Elmenhorst (ship)
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The Elmenhorst was a cargo ship and, like the Thielbek and the Athen , was loaded with concentration camp prisoners in Lübeck at the end of April 1945 .
history
The Elmenhorst was a cargo ship of the shipping company Bock, Godefroy & Co, was delivered in 1945 by the Lübecker Maschinenbaugesellschaft (LMG) and was measured at 1925 GRT. It was in the port of Lübeck and was assigned to the so-called prisoner fleet in April 1945 by the Reich Commissioner for Maritime Shipping ("Reiko See"), the Hamburg Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann . It was to be loaded with prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp .
On the morning of April 20, 1945, the exhausted prisoners were formed into groups on the roll call area of the Neuengamme concentration camp, led to the loading station with hand luggage and loaded into wagons of 50 each. On April 21st the train reached Hamburg and towards evening the prisoners arrived in Lübeck. The train stopped behind warehouses and sheds at a dock. The two freighters Elmenhorst and Thielbek were lying next to each other on the quay . The first wagons were unloaded and the prisoners were driven onto the ship by SS men via the gangway . In the meantime, around 100 dead who had died while the train was being transported have been taken from the wagons. In the fore and aft ship, between 2,000 and 3,000 people were crammed into two cargo holds, one above the other.
Since the captain of the Cap Arcona refused to let prisoners on his ship for several days, the SS needed replacement room for accommodation. Apparently the Elmenhorst was only used as an interim storage facility to accommodate the 10,000 prisoners arriving in Lübeck. In contrast to the other ships ( Cap Arcona , Thielbek and Germany ), she also had no fuel and remained in the port of Lübeck. Gustav Krüger, the captain of the Elmenhorst , complained about the treatment by the SS and that he had nothing more to say on his ship.
After the Second World War
The Elmenhorst survived the English fighter-bomber attack in Neustädter Bucht on May 3rd. In the attacks by British planes on May 3, a total of 23 ships were sunk and 115 ships were damaged.
The Elmenhorst was confiscated in May 1945 and delivered to Great Britain . In Empire Galleon renamed, it later became the USSR assigned and in Kazan renamed. The Kazan was scrapped in the USSR in 1973.
literature
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Bernhard Strebel : The Ravensbrück concentration camp. History of a camp complex , with a foreword by Germaine Tillion, at the same time dissertation 2001 at the University of Hanover under the title The camp complex of the Ravensbrück concentration camp , Paderborn; Munich; Vienna; Zurich: Schöningh, 2003, ISBN 3-506-70123-1 ; Table of contents can be downloaded as a PDF document
- in French translation: Ravensbrück. Un complexe concentrationnaire (in the series Pour une histoire du XXe siècle ), Traduction de l'allemand par Odile Demange. Préface de Germaine Tillion, [Paris]: Fayard, 2005, ISBN 2-213-62423-2
- Wilhelm Lange: Cap Arcona , 2014, City of Neustadt in Holstein
- Christoph Ernst; Ulrike Jensen: Aks last, hope died; 1989 Hamburg, Rasch and Röhring Verlag
- Katharina Hertz-Eichenrode (ed.): A concentration camp is evacuated; Edition Temmen; ISBN 3-86108-764-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detlef Garbe: 'Cap Arcona' commemoration. In: Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Ed.): Help or Trade? Rescue efforts for victims of Nazi persecution. Bremen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86108-874-5 , p. 169