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The Struma was a ship commissioned by the Revisionist Zionist organizations in Romania, especially Betar, to carry Romanian Jews as illegal immigrants to British-controlled Palestine. Apart from the crew, there were approximately 790 passengers consisting of many Betar members but mostly of wealthy Romanian Jews who could afford to pay the high price of a ticket. The voyage had the approval of the Romanian government.
The ship was barely seaworthy and in particular the engine was in extremely poor condition. Several times after the Struma set sail from Constanta on the Black Sea on December 12 1941, the engine gave out. After three days the ship was towed to Istanbul where it remained at anchor while secret negotations were conducted over the fate of the passengers. The British goverment was determined to uphold its policy of refusing illegal immigrants entry to Palestine and urged the Turkish goverment to prevent the ship from sailing onwards, while the Turkish government refused to allow the passengers off the ship. After weeks of negotiation, the British agreed to honour the expired Palestinian visas possessed by a few passengers and these were allowed to continue overland. A few also managed to escape with the help of friends in high places, and one was admitted to an Istanbul hospital.
On February 12, the British agreed that the children aged 11-16 on the ship would be given Palestinian visas, but then a dispute broke out over the means of their carriage to Palestine. Britian refused to send a ship, while Turkey refused to allow them overland. While negotiation over this issue was still in progress, and without notifying Britain in advance, Turkey towed the Struma back into the Black Sea and abandoned it there on February 23. The engine would not start despite weeks of work that had been performed on it by Turkish engineers, and the ship drifted helplessly. On February 24, there was a huge explosion and the ship sank. Only one person survived.
For many years there were competing theories about the explosion that sank the Struma, but in 1964 it was discovered by a German historian that a torpedo from a Soviet submarine had been responsible. Later this was confirmed from several other Soviet sources. The submarine had been acting under secret orders to sink all neutral shipping entering the Black Sea in order to reduce the flow of strategic materials to Nazi Germany.
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Other meanings of "Struma"
Struma is a medical term for the enlargement of the thyroid; it is sometimes used in reference to scrofula, a form of tuberculosis.
The Struma is also a river in Bulgaria and Greece. See Struma River.
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