World War II tragedy finally remembered

British RAF pilots could scarcely believe their eyes when the clouds broke over Germany's Baltic coast and they spotted an enormous luxury liner and two escort vessels apparently steaming up and preparing to flee war-torn Germany.

"We had been told Nazi bigwigs were trying to make a run for it to continue fighting in Norway," the pilot of one RAF Typhoon fighter-bomber recalls. "It was our job to make sure they didn't."

So the warplanes peeled off and dived for the floating targets in Luebeck Bay, opening fire with machineguns and rockets. They were the first of three RAF squadrons that pummelled the liner Cap Arcona and the other two vessels that afternoon.

But there were no Nazi bigwigs aboard.

Tragically, 7,500 concentration camp inmates were aboard. Most were trapped below decks and perished in agony as the burning ships foundered. Those who leapt overboard were gunned down by the RAF warplanes -- or else came under fire from Nazi SS troops on shore, who were under orders to ensure no camp inmates fell into Allied hands.

It was May 3, 1945. The next day, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery announced the surrender of German forces in Holland, Denmark and northern Germany.

When British troops arrived hours later, they found thousands of bodies washing up on Baltic beaches, most in tattered concentration camp garb, many in Nazi SS uniforms. And they found about 400 shivering and terrified camp survivors huddled on the shores.

Over 7,000 camp inmates were dead.

But the Cap Arcona tragedy was quickly forgotten in the jubilation over the end of hostilities in Europe in following days. And after the war, the division of Germany cut Luebeck Bay in half, with one shore falling to West Germany and the other to East Germany.

Now, nearly 60 years after the fact, the Cap Arcona incident is re-emerging as post-unification Germans reassess themselves and their history.

Nobel laureate Guenter Grass will speak at ceremonies at the water's edge on May 3 commemorating the incident. Grass will also read passages from his latest novel, Im Krebsgang (Crabwalk), which deals with the Allied sinking of another liner-turned-refugee vessel in the Baltic in the waning days of the war.

Grass he wrote the book to shake Germans out of their lethargy when it comes to remembering horrific chapters from their own recent history.

"It has been one of the great failings of German post-war literature that we writers -- and I include myself -- have all failed to take up this topic," Grass said in an interview.

The Cap Arcona story begins at the Neuengamme concentration camp outside Hamburg where 16,000 internees were incarcerated in the final days of World War II.

After the liberation of Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, Nazi henchman Heinrich Himmler issued strict orders to all camp commandants to ensure that no inmates fell into Allied hands.

It was a death order, of course. But Neuengamme camp commandant Max Pauly interpreted it to mean the inmates had to be evacuated.

Thus Neuengamme death march began, with 16,000 inmates led on foot from Hamburg to the Baltic coast, some 100km away.

Those who could not keep up the pace were shot and buried in shallow graves along the way.

At the port of Luebeck the 10,000 or so survivors were crammed into warehouses without food and water or toilet facilities for three days.

Finally, the 7,500 who were still barely alive were put aboard the three vessels in the harbor. The lucky ones were jammed aboard the Cap Arcona, a luxurious vessel that had plied the Hamburg to Rio de Janeiro route in the 1920s and 1930s before being converted to a troop transport.

The unlucky ones were herded aboard two small freighters, where they were shut away in total darkness in the cargo holds. They were packed so tightly there was no room to lie down or even to sit. They were held vertical only by the sheer pressure of all the bodies standing around them.

"They had all heard that Adolf Hitler was dead and that the British were advancing and would be in Luebeck any moment," Sven Schiffner, a 31-year-old banker who has become an authority on the Cap Arcona, explained.

"They were all hoping the war would be over before the SS officers could decide what to do with them," he adds. "In hindsight, it is pretty clear that the SS didn't know what to do with them. And then the Allies attacked, and it was every man for himself. And the next day it was all over."

For Schiffner it is not over, and he goes to clubs and public schools to lecture on the Cap Arcona.

"I have to do this," he explains. "Over 7,000 people died. It's only right that their memory be kept alive."