Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by CeeGee (talk | contribs) at 11:08, 12 September 2012 (added Category:Shipwrecks in the Black Sea using HotCat). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Mefkura (also called Mefkure) was a motor schooner chartered to carry Jewish Holocaust refugees from Romania to Istanbul, sailing under the Turkish and Red Cross flags.

The ship left from the port of Constanța before dawn on August 5, 1944, together with the ships Bulbul and Morina. The Romanian navy provided them with escort and signal flags to facilitate their departure from the harbour and the mined area around it. After midnight the ship was illuminated by flares from an unknown vessel. It failed to respond and carried on. Then it was fired on and began to burn. The captain Kazım Turan and 6 crew escaped in a lifeboat but only 5 of the 350 passengers survived. The Bulbul was also intercepted, but was allowed to continue after identifying itself. The passengers from the Bulbul and Morina reached Turkey and continued overland to Palestine.

It was much later revealed that the ship had been torpedoed by the Soviet submarine Shch 215.

See also

• Aliyah Bet
• Struma

References

1. Dead bodies of 130 passengers find of the Kemerburgaz shore at 12-15 August
2. Dalia Ofer, Escaping the Holocaust, Oxford University Press (1990), p260-266.
3. http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/5046.html

External links

• Mefkure - Definition
• Struma tragedy

This article related to the Holocaust is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Jewish Romanian history
• Romania in World War II
• History of the Republic of Turkey
• World War II shipwrecks in the Black Sea
• Ships sunk by Soviet submarines
• Rescue of Jews in the Holocaust
• Aliyah
• Zionism
• Maritime incidents in 1944
• 1944 in Romania
• Soviet Union–Turkey relations
• Shipwrecks in the Black Sea
• Holocaust stubs