I just heard and read about SS Struma. I quote:
The Struma was a ship chartered to carry Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to British-controlled Palestine during World War II. The engine gave out several times after the Struma set sail from Constanţa, on the Black Sea on 12 December 1941 and it was towed to Istanbul on 15 December 1941. On February 23, 1942, with its engine inoperable and its refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed the ship from Istanbul harbor through the Bosphorus out to the the coast of Şile in North Istanbul. Within hours, in the morning of February 24, it was torpedoed and sunk by the Soviet submarine Shch 213, killing 768 men, women and children, with only one survivor, a 19 year old man, making it the largest exclusively civilian naval disaster of the war in Black Sea
You know what I found ironic? This single survivor served in North Africa for the British Army in WW2. Sad.
Not the finest hour for Turkey or United Kingdom.
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