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Title: Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the 'Struma' and World War II's Holocaust at Sea by Douglas Frantz, Catherine Collins ISBN: 0-06-621262-6 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Floating Holocaust
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Lessons From the Depths...
Comment: 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.
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Title: And the Dead Shall Rise : The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by STEVE ONEY ISBN: 0679421475 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Kansas Charley: The Story of a 19th-Century Boy Murderer by Joan Jacobs Brumberg ISBN: 067003228X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Saved 1,200 Jews and Built a Village in the Forest by Peter Duffy ISBN: 0066210747 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Gulag : A History by ANNE APPLEBAUM ISBN: 0767900561 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Pieces from Berlin by MICHAEL PYE ISBN: 0375714162 Publisher: Vintage Books Pub. Date: 10 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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