Some two months before, the refugees had booked passage (at cruelly exorbitant prices) to Palestine, where they hoped to settle. The voyage had promised to be dangerous, but staying in Romania meant certain death. To be sure, their journey would be a daring gamble. The Struma was barely a ship at all; it was a converted cattle barge, and a barely seaworthy one at that.
As the Struma neared the Bosporus Strait in mid-December, its rickety engine gave out. With the ship forced by Turkey to lay at anchor in Istanbul's harbor, Britain (who controlled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate) and the Turks wrangled for some eight long weeks over the fate of the refugees, who suffered through an agony of limbo.
Despite the furious attempts of Jewish activists to secure the Struma's safe passage, Turkish authorities towed the powerless ship back into the Black Sea and cut it loose. Just before dawn Feb. 24, a torpedo from a Soviet sub ripped through the vessel. It quickly sank, leaving one survivor. The Struma's sinking would mark World War II's largest loss of civilian life at sea.
Remarkably, this incident is little remembered today. A meticulous, judicious, at times searing chronicle, "Death on the Black Sea," is a superb act of recovery, and a noble addition to the shelf of books about the fate of European Jewry. It will leave no reader unmoved.
"The tragic events that led to the sinking of the Struma had unfolded not only on the Bosporus, but in the marble corridors of power in London, Ankara, and Moscow," write the authors, Douglas Frantz, investigations editor at The New York Times, and his wife, Catherine Collins, a free-lance writer who reports on Turkey for the Tribune.
Set against the grim backdrop of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, the desperate attempt of refugees to reach Palestine, and the geopolitical considerations of Britain, Turkey and the Soviet Union --considerations that ultimately doomed the Struma--"Death on the Black Sea" combines historical analysis with a moving account of a recent expedition, led by British diver Greg Buxton, grandson of one of the Struma's passengers, to find the wreck.
Frantz and Collins prove themselves able historians. Using official documents and diplomatic minutes, and vivid biographies of the Struma's passengers and those who tried to save them, the authors move back and forth between Buxton's often frustrating attempts to locate the wreck, the human drama of the refugees, the ruthlessly unsentimental calculus of wartime diplomacy and the calamity that befell Romania's Jews.
Frantz and Collins describe in grim detail the slow descent of Romania into murderous anti-Semitism and the emergence of its homegrown fascist movement, the Iron Guard, whose violence against the Jews is shocking even by the horrifying standards of World War II.
By 1941, life had become unbearable for Romania's Jewish citizens; Nazi troops had joined forces with the country's fascist ruler, Gen. Ion Antonescu, and embarked on a vicious campaign of extermination. In the words of Raul Hilberg, a seminal historian of the Holocaust, " `no country, besides Germany, was involved in massacres of Jews on such a scale.' "
For those with enough resources, however, there was a way out: taking a fraught journey by sea to Palestine. But immigration was a tricky proposition. Successive waves of Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the 1930s had exacerbated tensions with Arabs.
The British, with an eye on oil deposits in their Middle East possessions and fearful of further angering the Arabs, "proposed a drastic solution--they would restrict Jewish immigration at the very time the Jews needed an escape route most." Despite the vocal objections of Winston Churchill, who was sympathetic to the Zionist cause, the British government promulgated a 1939 white paper drastically restricting legal immigration into Palestine. It would have catastrophic results for Europe's Jewish refugees.
Still, as Eastern Europe fell to the Nazis in 1940 and 1941, ship after ship tried for Palestine, infuriating the British. Several foundered or were wrecked off Turkey. Greedy profiteers made a fortune exploiting the desperation of refugees, like shipping agent Jean D. Pandelis, an "immensely bloated, mountain of a man."
In Bucharest, Romania's capital, agents from Mossad, a clandestine Jewish group devoted to getting refugees to Palestine, liaised with Pandelis (a character right out of an Eric Ambler thriller), who offered them the Struma. But Pandelis sold the refugees a bill of goods.
The engine was in terrible shape and gave out after a few hours at sea. By the time the Turks secured the powerless Struma on Dec. 15, 1941, the British were well aware another mission to Palestine was under way. And they were determined to stop it.
This is a book that will not please the Turkish or British diplomatic services, whose actions condemned the Struma to its fate; it was far from Britain's--or Turkey's--finest hour.
The authors deftly explore the schisms within the British government, between philo-Semites, such as Churchill, and the pro-Arab Colonial Office hands, particularly Harold MacMichael, high commissioner for Palestine, whose hard-line stance against Jewish refugees carried the day. The British brought enormous pressure to bear on the Turks.
Despite the sympathetic advocacy of Britain's ambassador, "one of the few British diplomats with any sense of compassion for the Struma's passengers,"the British government fanatically pursued its policy: The Struma would not go to Palestine. Turkey comes off little better. Officially neutral, it was squeezed by Britain and, the authors speculate, by Nazi threats. Istanbul had become a magnet for refugees all across Europe; the city's back streets teemed with foreign agents, "transforming the country into a covert battleground."
Turkey was loathe to offend either Britain or Germany, so it dithered, and frustrated Struma's champions at every turn with bureaucratic obstacles and vague promises. The authors note that Turkey had no legal right to thwart the Struma, but "none of the Struma's advocates were aware that international maritime law was on their side."
Frantz and Collins' account of the Struma's two-month embargo is piercingly sad. "By the middle of February, " the authors tell us, "some passengers spent most of their waking hours crying quietly. Others broke into loud sobs. Some passenger coped with the horror by praying constantly."
The engine could not be fixed. Food and water were in short supply; conditions on the ship were miserable. A few lucky passengers secured transit visas and were let off the ship; a pregnant woman was allowed entry to an Istanbul hospital.
Jewish activists in Palestine tried to publicize the refugees' cause, but the British censored their efforts. A last-minute deal was struck to let the Struma's children travel on to Palestine, but the Turks refused to let them go overland; the British had to provide a boat, which never materialized.
To the Struma's passengers, it seemed the world had abandoned them. Sadly, it had. One reads in total disbelief as the Turks force the Struma, with no working engine, back into the Black Sea, where the final act played out. Stalin, desperate to cut off supplies to Germany, had ordered Soviet subs to sink any ship headed from Turkey into the Black Sea. The Struma's fate was sealed.
The Struma now lies somewhere off the coast of Turkey. As Buxton makes attempt after attempt to find the wreck--angering the Turkish government, which prefers to forget its role in the saga of the Struma--one is moved by his dedication to pay final homage to the victims of this wartime tragedy. The Struma may have been forsaken during those cruel months in 1942, but in Buxton--and the authors-- the men, women and children who perished have found righteous witnesses. (MP)
* Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2003.
* Matthew Price writes regularly for the Tribune, Newsday, and other publications
* Death on the Black Sea Ecco, 352 pages, $26.95.
