Death in the Baltic

by Cathryn J Prince

  By now it was nearly 2:30 in the morning on January 31. With nearly 500 survivors aboard, the T-36 quickly ran out of room. Inside the engine room, two sailors helped Helga shed her iceencrusted clothing and don warm, dry apparel, all of it donated from the crew’s own clothing. A third sailor wrapped her in a woolen blanket. A fourth sailor handed her a double vodka. She looked down and realized she had only one shoe. It was missing a heel. Slowly the icebox chill left her body and the heat, painful at first, flooded her body. Helga opened and closed her fingers to encourage blood flow. Then, the awful truth about Inge and Ruth came as her body warmed.

  “As for my sister and aunt,” Helga said. “I never heard from them again.”

  Since the T-36 had escorted the Wilhelm Gustloff out of Gotenhafen, it was the first rescue vessel to arrive on the scene. It had been working the area some time before it found Helga and her companions in their life raft.

  The young captain and his T-36 crew also rescued Captains Wilhelm Zahn, Friedrich Petersen, and Heinz Weller, in addition to pulling several hundred people out of the Baltic Sea. Not all of them were alive and some were dying. Rescuers kept coming upon an all too familiar sight; aimlessly drifting lifeboats filled with the frozen dead. Some of the people had died from exposure, others from the sheer exhaustion of trying to balance on rickety life rafts. People were sucked under the propellers of rescue ships. From inside the rafts and lifeboats, a maddening chorus of screaming women, children, and men filled the air. Dead bodies floated past.

  Most rescue boats took hours to locate survivors from the Wilhelm Gustloff, searching for bodies to match the pleading voices calling over the black waters. Many lifeboats and bodies had drifted far from the site of the attack. When rescue boats did arrive, their captains and crews found a floating debris field filled with dangerous pieces of metal, splintered wood, rucksacks and bodies.4

  “On January 31, 1945, at about 1 A.M., we passed the sinking spot of the Gustloff. Despite submarine alerts we were able to save a woman and a petty officer amongst the drifting bodies,” wrote one officer who had been on a rescue vessel.5

  Two decades after the sinking, Maj. Erich Schirmack wrote to Dönitz’s subordinate Vice Admiral Conrad Englehardt about the rescue effort. While returning from a mission with five other boats, Schirmack heard the Gustloff’s distress call. His boat was heading back to Pillau to pick up refugees. Schirmack’s vessel arrived on the scene an hour after hearing about the sinking. It sailed as fast as possible, but “could only recover corpses.”6

  The Admiral Hipper, a heavy cruiser that T-36 had escorted from Gotenhafen, arrived on the scene soon after hearing the distress signal. It had left Gotenhafen with 1,377 refugees and 152 crewmembers already on board. The Hipper had seen quite a lot of combat during the war, from operating against Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic to participating in operations against Allied convoys trying to supply the Soviet Union. The ship and its crew had been drafted into doing construction work in Gotenhafen. The boat was actually on its way to Kiel for refitting when it heard the distress call. The Hipper’s crew tried to pluck survivors from the black waters of the Baltic Sea. Her captain, fearing another submarine attack, didn’t stay long. The ship sailed away.

  His fear was understandable, but Alexander Marinesko never saw the Hipper. In fact, he’d dived far beneath the midnight-dark sea to escape the punishing shock waves of depth charges.7 Three more minesweepers eventually arrived and saved nearly 200 more people from drowning or exposure.

  Dramatic scenes played out throughout the night, aboard the rescue ships and in lifeboats such as Captain Paul Vollrath’s. The lifeboats were built to safely hold between 60 and 70 people. After a quick head count Vollrath realized close to 90 people sat on board. The boat was heavy, the bodies and sodden clothing pushed the gunwales nearly flush with the water.

  For the rest of his life, Vollrath’s decision to refuse more people remained one of the hardest and yet the most necessary choices he ever had to make. Inside the boat meant life, or at least a chance at life. Outside the boat death was certain. “Even today I often ask myself, ‘Why did you not at least attempt to get some more into the boat?’ But still my answer is that should I have done so, the boat would have capsized, there were too many people swimming in the water,” said Vollrath.8

  Finally the wind no longer whipped about, the sea calmed, and the swells came less frequently. Just after 10 P.M., an hour after the three torpedoes hit, Vollrath decided to stop rowing away from the ship so he could conserve his energy. He also didn’t want to take the craft too far from the site of the attack. About 50 yards separated his boat from the Wilhelm Gustloff. Vollrath saw the emergency lights glimmering against the ship’s upper decks; they cast a spectral glow. He thought he saw a person standing on the side of the ship, which now rested at sea level. He wondered if his mind was simply playing tricks on him. When he looked again, there was nobody there and quite suddenly the Wilhelm Gustloff was gone, pulled into the watery abyss.

  Among the 90 people inside the lifeboat was a doctor, and for that Vollrath was thankful. He asked the physician to look after people as best he could. Meanwhile, Vollrath passed around his cigarettes and bottle, which, if nothing else, helped shore up morale. “There was not much else one could do,” Vollrath said. Every now and then one of the survivors saw what appeared to be the shadow of a ship moving on the water’s surface and then stopping to pick up survivors. The people in lifeboat No. 6 waited, and waited, for their turn.

  Shortly before midnight, nearly two hours after the S-13 fired its torpedoes at the Gustloff, the Löwe moved alongside Vollrath’s lifeboat. Vollrath told the captain of the torpedo boat that he and his passengers were stable and in fair shape, and he suggested that the crew continue searching for those hapless souls still in the water or those people floating on the more exposed rafts. Before the Löwe left Vollrath’s location to do so, one of its crew announced through a megaphone that they were preparing to drop depth charges. The British had developed depth charges in World War One to use against German submarines. It was unlikely that Löwe’s action would sink the S-13 or any other submarine still prowling about. However, its shock waves could loosen the submarine’s joints or perhaps damage its instruments, which would force the sub to surface, allowing guns from the Löwe to finish it off.

  Explosions rumbled beneath the water and Vollrath’s lifeboat creaked. The severe shockwaves threatened to split the lifeboat open. The depth charges, however, yielded no results: Captain Marinesko’s submarine was no longer in the vicinity.

  At this point silence filled the lifeboat. Passengers sat alone with their thoughts. To Vollrath, it felt as if only a short time had ticked by since thousands of lives were literally swept away, frozen to death. When he rowed away from the Wilhelm Gustloff, Vollrath glimpsed a gigantic hole in the Gustloff’s foredeck, the size of which had nearly eviscerated the boat. The hole was just below where the drained swimming pool had sheltered the Women’s Naval Auxiliary. “In one hour this inferno had lasted and dragged love, hopes, and wishes down to the bottom of the sea. What is one hour, 60 minutes, 3,600 seconds? Sometimes it may appear to be [an] eternity and I am sure no one will ever forget this,” Vollrath wrote in his postwar memoir.

  He remembered the ship’s siren screaming as the Gustloff went down. “Landlubbers always say that ships do not have a soul. Technically this behavior is easily explained by stress, but I thought that it so very much reminded me of the last outcry of a dying animal,” Vollrath said.9

  In his memoir, Vollrath recounted how the Löwe worked for several hours more, picking up survivors here and there, until its captain realized nothing more could be done. It was time for the Löwe to return to lifeboat No. 6. The beacon from Vollrath’s flashlight helped guide the torpedo boat back into position.

  That night the Löwe saved more than 400 people. Vollrath wondered how many others might have lived had their lifejackets been supplied with flashlights. The survivors in lifeboa
t No. 6 scrambled over the side of the lifeboat and onto the torpedo boat, which was fairly low in the water. Only then did Vollrath notice a crippled old man, unable to move, lying in the boat. Vollrath reached for him and helped carry him aboard the Löwe.

  Once the survivors were safely on board the Löwe, the crew worked furiously to warm them. They cut away nearly frozen clothing from men and women and hosed their frigid bodies with warm water. Then they tucked the survivors into bunks in twos and threes. Hot drinks were served and blankets handed out. Members of the ship’s crew gave their clothes to the survivors.

  After he had boarded the Löwe and changed into warm, dry clothing, a woman approached Vollrath. She told him that she and the others from the lifeboat had been angry that he had repeatedly turned away the Löwe to rescue others. Now she wanted Vollrath to know she understood his decision, and that he had been right after all.

  The Löwe also plucked Horst Woit from his lifeboat. He doesn’t remember his mother pushing him up and over the side, or her telling him it would be okay, that they were now safe. He doesn’t remember any motherly words of consolation or assurances. One minute he sat next to her and 68 other people, and the next minute strong arms lifted him through the air. Being carried up from a lifeboat to a rescue boat didn’t guarantee safety. Some people slipped through rescuers’ arms into the sea and drowned; others died minutes after being pulled from the water. Horst Woit was lucky.

  On board, an officer guided the young boy to the engine room. The room radiated heat. The officer helped Horst out of his frozen ski pants, jacket, and socks and into dry, if slightly large, clothes. He gave Horst something hot to drink. The officer asked Horst if he would like a marmalade sandwich.

  “Yes, of course,” Horst remembered answering, “with butter too please.”10

  Though alone, Horst said he didn’t feel frightened but he was anxious to find his mother. So much had happened so quickly, he hadn’t much time to think, but now he began to wonder where the crew had taken his mother. Meta Woit had been pulled aboard the Löwe a little after Horst; it took time to transfer all 70 people inside the lifeboat. When Meta boarded the Löwe, sailors offered her a change of clothing and something hot to eat and drink. Then she searched for Horst. It was a story she often told Horst in the years after the sinking.

  “Have you seen my son?” she asked every crewmember, every passenger. No one answered the wild-eyed mother because no one knew the answer. There were so many people, so many families split apart in the confusion of the sinking and rescue operation. An officer pointed Meta toward a scratchy-looking woolen blanket piled at the bow. Meta forced herself to peer beneath the mound. Small bodies lay tucked together in lifeless slumber. Though her little yellow-haired boy was not among them, she nearly retched at the sight. At dawn, Meta found Horst asleep in a bunk, wedged between the wall and an elderly man.

  Others weren’t so fortunate. Children, mothers, fathers were stacked like cordwood on the boat’s decks. There weren’t enough rough wool blankets to drape all the corpses.

  Around 5:30 A.M. on January 31, a small patrol boat, the VP–1703, spotted a dark shape bobbing on the waves. At first the sailors couldn’t figure out whether it was debris or bodies. It was a lifeboat, but its passengers appeared dead, all of them twisted and frozen, floating inside the water-filled craft. Nonetheless, Petty Officer Werner Fick jumped in to inspect. To his astonishment he found an infant wrapped in a woolen blanket snug between frozen corpses. He was the last official survivor of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Fick and his wife adopted the baby.11

  Rose Rezas thinks she was rescued around 4 A.M., but since she had no watch she couldn’t be certain.12 Inside her lifeboat, which was only half full, one little boy kept yelling over and over for everyone to stay strong, to not give up hope. Finally, after what seemed an interminably long time, a ship appeared. The crew threw over a rope and the refugees ascended to safety one at a time. Rose promptly passed out upon hitting the deck. She woke to find herself wearing men’s clothes. A sailor handed her a whiskey to drink. With each sip her anguish grew. Where was her sister Ursula? Feeling quite worried, Rose almost didn’t notice the officer standing before her.

  “There’s a girl who looks like you in the next cabin,” the sober-looking officer said. Rose timidly got to her feet and followed him, cautiously hopeful. She passed through the door, her eyes searching. Leaning against a wall, Ursula sat eating.

  Nearly 70 years later, Irene Tschinkur, who was 11 at the time, doesn’t remember the moment her body hit the sea. She doesn’t remember feeling a slap as the waves rushed to meet her. She does remember feeling afraid she would drown. While submerged beneath the icy surf, she felt her lungs might pop. She doesn’t remember seeing bodies or debris. But those memories pale in comparison to the moment she and her mother, Serafima, found each other in the dark water and swam together toward a lifeboat packed with people. They tried to hang on to the outside of the little vessel. Their exertion was in vain; the people inside boat smacked at their hands with oars. Irene and Serafima treaded water. When Irene remembers it today, it seems that they waited for hours in the water. Naturally, there was no way to tell how long they were in the water until the T-36 picked them up.

  “The German navy men were so helpful, stripped our wet clothes from us, and put us in hammocks with warm blankets,” Irene said, remembering how she studied the beads of condensation on the ceiling as she lay in the hammock. Getting out of her wet, frozen clothes was relief and torture, the sudden warmth painful. After more than six decades, certain sights and sounds can still pull Irene back in time.

  “We watched somebody operate on a woman’s leg which showed a big hole, and most of the night we kept throwing up seawater,” Irene said.

  Irene and her mother still had no inkling if little Ellen had survived. The thought that she too had died twisted the mother’s gut since she was fairly certain that Evi, or Evchen as she was also called, had drowned. So mother and daughter thawed and sipped hot liquids, and if they talked, Irene doesn’t remember what they said.13 They simply waited in limbo together with the hundreds of other refugees aboard the boat. So many were waiting for news of loved ones.

  The pair spent the night on the T-36, and the next morning the ship arrived at Sassnitz, a seaside port on the Isle of Ruegen, just off the coast of present day Stralsund, Germany. The Red Cross had set up a makeshift camp with the German authorities to help sort out the survivors. The sailors had given them their clothes but had no shoes to provide. They tramped barefoot through the snow to the camp.

  Hitler had envisioned using the 30-mile-long island of Ruegen with its deep bays and narrow straits to build a British-style beach resort. He wanted the Baltic Sea island to be the largest resort ever to have existed, with room for up to 20,000 people at a time in a 2.5-mile-long complex. The hotel Prora, situated between Sassnitz and Binz, was built between 1936 and 1939. Like the KdF cruise liners with which the Wilhelm Gustloff had once sailed, the hotel too would offer affordable vacations for the average German worker. It was called a “Seaside Resort for the Common Man.” Each room boasted two beds, a wardrobe, and sink; guests would have used communal toilets, showers, and ballrooms located on each floor. In spite of Hitler’s ambitious plans, no guests ever checked into the hotel, for when Germany invaded Poland, the idea and the buildings were abandoned. Today the island is a popular tourist destination and can be reached by ferry or car over a causeway.

  German authorities processed the refugees, recording their names and where they wanted to go. Like many survivors, Serafima and Irene Tschinkur were assigned to a Red Cross ship. Once on board they found a place to sit. They still didn’t know Ellen’s fate. No one on the island remembered seeing the child, but then again many children and parents had become separated. The mother was heartsick. If her little daughter hadn’t made it into a lifeboat, she was dead. She told Irene to wait while she looked for their clothes, which supposedly had been transferred from the T-36 to this Red Cross ship
. Suddenly, a cry of joy pealed through the boat. Serafima had found Ellen’s little red wool cable-knit sweater in the survivors’ clothing pile. After survivors had been pulled from the sea and given dry garments, rescuers had gathered up the sodden clothes. The Red Cross had taken the clothing, hoping to match the garments with their owners. Surely, she thought, this little hand-knit sweater was proof of life. She scooped it into her arms and tore through the ship, going from room to room until she came upon a room full of crying children who had lost their mothers. There sat Ellen, quiet and bewildered. She did not speak one word.

  A lifeboat had rescued the six-year-old. When the T-36 came on the scene and began transferring people from the lifeboat, it was clear the blond-haired girl was too small to climb the rope ladder on her own. Instead, she was transferred aboard in a sling seat. Just before Ellen’s turn came to ride the sling, she watched a lady in a rescue chair. The lady was pulled up, but her frozen hands were unable to firmly grasp the ropes. She slipped and fell, hitting her head on the lifeboat. She sank.

  The terror of falling into the water and being submerged remains with Ellen Tschinkur to this day. She has trouble talking about her rescue. She still cannot wash her hair under the shower since standing under the faucet reminds her too much of being submerged under the sea. So few children Ellen’s age were rescued. Her white fur coat helped save her life; it shone like a beacon in the dark.

  Milda Bendrich couldn’t believe her 2-year-old Inge made nary a peep the entire time, from the moment the first torpedo slammed into the Wilhelm Gustloff until they were rescued aboard the T-36. Like survivors in the other lifeboats, Milda too climbed a ladder from her lifeboat to the safety of the T-36 deck. Her hands were frozen but she maintained her white-knuckled grip on her baby girl. Once on board, Milda tried to warm Inge. “A woman with a fur coat put me inside and kept me warm,” Inge Bendrich Roedecker said.14 Together, the lady and Milda made sure Inge was warm, safe, and unscathed. Medical personnel took Inge in another cabin for further examination. Only then did Milda tend to her own basic needs. She changed into dry clothing before sitting down on a hard chair.