Douglas Frantz - Death on the Black Sea [2003][A]

On the morning of February 24, 1942, on the Black Sea near Istanbul, an explosion ripped through a decrepit former cattle barge filled with Jewish refugees. One man clung fiercely to a piece of deck, fighting to survive. Nearly eight hundred others -- among them, more than one hundred children -- perished.
In Death on the Black Sea, the story of the Struma, its passengers, and the events that led to its destruction are investigated and fully revealed in two vivid, parallel accounts, set six decades apart. One chronicles the international diplomatic maneuvers and callousness that resulted in the largest maritime loss of civilian life during World War II. The other recounts a recent attempt to locate the Struma at the bottom of the Black Sea, an effort initiated and pursued by the grandson of two of the victims. A vivid reconstruction of a grim exodus aboard a doomed ship, Death on the Black Sea illuminates a forgotten episode of World War II and pays tribute to the heroes, past and present, who keep its memory alive.

Editorial Review
From Publishers Weekly
On February 25, 1942, a young Romanian Jew named David Stoliar was rescued after surviving more than 24 hours in the frigid Black Sea. His 768 shipmates were not so lucky-their desperate attempts to escape Nazi persecution in Romania ended when a Russian torpedo downed the Struma, a former cattle barge pressed into service as a decrepit, cramped refugee ship bound for Palestine. But as journalists Frantz and Collins (Celebration, U.S.A.) chronicle, the Struma, stymied by uncaring or anti-Semitic officials in England and Turkey, was doomed from the start. When the Struma's engine failed almost immediately after leaving the port of Constanta, a make-do repair got it to Istanbul. There, the engine failed again and the ship languished in port for two months; eventually, she was towed back into the Black Sea, where she was attacked. The authors are painstaking in their efforts to expose the horrors of what has been but a historical footnote, and their talent for fleshing out the admittedly meager historical record of the attack is compelling and clear-eyed (they were able to track down Stoliar). But their narrative sometimes shuttles awkwardly between historical events and the present-day, unsuccessful quest by a victim's descendant to locate the sunken wreck. With scant corroborating first-hand accounts, the authors lean too heavily on laundry lists of Holocaust horrors and reports of "diplomatic callousness"-the back-and-forth missives between various governments seeking to rid themselves of the Struma, for example. Still, this is a book of meticulous, driven reporting, and a valuable contribution to WWII history.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reviews
“Among the countless books about the Holocaust, Death on the Black Sea is particularly important.” (Washington Times)

“Mr. Frantz and Ms. Collins have performed a vital act of reclamation.” (New York Times)

“A meticulous, judicious, at times searing chronicle... It will leave no reader unmoved. (Chicago Tribune)

“A balanced, textured account that juxtaposes byzantine, coldly calculating diplomatic maneuverings with the suffering of the refugees.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

About the Authors
Douglas Frantz, the investigations editor at the New York Times, is the newspaper's former Istanbul bureau chief and a former investigative reporter the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Catherine Collins covers Turkey for the Chicago Tribune and has written for the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Frantz and Collins have written several nonfiction books, most recently Celebration, U.S.A.