DATELINE :- 14th June 2000
SEARCH FOR TRAGIC STRUMA
Divers to locate refugee mass death wreck
British divers plan to locate, dive and survey a vessel which has one of the most tragic histories of human loss on record - and the team is headed by a diver whose own grandparents died in the sinking.
In 1941, 779 Romanian refugees, attempting to escape the massacres of Jews by Germany's Iron Guard, piled aboard the 49m Struma and, with the ship's nine crew, headed for British-administered Palestine, where they hoped to be allowed to stay.
However, engine failure meant that the ship splut-tered its way into the Turkish port of Istanbul, where the refugees endured 70 days of appalling hardship while the British and Turkish governments argued over what to do with them. Only eight people were taken off the vessel during that time.
Neither country would accept the refugees and finally, in February 1942, in what must rank as one of the most callous acts of abandonment, Turkish police cut the lines of the Struma and towed the engineless ship and her complement back out into the Black Sea, where she was left 7-10 miles offshore.
Just two days later, the helpless Struma was spotted by a Russian submarine, torpedoed and sunk with the loss of 406 men, 269 women and 103 children. Only one survivor, found clinging to a piece of wreckage, was picked up, by men from a nearby lighthouse.
The survivor, David Stoliar, eventually entered Palestine, fought for the British and later settled in the USA, where he still lives.
Now British diver Greg Buxton, whose paternal grandparents died aboard the Struma, has put together an international diving team representing "the best from around the world" to search for the wreck of the Struma, the approximate position of which is known. They will be diving throughout August to find the wreck, which Buxton reckons lies in 70-90m depth. The location has been narrowed down using the Russian submarine records, traced with the help of sub expert Innes McCartney, and through Stoliar.
Arrangements have been made, should the ship be found, for filming and the recovery of artefacts for holocaust memorial museum exhibition in the USA, Turkey and Israel. The expedition is seeking further sponsorship. Information about the project can be obtained on website www.struma.net, or call Greg Buxton on 07803 723545, email greg@struma.net.
An exclusive account of the Struma expedition will be carried in Diver.