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Istanbul Passage
March - April, 2013
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Lily
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Feb 11, 2013 07:56AM
Use this thread to provide comments about
Istanbul Passage
by Joseph Kanon prior to our meeting in April.
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"The horrors of Străuleşti, the sinking of the Struma, Ira Hirschmann’s heroic work for the War Refugee Board rescuing European Jews, and the tireless efforts of Mossad le Aliyah Bet (Committee for Illegal Immigration) are all matters of historical record and appear here only as background. The events and people in Istanbul Passage are fiction." From "Author's Note."
Kanon, Joseph (2012-05-29). Istanbul Passage. Simon & Schuster, Inc. Kindle Edition.
http://www.romanianjewish.org/en/cap2...
The devastating background of this story may be gleaned from this site, but it is gory enough reading that I could only stand to skim it. (The part on Străuleşti is near the end.) The concluding paragraph of the section on this page is below:
"From late June 1940 to the end of May 1941, more than 600 Jews were slaughtered in Romania . The overwhelming responsibility for the murders, robberies, and other abuses must be borne by military personnel and policemen, the latter often Legionnaires, though these galvanized a more diffuse—but much broader—popular malice. Still, it is important to bear in mind that there was no systematic and centralized plan for these massacres; in 1940 and early 1941, the state had not formulated such a plan."
http://history1900s.about.com/od/holo...This article describes the story of the sinking of the Struma. It is presented as one of the sources of the condition into which Anna retreats.
To me, a fascinating aspect of our story is the differences in the ways the humans involved handle extreme adverse conditions in which they find themselves. One of my regrets at not being able to be present at our f2f meeting is being unable to hear the thoughts of others on this topic. (I had barely finished the novel when I went to Tenebrae services. The stories kept getting intertwined.)
I'm not going to have a chance to revisit the remaining chapters, as I did for the first one. I have deeply enjoyed the virtual tour of Istanbul for which this book became the catalyst.
"Mihai said nothing. It had been his boat, the one he and Anna had organized, also out of Constancia, as it happened. Overcrowded and listing, stuck in Istanbul for repairs, then waiting for sailing permits, two hundred people taking turns on deck. They’d run tenders out with food and water, medicine that Anna had somehow rounded up out of nonexistent supplies. Black market drugs. And still no permits, then panic, everyone seeing a repeat of the Struma, the ship sent back, then torpedoed in the Black Sea, everyone down with it. One survivor, they’d heard."Kanon, Joseph (2012-05-29). Istanbul Passage. (p. 37). Simon & Schuster, Inc. Kindle Edition.
