Rudnitchar (ship)
 The Rudnitchar around 1939/40 in the port of Varna
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The Rudnitchar was a Bulgarian coastal cargo ship built in 1872 . In 1939/40 it brought over 1,600 Jewish refugees from Bulgaria to the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, which was under British administration, and sank in a German charter on the Bosporus in 1942 .
Construction and technical data
The ship was at the shipyard Motala Verkstad in Sweden Motala under the hull number 65 in 1872 as an iron ship built and named Siri delivered. The length of the ship was 36.36 meters, it was 6.97 meters wide and had a draft of 3.62 meters. It was measured with 269 GRT or 160 NRT. The drive consisted of a two-cylinder composite steam engine from Eriksbergs Mekaniska Verkstad from Gothenburg , which worked on a screw .
history
Swedish freighter in the Baltic Sea
For more than 60 years, the small coastal cargo ship did its job in an apparently unspectacular and noiseless manner, because only fragmentary information is available on the history of the Siri : After delivery in 1872 to a shipping company unknown by name, the steamer flied the Swedish flag and was later referred to as a timber freighter. The next records only follow for 1899, when the ship was sold and unspecified conversions took place, which themselves led to an entry in Lloyd's Register. The new owner was the Stockholm shipping company CB Below . The ship was named Serla and the callsign "HJGV", home port was Stockholm. The shipping company kept the Serla until 1919 and then sold it to Greece.
Greek and Bulgarian freighters in the Mediterranean and Black Seas
In Greece, the owners of the also unknown shipping company gave the steamer the name Demosthenes . It remains to be seen whether the new name Aghios Nicolaos was accompanied by a change of ownership in 1936 . No more is known from this period. This Aghios Nicolaos - a name frequently used in Greek shipping - should not be confused with the later refugee ship of the same name, which Baruch Confino, the organizer of refugee transports from Bulgaria to Palestine, used. The ship he used was built in 1899 and measured at 1106 GRT.
In 1937 the ship changed hands again: the buyer was the Varna- based copper ore mining company, which gave the ship the name Rudnitchar (Bulgarian Рудничар , dt. "Miner"). The company used the Rudnitchar to transport ore between Burgas and Varna and Turkish ports. There were also reports of coal transports that are said to have been carried out by ship in the summer of 1939. Around the late summer of 1939 the mining company sold Rudnitchar to Society Traffic, which was also based in Varna .
Bulgarian refugee and immigration ship
At this time, the Jewish ophthalmologist Baruch Konfino , who lived in Varna and worked for various Zionist organizations , who had already successfully organized the voyage of the Kraljica Maria ("Queen Maria") in May 1939 , became aware of Rudnitchar lying in the port of Varna . He bought the steamer for the Traffic Society and had it converted into a refugee ship at a shipyard in Varna, keeping the name. Wooden platforms were installed in the holds, so that the ship could initially hold a good 300 and later 450 to 500 people. In four journeys from August 1939 to January 1940 the Rudnitchar brought a total of 1635 (na A. 1638) Jewish refugees to the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, which is under British administration .
The first voyage began on August 1, 1939. On it the Rudnitchar carried 305 refugees to Palestine, where the ship arrived on August 10. For the next trips he also bought the motor sailer Bopha and Kooperator . On August 30, the Rudnitchar took in a total of 368 refugees, first in Varna, then in Constanța, Romania, and in Burgas . The landing took place with the help of boats and the Bopha on September 19 at Herzlia . For the third voyage, the steamer first drove from Varna to Brăila in Romania on September 29 to take in refugees, then returned to Varna on October 26 and started with 457 Jews on November 1 and the cooperator in tow to Palestine. Damaged by a storm and a stopover for emergency repairs, the two ships reached their destination on November 14th. With the help of the rowing boats and the cooperator , the refugees were brought ashore at Sydne Ali, about 25 kilometers from Haifa . On the fourth voyage, the Rudnitchar started together with the newly acquired motor sailor Orlik on December 1st, initially to Sulina and took over refugees there. With other refugees who then boarded in Varna, the journey began on December 26th with a total of 505 passengers and the Orlik in tow. Both ships reached the Palestinian coast on January 7, 1940 and brought the refugees ashore.
The planned fifth trip did not take place. It is unclear whether British pressure or a ban by the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry was the reason for the cancellation of the trip. In view of the situation, Baruch Confina changed ships and continued his work first with the Libertad and later with the Struma .
In German charter and whereabouts
After the fourth voyage, the Rudnitchar returned to Varna on January 20, 1940. There a German company chartered the old freighter from Society Traffic to transport ore.
Almost a year and a half later, the German Navy took over the ship on July 9, 1941, which continued to be called Rudnitchar . The Navy planned to use it as a replacement for the Rila for special companies. The Rila was originally equipped as Ship 19 for submarine trap , but was used by the Navy for escort security in the Black Sea. Information from the Rudnitchar is only available again for February 1942, when it was badly damaged by a block of ice on February 17, 1942 while approaching the Bosporus and an attempt was made to rescue the ship. Thereafter, further records of the ship are missing and this date is recorded as the sinking date.
literature
- Registersidorna 2301–2400 [Attachment Schiffsregister 2301–2400] (Swedish), In: Länspumpen 3/1996 , published by Västra Kretsen av Klubb Maritim Förening for fartygshistorisk forskning [Västra Kretsen Maritimen Klub for the exploration of shipping history , ISS Göteborg 1996 ] , Göteborg 1996 4242 ( online version as PDF ).
- Jürgen Rohwer : Jewish refugee ships in the Black Sea (1934–1944) , In: Ursula Büttner (Ed.): The Unrechtsregime. Volume 2: Persecution / Exile / Burdened New Beginning . Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1986. pp. 197–248 ( online version as PDF ).
- Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German warships 1815-1945, Volume 8/2: Outpost boats, auxiliary minesweepers, coastal protection associations (part 2), small combat associations, dinghies , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-7637-4807- 5 .
Web links
- Lloyd's Register. Navires a Vapeur et à Moteurs de moins de 300tx, chalutiers, & c. (1940–1941) , accessed August 8, 2020
- Photo of Serla 1918 in Åhus at digitaltmuseum.se (Swedish), accessed August 8, 2020
- List of refugee trips to Palestine 1934–1944 at paulsilverstone.com , accessed August 8, 2020
- Joseph Conforti: Dr. Confinos Aliyah Factory 1939–1940 at thebulgarianjews.org (Hebrew), accessed August 8, 2020
Individual evidence
- ^ Lloyd's Register. Navires a Vapeur et à Moteurs de moins de 300tx, chalutiers, & c. (1940-1941)
- ↑ a b c Gröner, p. 456
- ↑ a b c Länspumpen 3/1996
- ↑ a b c Rohwer, p. 213
- ↑ The Serla 1918 in Åhus at digitaltmuseum.se
- ↑ a b c d List of refugee trips to Palestine 1934–1944 at paulsilverstone.com
- ↑ a b Joseph Conforti: Dr. Confinos Aliyah Factory 1939–1940 at thebulgarianjews.org
- ↑ a b Rohwer, p. 214
- ^ War diary of the Naval War Command 1939–1945. Part A, Volume 30, February 1942 , Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Herford 1992, ISBN 3-8132-0630-0 , page 341