and try to raise the remains of then Struma in 2000), had sent him a copy of my article on the Struma, The article, “Comments on Several Personal Tragedies that were part of the General Tragedy Called Struma,” based on a booklet in Hebrew of the same title that I published in 1997, appeared also in Romania in 1999 in the Annual Studia et Acta Historiae Judaeorum Romaniae, and an expanded version of the article appeared later in the website of Uli Friedberg-Valureanu.

I have also added two appendices in French (nos. 14 and 15 bellow), which are themselves remarkable documents. They consists of two chapters by the historian of the Jews of Turkey Abraham Galante (1873 - 1961), one of the important Jewish scholars of his generation (he was also ethnographer, linguist, turkologist and journalist),  in his book History of the Juifs d'Istanbul vol. 1 (1941), vol. 2 (1942). The First describes efforts of the community on behalf of Jewish refugees who passed through Istanbul in the course of 1940 and 1941, The second, fromvol. 2, is the first serious study of the sinking of the Struma. Together these two chapters put the Struma tragedy into the context of relief efforts by the Jews of Istanbul and demonstrate how futile these efforts in neutral Turkey were in the face of the greater tragedy, that of the Salvador, which sailed with Jewish refugees from Varna (Bulgaria) to Istanbul on the December 3, 1940 and sank on December 14, in the Sea of Marmora. According to Galante, 220 souls perished and 122 survived (1a)
Even though the Struma tragedy is not integrally related to the history of the Jews of Istanbul, Galante realized the significance of the tragedy and added a chapter on it in his book. He investigated the matter thoroughly and is the first to mention the survivers  David Stoliar and Medea Salmonovic (Salmovici).

I wish to add here two elements that correct or complement the information in that paper. The first is based on a communication from Prof. Aroni, correcting the information about David Stoliar; the second is data on Sofia Sara Zisman, another passenger on the Struma, based on interviews with Mrs. Alda Mouchly and Prof. Bernard Sulitzianu. I wish to thank Prof. Sulitzianu for introducing me to Mrs. Mouchly. I have devoted so much space to Mrs. Zisman, her correspondence with her family and the efforts to trace her after the sinking of the Struma because her story could reflect the fate of the other victims of the tragedy. If the tiniest percentage of the reparations money was devoted to tracing documentation of this kind, more stories of Holocaust victims could be uncovered and preserved for posterity. Of course this is not meant to criticize the outstanding and unparalleled work of Yad Vashem in documenting Holocaust stories.

I wish to conclude the preface by referring to a letter sent by Idov Cohen, a leader of the Organization of Romanian Olim, to the Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency after Struma reached Istanbul, saying: "It seems to me that our institutions should take an interest  in the fate of this people. Whether in London or in Turkey or anywhere, anything can be done to save them, so that they not be forced to return as pry to the talons of the barbarians or sink to the death of the sea". (Sf. Shai Elias "The Sole Survivor from the Struma", Dvar Hashavua, 1995)

I would like to give my thanks and acknowledgments to the histoian Zeev - Lucian Herscovici,  who kindly read the manuscript, translated it into Romanian and added to the Romanian version a number of bibliographic references. I would like to thanks my friend Michael Glatzer for his help in editing in English version and translating the additions.