M/S Wilhelm Gustloff Final Voyage Survivor, Missing, & Dead Lists
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M/S Wilhelm Gustloff Final Voyage Survivor, Missing, & Dead Lists Translated from The Gustloff-Archiv by Heinz Schön *This work was originally published by Heinz Schön in Die Gustloff Katastrophe, Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany – 1999. Pages 433 to 499. It was translated into English for the first time in June, 2017 for free educational, historical, and research purposes on the Wilhelm Gustloff Museum website. Attachment: Documentation The loss of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff - January 30th, 1945 - Data - Numbers - Names - Facts Overview I. Preliminary remarks. II. Report of the Commander of the 2nd U.L.D. on the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945. III. List of people reported on board the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, January 30th, 1945. IV. Ships of the Martial and Commercial Marines involved in the rescue of Wilhelm Gustloff sinking. V. Missing VI. Dead VII. Survivors Equipment: 1. Report of Corvette Captain Zahn on the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945, given in Kiel on February 4th, 1945, to the Eastern Naval Commander for the transfer to the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. 2. Rescue vessels involved in the rescue of those shipwrecked on the Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th and 31st, 1945 in the Baltic Sea. 3. Report of Corvette Captain Zahn to the Commanding Admiral of the U-boats, for the attention of Corvette Captain Mueller Arnecke on February 8th, 1945 on the rescue of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff. Collected in Swinemünde, then transferred to Kiel. 4. List of the survivors saved from the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff by the NDL steamer Göttingen on the night of January 30th, and 31st, 1945. 5. Notification list from the Commanding Admiral of the U-boats on April 12th, 1945, at the time of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945 in the Baltic Sea, near Stolpmünde. Missing female members of the Kriegsmarine. 6. Notification list from the Commanding Admiral of the U-boats on April 12th, 1945, at the time of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945 in the Baltic Sea, near Stolpmünde. Missing female members of the Kriegsmarine. (Marine helpers to the U-boats included.) 7. List of naval helpers who were reported missing in the command line of the Kriegsmarine on June 16th, 1945. Those who were on the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945. 1 8. List of the civilian crewmembers of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff who were reported missing on February 15th, 1945 by the Hamburg-South American steamship company, Hamburg. 9. Notification list from the Commanding Admiral of the U-boats on April 12th, 1945, at the time of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945 in the Baltic Sea, near Stolpmünde. Members of the Kriegsmarine fallen on January 30th, 1945. 10. Protocol on the funeral of 143 deaths, which, after the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, were handed over to the burial officer of the seaport of Pillau by various ships. Held at Pillau I cemetery on February 2nd, 1945, 11pm at the chapel in a mass grave. 11. Evidence of deaths on the occasion of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, compiled by the registry office I Berlin, Berlin-Dahlem, Lentzeallee 107, from the death book of the town hall of Gotenhafen, 1945. 12. List of the survivors (incomplete) of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff (refugees, war marines, naval helpers, soldiers, civilians, civil servants and other persons). Compiled according to existing documents from Gustloff-Archiv: Heinz Schön. I. Preliminary remarks On January 31st, 1945 there was a loss with the Wilhelm Gustloff. Under this heading, the departments of the German Red Cross, and other search services including the German service for the notification of family members of the German Wehrmacht, registered names, facts of missing, dead, and survivors of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945 in the Baltic Sea. In the post-war period, numbers of people who embarked on the last trip of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, the ships involved in the rescue operation, as well as figures of deaths and deaths, were published in German and foreign newspapers, magazines, and books, radio and television. Survivors of the disaster night can be inaccurate, understated or exaggerated. In a few months after the end of the Second World War, I began to collect all the documents which could be obtained about the Gustloff catastrophe and its connections in my Gustloff Archives. Included in this task from the outset was the identification of concrete facts about the number of people who embarked on the last journey: passengers, the missing and the dead as well as the survivors. I needed 39 years for this comprehensive investigation. The following task was to be accomplished: 1. Contact with all search services and services dealing with the loss of M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, including the transparency and evaluation of the documents available at these search services and services. 2. Determination of all ships of the naval and naval armies and of the Luftwaffe, who participated in the rescue of Gustloff on the night of January 30th. Identification of 2 the addresses of the commanders, captains and deck officers of these vessels for the purpose of the survey are also included. 3. The questioning of commanders, captains, officers and ascertained crew members of all rescue vessels by means of personal visits, interviews, telephone calls, letters and special questionnaires, evaluation of these statements and reports. 4. Purchasing the originals or copies of the lists and lists of saved, dead and missing persons, as well as those who were in the archives, obtaining the partly preserved list of embarkations of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff of the last journey on January 30th, 1945. 5. Survey of all the survivors of the Gustloff catastrophe, whose names and addresses were known to me to learn more addresses survivors. 6. Procurement of the opinions of military bodies on the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff and its connections, in particular the opinion of the surviving commander of the 2nd division of the U.LD., Gotenhafen-Oxhöft, Korvettenkapitän Wilhelm Zahn. It was only through this intensive, comprehensive, targeted investigation and the screening of the existing archive material of state and private archives and collections that I was able to gain more comprehensive knowledge of the Gustloff catastrophe, its connections and more concrete figures and facts of the embarked, missing and surviving persons of the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff. II. Report of the Commander of the 2nd Division U.L.D., on the sinking of the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30th, 1945: After the sinking of M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, a whole series of important questions have been asked and discussed in the circle of the survivors, maritime departments, the members of Gustloff victims and those interested in the history. E.g. The question of why the Gustloff left Gotenhafen-Oxhoft without sufficient escort, why the coastal route was not chosen, why on zig-zag course and maximum speed was not run on the Emergencey Route 58, and whether a larger number of shipwrecked passengers could have been saved. On these and other questions, Corvette Captain Wilhelm Zahn, Commander of the 2nd Division U.L.D., who witnessed the ship's sinking, a few days after the disaster on February 4th, 1945, he sent a written report to the Naval Command in the East to the Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine. - Appendix 1 to the documentation – III. People posted as on board the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff, January 30th, 1945: On January 30th, 1945, after the taking on of the last refugees by the steamship Ravel, arriving from Pillau, the following were on board the M/S Wilhelm Gustloff. - 4,974 refugees from East Prussia, from the Memelland, and from West Prussia, mainly from the Elbing, Gotenhafen, Gdansk and Sopot regions. - 918 Officers, unofficial officers, and men of the 2.UL Division, Gotenhafen-Oxhoft. - 173 Crew members of the merchant navies. 3 - 162 Wounded. - 373 Women’s Naval Auxilary members of the 2. U.L.D. and units of the submarine division, as well as the M.H. Readiness of the Wehrmacht Commander Gotenhafen, the Navigation School Gotenhafen, the Navy Flak Division 219, the Navy Flak Division 249, the Navy Flak Division 259 and a few assistants of other units. The total number of 6,600 passengers on board during the accident night is not an absolute number, but it seems very realistic. It may be that during the last embarkation hours, some refugees could not be included in the embarkation list or were not recorded in figures, but their number would hardly have exceeded 100. The often-published number of 904 survivors, according to the investigations carried out by me up to December 31st, 1950, is no longer true; More than 1,200 shipwrecked people were saved. Also on the structure of the on board passengers, the composition of the 6,600 passengers arranged by gender, is now available: Assuming that among the refugees who were on the Gustloff there were only very few men, and even very few isolated women, but mainly mothers with two or more children, the naval helpers and the female civilian occupiers are considered in the following picture: Of the 6,600 persons on board there were: 1,300 men and women. 5,300 women and children. Among the 5,300 women and children, the number of children was approximately 3,100.