Ticket booklet for David Stoliar’s passage on the Struma.

SYNOPSIS

The Struma [working title] comprises eight chapters, a Prologue, Epilogue, and a Sources section, running 90,000 words in length.  The Prologue, each of the eight chapters, and the Epilogue and Sources sections of the manuscript are described below.  The purpose of this outline of the Table of Contents is to give the prospective publisher some idea of the narrative flow and chronology of the manuscript.

Prologue

(2,269 words)

Jew Boat

The Prologue describes how The Struma—The Sole Survivor’s Tale of Escape and Survival came to be written. In 2002, he submitted to ninety-two hours of interviews and another dozen years of research, discovery—and friendship—with author Alan Guggenheim.  The result is this book. 

Chapter 1

(7,417 words)

Slaughterhouse

David Stoliar’s father Jacob grows increasingly alarmed at the danger for his son after Jewish youth like him are expelled from school in 1940. He is forced in 1941 to dig trenches at the Poligon that will be used for a new firing range for the Wehrmacht.  Increasing oppression by the fascist government of General Ion Antonescu along with the widespread mayhem and violence against Jews by the Iron Guard, prompts Jacob to plot his son’s escape that fall of 1941 from the unfolding Holocaust in Romania.      

Chapter 2

(8,079 words)

“Surplus Jews”

As an old man in 2002, David reviews archival documents that describe the forces that compelled him to leave Romania on such a decrepit hulk as the Struma. For years, from 1936-1941, he was brutalized by the murderous opportunists of the Antonescu regime. He was victimized by the extortionist organizers, including the infamous Jean D. Pandelis, into paying an extortionate $1,000 for passage on the unseaworthy Struma. He was unwelcome by the British and seen as a “surplus Jew” in a land that should have been a sanctuary to him—Palestine. With no good options, David asks for his rabbi’s blessing and risks his life on the Struma.

Chapter 3

(7,989 words)

Farewell

David bids his father Jacob farewell on a cold Sunday evening, December 7, 1941. He boards a sealed trained for the port of Constanta. The Romanian administration loots him and the passengers for four days before they’re allowed to board Friday, December 12, 1941, and depart on the Struma. Plagued by crew incompetence and engine failure, the Struma limps across the Black Sea. A Turkish naval tug intercepts the Struma before it enters a mine field and quarantines the vessel in Istanbul harbor.

Chapter 4

(7,011 words)

Istanbul

For ten weeks, from December 16, 1941, to February 23, 1942, David and Ilse Lothringer, his girlfriend from Bucharest, and the almost eight hundred passengers on the Struma starve while Great Britain cajoles Turkey into returning the Struma to the Black Sea rather than allowing it to proceed to Palestine. An American oil company executive (and future spy for the U.S.) uses company funds and his standing in Istanbul to obtain the release in January 1942 of eight passengers, and to help feed the remaining passengers. David and Ilse obsess on the scant food and water, and the severe overcrowding.

Chapter 5

(10,447 words)

Ilse

David and Ilse bribe police for food.  From the moment the Struma arrives December 15, 1941, British authorities dither with Turkey and the Jewish Agency whether to issue visas. David, Ilse and the passengers endure packed conditions and short rations shipped in by a mysterious benefactor with the Jewish community in Istanbul.  Medeea Salamowitz is hospitalized with a miscarriage—making her the ninth and last passenger to be released ashore before the sinking. David loses hope. Ilse restores it.

Chapter 6

(5,469 words)

Revolt

To the alarm of organizers as well as British, American and Jewish Agency officials, Turkish police repress a passenger revolt and cut the ship’s anchor, Monday afternoon, February 23, 1942. David recalls the passengers’ cries for help as a Turkish military tugboat casts the Struma adrift in the Black Sea—without a working engine, provisions or an anchor. Hours later, at 2 a.m., Tuesday, February 24, 1942, the ship explodes, victim of a Soviet submarine torpedo fired from the direction of the Turkish shoreline. 

Chapter 7

(15,688 words)

Angel

David and a hundred or so survivors, many injured and bleeding, flail about the sea, awaiting rescue. For twenty-four hours, no help arrives.  David recalls the agonizing deaths of hundreds no killed in the immediate blast. He remembers an angel swimming calmly in a nightgown.  Chief Mate Ivan Dikof joins David on a piece of floating wreckage and, before dying, bears witness to the torpedo that sank the Struma. David is rescued Wednesday morning, February 25, 1942, by Turkish coast guardsmen scavenging for war booty. After a brief hospital convalescence, he is jailed for being in Turkey illegally.

Chapter 8

(11,138 words)

Cafea turcească

Puzzled by his arrest and imprisonment on March 6, David wonders about the valise full of new clothes and the meals catered to his jail cell.  Unbeknownst to David until he was an old man, the Struma aroused an outcry in the U.S., Great Britain and Palestine for creation of a Jewish homeland, and coincidentally for his release. He learns to brew Turkish coffee and chitchats with fellow inmates—all of whom are spies—until April 22 when he is released to Simon Brod, a one-man Jewish relief agency. Brod clothed and fed him, and then saw David off for Palestine the next day. They would never see each other again.

Chapter 9

(9,869 words)

David convalesces in Palestine, and in 1943, joins the British 8th Army, learns English, gains promotions, marries Adria Nacmias, and conforms to army life until his discharge in 1946.  He learns in 1946 that his mother was gassed at Auschwitz.  In 1947, Jewish Agency officials use the Struma during UNSCOP to justify creation of Israel.  That same year, Romanian Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen requests David’s help with a Struma memorial service in 1948 in Bucharest.  (He helped, but did not attend since he was in uniform again, this time fighting for Israel Defense Forces for Independence.) In 1952, David donates items to Yad Vashem, the new Holocaust museum in Israel. In 2002, he inspires Mr. Epstein’s fifth grade class at Temple Beth Hillel in Connecticut to compose a poem memorializing those lost on the Struma. Ten years later, in 2012, Temple Beth Hillel includes David’s thoughts about Struma and God in their time capsule—to be opened in 2062.  David dies a Jew who found much joy in his long life.

Sources

(1,881 words)

David Stoliar is identified as the key source informing the narrative voice of The Struma.  This section also lists more than sixty books, monographs, websites, archives, reports and documents important to the framework of The Struma.