769 Jews from Rumania Reach Turkey on Sinking Freighter After Eventful Voyage

The tragic story of 769 Rumanian Jews who reached Turkish shores aboard a freighter equipped to carry only 120 people, after a trip in which two of the passengers were driven insane and the others either became ill or had to man the pumps for twenty-four hour stretches when the engines were damaged, was reported today to the Jewish Agency for Palestine in a cable from Istanbul, asking the Agency to secure permission for the wanderers to enter Palestine.

Many of the refugees are Jews who escaped from the ghetto in Czernovits, capital of Bukovina. Others are wealthy people having deposits in Palestine and American banks. They are now jammed aboard the freighter “Strume” on which they reached Istanbul after their eventful voyage and their only hope is to be admitted into Palestine.

The sanitary conditions on the freighter are reported to be frightful in view of the overcrowding of the vessel. Of the 769 refugees on board, only twenty were allowed on deck at one time for for fresh air, since the captain feared that the freighter might capsize. In the middle of the voyage, when the freighter was in the stormy waters of the Black Sea, the engines and the radio were damaged by a storm and water began to pour into the vessel. The refugees fighting for their lives had to man the pumps constantly until the captain succeeded in bringing the freighter into a Turkish port.

Three Bulgarian Jewish families numbering fifteen people today reached Palestine vis Turkey and Syria after a miraculous escape from Bulgaria. Six Rumanian Jews also arrived today from Turkey after having their expired Palestine visas renewed by the British consular authorities there.