Rheinfels (ship, 1943)
The Rheinfels was a freight steamer of the DDG "Hansa" , which was ordered from Deschimag in 1939 and delivered in 1943 by the Odense shipyard .
Construction and technical data
The Rheinfels was a cargo ship ordered in 1939 from Deschimag, Seebeck plant , in Geestemünde , which was built in 1943 by AG Weser for DDG Hansa. The ship measured with 7,765 GRT was 149.8 meters long, 19.1 meters wide and had a draft of 5 meters. The load-bearing capacity was 10,150 dwt . With the drive system consisting of a steam engine with an exhaust turbine from the Seebeck plant, the steamship ran 14 knots . The extensive loading gear consisted of a total of 23 trees, including a heavy-lift tree with a lifting capacity of 120 t. The crew consisted of 59 men.
resume
The launch took place under construction number 974 on September 2, 1939 at AG Weser in Bremen, but the ship was not completed due to the start of the war. It was not until March 1941 that the ship was towed to the Odense shipyard in Denmark. The building was continued here and the final delivery took place in March 1943.
In April 1944, the Rheinfels ran aground off Sweden with a coal load for Bremen. The ship was towed free, but then sank due to water ingress on the port side. After the uplift, it was repaired in Gothenburg .
In the first week of May 1945 it was used by Olga Siemers to transport the concentration camp prisoners .
Transport of concentration camp prisoners
On May 4, 1945, shortly before the end of the war, the ship was loaded under SS supervision in Flensburg with around 1,300 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp and around 300 concentration camp prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp , who were housed in the holds under primitive circumstances . The ship left with the prisoners and around 100 SS guards, but soon had to anchor due to a screw accident. The ship was still at anchor on May 8th, the day of the surrender of the German troops.
On May 10, the Swedish Red Cross handed over the prisoners still alive from the Rheinfels to the Homberg under the supervision of the Allies and reached Malmö on May 11 as part of an action initiated by Folke Bernadotte .
See also
delivery
In the same month, the Rheinfels was confiscated by Great Britain and delivered to the Soviet Union in April 1946 . Here it was operated as Admiral Nachimov until May 1947 and then handed over to the Polish government. From 1950 she continued to operate as Kosciuszko with the Polish shipping company Polskie Linie Oceaniczne . In June 1970 she made her last trip from Hong Kong to Chinnampo near Namp'o in North Korea , where she was scrapped.
literature
- Hans Georg Prager: DDG Hansa , Herford Koehler Verlag 1976, ISBN 3-7822-0105-1
- Hermann Kaienburg: The Neuengamme Concentration Camp 1938–1945 . Bonn: Dietz, 1997