Save the Children?
For weeks, the British had adamantly denied the entry of all the refugees aboard the Struma, even the children. But as the Turks' deadline neared, the British government acquiesced to allow some of the children to enter Palestine. The British announced that children between the ages of eleven and sixteen on the Struma would be allowed to immigrate.
But there were problems with this. The plan was that the children would disembark, then travel through Turkey to reach Palestine. Unfortunately, the Turks remained stringent on their rule of allowing no refugees onto their land, thus they would not approve this over land route.
In addition to the Turks' refusal to let the children land, Alec Walter George Randall, Counsellow in the British Foreign Office, aptly summarized an additional problem:
Even if we get the Turks to agree I should imagine that the process of selecting the children and taking them from their parents off the Struma would be an extremely distressing one. Who do you propose should undertake it, and has the possibility of the adults refusing to let the children go been considered?**
In the end, no children were let off the Struma.
Set Adrift
The Turks had set a deadline for February 16. By this date, there was still no decision. The Turks then waited a few more days. But on the night of February 23, 1942, Turkish police boarded the Struma and informed its passengers that they were to be removed from Turkish waters. The passengers begged and pleaded - even put up some resistance - but to no avail.
The Struma and its passengers were towed approximately six miles (ten kilometers) from the coast and left there. The boat still had no working engine (all attempts to repair it had failed). The Struma also had no fresh water, food, or fuel.
After just a couple of hours drifting, the boat exploded. Most believe that a Soviet torpedo hit and sank the Struma. The Turks did not send out rescue boats until the next morning - they only picked up one survivor (David Stoliar). All 767 of the other passengers perished.
* Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (London: Clarendon Press, 1979) 144.
** Alec Walter George Randall as quoted in Wasserstein, Britain 151.
Bibliography
Ofer, Dalia. "Struma." Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Ed. Israel Gutman. New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1990.
Wasserstein, Bernard. Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. London: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Yahil, Leni. The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
