ON THIS DAY

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May 3, 1945

German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona sunk

SS Cap Arcona, was a large German ocean liner, later a requisitioned auxiliary ship of the Kriegsmarine (Nazi German War Navy), and finally a prison ship in the later months of World War II.

In May 1945 she was heavily laden with prisoners from Nazi concentration camps

On 3 May 1945, three days after Nazi German dictator Hitler's suicide in Berlin, and only one day before the unconditional surrender of the German troops in northwestern Germany to British Army commander Field Marshal Montgomery, Arcona was bombed by the Royal Air Force in the western Baltic Sea, killing about 5,000 people; with more than 2,000 further casualties in the sinkings of the accompanying vessels of the prison fleet, Deutschland and Thielbek. More than 7,000 survivors of concentration camps were dead at the hands of the Allies.

This was one of the largest single-incident maritime losses of life in the Second World War.

None of the prison flotilla were painted / marked with Red Cross symbols (although the Deutschland had previously been intended as a hospital ship, and retained one white painted funnel with a red cross), and all prisoners were concealed below deck, so the pilots in the attacking force were unaware that they were laden with concentration camp survivors.

Although Swedish and Swiss Red Cross officials had informed British intelligence on 2 May 1945 of the presence of large numbers of prisoners on ships at anchor in Lübeck Bay, this vital information was not passed on. The R.A.F. commanders ordering the strike believed that a flotilla of ships was being prepared in Lübeck Bay, to accommodate leading SS personnel fleeing to German-controlled Norway in accordance with Admiral Dönitz's orders.

Equipped with lifejackets from locked storage compartments, most of the SS guards managed to jump overboard from S.S. Cap Arcona. German trawlers sent to rescue Cap Arcona's crew members and guards managed to save 16 sailors, 400 German SS men, and 20 SS women. Only 350 of the 5,000 former concentration camp inmates aboard Cap Arcona survived. From 2,800 prisoners on board the S.S. Thielbek only 50 were saved; whereas all 2,000 prisoners on the S.S. Deutschland were safely taken off onto the S.S. Athen, before the Deutschland capsized.

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