Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

SS Mefküre מפקורה, also known as Mafkura, was a wooden motor vessel, acquired by Pandelis.
Length : 35 meters
Beam: 8 meters
Gross tonnage: 52 tons
Speed: max 11.5 / average 9.9 knots
Flag: Türkiye

On August 1, 1944, Turkey Türkiye broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, which put at risk all Turkish flagged transports on the Black Sea Karadeniz.

On August 3, 1944, Bülbül בולבול sailed from Constanţa, carrying 410 passengers, in a convoy with Morino מורינה, carrying 308 passengers, and SS Mefküre מפקורה, carrying 350 passengers (estimates range from 289 to 394), all under Turkish flag, organized by Mossad leAliyah Bet, Revisionists and the Zionist Organization in Romania, carrying a total of 1,068 passengers.
AmutaYam.org.il cites: Bülbül בולבול carried 390 passengers, Morino מורינה carried 308 passengers and SS Mefküre מפקורה carried 315 passengers, a total of 1.013 passengers.
Wikipedia cites: Bulbul בולבול sailed from Constanţa, on August 5, 1944, and Mefkure, carried 350 passengers.
Wikipedia cites: Bulbul בולבול sailed from Constanţa, on August 5, 1944, carrying 390 passengers (Hebrew page), Morino מורינה, carried 308 passengers (Hebrew page) and Mefkure, carried 350 passengers (Hebrew page cites 315-380 passengers) .
Dalia Ofer: cites the sailing of Bülbül בולבול, Morina מורינה and SS Mefküre מפקורה took place at a critical juncture, when "relations between Germany and Turkey were tense...., and Berlin sought to avoid exacerbating those tensions."
The boats were supposedly accompanied by the German security boats, until the end of the mine barriers.
Dahlia Ofer cites: "a temporary engine failure on the Mefkura was repaired while the boat was towed out of the minefield by German and Pumanian coastal patrols."
The three boats sailed close together, Bülbül בולבול took the lead, and slower SS Mefküre מפקורה sailed at the rear, until they encountered a storm and the boats were separated.

On August 5, 1944 (אב 16, 5704), some time after midnight, SS Mefküre מפקורה was illuminated by flares from an unknown vessel, but she failed to respond and carried on.
At 10:00AM, SS Mefküre מפקורה was was hit with gunfire and torpedoes.
Russian submarine, SHCH-215 Щ-215, captained by Commander A. Strizhak А. И. Стрижак, torpedoed SS Mefküre מפקורה.
The Captain of SS Mefküre מפקורה cited being fired upon before he was able to make out warning signals or respond to them.
He stated that he was ordered to halt SS Mefküre מפקורה, at which point, he claimed he instructed all passengers to put on their lifejackets.
Survivors claim that they did see flares, but the warnings went unheeded, and the Captain took no precautionary steps.
SS Mefküre מפקורה took a third shell fired dead center, and sank north-west of the Bosphorus at position 41º57'N, 28º47'E.
The Russians cite: They thought SS Mefküre מפקורה was carrying Polish officers on their way to the Allied armies.
Turkish authorities cite Mefkure מפקורה's was sunk on August 4, 1944, between Ahtapolu and Rezve, about 25 miles northeast of Igneada, off Bulgaria, by 3 unknown submarines.
The survivors were machine-gunned while struggling in the water.
305 people were killed, only 11 survived, 5 passengers, and 6 crew members, including the Captain and some of his officers, who were first to take to the lifeboats.
After hours in the cold water, the survivors were picked up by Bülbül בולבול, which had been stopped by several patrol boats prior to the sinking of SS Mefküre מפקורה, and had taken shelter at Igneada in the storm, and taken to the medical control and delivered to the Red Crescent authorities in Kırklareli, Tekirdağ, before going to İstanbul by train.
Among the victims of the sinking were at least fifty orphans who had been rescued from Transylvania.
A communique of August 8, 1944, from the German Naval High Command cites: "The Jews are continuing to send Polish and Serbo-Croatian partisans for the Allied forces in the Near East through their emigration offices, placing them on boats used for transporting emigrants. We have identified those listed below as passengers on the Mefkura when it left Rumania...."

Rabbi Gutman put up a memorial plaque for SS Mefküre מפקורה in his synagogue in Tel Aviv with most of the names of those who were lost.
In 2003, a monument to the memory of the victims was erected in the Giurgiului Cemetery south of Bucaresti, on the initiative of the Romanian Jewish Communities Federation and the Bucharest Jewish Community

On February 25, 1944, a large group of orphans arrived from Transnistria; those who were relatively healthy had been placed in a schoo, while the sick ones, aged one to fifteen, were housed in the orphanage.
The orphans were emaciated, exhausted, and were covered with open wounds from scabies.
Bella Swartz Azar cites: "We settled them in a large dormitory. The "veterans", like myself, were assigned to take care of the younger newcomers. We used to treat the scabies with a black, tar-like, creamy ointment, which caused severe burning of the skin. The babies were howling in pain; we would cuddle them, and would share with them our meagre food. Feeling comforted and loved, our little "siblings" recovered within a few weeks."
"Then, the Jewish committee rented trucks to transport the children to Bucharest, where orphans from Transnistria had been gathered from many Romanian cities. From Bucharest, the orphans were to be sent to the port of Constanta, and put aboard Palestine-bound ships (rented by the American Joint committee)."