Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the 'Struma' and World War II's Holocaust at Sea [Hardcover]

Douglas Frantz (Author), Catherine Collins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 4, 2003

On the morning of February 24, 1942, on the Black Sea near Istanbul, an explosion ripped through a ship filled with Jewish refugees. One man clung fiercely to a piece of deck, fighting to survive. Nearly eight hundred others -- among them, more than one hundred children -- perished.

From this dramatic prologue "Death on the Black Sea unfolds as a powerful story of endurance and the struggle for survival aboard a decrepit former cattle barge called Struma. The only path to escape led through Istanbul, where the desperate passengers found themselves trapped in a closing vise between the Nazis and countries that refused them sanctuary.

The story of the Struma, its passengers, and the events that led to its destruction is investigated and revealed fully in two vivid, parallel accounts set six decades apart. One chronicles the diplomatic maneuvers and callousness of Great Britain, Romania, Turkey, and the rest of the international community, which resulted in the largest maritime loss of civilian life during World War II. The other part of the story recounts a recent attempt by a team of divers to locate the Struma at the bottom of the Black Sea, an effort initiated and pursued by the grandson of two of the victims.

A vivid reconstruction of a grim exodus aboard a doomed ship, "Death on the Black Sea illuminates a forgotten episode of World War II and pays tribute to the heroes, past and present, who keep its memory alive.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On February 25, 1942, a young Romanian Jew named David Stoliar was rescued after surviving more than 24 hours in the frigid Black Sea. His 768 shipmates were not so lucky-their desperate attempts to escape Nazi persecution in Romania ended when a Russian torpedo downed the Struma, a former cattle barge pressed into service as a decrepit, cramped refugee ship bound for Palestine. But as journalists Frantz and Collins (Celebration, U.S.A.) chronicle, the Struma, stymied by uncaring or anti-Semitic officials in England and Turkey, was doomed from the start. When the Struma's engine failed almost immediately after leaving the port of Constanta, a make-do repair got it to Istanbul. There, the engine failed again and the ship languished in port for two months; eventually, she was towed back into the Black Sea, where she was attacked. The authors are painstaking in their efforts to expose the horrors of what has been but a historical footnote, and their talent for fleshing out the admittedly meager historical record of the attack is compelling and clear-eyed (they were able to track down Stoliar). But their narrative sometimes shuttles awkwardly between historical events and the present-day, unsuccessful quest by a victim's descendant to locate the sunken wreck. With scant corroborating first-hand accounts, the authors lean too heavily on laundry lists of Holocaust horrors and reports of "diplomatic callousness"-the back-and-forth missives between various governments seeking to rid themselves of the Struma, for example. Still, this is a book of meticulous, driven reporting, and a valuable contribution to WWII history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“A balanced, textured account that juxtaposes byzantine, coldly calculating diplomatic maneuverings with the suffering of the refugees.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram )

“A meticulous, judicious, at times searing chronicle... It will leave no reader unmoved. (Chicago Tribune )

“Among the countless books about the Holocaust, Death on the Black Sea is particularly important.” (Washington Times )

“Mr. Frantz and Ms. Collins have performed a vital act of reclamation.” (New York Times )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 1st edition (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066212626
• ISBN-13: 978-0066212623
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,847,125 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Floating Holocaust, May 23, 2003

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the 'Struma' and World War II's Holocaust at Sea (Hardcover)

There are countless stories of the Holocaust that can never be told because those who experienced them were lost in the mad destructive fury. The story of the doomed ship _Struma_ might be one of those stories, except that one of the nearly 800 people on board survived the sinking of the vessel. _Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II's Holocaust at Sea_ (Ecco) by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, is not just a survivor's story, but a full accounting of a shameful atrocity that has been largely overlooked, even in histories of that bleak time.

The history begins with an account of pre-war Romanian history, and the brutalities that occurred even before the country joined the Nazis. Only the desperate would have paid the shamefully exorbitant cost for passage on the leaky, filthy cattle boat _Struma_, with the hope of getting to Palestine. The British controlled such immigration, however, and restricted it so as not to bother the Arabs and their oil supplies. The ship left Romania in December 1941, with intent to sail out of the Black Sea, through the Bosporus Strait, and on to Palestine. The engine failed on the first day, was patched, and failed three days later. The ship was towed by a Turkish tug to Istanbul harbor. There the ship stayed for almost two months, while bureaucratic nonsense was conducted to seal the fate of the passengers. They slowly withered due to disease and lack of fresh food and fresh air. There was even bickering over a plan to let the children leave the ship, a plan that never happened because Turkey, following a suggestion from the British, cut the anchor of the engineless vessel and simply set it adrift. Stalin had ordered Russian submarines to sink all ships in the Black Sea to prevent them from getting to Germany. A day after being set adrift, the helpless _Struma_ was torpedoed, and quickly sank. Nineteen-year-old David Stoliar miraculously was rescued by Turkish fishermen, but was imprisoned in Turkey thereafter; much of the book is his story.

The horrific story of the _Struma_ is here told in a plain and unsensational way. The authors have rightly sensed that there is no need to try to make the account more dramatic by artificial recreations of imagined conversations or thoughts of the people involved. There is some heroism, like that of Simon Brod, an Istanbul businessman who selflessly devoted constant efforts to helping refugees of various kinds and from various sources. Such lights are few in this, one of the darkest episodes of the war and one that took longest to be seen clearly. There is a portion of blame to go to the U.S., which parroted the British line about the importance of limiting emigration, and did not want to get further involved. The evil of the Nazi purge is to blame, of course, in its Romanian variant, as is the ruthlessness of Stalin's blanket order to clear the Black Sea of shipping indiscriminately. Those on the _Struma_ died, however, because of the joint efforts of the British and the Turks, from veiled anti-Semitism to indifference to outright murder. Frantz and Collins have produced a vivid and shocking book to rescue a gruesome but essential story into history again.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessons From the Depths..., March 5, 2003

By 

William C. Rempel (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the 'Struma' and World War II's Holocaust at Sea (Hardcover)

A disturbing but important tale told in rich, compelling detail. The ``Struma'' was to be a lifeboat for desperate refugees from Hitler's Europe only to become a pawn of politics. History kept this secret too long, but thanks to Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins the story of the ``Struma'' has been recovered from the depths of obscurity. And just in time to underscore the real, human costs of indifference to brutal prower and the failure of reasoned diplomacy. Here, the victims have names and they haunt the pages of ``Death on the Black Sea'' -- as they must always the pages of history.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessons From the Depths..., March 5, 2003

By 

William C. Rempel (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the 'Struma' and World War II's Holocaust at Sea (Hardcover)

A disturbing but important tale told in rich, compelling detail. The ``Struma'' was to be a lifeboat for desperate refugees from Hitler's Europe only to become a pawn of politics. History kept this secret too long, but thanks to Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins the story of the ``Struma'' has been recovered from the depths of obscurity. And just in time to underscore the real, human costs of indifference to brutal prower and the failure of reasoned diplomacy. Here, the victims have names and they haunt the pages of ``Death on the Black Sea'' -- as they must always the pages of history.