Completed April 1921 Launched 31 December 1920 Builders Nieuwe Waterweg, Schiedam | Fate scrapped 1970 Length 123 m | |
Name 1921 Brielle
1935 Djurma (also known as Dzhurma) Owner 1921 Royal Netherlands Steamship Company
1935 Dalstroi
1953 Far East Shipping Company Operator 1921 Verenigde Nederlandsche Scheepvaartmaatschappij
1935 Dalstroi Port of registry 1921 Amsterdam, Netherlands
1935 Nogaevo, Soviet Union | ||
SS Djurma (Russian: «Джу́рма», [ˈdʑurmə]) was a Soviet steamship, occasionally used for transporting prisoners within the Gulag system. Because of an alleged 1933–34 incident wherein 12,000 prisoners were said to have died, it became the most famous ship of the Dalstroy prison fleet. The ship was built in the Netherlands in 1921 as the SS Brielle. When the ship was sold to the Soviet Union in 1935, it was registered under the spelling Djurma, in accordance with the Protocol of Third Soviet-American Session regarding maritime shipping dated to the first half of 1974. The ship's name has been most commonly transliterated as Dzhurma since 1974.
Contents
- Career under the Netherlands flag
- From April 1935 to September 1945
- Cold War period
- Famous passengers of this ship
- Alleged 193334 incident
- Shining path
- References
Джурма is not a Russian word, rather meaning "light path", "bright path" or "shining path" (Russian: "светлый путь") in the Evenki language.
Career under the Netherlands flag
SS Brielle was launched on 31 December 1920 at the New Waterway shipyard in Schiedam in the Netherlands. The cargo ship was 122.7 metres (402 ft 7 in) long (pp) and was 17.8 metres (58 ft 5 in) abeam. The 6,908-gross-register-ton ship was powered by a single triple-expansion steam engine that could move it at speeds up to 10.5 knots (19.4 km/h). After its completion in April 1921, it was delivered to the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company (Dutch: Koninklijke Nederlandse Stoomboot-Maatschappij or KNSM). The ship was operated by Verenigde Nederlandsche Scheepvaartmaatschappij (VNS), founded by a Dutch consortium (that included KNSM) after the end of World War I. The ship was eventually absorbed into the Royal Netherlands Steamship Company, one of the consortium members.
The ship sailed under the Dutch flag out of Amsterdam for most of the next 14 years.
During the Great Depression, the ship was taken out of service and laid up. When its owners faced financial pressures to sell the ship, it was purchased by the "Dalstroy" in 1935.
From April 1935 to September 1945
April and May 1935. The Soviet Union purchased the ships in the Netherlands for the sea fleet of "Dalstroy". Eduard Berzin arrived to Amsterdam to see and check two purchased steamers Brielle and Almelo, which were renamed «Джурма» и «Яго́да» (later was renamed «Дальстрой»), and to hasten the purchase the third ship Batoe, it was renamed «Кулу». «Ягода» was a sister ship of «Джурма» and «Ягода» was the first purchased ship. «Кулу» was another class ship and was also purchased in 1935. The third ship was transferred to the Soviet flag under the name Djurma and registered with a home port of Nogaevo. Djurma or Dzhurma translates as "shining path” in the language of the Evenks from the Kolyma region.
The ship «Яго́да» was the first ship of tree purchased ex-Holland ships, which arrived in Nagayevo port on September 26, 1935. After the visit of Novorossiysk port, «Джурма» and «Кулу» arrived in Nagayevo port in October 1935. The first Soviet captain on the ship «Джурма» was N.A. Finyakin.
Author Martin Bollinger reports that during the ship's Soviet career there is ample evidence that Dzhurma was used on Gulag routes between 1936 and 1950. As a part of the Dalstroy fleet, the ships «Ягода» (later was renamed «Дальстрой»), «Кулу», «Джурма» transported prisoners from Vladivostok, endpoint of the Transsiberian railway, across the Sea of Okhotsk to Kolyma via Nagayevo port, it was the port of Magadan city. Travel time was about 6 to 14 days to Magadan; trips to the Arctic were seasonal as during the winter the sea froze over. A steamer would make about ten trips a year. Conditions were horrendous, and many people did not survive the trip.
When the steamer Джурма or Кулу entered Nagayev Bay and signaled the arrival, everybody in the city knew: new stage of prisoners has arrived, up to 7,000 people in the holds. A column of ragged, hungry, wearied due to sea rolling people, which had endless night interrogations before, led from the shore to the "transitka" (the local name of transit camp), under the escort of submachine gunners with dogs. From it went Stages of prisoners went from this camp to Kolyma camps.
A former captain of Djurma, who became a captain of the ship Dalstroi, was arrested in Magadan on November 6, 1937 when he was 43 years old. After six months of inquiry, he confessed to espionage in favor of Japan and was shot. The executed were Also many members of Dalstroi's ships crew members were shot also. So "the traces were swept up".
During 1937 the ship Djurma had 8 voyages to Nagayevo port and carried out 13,216 passengers and 42,442 tons of cargo.
On the August 27, 1939, the fire occurred in the hold No 2 of the steamer Djurma, which proceeded from Vladivostok to Nagayev Bay with a stage of prisoners. According to the some sources, the burning of fuels and lubricants was made by the prisoners, they wanted the ship Djurma went to the nearest port for repairs, and to escape from there. The Soviet newspaper «Советская Колыма» (English: «Soviet Kolyma») wrote on September 29, 1939:
«... The steam ship arrived in Nagayevo with minimal loss of cargo. As per Order No 933 of the Chief Administration of the "Dalstroy" dated September 23, 1939, the gratitude for the shown courage, bravery and discipline was announced to all crew members of the ship».It was not information about any causes of the fire or any victims. According to the some testimonies, few dozens of prisoners died.
With the entry of the United States in World War II, the ship arrived for repairs at Seattle on January 31, 1942 under the Lend-Lease program. In addition to prisoner transport, it was also used to haul matériel across the Pacific, calling at the U.S. ports of San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Oregon about a dozen times.
Cold War period
As per Josef Stalin order and the resolution of SNK number 2358 dated September 14, 1945, the 126th light infantry corps, which was included in the Far Eastern Military District, received the task "to build on the Chukotka Peninsula defensive outposts to cover the main naval bases on the coast of the Gulf of Anadyr and Provideniya Bay, to provide land their antilanding defense." So, in 12 days after the surrender of Japan, on September 2, 1945, Josef Stalin made his most important strategic decision: to strengthen foothold in Chukotka, where recently the Soviet Union had friendly contacts with the United States under the lend-lease agreement. 10,000 soldiers and officers were brought to Providence Bay. "Dalstroy"'s steamer Djurma was one of the ships, which carried the 126th light infantry corps from Vladivostok to Providence Bay in September 1945. This replacement of Soviet military troops mentioned as commencement of "Cold War" in September 1945.
After 1950, the ship appears to have been used only for the carrying of cargo.
Due to the liquidation of "Dalstroi" in 1953, all ships of this company were transferred to Far East Shipping Company. The ship «Джурма» was decommissioned in 1967. She was removed from Lloyd's Register of Shipping in 1968 to allow a ship of the same name to be built in Poland. The ship was scrapped in 1970.
Famous passengers of this ship
Alleged 1933–34 incident
In an account by David Dallin and Boris Nicolaevsky in their 1947 book Forced Labor in Soviet Russia, it was suggested that in the winter of 1933–34 the Dzhurma, ferrying 12,000 prisoners to Ambarchik, got trapped in the Arctic ice and was unable to move on until the spring. The story alleged that all prisoners died from frost and starvation with later versions indicating that surviving crew members may have resorted to cannibalism to survive. The story was propagated and widely accepted. If true, this would have been among the worst ship disasters of all time.
In his book Stalin’s Slave Ships, Bollinger examined the evidence and found that the Dzhurma did not enter service in the Dalstroi until 1935 and was not big enough to hold 12,000 prisoners. Bollinger estimated that the ship, if overcrowded, would be able to hold up to 6,500 prisoners. In addition, there are no accounts that this ship, which was not strengthened for Arctic travel, made the journey north through the Bering Strait to Ambarchik. Thus the alleged event has been proven not to be true. He suggested this could possibly be the case of a mistaken identity involving the cargo ship Khabarovsk that, if it had been carrying passengers had already had opportunity to deposit them at Ambarchik, and was trapped by ice when returning from Ambarchik in the 1933–34 winter.
Shining path
As per Soviet Union ideology, Soviet people used "shining path" to see "shining future" and to built "shining life".
The Soviet musical-comedy film Shining path was filmed in 1940.
The old ship Djurma was decommissioned in 1967. The premier of the film The Head of Chukotka (1966-67) by Vladimir Valutsky and V. Viktorov was in the USSR on 17 of April, 1967. In this film the main herou says about "shining life", to see beginning of the film.