The Mefkure
From Refugee Ship to Death Ship

Place of Residence, Place of Death, Place of Birth, Age

Nils H. Roemer Director, Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies
Katie Fisher, Research Assistant, Belofsky Fellow
Jennifer Cantrell-Sutor, Research Assistant, Belofsky Fellow
Mallikarjun Nagaraja, Research Analyst

When the National Socialists came to power, Romania, a newly-formed independent nation, was experiencing its own political turmoil – a turmoil that would ultimately facilitate an alliance between Germany and the nascent nation state less than a decade later. Between 1933 and 1941, Romania evolved from a monarchial dictatorship under King Carole II, to a National Legionary State controlled by the Iron Guard, and finally to a military dictatorship ruled by General Ion Antonescu. On November 20, 1940, Romania officially allied itself with the National Socialists, a natural next step for the fiercely antisemitic Antonescu. In fact, Antonescu took a personal interest in the ethnic cleansing of Romania, immediately promulgating anti-Jewish and anti-Roma legislation. Unique to this group of Holocaust victims, however, was their proximity to Turkey, a country which managed to remain neutral throughout most of World War II. Separated only by the Black Sea, Turkey functioned as a geographic gateway to Palestine, where the Haganah – a pro-Zionist paramilitary group – actively facilitated “illegal” immigration activities throughout the Nazis’ terroristic reign.

One of these so-called “illegal” operations began on August 3, 1944. Three ships, the Mefkure, the Bulbul, and the Kazbek departed the port of Constanta, Romania bound for the port of Istanbul. According to the “place of residence” data collected, the ships’ occupants originated from three primary cities in Romania – Bucharest (37%), Iasi (9%), and Cernauti (5%) – while “place of birth” data indicates that 92% the passengers were native Romanians. The national homogeneity of the ship’s passengers is unsurprising, as Romania – unlike occupied territories – was not home to traditional concentration camps and, consequently, did not generally receive transports of prisoners from outside of Romania.

According to Survivor testimony, the goal of this refugee operation was to “bring Jewish young people to Palestine,” an objective easily reflected in the available data, which indicates that 169 – approximately one-third – of the Mefkure’s passengers were under eighteen years of age when the ship left the port. These numbers differ slightly from contemporaneous news reports, which suggested that a mere one hundred of the ship’s passengers were children. These same news outlets likewise reported that the ship was carrying around sixty Jewish orphans at the time it sank. Unfortunately, this data point is difficult to corroborate owing to the limited nature of the available data. However, isolating passengers who appear to have traveled alone – there were, in fact, 62 passengers who did not share a surname with any other passenger onboard the ship – suggest that perhaps fewer orphans were actually onboard than reported. This is especially true as only 6 of these 62 solitary passengers were under 18, 4 of whom were 17 and nearing the age of majority.

Tragically, just one short day into their journey the Mefkure – which reportedly displayed both a Red Cross and Turkish flag – became the target of machine gun fire, lighting the wooden vessel afire and causing it to sink. A mere five passengers survived the attack, which was initially believed to be perpetrated by Germans. Subsequent research, however, suggests that Russia may have instead been the “accidental” culprit. Curiously, however, the Mefkure left port just eighteen days prior to the liberation of Romania by Russian troops. More curious still, is the post-war testimony of Bulbul passenger Lea Giller, who admitted that she was more afraid of the Russians than the Germans. Giller’s testimony, coupled with the voyage’s proximity to Romania’s liberation, raises a number of important questions: from whom were these refugees actually running? Did Russian troops sink this passenger ship? Did the Haganah rescue operations continue past liberation? Unfortunately, the answers to these questions may never be known for certain. What can be said, however, is that the memory of the Mefkure’s passengers did not go down with the ship on that fateful day in August 1944 but instead live on, not just in the troves of data available today, but in the memories and the stories extracted from that data.