Renewed Interest in the Sinking of the Struma

Apparently one could be inclined to conclude that following Nicholas Bethell’s article entitled “The Tragedy of the Struma Ship” and the publication of his book[2] on the same topic that brings to light a number of meaningful Israeli and British archival documents that had been shielded in the past, particularly David Stoliar’s  testimony,[3]  the historic research on the Struma tragedy has come to a close. Although the scope and the results of N. Bethel’s historical research have been considered exhaustive, it unremittingly raises a question that has not been answered yet; namely, who launched the torpedo that brought about the sinking of the Struma ship in the Black Sea on February 22, 1942 and on whose orders was this action carried out?

     An attempt to provide a logical reply to this question has been made by the Soviet navy officer G.I.Vaneev, who was an expert in Soviet Military Navy history.[4] In his Ph.D. dissertation that was published in a volume dealing with Soviet military navy history, Vaneev quotes the report of the Soviet S.C.23 submarine captain, who gave the orders to torpedo an isolated ship that had been identified and brought about its sinking.[5] However, I am of the opinion that the mystery surrounding the sinking of the Struma has not been unraveled yet although the piece of information provided by the aforementioned Soviet Navy officer is very helpful. On the other hand one should read this piece of information carefully, taking into account that Vaneev’s work was published in 1978 during the Cold War years and he might have had the intent of providing an amount of misleading information. In my view the historic truth about the circumstances of the Struma’s sinking remains an open topic.

This arises, I believe, from the gap between the rationale brought forth by the Soviet military navy officer and the words contained in Stoliar’s testimony. Stoliar recounts the statements of the second mate while they were swimming adrift at the end of their tether on a floating board (probably a remnant of a ship’s door), that being their only chance to survive the disaster. Prior to losing consciousness the Bulgarian seaman told Stoliar that he was standing on the ship’s deck and suddenly noticed a water trail that came from a torpedo from the Turkish coast towards the Struma.[6] Bethell’s research relies mostly on Stoliar’s testimony, which recounts that as soon as he noticed the water trail, the Bulgarian officer rushed in to report the fact to the captain. The blast occurred as he was taking hold of a door handle and he was suddenly thrown away into the sea with the door handle in his hand. These were the circumstances under which he met Stoliar. The latter was the only survivor among the Struma’s passengers. If Bethell’s version of Stoliars’s statements is accurate, it goes without saying that his words are more trustworthy than the content of the Soviet report quoted by Vaneev without diminishing the importance of the research made by the Soviet navy officer. My point of view on this topic relies on the rather daring, probably speculative outlook that one cannot entirely reject the idea of a secret Soviet-British agreement by which Turkey was requested to tow the ship and bring it on the high sea on February 23, 1942, without mentioning the real purpose of this scheme. The purpose was to give the submarine enough leeway to move between the ship and the coast in order to launch the deadly torpedo while making it almost impossible to find out from where the torpedo had been fired. Although this version may appear speculative, one should not overlook the fact that Stalin was a completely unscrupulous politician and in exchange for a privilege granted to Russia, he acquiesced into hushing up the topic. He was likely to agree to free both Turkey, a neutral country, and Britain,  his ally, from any moral responsibility and  allow Britain to get rid of the “unwelcome” ship. I hold the view that this hypothesis deserves to be  considered and explored as seriously as all previous versions relating to the Struma ship tragedy.

Furthermore, there is, I believe, another side of the Struma disaster that has been scarcely explored so far, namely the personal suffering and the human consequences of this tragedy.[7] The biographical research of the victims as well as that of the pain-stricken relatives who stayed on the ground and remained alive but have always been haunted by the shadow of this great loss, should be considered through the perspective of modern psycho-history and the science of victimology.[8] I would like to make my modest contribution to this issue and explore two major facts relating to the Struma tragedy. Firstly I will make some comments on the Jewish people of my native town of Barlad who perished during the Struma  disaster. The information I have about them comes from my own parents, Natan and Erna Rubinstein, as well as from different other relatives and acquaintances of their generation who are also native of  the town of Barlad. Secondly I would like to refer to the story of Medeea who was my mother’s cousin’s cousin. Given personal reasons that I’ll detail later in the course of this research paper, she was allowed to get off the ship in the harbor of Istanbul, before the ship was torpedoed and thus she remained alive. Medeea passed away in France in 1996.

I cherish the hope that this study will boost the interest of historians as well as that of the victims’ relatives and friends to search for, collect and write down further information from family records, reminiscences and other documents. This will certainly widen the picture of the Struma ship tragedy that should come down to the next generations.

It is beyond doubt that every name among the 796 passengers that perished during the Struma tragedy harbors a different personal story that is noteworthy and should be reconstructed in as much as possible.

I strongly believe that accounting for the human side of the Struma  passengers themselves as well as their personal and  family background is conducive to a deeper understanding of the social framework of the Jewish population of Romania during the inter-war time-span  and the beginning of the Holocaust.