Cap Arkona
On the 19th of April, evacuation of this camp by train towards Lübeck began. Between the 20th and 26th of April 11,000 people were gathered in the port there. SS Command decided to transform the luxury ship "Cap Arcona", the freighters "Athen" and "Thielbek" and the ship "Deutschland" lying in the roadstead 2 miles away into a floating prison. 9,400 prisoners were locked in terrible conditions in cabins and holds, without light and access to fresh air, food, water and medications. There were fears that the boats would be sunk by guard crews or German submarines. The dead were simply thrown overboard.
At the same time, the liquidation of KZ Stutthof near Gdansk began. Nearly a thousand people, mostly Poles and Russians, including many women and children, but also Danes and Norwegians, were loaded on two barges, which reached the Bay of Lübeck on the 2nd of May and were moored to the ships "Cap Arcona" and "Deutschland". However, their crews refused to accept further prisoners because both units were overcrowded. On the 3rd of May at night, the barges were unmoored and started drifting towards the shore. Whoever had the strength was looking for help on land, where Wehrmacht soldiers and members of the SS, Hitlerjugend and Volkssturm were already waiting and willing to get rid of witnesses of Nazi crimes a few hours before the British army arrived.
In the morning of the 3rd of May, the British aircraft patrolled the area between Flensburg and Rügen in order to cut off a possible escape route for the Nazi leaders to Norway, which was still occupied by the Germans. At 2.30 p.m. one of the squadrons reached the Bay of Lübeck and attacked first the "Athen" lying in the port, which responded with anti-aircraft fire. After receiving three hits, the crew of the ship gave up. In the meantime, other planes took the course for "Cap Arcona", "Thielbek" and "Deutschland" in the roadstead, which temporarily had no prisoners on board. All the ships were sunk, "Thielbek" sank within 20 minutes together with 2,800 victims. The whole "Cap Arcona" was on fire, after an hour it leaned to one side and settled on the bottom of the shallow part of the bay. The ice-cold water was covered with the bodies of the dead and those fighting for survival.
Several hours after the so-called "Cap Arcona" catastrophe, the city of Neustadt in Holstein, near which the ship sank, was liberated by the British army. For the next few years the waves of the bay kept throwing the remains of the assault victims ashore.
Out of 9,400 prisoners from 24 countries, only 2,400 managed to survive. In four towns surrounding the Bay of Lübeck there are mass graves - mostly nameless - of an undetermined number of victims of this tragedy:
In Neustadt in Holstein at the northern cemetery: 64
In Neustadt in Holstein at the southern cemetery: 258
In Neustadt in Holstein at the Jewish cemetery: 100
In Neustadt in Holstein at the cemetery by the clinic: 100
In Scharbeutz: 1,128
Timmendorfer Strand: 812
Timmendorfer Strand-Niendorf: 113
