Investigating a Tragedy

The Sinking of the Cap Arcona

In the last days of the Second World War, one of the worst shipping disasters ever to occur took place in the Bay of Lübeck. More than 6,000 concentration camp prisoners who were being held on board freighters and passenger ships lost their lives as a result of a terrible mistake. British fighter planes attacked and sank the vessels in the mistaken belief that they were carrying German troops. An extensive collection of documents held by the Arolsen Archives is still being used today to help give the victims their names back and clarify the fates of those involved in the tragedy.

Prisoners Sent Marching to Their Deaths

In April 1945, the SS evacuated hundreds of concentration camps and sent their prisoners on “death marches” in an attempt to conceal Nazi crimes from the approaching Allied troops. The Nazis seized three ships moored in the Bay of Lübeck to hold the prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg: a passenger ship called the “Cap Arcona” and two freighters which bore the names “Thielbek” and “Athen.” The SS forced around 9,000 people onto freight trains or marched them on foot to Lübeck, before ferrying them to the ships lying at anchor far out in the bay.

Floating Prisons

The Cap Arcona, originally a luxury liner built to accommodate 850 passengers, was carrying 4,300 prisoners. They were accompanied by around 400 SS guards and almost 100 crew members. The prisoners had neither food to eat nor water to drink.

Little Chance of Survival

British fighter bombers attacked the two ships on May 3, 1945. The “Cap Arcona” caught fire, but no lifeboats were available for the prisoners, so many jumped into the ice-cold Baltic Sea and tried to swim ashore. With the water temperature below 10 degrees, the shore 4 kilometers away, and the prisoners already completely exhausted, it is unlikely that any of them survived. To make matters worse, both the SS guards and, tragically, the British pilots continued to shoot at the prisoners who were trying to escape.

The “Cap Arcona” capsized as did the “Thielbek” which was also hit several times. Of more than 7,000 prisoners on board the two ships, only about 600 survived. Many historians now believe that the Nazis deliberately set the stage for the catastrophe, fully aware that British bombers would likely attack the ships.

Documents Held by the Arolsen Archives

After the war, numerous records were produced in the aftermath of the disaster as part of efforts to investigate what had happened. The authorities had to recover, identify, and bury the bodies. Prisoner numbers on the victims’ clothing were often the only means of establishing their identity. Because those responsible at the time did not yet have access to the extensive records kept in the concentration camps, many of the dead remained nothing more than numbers and could not be identified.

Only later, when the vast number of concentration camp documents and other records had been archived, was it possible to match names with the prisoner numbers. The online archive of the Arolsen Archives contains reports on the recovery of bodies, the account book of the Thielbek, and a plan of the Cap Arcona cemetery of honor in Neustadt, to mention just a few of the materials available today. It also contains documents recovered from the wreck of the Thielbek, including “death certificates” issued by the SS for prisoners who had died in the days and weeks leading up to the disaster that occurred on board the ships.

Often, victims’ families knew nothing of the fate of their loved ones and searched for information about them in the wrong places. Only when they submitted an inquiry to the Arolsen Archives did they find the correct documents. In some cases, it was even possible to tell families where their loved ones were buried more than 70 years after their deaths. Finding out that a relative was among those who died in the Bay of Lübeck usually comes as a very painful surprise.

Walery Bronicki

The Arolsen Archives still hold the personal effects of around 2,000 former concentration camp inmates, personal belongings that were confiscated from them on their arrival at a camp. Many of these items belonged to prisoners who died in the disaster in the Bay of Lübeck, like Walery Bronicki, for example. He was a prisoner of war from Poland who had been deported to Germany by the Nazis for forced labor, and he ended up working in a sub-camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp.

In June 1945, during one of the daily salvage operations on the beaches of the Bay of Lübeck, the municipal police in Neustadt recorded his prisoner number and arranged for him to be buried nearby. In the 1950s, the Arolsen Archives began investigating death marches and the burial sites of unknown dead, a project they called the “Attempted Identification of unknown dead.” Based on the record of Walery Bronicki’s prisoner number in Neustadt and several historical documents held in the archives, it was possible to reconstruct his path of persecution.

In this way, one of the previously unknown victims of the disaster was given his name back at least. However, Walery Bronicki’s personal belongings are still waiting to be returned to his family.

Kazimierz Biel

Kazimierz Biel from Krakow was just 19 years old when the Nazis deported him to the Neuengamme concentration camp. He died on the Cap Arcona too. He was buried at the cemetery in Haffkrug in the Bay of Lübeck in October 1950. His personal effects were stored at the Arolsen Archives for decades before Kazimierz Biel’s family was finally found in 2018 as part of the #StolenMemory campaign. His nieces and nephews not only received his personal effects, which included his student ID, but also learned for the first time that their uncle was buried in Germany.

One of the Few Survivors

Willi Neurath was another of the prisoners held on the Cap Arcona (on the left in the photo, as a forced laborer during construction work at the “Messelager Köln,” a large forced labor and detention camp in Cologne). He was imprisoned on various occasions and spent years in detention during the Nazi era for his involvement in the resistance. Because he had never learned to swim, Willi Neurath stayed on board the ship when it capsized in flames on May 3, 1945. In the evening, when the air raid was over, British soldiers rescued him and the few other survivors and brought them ashore in Neustadt.

A Joyful Reunion

What Willi Neurath did not know was that his wife Eva was also in Neustadt. She was working as a naval auxiliary and her unit had been transferred there to escape the Red Army. Eva Neurath had no idea that her husband was on the Cap Arcona. In the last months of the war, she had only received vague information about where he was being held. On the morning after the attack, Eva Neurath met her husband completely by chance. He was wounded and covered in dirt, and she did not recognize him at first. In 2020, the couple’s son Bruno Neurath sent us some photographs and told us his parents’ incredible story after discovering documents about his family in the online archive.

The haunting memory of this moment, this miraculous reunion of my parents on the beach in Neustadt, lingered on in our family for decades. After my father’s death in 1961, it stayed with my mother and with us children, moving us deeply whenever it came to mind.
Bruno Neurath-Wilson, son of Willi Neurath

Bruno Neurath also hopes that telling his parents’ story will help shape how future generations remember the past. He wants to create a lasting tribute to the many people who risked their lives by taking part in resistance against the Nazi regime. With that aim in mind, he has also worked with students at Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, who made a short film about the fate of Willi and Eva Neurath in 2013 as part of their communication design course (only available in German):