“Struma”: The Destiny of a Tragedy. A Revised Perspective

Using new and previously-published sources, including archival documents and family testimonies, this article revises the common view of the 1942 Struma disaster, the sinking of a ship carrying 769 people, mostly Jewish emigrants from Romania to Palestine. It attempts to reconstruct how the Struma emigration was organized, and who was involved in procuring the ship. It additionally outlines the biographies of several of the victims, as well as individuals who did not board the ship. The article also examines the involvement of victims’ families in the commemoration of the disaster in Romania and Israel. It supplements existing secondary literature on the Struma by clarifying certain aspects of the events, namely the number of victims, their geographical and family backgrounds, and interactions between authorities and organizers of the Struma emigration.