THE ss. STRUMA ATROCITY

Must one suffer Erdogan's 'mug - shot' appended to every report of his unrelenting anti-semitic expletives? Why not devote the 'wanted space' to recall Turkish double dealing throughout World War Two - as recorded in Franz von Papen's Memoirs - until it decided to jump onto the winning Allied side

Up to April 30, 1944! it religiously supplied chromium to Nazi Germany and it took until August 2, 1944! for the Turkish National Assembly to approve severance of diplomatic relations with the Nazis !

Just as the Turks continue to sweep the Armenian genocide under their oriental carpets, so have their Leaders escaped indictment for their complicity in the mass murder of innocent Jews in the infamous ‘Struma affair’: A war crime and crime against humanity - par excellence!

The 180-ton cattle boat left Constanza, Romania 68 years ago (Dec. 12, 1941) with 765 Jews bound for Haifa. Despite engine problems, the ship reached Istanbul, Turkey - where landing privileges were refused. The Struma was quarantined in the harbor for 10 weeks. On Feb. 23, 1942, the Turkish police cut the Struma's anchor and towed it into the Black Sea, where it was set adrift without a working engine. A torpedo (from Russian submarine SHCH-213, commanded by Lt. Col. Isaev) sank the Struma six miles from shore early the next morning.

It was the largest maritime loss of civilian life during World War II.

More than 100 children perished.

Olivia Manning, on deck of a British Royal Navy ship cruising around Istanbul harbor, in January 1942, espied a wretched ship: "The ship was the Struma", she later wrote: “The images of gaunt, ghostlike men and women from the Nazi death camps were not yet stamped on the world's consciousness: The hair-raising atrocities were proceeding largely behind closed gates at the end of 1941".
However, "in the harbor of one of the world's largest cities, though, a place teeming with diplomats, journalists and spies, the panorama of Jewish suffering was visible to anyone who cared or dared to look”.