![Memorial plaque to Mefkure victims in Tel Aviv](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Memorial_plaque_to_Mefkure_victims_in_Tel_Aviv.jpg)
MV ''Mefküre'' (often referred to as ''Mefkura'') was a Turkish wooden-hulled
[ motor ]schooner
A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...
chartered to carry Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
ish Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
refugees from Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
to Istanbul
Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...
, sailing under the Turkish[ and ]Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
flags. On 5 August 1944 a Soviet submarine sank her in the Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Roma ...
by shellfire, killing more than 300 refugees.
Final voyage and sinking
On 3 August 1944 three small old merchant ships, overcrowded with about 1,000 Jewish refugees, left the Romanian port of Constanța
Constanța (, ; ; rup, Custantsa; bg, Кюстенджа, Kyustendzha, or bg, Констанца, Konstantsa, label=none; el, Κωνστάντζα, Kōnstántza, or el, Κωνστάντια, Kōnstántia, label=none; tr, Köstence), histo ...
at about 20:30 hrs. Sailing instructions from the German naval authorities were for ''Morina'' with 308 passengers to sail first, followed by ''Bulbul'' with 390 people, and lastly by ''Mefküre'' with 320 refugees (the exact number may be slightly different) on board. The vessels were ordered to sail from position 43°43'N 29°08'E strictly southward, which would lead them directly into the Bosphorus. Armed ships of the Romanian Navy
The Romanian Navy ( ro, Forțele Navale Române) is the navy branch of the Romanian Armed Forces; it operates in the Black Sea and on the Danube. It traces its history back to 1860.
History
The Romanian Navy was founded in 1860 as a river flot ...
escorted the convoy and provided signal flags to aid their passage from the harbour and through the mined area of the approaches.
On 5 August 1944, about 40 minutes after midnight ''Mefküre'' was about northeast of İğneada
İğneada (Greek: Thynias) is a small town within the district of Demirköy, Kırklareli, Demirköy in Turkey's Kırklareli Province. It lies on the Black Sea coast and is approximately south of the Rezovo River, Mutludere river which forms the b ...
in Turkey when flares from an unknown vessel illuminated her.[ ''Mefküre'' failed to respond and carried on.][ In the same night, at 02:00 hrs, the German ]radio direction-finding station
Direction finding (DF), or radio direction finding (RDF), isin accordance with International Telecommunication Union (ITU)defined as radio location that uses the reception of radio waves to determine the direction in which a radio statio ...
at Cape Pomorie
Pomorie ( bg, Поморие ), historically known as Anchialos (Greek: Αγχίαλος), is a town and seaside resort in southeastern Bulgaria, located on a narrow rocky peninsula in Burgas Bay on the southern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast.
It is si ...
in the Gulf of Burgas intercepted a radio signal of the Soviet , , with a bearing of 116 degrees. "This bearing crossed the course of ''Mefkure'' and the two Turkish vessels almost exactly at the area where ''Mefkure'' was sunk during that night." The German historian Jürgen Rohwer claimed ''Shch-215'' as the vessel which then attacked. ''Shch-215'' fired 90 rounds from her 45-mm guns and 650 rounds from her 7.62 mm machine guns. ''Mefküre'' caught fire and sank. Her captain, Kazım Turan, and six of his crew escaped in the only available lifeboat, but only five of the refugees survived. The number of refugees killed is unknown, but one estimate suggests it includes 37 children.
On 30 July 1944 submarine ''Shch-215'', under command of Captain 3rd Rank Captain 3rd rank (russian: Капитан 3-го ранга, Kapitan 3-go ranga, lit=Captain of the 3rd rank) is a rank used by the Russian Navy and a number of Communist state#Former communist states, former communist state. The rank is the lowest ...
AI Strizhak, had departed from Batum
Batumi (; ka, ბათუმი ) is the second largest city of Georgia and the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara, located on the coast of the Black Sea in Georgia's southwest. It is situated in a subtropical zone at the foot of t ...
, operating at the approaches off Burgas
Burgas ( bg, Бургас, ), sometimes transliterated as ''Bourgas'', is the second largest city on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast in the region of Northern Thrace and the fourth-largest in Bulgaria after Sofia, Plovdiv, and Varna, with a popu ...
. This submarine, on the night of 5 August, claimed the sinking of a big schooner
A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...
with about 200 armed men aboard,[ answering the attack with rifles and light machine guns, and in addition one "barkass", possibly a life boat. ''Shch-215'' made the attack in position 42.00'N 28°42'E, at a distance of westward from the ordered course of ''Mefküre''.
A fortnight after the sinking a JTA news report alleged that three German surface craft had sunk ''Mefküre''. The same report stated that ''Bulbul'' had been intercepted, too, but was allowed to proceed after identifying herself; at daybreak she rescued ''Mefküre''s survivors.] ''Bulbul'' continued to İğneada, whence her 395 refugees and the five surviving ''Mefküre'' refugees continued by road and rail to Istanbul. ''Morina'' also reached Turkey, and refugees from both ships continued overland to Palestine
__NOTOC__
Palestine may refer to:
* State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia
* Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia
* Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
.
Memorials
There are memorials to those killed aboard ''Mefküre'' at the Giurgiului
Giurgiului () is a neighborhood in the southern part of the Romanian capital Bucharest, in Sector 5, near Berceni and Ferentari. Like Berceni, Giurgiului has plenty of 10-storey blocks of flats that were built under Communist rule, starting ...
Cemetery in the south of Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
in Romania and at Ashdod
Ashdod ( he, ''ʾašdōḏ''; ar, أسدود or إسدود ''ʾisdūd'' or '' ʾasdūd'' ; Philistine: 𐤀𐤔𐤃𐤃 *''ʾašdūd'') is the sixth-largest city in Israel. Located in the country's Southern District, it lies on the Mediterran ...
in Israel.
See also
*Aliyah Bet
''Aliyah Bet'' ( he, עלייה ב', "Aliyah 'B'" – bet being the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet) was the code name given to illegal immigration by Jews, most of whom were refugees escaping from Nazi Germany, and later Holocaust sur ...
*Patria disaster
The ''Patria'' disaster was the sinking on 25 November 1940 by the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah of a French-built ocean liner, the 11,885-ton , in the port of Haifa, killing 267 people and injuring 172.
At the time of the sinking ...
* Struma disaster
References
Further reading
* includes 19 documents and a list of 302 passengers (victims) of the ''Mefkure''
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mefkure
1929 ships
1944 in Romania
Aliyah
History of the Republic of Turkey
Jewish Romanian history
Maritime incidents in August 1944
Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust
Romania in World War II
World War II ships of Turkey
Ships sunk by Soviet submarines
Soviet Union–Turkey relations
Schooners
World War II shipwrecks in the Black Sea
Jewish immigrant ships
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement