David Stoliar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Stoliar is the sole survivor of the torpedo-sinking of the Holocaust refugee ship, Struma, by a Soviet submarine Shchuka 213 in the Black Sea early in the morning of February 24, 1942. All of the other 781 Jewish refugees and 10 mainly Bulgarian crewmen perished. The nineteen-year-old Stoliar and the passengers fleeing Constanţa, Romania, onboard Struma were cited by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a January 26, 2005, speech before the Knesset: "The leadership of the British Mandate displayed . . . obtuseness and insensitivity by locking the gates to Israel to Jewish refugees who sought a haven in the Land of Israel. Thus were rejected the requests of the 769 [sic] passengers of the ship Struma who escaped from Europe – and all but one [of the passengers] found their death at sea. Throughout the war, nothing was done to stop the annihilation [of the Jewish people]." The sinking of the Struma might have been no more than a footnote as the single-largest civilian maritime catastrophe during World War II had it not been for Stoliar's remarkable survival and willingness, even today, to attest to the callous nature of mankind that resulted in the Struma tragedy.
The Struma was sailing from Romania to Palestine. The Struma's engines gave out during December, 1941. A Turkish military tugboat towed Struma to Istanbul Harbor where during the coldest winter on record. Under close police surveillance, Struma languished 71 days in the harbor, its passengers prevented by Turkish police from going ashore. Stoliar said he and the passengers would have died without the meager shipments of bread and other food ferried from shore to the vessel by a single Turkish Jew named Simon Brod, working with Red Crescent and other Jews of Istanbul. Finally, at the insistence of the British Colonial Office and the Palestine High Commissioner, the crew of the Turkish military tugboat "Aldemar" cut the anchor of the "Struma," according to Stoliar, and towed the hapless vessel, without working engine, radio or anchor, and without adequate food or provisions, back into the Black Sea. That night, the Allied submarine commanded by Soviet Senior Lieutenant D. M. Denezhko and Political Commissar A.G. Rodimatzav, fired a single torpedo from a distance of 111.8 meters and vaporized the Struma. Stoliar survived the blast and clung to wreckage with Struma First Mate Ivanof Dikof. Stoliar said Dikof told him, in Russian, he saw the torpedo before it sank the Struma. (Dikof was taught Russian in Bulgarian grade school. Stoliar learned Russian as a child from his father who was born in Odessa) Dikof died slumped next Stoliar on the wreckage. The Turkish government didn't launch a rescue effort for 24 hours. Six coast guard men in a row boat rescued David after initial reports of the sinking of the "Struma," allegedly by a stray mine, had already appeared in The New York Times.
After his rescue, Stoliar was imprisoned in Turkey for 6 weeks. After an impassioned outcry and strike in Palestine, Turkish authorities released him to Simon Brod, a Turkish Jew who gave his life savings helping Jews like Stoliar escape the Holocaust. After British authorities acquiesced and issued Stoliar travel papers and a visa to Palestine, Brod put him on the train to Palestine. Stoliar later joined the British Army and served with distinction in Egypt and Libya, then later in the Israeli Army in the 1948 war for Israel's independence. Later, he moved to Japan and then the United States. As of the year 2006 Stoliar was 83 years old and living in Bend, Oregon. He was 19 when the Struma sank.
