MV Mefküre (often referred to as Mefkura) was a Turkish wooden-hulled motor schooner chartered to carry Jewish Holocaust refugees from Romania to Istanbul, sailing under the Turkish and Red Cross flags. On 5 August 1944 a submarine  sank her in the Black Sea  by shellfire, killing more than 300 refugees. What is also even more inhumane is that once they sank the ship, the survivors were machine-gunned while struggling in the water. There is debate about whether it was a Soviet or German submarine, but most of my sources said it was the Soviets. The number of refugees killed is unknown (well over 300), but one estimate suggests it also includes 37 children.

This is also a memorial for the victims of the MV Struma, a ship that had been trying to take nearly 800 Jewish refugees from Axis-allied Romania to the Holy Land. On the morning of 24 February, the Soviet submarine Shch-213 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. There was only 1 survivor.

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These are just two incidences of atrocities which occurred during the Holocaust. It is important for people to understand that the goal of the nazis was total extermination of the Jewish people. These thoughts and goals have never totally gone away and we are seeing a huge increase in antisemitism. Just recently, Baruch was watching an interview and the expert mentioned that while the spotlight is on relations between blacks and whites, the overwhelming number of racist crimes have been committed against the Jewish population in the United States. This is not being reported.

Throughout Israel there are many memorials to remember victims of the Holocaust, terrorism and the unprovoked attacks by our neighbors.