[Peter Clare]

CAP ARCONA and THIELBECK (May 3, 1945)

Four days after Hitler's suicide the German pre-war luxury liner Cap Arcona, 27,561 tons, anchored in Lubeck Bay along with two other ships the Thielbeck and Athen, were bombed by RAF planes of 83 Group, 2nd Tactical Air Force. On board the three ships were around 7,000 prisoners from the Nazi concentration camps at Neuengamme near Hamburg and Stutthof near Danzig, half of whom were Russian and Polish POW's who were being evacuated ahead of the advancing British troops. Arriving at the port of Lubeck they were forced on board the 1,936 ton Athen to be ferried out to the Cap Arcona whose captain, Kapitän Heinrich Bertram, refused to let them on board protesting that his ship could only accommodate 700. Threatened with arrest and execution, he relented and watched as thousands of prisoners were herded into the holds of his ship. Guarding them were some 400 SS troops. (These ships were to be sailed out to sea and then scuttled, drowning all on board according to Himmler's order to all concentration camp commanders that 'surrender was unacceptable, that camps were to be immediately evacuated and no prisoner was to fall alive into the hands of the enemy). When the Athen had finished its ferrying duties a group of prisoners were then transferred from the Cap Arcona (which was now seriously overcrowded) back to the Athen whose captain then ran his ship against the quay at Neustadt and hoisted a white flag, thus saving his 1,998 passengers.
A short distance away, the civilian liner Deutschland (21,046 tons) was anchored and about to be converted to a hospital ship. Firing their rockets, the Typhoons of 184 Squadron from Hustedt attacked first, hitting all three ships. The second attack was by 198 Squadron from Plantlünne led by Group Captain Johnny Baldwin. The third attack by 263 Squadron from Ahlhorn attacked the Deutschland as did the fourth attack by 197 Squadron, also from Ahlhorn. The Deutschland, burning furiously, keeled over and sank four hours later. Fortunately there were no prisoners on board and the crew had deserted the ship during the first attack. The 27,561 ton Cap Arcona, with nearly 4,500 prisoners trapped below and suffocating in the smoke and flames, turned over on her side and lay partly submerged and burning out. Some managed to break out and cling to the hull of the ship, others jumped into the freezing Baltic Sea. In all, 314 prisoners and 2 crewmembers were rescued. The Thielbeck (a 2,815 ton freighter) was left a smouldering wreck and sank forty-five minutes later. Of the Thielbeck's 2,800 prisoners, only around 50 were saved. Many survivors, trying to swim ashore, were mown down mercilessly in the water from machine guns of SS troops stationed on shore. They only rescued those in SS uniform, about 350 at the most. Altogether, over 6,500 people died in this tragedy.
The RAF pilots knew nothing about the prisoners on board and it was not until many years later, in fact 1975, that they learned that they had slaughtered their own allies! For weeks after the sinking, bodies of the victims were being washed ashore, to be collected and buried in a single mass grave at Neustadt, in Holstein. For nearly three decades, parts of skeletons were being washed ashore, the last find, by a twelve year old boy, was in 1971. The history of this tragedy is depicted in the 'Cap Arcona' Museum in Neustadt, opened in 1990. Max Pauly, the ex-Commandant of Neuengamma Concentration Camp and SS doctor Alfred Trzebinski, were later tried and convicted of war crimes. Both were hanged in Hamelin Goal.