David Stolyar, the sole survivor of the sinking of the ship Stroma in 1942, died last week in the state of Oregon in the USA. Stolyar is survived by a son and a granddaughter.
Stolyar died three days ago, but news of his death has only just become known.
Stroma is an immigration ship that carried about 760 Jewish refugees who were trying to escape from fascist Romania led by Ion Antonescu, and was sunk in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine. The ship was organized as part of the Irgun's immigration operation. The sinking of all but one of its crew and passengers is considered the greatest disaster in the history of immigration to the Land of Israel and the largest disaster in terms of the scale of a civilian ship sinking during World War II.
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On December 11, 1941, they boarded the ship, which docked in the port of Constanta in Romania, (which had ten crew members, some of whom were Jews), and about 760 illegal immigrants (according to other accounts, 769 illegal immigrants). On board for the short voyage, which was intended to last about 14 hours, were 103 children, 272 women, and 393 men from among the Jews of Romania. However, the voyage took longer than expected and they had to dock in the port of Istanbul for more than two months.
The Turkish government conditioned the ship's stay on its shores on another country agreeing to take in the refugees, but no such country was found, despite the ship's long stay in port. The British, who ruled the Land of Israel - the destination of the illegal immigrants - stubbornly refused to allow the illegal immigrants to enter the country.
The disaster, and the death of one of the two survivors
Finally, the Turks decided to get rid of the problem at all costs. On the night of February 23, 1942, the Struma, with a broken engine and no anchor, was tied to a Turkish tugboat that towed her out to sea, outside Turkish territorial waters, leaving her there without food or water, for the hundreds of people crammed aboard.
The next day, on the morning of February 24, 1942, a Soviet submarine reported spotting an "enemy ship" in the Black Sea, off the coast of Bulgaria, and launched a torpedo at it. It turned out that the Soviet Navy had been ordered to attack any unidentified ship entering the Black Sea. The torpedo hit caused enormous damage to the old, decaying ship. The ship's lower hull sank immediately, and the ship quickly sank to the bottom.
Of the hundreds of people on board, only two survived: David Stolyar and one of the ship's officers, who managed to climb onto a beam and were just a few centimeters above the waterline. Over time, the two survivors tried to encourage each other in order to survive, and throughout the cold night they sang, talked, and shouted. They feared that if they stopped, they would not survive the intense cold in the water and their bodies would freeze. Early in the morning, Stolyar realized that the officer had not survived and had died, and he remained the only survivor of the ship. Turkish fishermen accidentally discovered the survivor and took him aboard their ship.
In 1946, Stolyar and his wife arrived in Israel and lived in Haifa. During the War of Independence, he served as a machine gunner in the north. In 1968, he immigrated to the United States and lived in the state of Oregon. He established a shoe manufacturing factory and a company called Kavala, and even opened a bakery and a baking school.
He passed away last week.
In preparing the article, we used material and images from the Wikipedia website.
The illegal immigrant ship Stroma
