Searching not
too long ago on the Internet for information about Struma, I
was surprised at how little there was. There is not any
web site dedicated to this ship with 769 Jewish refugees - the large majority
from Romania - who were looking to escape the Nazi orgy by going to the
land of their ancestors. On a Turkish web site I found a page which hosted
a commemorative article about Struma which appeared in an English language
newspaper published in Istanbul. The Holocaust Museum mentions copies of
some documents from the archives of the Romanian Security Agency (Siguranta).
I found small references, in fact very small references, on the web sites
of some Jewish organizations in the US and some Israeli institutes with
pages about the Holocaust.
The lack of
information about a tragedy such as Struma is by it's nature intriguing.
But what shocked me and gave me the determination to build this web site
memorial was a reference to Struma I found in an English language web site
of the Jewish Agency. In an ample article called "A Century of Zionism"
were evoked the most important events - from a Jewish standpoint - of each
year of the century. In 1942 Struma was also mentioned. Except that in
those few lines the number of victims or where they were from was not even
specified. On a different page of the same site was a reference to the
Struma "incident" and not to the Struma "tragedy". Incident, as if it was
an accident between two cars which bumped each other in which there may
have been injuries...
It is true
that many Israelis have not even heard of Struma. But the person
who summarized the century knew what it was about, because
otherwise the event would not even have been mentioned. It's not then because
of ignorance of Jewish history. It's more a careless assessment, a lack
of sensibility, an incapability of realizing the proportions of the tragedy
or, who knows, maybe an act of ill will towards such a difficult blow on
Romanian Jewry. I wrote to the Internet service of the Jewish Agency and
I received some unsatisfactory explanations and the promise that changes
would be made when the page came under review.
This is how
I decided myself to build this Internet station in memory of the Struma
victims. I have announced this project on the Internet, explaining that
I also want to put on the site the list of the victim's names, adding -
whenever possible -
biographies of those lost on the torpedoed vessel on
Feb. 24, 1942 on the waters of the Black Sea. I received answers from relatives
and friends of the victims (messages from Israel and other countries).
One of the respondents helped me get in touch with David Stoliar, the only
survivor of the catastrophe, who lives in the US, and with whom I had many
interesting discussions. I received over 100 documents from the Holocaust
Museum In Washington (where I was helped by Mr. Radu Ioanid). From the
International Red Cross in Geneva I received many unedited documents regarding
this period), I received help from other people and organizations. I consulted
the CD of the Jerusalem Post newspaper containing everything that was published
about Struma between 1980-1997 and I found many interesting and little
known facts there. I was also helped by the state of the art documentation
system of the University of Haifa library. I consulted the book "Save the
Honor of Civilization" by Simion Saveanu of Beer Sheva (with 50 pages translated
into English). I received an avalanche of letters and phone calls from
many persons in Israel who wanted to give me more details about the friends
and relatives they lost on the ship...
Slowly, slowly,
Struma-web became a tangible publication. It already has
some pages also in English, and perhaps in the future
it will have some in Hebrew as well. And so, Struma is again sea-bound,
on the waters of the Internet, to inform the world and especially the new
generations about the drama which occurred 57 years ago, during the terrible
time of the Holocaust, that of World War II....
Uli Friedberg-Valureanu
English translantion:
Monica TalborIf
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