Death in the Baltic

by Cathryn J Prince

  Inge Bendrich Roedecker after the war on King Island, Australia, with pet wallaby Skippy. Inge’s father spent nearly three years in a Soviet prison camp after the war. After he was released the family moved to Australia. Courtesy of Inge Roedecker.

  Eva Dorn Rothschild in Ascona, Switzerland. A music student at the University of Leipzig when the war broke out, Eve joined the Women’s Naval Auxiliary. She was helping in the ship’s hospital when the torpedos hit. Courtesy Cathryn J. Prince.

  Evelyn “Evi” Krachmanow, cousin of Irene and Ellen Tschinkur. The three cousins were very close, and Evi’s death left an impossible hole to fill in Irene and Ellen’s hearts. Courtesy of Irene Tschinkur East.

  Alexander I. Marinesko, commander of the S-13. The sailor from Odessa knew he needed a significant “kill” in order to redeem himself in the eyes of his superiors. Courtesy of Edward Petroskevich.

  Statue honoring Alexander I. Marinesko in Kaliningrad, Russia (formerly Königsberg, East Prussia). Today the Russians consider Marinesko a hero for sinking the Wilhelm Gustloff.

  Seven

  CHAOS ON DECK

  Before the war, Gotenhafen had been an orderly seaport on the Baltic Sea. Eva Dorn, who served with the Women’s Naval Auxiliary, recalled that German sailors were stationed on and near the ships, but they rarely interacted with civilians. Now, as Operation Hannibal got underway, the population had tripled, and members of the military—some of whom had deserted, while others had been assigned to transport ships— mixed with the refugees.

  Five years into the war, the seaport was unrecognizable. People scavenged for food and scoured the streets for shelter. Throngs of refugees pushed and shoved while waiting to get a place aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff or other ships. Etiquette and civility broke down.

  Refugees who had arrived in the port one or two days before the ship left boarded in a more orderly fashion than those who boarded in the last hours. For the recent arrivals it was chaos. Accounts from survivors tell of mothers throwing their children into the water in a vain effort to protect them from crushing crowds. With discipline unraveled, people looted homes in and near the large port. Coal barges, submarines, minesweepers, and former cruise liners waited at the docks. Some soldiers deserted by donning civilian clothing and trying to board the waiting ships.

  Admiral Karl Dönitz urgently needed to transfer the German submariners to Flensburg, the naval base near Kiel. He hoped they could refresh depleted units. Among these sailors were those who had been training in the new, more powerful type of U-boat, the XXI. In addition to civilian refugees, some of the Gustloff’s passengers included these trainees.

  People waited in the harbor for days before the Gustloff departed. They saw other boats taking part in Operation Hannibal, including the Löwe, which, until Germany’s 1938 invasion of Norway, had been a destroyer originally commissioned in the Royal Norwegian Navy with the name HNoMS Gyller. Many of these waiting refugees had tried to leave East Prussia at the beginning of the month but were denied passage. For example, Peter Siegel, a doctor from Homburg-Saar, who had been stationed near the Baltic Coast for most of the war, had brought his wife to Pillau the week of January 20 when it was clear the Soviet army couldn’t be repelled. In Pillau he saw the Robert Ley, another former KdF cruise liner, dock and take on refugees. The officer in charge told Siegel that East Prussian gauleiter Erich Koch had “ordered that no one was to go on a ship, not even women and children.”1 Five days later Siegel received orders to transport injured soldiers to the port of Pillau. This time the local authorities permitted him to bring his wife. The couple arrived in Pillau on January 31 and boarded the Togo. The ship “was so stuffed with refugees it had to leave,” Siegel wrote. About 9 P.M. the ship raised its gangplank. Panicked refugees stormed the gangway and 20 people fell into the water. The first officer dove into the water to save the people from getting crushed between the pier and the hull. Finally the Togo left the pier and set off toward Kiel.

  As a member of the German Navy’s Women Auxiliary, Eva Dorn, 18, boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff one week before it left port. The former music student from Halle (Saale) was assigned to the Gustloff with other naval personnel who would be transferred to Flensburg. Upon boarding she was issued a mattress and a pillow and was assigned to sleep in the drained swimming pool. Eva took one look at the area, already crowded with hundreds of other Naval Auxiliary officers, and decided it too closely resembled a cage. Deciding to find sleeping accommodations later, Eva climbed a few steep flights of stairs to the ship’s infirmary. She made herself useful there for a few days, helping dress wounds and preparing for arriving refugees. Starting on January 28, Eva began helping to register refugees as they arrived in Gotenhafen.

  “The children came on, frozen. Their frostbitten cheeks had holes in them. Every child that came on got a dab of salve on each cheek. Mothers came on, some with dead babies in their arms,” Eva remembered. “People were pushing, but they were elated to be on the boat, they were relieved.”2

  The Gustloff’s crew showed people to cabins, assigning two and three to a bed. Many of the refugees promptly collapsed from mental and physical exhaustion. After helping refugees register, Eva returned to the infirmary. When Eva did leave the infirmary for fresh air, she noticed the ice on the deck was getting thicker and there was no sand to spread across the ice to prevent people from slipping and sliding. The lifeboat davits and ropes were frozen and the inflatable boats were frozen together.

  After nearly 70 years, it remains unclear exactly what passengers were told to do in case of a crisis. According to Eva there were no preparatory exercises. At no point prior to sailing did the crew tell passengers what to do or where to assemble in case of an emergency.

  However, according to Captain Paul Vollrath, who also served on the ship, the ship’s officers did give the refugees a crash course in basic boat safety.3 This was important considering most of the refugees had never before set foot on a ship. After instructing them how to properly put on their lifejackets, the crew also instructed the passengers not to smoke, not to use a flashlight, not to turn on radios. The crew told passengers to keep portholes firmly closed and to keep the steel blinds lowered so as not to let light leak out during the night. Lights would attract not only enemy ships operating in the region but also Allied aircraft. By this time in 1945 the Allies airplanes were making nearly round-the-clock sorties over the Baltic Sea. Earlier in the war the Allied planes had protected shipping against U-boat attacks. Now much of their activity involved firing on cities and laying mines.

  Word spread rapidly of the vast operation underway to move civilians from the path of the Soviet army. Therefore, many passengers boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff a few days before the lines that bound her to the pier were cast off. These passengers settled in, their thoughts drifting between the horrors they’d seen and the unknown into which they headed. Just three days before the Gustloff sailed, passengers were roused from what Helga Reuter remembered as a state of limbo. An order blared over the ship’s public address system: “Everybody Off!” The screech of an airraid siren filled the air.4 Every man, woman, and child shuffled off the boat. Crewmembers carried those who couldn’t walk, the wounded rode on stretchers, the newborns in their mothers’ arms. Once again the passengers stood bunched in the frigid air trying to stay warm. Air raids were frequent in January 1945. In this late stage of the war, Germans spent many hours in bomb shelters and basements as sirens seemed to sound 24 hours a day. For those who didn’t take refuge in the shelters, bags of sand and buckets of water stood ready to douse flames.

  Not every person who came off the Gustloff during the air raid found shelter in cellars or other underground locations. Some simply tried to hunker down as best they could. Finally, the all-clear whistle sounded and the thousands of people returned to their hard-won nooks and assigned cabins aboard the vessel. Fortunately, no bombs had fallen on Gotenhafen that night. When bombs did fall, it was difficult for the authorities to establish order. Rubble and bodie
s intertwined, making identification of the dead nearly impossible. Proper burial was also a luxury; at this point in the war many bombing casualties were buried in mass graves.5

  On January 25, five days before the Wilhelm Gustloff started her engines, Rose Rezas and her father trudged roughly seven miles under gunmetal-gray skies to reach the harbor in Gotenhafen, suitcases and purse in hand. Rose Rezas was most definitely not inured to the devastation she saw on the way. Rose and her father set their sights on safety. The 25,000-ton Gustloff gave her a glimmer of hope.6

  Once in Gotenhafen, Rose stared openly at the refugees. Not everyone had come from a city like hers where, before the war, shop windows beckoned and sidewalks were swept. There were tens of thousands of refugees holding their few belongings in rucksacks or valises. Some people camped in abandoned trolley cars. And yet, Rose and the others—Horst, Helga, Irene, and Ellen—had more in common with these people than she could ever have thought possible, because they all shared a common purpose: escape and survival.

  The time finally came for Rose and her companions to board the nearly 700-foot long ship. A sailor, one of hundreds on board, handed the group life jackets, and along with 18 other girls they were assigned to a space in the once-grand ballroom. The ballroom was on the same level as the promenade deck. Refusing to feel claustrophobic, Rose tried to sleep on the granite-like floor. Her feet throbbed.7

  Knowing that passengers now outnumbered available life jackets, Friedrich Petersen, the ship’s military captain, ordered all men with life vests to pass them out to women and children. There was not enough safety equipment onboard. The ship had only 22 lifeboats and, even with extra safety equipment brought aboard, there were still only enough flotation vests and life-rings for less than half of the ship’s passengers and crew.8

  “Don’t take your clothes off. Everybody put on your life jackets,” commanded a disembodied voice over the ship’s loudspeaker. The air was so hot in Rose’s small corner of the ship; she ignored the voice and shed her life preserver and her shoes. Indeed, few passengers complied with the order to keep their life jackets on; the air was simply too thick with sweat and fear. Dirty people crowded the space and babies’ cloth diapers needed changing. No matter how uncomfortable, the thought that soon she would be relatively safe bolstered Rose’s spirits. She tried to rest, to close her eyes.

  On the evening of January 29 the harbormaster instructed Captain Friedrich Petersen, who was officially in command, to prepare to weigh anchor. There were actually four captains on the bridge. Captain Wilhelm Zahn, who had been in charge of the U-boat training division aboard the Gustloff, was also aboard. Zahn stayed on with the submariners under his command being transferred to the naval base of Flensberg. There were also two captains from the German merchant marine, Karl-Heinz Köhler and Heinz Weller.

  During these final hours, the German military police boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff. The police hunted for deserters in the corridors and rooms. The police had the power of summary court martial and although they didn’t wield this power against anyone on board the Gustloff, they had used it often on the front lines. This time it seemed an intimidation tactic, nothing more, Paul Vollrath wrote.9 The crew raised the gangways under cover of darkness. They had been ordered to sail on January 30.

  A coat of gray paint and antiwar craft weapons mounted on the ship’s upper decks made it hard to discern the true face of the one-time cruise liner. However, the Wilhelm Gustloff’s dull color did nothing to mask the near elation Horst Woit felt as he marched up the gangplank with his mother, Meta, his mother’s friend Hildegard, and her daughter Christa. From the posture of the two women, the young boy sensed they were incredibly lucky to have escaped Elbing.

  “The temperature was 20 below Celsius. Oh, the four of us were very happy to be on board and thinking we were safe from those Russkies,” Horst said, smoothing his crown of white hair.10

  The Woits felt blessed for another reason. Proper boarding passes were becoming scarcer by the hour; indeed there were virtually none to be had at this late date. Previously, the ship’s printing press had printed boarding passes in German Gothic type. Some passes bore the stamp of the U-boat training division’s headquarters.11

  One bit of gossip making the rounds on the pier was that Erich Koch, the East Prussian gauleiter, had decreed that only Nazi party members could board the ship. The struggle for boarding passes intensified as word spread through the swarming harbor that the Wilhelm Gustloff was prepared to leave. Those who got boarding passes had to supply authorities with their name, address, and city of origin. Those with money and influence boarded the former KdF luxury liner first. For example, Wilhelmina Reitsch, sister-in-law of Hitler’s favorite test pilot, squeezed and searched for spare room among the thousands now on board, all vying for space.

  The 373 female naval auxiliaries of Eva Dorn’s group, aged 17 to 25, sheltered in the empty swimming pool in their blue-gray uniforms with winter overcoats. The sunlight above the pool let in the barest of light. An enormous Roman-style fresco of fit and fertile bodies, fierce horses, and shining chariots adorned the wall at one end of the pool. The female auxiliaries rested and slept on mattresses in the pool and on the surrounding deck. At the last minute, officials and high-ranking Nazi Party leaders scurried to board, some of whom were shown to the Führer Suite located on B deck. The 13 members of the Danzig burgermeister’s (mayor) group took over the suite; the entourage included the county’s Nazi Party leader, and his wife and five children, a maid, and a parlor maid.12

  Along with the Woits, Helga and Inge Reuter and their aunt Ruth Walloch, Rose Rezas, Irene, Ellen, and Serafima Tschinkur and their cousin pushed against the dense crowd forming around the ship. After helping Nazi Party officials and German military board, the ship’s crew turned their attention to those traveling with children. In dire straits, adults passed children and babies to and fro between strangers; this helped hundreds more secure passage on a boat whose hull already seemed to sag from the extra weight. Sometimes the children fell into the water or onto the pier or were caught by strangers. There were stories of soldiers taking children and disguising themselves as women, or carrying rolled blankets made to look like babies. If they were caught, they could be hung for desertion.13 Women smuggled husbands and sons in their trunks, rolling and pushing them on board so the males could avoid being pressed into the Volkssturm (Home Guard).

  Serafima Tschinkur knew her group had escaped from Gotenhafen just in time. They reached the ship on January 28 and sat in it for two days before it set sail. Like most passengers, they didn’t know that January 30 had been set as the departure date.

  Never before had the Wilhelm Gustloff carried so many people. Later, Heinz Schön, a purser in training, would devote much of his life to tallying the number of people who had been aboard the doomed vessel in order to calculate the loss of life. By his count the ship’s official manifest would show the number of passengers and crew stopped somewhere just above 6,000.14 Schön, who had been just 19 at the time of the sinking, spent many hours over the years to corresponding with surviving crewmembers and civilian passengers to piece together the story. Through his work, he learned that in fact thousands of people smuggled themselves aboard disguised or inside crates. The crew worked hard to situate everyone. Refugees who didn’t have passes waited forlornly on the pier for other ships to come. Some said 60,000 or more refugees waited on the quays hoping for a chance. One soldier reported the most pathetic sight was of children who had lost their parents in the mad race to escape: “Even their tears froze.” These children were among those given priority and assigned places aboard.

  Flocks of small boats packed with refugees followed the Wilhelm Gustloff, their passengers screaming: “Take us! Take us!” In the last hours in the harbor and as it left shore taking on those from smaller boats, the Wilhelm Gustloff added an estimated 2,000 additional undocumented passengers.15

  The Hamburg-based shipbuilding firm Bloss & Vohm had designed the Wilhelm Gustlo
ff to accommodate fewer than 2,000 passengers. However, given this emergency, the crew knew that with a little ingenuity they could pack scores more on board. They emptied the dining rooms and removed the seats from the onboard movie theater, a luxury from another time. The crew transformed the sun deck into a maternity unit and another deck served as an extra infirmary in which nearly 162 military casualties, many of whom were amputees, lay on stretchers. Nurses and medical orderlies from East Prussia attended these soldiers. Aside from the sundeck, the infirm recuperated in larger lounges and halls. The Gustloff crew tried to make these soldiers and sailors as comfortable as possible on whatever mattresses, chairs, settees, and lounges they could find.16 In addition to helping situate the sick and wounded, the crew needed to feed the soldiers and refugees, and the catering staff was asked to find food.17

  “The catering staff had been instructed to get as much food ready as possible with emphasis on much, for many people had to be fed and there could not be a question of choice selection. After all the ship had originally been designed to carry approximately 1,500 passengers and a crew of approximately 500. We now had already over 5,000 people on board and more were coming all the time. The main thing was therefore to have something hot, never mind Cordon Bleu standards,” Vollrath wrote.18

  “They let the ramp down for us to go on board,” Helga Reuter said. “We got registered. The soldiers that ran the ship had to give us their life vests. Then we were told to go to the dining room—to get our ration of bread and find ourselves a place to rest.” Upon boarding the ship, the three young women felt secure.19

  Helga and Inge Reuter and their aunt, Ruth Walloch, three months pregnant, found a place to camp. The stately dining room, now devoid of any furniture save for a grand piano, once had a lustrous parquet floor. The white columns, which once separated long tables and supported the paneled ceiling, stood like silent waiters. The last fine meal had been served long ago.