Video: 'The Struma- A Never Ending Sadness'

(Tuesday, February 24, 1942, morning Eastern European Time; during the Struma disaster, part of The Holocaust and World War II) — The MV Struma, a charter ship attempting to carry nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to Mandatory Palestine, was torpedoed by a Soviet submarine today in the Black Sea; all but one of the refugees perished.

Video: 'U.S. Detention, Nazi Deportation, and Death in the East – WAH 029 – February 1942, Pt. 2' (Struma disaster at 10:55)

Struma’s diesel engine failed several times between her departure from Constanta on the Black Sea on Dec. 12, 1941, and her arrival in Istanbul on Dec. 15. She had to be towed by a tug boat to leave Constanta and to enter Istanbul.

On Feb. 23, 1942, with her engine still inoperable and her refugee passengers aboard, Turkish authorities towed Struma from Istanbul through the Bosphorus out to the coast of Sile in North Istanbul.

Video: 'David Stoliar, sole survivor of WWII atrocity, speaks about life and human nature'

Within hours, in the morning of Feb. 24, the Soviet submarine Shch-213 — acting under secret orders to sink all neutral and enemy shipping entering the Black Sea to reduce the flow of strategic materials to Nazi Germany — torpedoed her, killing an estimated 781 refugees plus 10 crew, making it the Black Sea’s largest exclusively civilian naval disaster of World War II.

Of the 781 Jewish refugees 10 crew members aboard, only 19-year-old David Stoliar survived (he died in 2014).