In late January of 1945,with the Allied victory imminent,nearly 10,000 German refugees attempted to flee the advancing Red Army aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a cruise liner-turned-escape ship. As the ship set sail in the dark of night, three torpedoes from a Soviet submarine struck the boat, causing catastrophic damage, and throwing women, children, the elderly, and wounded soldiers into the frigid waters of the Baltic Sea. When a few hours later first light broke,over 9,000 people had drowned in one of the worst maritime ...
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In late January of 1945,with the Allied victory imminent,nearly 10,000 German refugees attempted to flee the advancing Red Army aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, a cruise liner-turned-escape ship. As the ship set sail in the dark of night, three torpedoes from a Soviet submarine struck the boat, causing catastrophic damage, and throwing women, children, the elderly, and wounded soldiers into the frigid waters of the Baltic Sea. When a few hours later first light broke,over 9,000 people had drowned in one of the worst maritime disasters of all time. For 65 years, both East and West kept this story hidden. The drowned were citizens of the future East Germany and part of the Soviet Bloc. And the German victims inspired little sympathy in the West. In Death in the Baltic, award winning author Cathryn Prince reconstructsthe story of unimaginable horror by drawing on original interviews with ten remaining survivors and newly declassified records. Weaving the personal narratives into the broader history, she finally gives this WWII tragedy its place in history.
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"World War II not only wiped away whole villages and populations. It also wiped away pieces of history." (Page 175, Death in the Baltic)
Cathryn Prince tells a harrowing story, one of a mass murdering. Many think of the Titanic as a tragic shipwreck; the Wilhelm Gustloff sunk with more than 4 times the passengers of the Titanic aboard.
I learned so much from this book; the information about this piece of hidden history is priceless. I learned of the tortures that the Germans had to face during WWII. Commonplace Germans were afraid of the Nazis too, not just the Jews and other persecuted races. German families became refugees of a war that their own country started, but they wished to take no part in it. These families just wanted to get away... and the Wilhelm Gustloff was their ticket out of the war zone.
Sadly, this ship, carrying so many to safety, was chosen as the object of a torpedo attack. This great and mighty hulk sunk to the bottom of the Baltic Sea, taking an almost uncountable amount of souls with it.
How is it that no one has really heard of this ship and its tragic end?
Because it happened during a deadly war. (The Germans controlled the news of the sinking, and actually, not many knew about it at the time the sinking took place in 1945. The few survivors were silent. The story didn't travel far.)
"Death in the Baltic" holds all the information you could ask for about the Wilhelm Gustloff. It contains volumes of information of the ship, her history, her demise, and the travelers aboard her decks.