75 Years Since the Struma Disaster

Disaster? Or an atrocity committed by everyone involved?

Remember, these were people trying desperately to escape the Holocaust.
One of the most successful massacres of Jews during WWII,
and not a single German in sight!

In December 1941, 769 Jewish passengers boarded the MV Struma, a ship that was to set sail from Axis-allied Romania to seek refuge in Israel. 

The passengers each paid an exuberant amount and were promised a luxurious ship that would transport them to Israel; however, when they reached the boat, they discovered that the Struma was in fact an old dilapidated vessel, containing one bathroom, no kitchen, and hardly any space. 

She was built in 1867 as a British marquess's luxury steam yacht and ended 75 years later as a Greek and Bulgarian diesel ship for carrying livestock. Wikipedia.

After a three day journey filled with engine failures, the Struma arrived at Turkey, where they were told they would be going to pick up their immigration certificates – but there were no immigration certificates to be found. The Turks refused to let the ship board, and towed the broken ship to a quarantine section while they figured out what to do with them.

Lloyd's Register of Shipping lists her as still having her steam engine in 1934, but within a few years it had been replaced with a three-cylinder marine diesel engine built by Benz & Cie. of Mannheim in Germany. Some sources claim that the diesel engine had been salvaged from a wreck sunk in the Danube. 

In 1941 the New Zionist Organisation and the Betar Zionist youth movement chartered Struma from Jean Pandelis to take Jewish refugees from Romania to Palestine. On 12 December 1941 she left the port of Constanța in Romania carrying 10 crew and about 781 refugees. 

Her diesel engine was not working so a tug towed Struma out to sea. She drifted overnight while her crew tried in vain to start her engine. She transmitted distress signals and on 13 December the tug returned and the tug's crew repaired Struma's engine in exchange for the passenger's wedding rings. Struma then got under way but by 15 December her engine had failed again and she was towed into Istanbul in Turkey.

The British refused to let the ship sail to Mandatory Palestine, and Romania refused to allow them return. While Turkey was deliberating what to do, the boat remained anchored and isolated for ten weeks, its passengers suffering from starvation inhumane conditions.

While Turkish mechanics made unsuccessful attempts to repair Struma's engine, there was a 10-week impasse between British diplomats and Turkish officials over the fate of the refugees. Because of Arab and Zionist unrest in Palestine, Britain was determined to minimise Jewish immigration to Palestine under the terms of the White Paper of 1939. Under pressure from Britain, Turkey denied the refugees permission to come ashore. One pregnant refugee who suffered a miscarriage was allowed to disembark and admitted to an Istanbul hospital.

Reaching no agreement with England and Romania, the Turkish government decided to tow the Struma out of Turkish waters and into the Black Sea, where they left the inoperative ship and its passengers to rot with no fresh water, food, or fuel.

After just a few hours of drifting on February 24, 1942, a Russian ship torpedoed the Struma, killing all but one of the passengers on board.

On 23 February 1942 Turkish authorities boarded Struma. Her engine still did not work so they towed her back out into the Black Sea and cast her adrift about 10 miles off Istanbul. On the morning of 24 February the Soviet submarine Shch-213 torpedoed her. Struma sank quickly and many people were trapped below decks and drowned. 

Many others aboard survived the sinking and clung to pieces of wreckage, but for hours no rescue came and all but one of them died from drowning or hypothermia. Struma's First Officer clung to a piece of wreckage that was floating in the sea along with a 19-year-old refugee, David Stoliar. The officer died overnight but Turks in a rowing boat rescued Stoliar the next day: the only survivor of about 791 people who were aboard.

May their memories be a blessing.

And may their memories bruise the consciences of every man and woman who hates Jews. This is what Jew-haters are capable of. May God have mercy on their souls.

9,000 Photos from 1800’s British Mandate of Palestine – with No Trace of ‘Palestinians’

https://palestineisraelconflict.wordpress.com/

Where ARE all those Palestinians, the proclaimed one million of them who lived in Israel before they were ‘displaced’?

Nowhere.

Nowhere, because they never existed.




And where are all the mosques for those “1 million Palestinians”? With Muslims comes mosques. There can be no Muslim population without a large proportion of mosques. If they had been 1 million at the turn of the Century, or even in 1920 after they began immigrating to fight the British, with their rapid population growth Palestine would consist of over 40 million people today and not 4 million. That alone proves the Palestinian jihad lies. Their population is small because they are new invaders and occupiers who arrived late with an aim to commit jihad. They never lost land that was never theirs to begin with!



Félix Bonfils (1831-1885): Birket, Israel in late 1800’s

The British army permitted merely a few Ottomans to remain due to religious observations, the rest was Jewish. In reality according to eyewitness reports the barren British Mandate had a very small number of people living on it. 

Félix Bonfils (1831-1885) was a French photographer and writer who was active in the Middle East. Four years after his arrival he reported 15,000 prints of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Greece, and 9,000 stereoscopic-views. He traveled to the region several times and we hear of no mass population of Palestinians, which contradicts everything the Palestinians lie about to the world.

His pictures did not manage to capture any photographs of a single so-called ‘Palestinian’ who are suppose to have lost land to Jewish occupation, if we believe Arab propaganda. All he found was a few bedouines passing through and some remnants of the Ottoman Turks. Guess why? Because the “Palestinian” people as we know them today never existed.



Félix Bonfils (1831-1885): Jews at the Western wall in 1870.

The original philistines which the Arab jihadi’s named themselves after were a small group of lawless bandits who occupied the region near Gaza by force and died out before the birth of Christ. Islam was created over 600 years after the death of Christ and is the world’s youngest religion.

Palestinians are a fake creation ordered and constructed by the Grand Mufti Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini [1889-1974]. They were basically discovered (formed and invented) and originate from mass immigration from Egypt and Saudi Arabia with purpose to commit jihad. The Egyptian fighters ended up in Gaza and the Saudi fighters ended up in the West Bank according to their rout of entry.

           Félix Bonfils (1831-1885): Yessayi Garabedian, the Armenian Patriarch in Jerusalem.

This has been well documented by British government reports from the British Mandate and from Transjordan. It also fits the video clips and rants by Hamas leaders, who seem well aware that Palestinians are fake yet continue to argue that they ‘lost land’. We are dealing with a terrorist organization here, and not a people who became victims of loss of land.

It is also important to pay attention to the fact that once Israel had been assigned to be returned to the Jewish people in 1917, Muslims rapidly began to pour into the region from other countries with a purpose to kill them. The first conflict and killing in Israel/Palestine was initiated by the Muslims. At that point to control the population influx the British government stopped Jewish people from entering the area. So for a short span, the Muslim population suddenly became a majority. Not for natural reasons but due to their rapid invasion and occupation. Therefore, if we look at timeline of events in history we will quite easily see that the REAL occupiers of the region are the Muslims.



Felix Bonfils, Modern Jericho,  W.C. Prime 1857 in “Tent Life in the Holy Land”



Felix Bonfils, Solomons pools, From Thomas Shaw, Travels and Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant, London, 1767, S. 331 ff.



Félix Bonfils (1831-1885): Dome of the Rock 1875 (Where are all the “Palestinians” in their so-called displaced and occupied holiest site?). The Dome of the Rock was originally a Jewish synagogue, and later, a Christian cathedral but was conquered and occupied by Muslims who converted it to a mosque. The entire region was bathing in blood from the Muslim conquest.



Felix Bonfils, Entry of Pilgrims into Bethlehem at Christmas time, Palestine, 1867-1885.</p> <p> Source: Library of Congress


Félix Bonfils (1831-1885): Women pray at the Western wall in Jerusalem in 1899.

               Bonfils,_Félix_(1831-1885)_-_766_Gardien_du_tombeau_des_rois_et_sa_famille
Bonfils and other historic records do mention that an occasional Arab bedouines would pass through the ‘barren land’ to reach other destinations but they would not stay. There is no mention anywhere, ever, of a “Palestinian” people with permanent settlement in the British Mandate.

                    Dome of the Rock



Félix_Bonfils._The_Pool_of_Hezekiah._1894

     Félix_Bonfils_(French)_-_Femmes_de_Siloé,_Palestine_-_Google_Art_Project



Felix_Bonfils-Road_to_Bethlehem



Gihon Valley Palestine



The Garden of Gethsemane, general view by Felix Bonfils ca. 1885. This is an original vintage Albumen print on a thin sheet of paper with sepia color and slightly glossy surface, signed in the negative (within a red circle). Showing a view overlooking from the temple mount of Jerusalem towards Mount of Olives. In the center the Garden of Gethsemane and Kidron Valley. Above the garden, is the Eastern Russian Orthodox Church of St. Maria Magdalena inaugurated in 1888. On the left is the tomb of the Virgin Mary and the Church Of The Assumption. Size: 28 X 22 cm (11 x 8.5 inches). This photograph is documented in the list of Felix Bonfils Photographs (“Die Provincia Arabia”), in the Department of Rare Books, Princeton University Library, Box 6, File 25, and Photograph No. 303. (http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/aids/msslist/maindex.htm).



Jerusalem-II



Mur-des-Juifs-un-vendredi



St. Stephen’s Gate Jerusalem circa 1870. This is an original vintage Albumen print on a thin sheet of paper with sepia color and slightly glossy surface, depicting the gate known as St Stephen’s in the eastern wall surrounding the old city of Jerusalem. This gate is also known as the Lions gate because of the decorations to the right and left of the gate. These are actually panthers which were the symbols of Baibars (1223 –1277 CE). Baibars was the first Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He defeated the crusaders who came to defend their Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 8th and 9th crusades. Saint Stephen was an early follower of Jesus. He was stoned to death in the mid 4th century CE and is considered the first martyr. (Actually, he was the first Christian martyr but he was stoned to death mid 1st Century AD not the 4th). Tradition puts the act of stoning outside this eastern gate, hence its name. In this picture we see that the path to the gate is slightly barred by earth. This was cleared around 1880. Inside the gate are Ottoman soldiers. This is an unsigned picture in relatively good condition with only minute foxing. there are some tears to the top and top right sides.

         Porte St Etienne St. Stephen's Gate Bonfils circa 1880
Porte St Etienne St. Stephen’s Gate Bonfils circa 1880. This is an original vintage Albumen print on a thin sheet of paper pasted on cardboard with sepia color and slightly glossy surface, numbered 273, depicting the gate known as St Stephen’s in the eastern wall surrounding the old city of Jerusalem. This gate is also known as the Lions gate because of the decorations to the right and left of the gate. These are actually panthers which were the symbols of Baibars (1223 –1277 CE). Baibars was the first Mamluk Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He defeated the crusaders who came to defend their Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 8th and 9th crusades. Saint Stephen was an early follower of Jesus. He was stoned to death in the mid 4th (1st) century CE and is considered the first martyr. Tradition puts the act of stoning outside this eastern gate, hence its name. This is an unsigned picture by Bonfils in very good condition with no foxing.



Jerusalem Mosque of Omar [a confiscated synagogue that had been converted into a mosque) by Felix Bonfils ca. 1870. This is an original vintage Albumen print on a thin sheet of paper with sepia color and slightly glossy surface, signed in the negative (within a red circle). The picture shows the Dome of the Rock that is also called the Mosque of Omar. It was built in 691 AD by the Khalif Abd El Malik on the rocky top of Mount Moriah about 600 years after the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple. It was named after the Khalif Omar who captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Christians in 638. In close proximity to the Dome of the Rock are three Ottoman freestanding qubbas (small domed structures) these qubbas are all single-unit buildings, their domes supported by six or eight open arches. With view looking south, to the left of the Dome of the Rock is the Dome of the Chain. To the right are the small Dome of the Prophet and the larger Dome of the Miraj. Size: 28 X 22 cm (11 x 8.5 inches). This photograph is documented in the list of Felix Bonfils Photographs (“Die Provincia Arabia”), in the Department of Rare Books, Princeton University Library, Box 19, File 9, and Photograph No. 278. (http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/brunnow.html).



Vallée de Josaphat, by Felix Bonfils ca. 1870. Photo number 290. This is an original vintage Albumen print on a thin sheet of paper with sepia color and slightly glossy surface, signed in the negative, showing the northen entrance to the valley of Jehosaphat, or Kidron Valley. The road on the left is the road to Jerico which passes through Betheny. Above and below the road many tombstoens are visible. This is the Jewish cemetry on Mount of Olives. The monument in the middle is called Absalom’s Tomb after king David’s son. There are various monuments of this sort in the valley all dating from the 2nd or 1st centuries BCE. This photograph is documented in the list of Felix Bonfils Photographs in the Department of Rare Books, Princeton University Library, Box 6, folder 15. (http://diglib.princeton.edu/ead/getEad?id=ark:/88435/sj1391972#series1subseriesE). The prolific photographer Félix Bonfils was born on 8 March 1831 in France. In 1867 he moved to Beirut with his wife Lydie (b. 1837), and son Adrien (b. 1861) and set up a photographic studio. Bonfils published many albums focusing on specific regions or themes from various sites along the eastern Mediterranean. Bonfils died in 1885.