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On December 12, 1941, the Struma ship left Constanţa Harbor. There were almost eight hundred Romanian Jews on board, dreaming of a better life, a safe destiny. They were leaving for Palestine, hoping for safety in their much desired and deeply longed-for Jewish homeland.
Due to the political situation of those times and British pressures, the ship is held for 10 weeks in Istanbul.
On February 23, 1942, in the evening, Struma's anchor is cut off and she is towed out of the harbor, about 10 kilometers off the coast. The 786 Romanian Jews, among them 101 children, remain abandoned in the midst of the water for the rest of the night. The following morning a Soviet submarine sends a torpedo, which hits the Struma ship and sinks it as if it has never existed.
Only one young man survives the tragedy, an eighteen-year-old boy named David Stoliar, the only one who arrives later in America.
This novel is not exactly about Struma; it is not even about those hundreds of innocent souls who were looking for salvation in another country, in foreign lands. This book is about every one of us and about our life-long quests, about us people who dam up questions that no one can answer, about those of us who feel strangled by tensions and emotions just like the Struma vessel was strangled by frightening arms of foam.