A naval history footnote to the deportation of the Danish Jews in 1943
by Thomas Harder
This article is based on work by the author and Lene Ewald Hesel on their book En sten for Eva – Bogense 1855-Theresienstadt 1943 (due for publication by Gads Forlag, autumn 2022). A Danish version of the article is available here.
The Germans took far longer to deport the Jewish population from Denmark than they did in other countries occupied during World War Two. They probably wanted to avoid friction with the Danish government, not to mention protests and unrest that might have forced them into unpopular and costly emergency measures. However, when the Danish government resigned on 29 August 1943, the Germans imposed martial law and the Reich Commissioner, Werner Best, decided that it was time to act. On 8 September, he sent a telegram to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin recommending that the state of emergency be exploited to solve the “Jewish question”. The ministry replied on 17 September that it approved mass deportation in principle and awaited his detailed plans. The following day, Best informed Berlin that there were 1,673 Jewish families in Greater Copenhagen and 33 in the rest of the country, a further 1,208 who had emigrated from Germany and 110 families who were no longer registered as part of the Jewish community. Best requested “a ship capable of accommodating at least 5,000 people” for transport from Greater Copenhagen and the rest of Zealand. Trains were to be used for the deportations from Funen and Jutland.[1]
By the time the Germans struck on the evening of 1 October 1943, most of the Jewish Community had gone underground, and some had already fled to Sweden. They were responding to the increasingly persistent rumours of impending action that had been circulating since the government resigned and to warnings of what lay ahead by G.F. Duckwitz, Maritime Attaché at the German Embassy, to his Danish and Swedish contacts. Duckwitz probably acted in concert with Best who wanted to limit the impact of the deportations and inflict as little damage on relations with the Danish authorities as possible.[2]
Georg Friedrich Duckwitz continued to serve in the German Foreign Service after the war, including as ambassador in Copenhagen, 1955–1958. In this photo, taken at his farewell reception, he is talking to Niels Bohr. (Photo: The Museum of Danish Resistance).
When the German transport ship MS Wartheland set sail from Copenhagen for Swinemünde on the morning of 2 October, she had 198 Jews and 150 Communists on board, a far cry from Best’s estimate of 5,000. Three other groups were taken by rail from Aalborg (2 October 1943) and Horserød (13 October and 23 November 1943), bringing the number of deported Jewish people to 472.[3]
MS Wartheland. (Photo: reproduced from Martin Schmidtke, Rettungsaktion Ostsee 1944/1945, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 2006 ("Privatphoto, Andersen & Co.").
Best probably did not envisage needing capacity for 5,000 but had to give his superiors the impression that his goal and expectation was “with one blow […] to arrest and deport approx. 6,000 Jews”.[4] This raises two questions: Firstly, could the MS Wartheland have carried 5,000 people? Secondly (and an answer to the first question is suggested in this second one): Why do sources from October 1943 (police reports, eyewitness accounts, a Swedish diplomat’s notes, articles in underground papers, etc.) talk about two or three German prisoner transport ships at Langelinie or in the Port of Copenhagen, when later descriptions only mention the MS Wartheland?
The MS Wartheland was a 6,783 GRT cargo ship built at Nakskov Shipyard for the Norwegian shipping company Westfal-Larsen & Co. A/S in Bergen. She was seized by the German Navy in 1942 while still under construction. The original name was Falkanger, Westfal-Larsen’s third vessel of the name. However, the Germans named her Wartheland at the launch on 20 December 1942. Wartheland was one of the four Reichsgaue into which the part of Poland incorporated into the Reich in 1939 had been carved up. After fitting out, trials, etc., the Wartheland left Nakskov at the end of August to serve as a target ship at the submarine schools in Mürwik and Travemünde.[5]
General arrangement of MS Wartheland (Nakskov Skibs- og Søfartsmuseum).
Since the Wartheland was not a passenger ship, the number of people it could carry would have depended on the conditions considered adequate for them. As the war drew to a close, the vessel returned to Copenhagen on 11 February 1945, carrying 2,028 wounded soldiers, 200 refugees, 115 paramedics and the bodies of 25 soldiers and/or refugees who had died during the voyage from Stettin (now Szczecin in Poland). They were the first of 363,580 refugees and wounded soldiers from German-occupied territories in the East shipped to Copenhagen between 11 February and 3 May 1945. A fortnight or so earlier, the Wartheland had taken approx. 3,500 refugees from Danzig-Neufahrwasser (Gdansk) to Swinemünde (Świnoujście).[6] Given the panic and chaos of the mass exodus from the East, it is safe to assume that 3,500 was the upper limit for cramming people together on the ship. There is also a considerable difference between 3,500 and the “at least 5,000” Best estimated. In other words, there is good reason to believe that the MS Wartheland was one of several German ships ordered to convey prisoners from Copenhagen to Germany.
The Port of Copenhagen papers in the Danish National Archives may make no mention of the MS Wartheland around 1 October 1943, nor of other vessels that might have been used to carry prisoners. However, the German Navy archive does. For example, a document dated 28 September 1943 from the German Navy High Command (Seekriegsleitung, SKL) to several of its sub-commands, including the Admiral commanding in Denmark and the Naval Transport Authority (Kriegsmarinedienststelle, KMD) in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Stettin and Oslo reads: “For the transport of 5,000 Jews [the word “people” has been crossed out and replaced with “Jews”] from Copenhagen to Swinemünde as per a special order from the Führer, Monte Rosa, Wartheland and Lappland must be ready to load in Copenhagen on 1 October at 20:00”.[7]
The German plan was that the deportees would embark from Copenhagen at night. The Monte Rosa was to take 2,000 prisoners and the other two ships 1,500 each. Details were to be agreed with the local authorities, but it was decided in advance that no catering would be provided, nor would anything be done to improve conditions on board. The SS was to provide 50-60 guards per ship. It is not stipulated clearly what was meant by “SS”, for example, whether the Schalburg Corps or Danish Waffen-SS volunteers were to serve as guards.
The ships were to depart for Swinemünde as early as possible on 2 October and no later than 12:00. No ‘escort ships’ were to accompany them[8] , but it “seemed appropriate” to let the three vessels sail south along with Convoy 407, which was due to leave Oslo for Stettin on 30 September. Befehlshaber der Sicherung der Ostsee (BSO, a naval authority based in Aalborg responsible for minesweepers, escort ships, etc. in the Baltic Sea), was ordered to arrange the convoy.
MS Lappland. (Photo reproduced from Martin Schmidtke, Rettungsaktion Ostsee 1944/1945, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 2006)
Both the Lappland and Monte Rosa usually transported soldiers and equipment between Oslo and Aarhus. At the end of September, the Monte Rosa was in Aarhus and due to sail for Norway as usual. However, she was diverted to Copenhagen. The Lappland was to sail from Oslo to Aarhus on 30 September and continue to Copenhagen instead of returning to Norway. On this voyage, the Lappland was not to carry cargo to Aarhus, only soldiers who could disembark quickly, allowing the ship to continue to Copenhagen with the minimum delay.
The Wartheland, which had been deployed at the submarine school in Mürwik and/or Travemünde since August 1943, was in Copenhagen on 28 September. It had spent three weeks in the port’s 10-metre dock having its magnetic mine defence system (MES) repaired. On 28 September, she had spent the day on “Schleifenfahrt”, i.e. routine trials to calibrate the compass to compensate for distortion by the ship’s magnetic field. Wartheland was ordered not to return to the torpedo school but to remain in Copenhagen for the time being.[9]
The German Navy’s transport service was stretched to its limits, so it was important to have the ships back on their regular routes as soon as possible. KMD Stettin, which was responsible for the port of Swinemünde, was ordered to make all necessary preparations in plenty of time to ensure a speedy turnaround in Swinemünde. As soon as the prisoners had disembarked, the Monte Rosa was to sail for Aarhus, while Lappland was to sail back to Copenhagen, where it was scheduled to dock on 9 October. The Wartheland was to leave for Travemünde as soon as possible to resume its duties at the submarine school. Upon arrival at their respective destinations, the three ships were to be routinely “gassed”, i.e. fumigated with the poison gas Zyklon B to eradicate lice and other pests. Gassing was a fairly extensive operation followed by three days of ventilation before ships were used again. [10]
The 13,882 GRT Monte Rosa was built in 1930 for passenger traffic between Germany and South America. She served as barracks from 1940 until 1942 and then as a transport ship on scheduled services between Oslo and Aarhus. At the end of the war, Monte Rosa was taken by the British Government as a prize of war and renamed the Empire Windrush. (Photo: Wikipedia)
The diversions of the Lappland and Monte Rosa to Copenhagen did not go quite to plan. An overview of the transport situation in Norway and “Ostland”[11] shows that the Lappland, the transport ships Drechdijk and Ulanga and the escort ship Peter Wessel[12] were scheduled to sail from Oslo Fjord to Aarhus, while the Monte Rosa does not appear on the list of ships in transit. The Moero does, however, having sailed from Aalborg for Copenhagen on 29 September at 17:00 to take part in a “special operation”. The Moero was taken out of her regular service between Aalborg and Oslo to transport prisoners instead of the Monte Rosa. But why?
The MS Moero (5,277 GRT) was built by the Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft in 1937 and belonged to a Belgian shipping company. The Germans seized her in 1940, and the ship sailed under the name H16 before reverting to its original name. (Photo: http://www.bellabs.ru/51/Photos/_Attack.html#Moero).
The KMD Aarhus log shows that the Monte Rosa called at Aarhus on 25 September and was then at the disposal of BSO, i.e. the authority charged with arranging ships to transport the prisoners from Copenhagen to Swinemünde. After that, almost an entire week passes before the Monte Rosa is mentioned in the log again: On 1 October, while the Lappland departed for Copenhagen with troops and cargo from Oslo, the Monte Rosa was docked in Aarhus and loading supplies. Monte Rosa left for Oslo on 4 October.[13]
The log offers no explanation why the Lappland did not accompany the Monte Rosa on the voyage to Copenhagen. However, in an article in Jyllands-Posten on 25 January 1946, the former head of KMD Aarhus, Lieutenant Captain of the Naval Reserve Friedrich Wilhelm Lübke, told the editor, Tage Mortensen, that he and the Captain of the Monte Rosa, Heinrich Bertram, neither of whom were Nazis, had informed SKL that the Monte Rosa was suffering from engine damage – a condenser had burnt out, they claimed – which made it irresponsible to put the ship to sea. When his superiors insisted, Lübke declared that he and Bertram would abdicate all responsibility for the consequences and demanded the order be issued in writing. SKL then agreed that the Monte Rosa could remain in Aarhus until the damage was repaired and instead sent the Moero to Copenhagen. However, this was not all that Lübke did to sabotage the operation. He also ensured that news of the impending round-up leaked to Danes in Aarhus, who may have passed it on and warned the Jewish community.[14]
After the war, Friedrich Wilhelm Lübke was active in the CDU and served as Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, 1951–54. (Photo: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung)
Heinrich Bertram was captain of the Monte Rosa when the ship transported refugees from Gotenhafen (Gdansk) to Copenhagen in March 1945. He was then put in command of the Cap Arcona, which lay at anchor in the Bay of Neustadt and housed approx. 4,500 concentration camp prisoners. On 3 May 1945, the Cap Arcona and other prison ships in the bay were mistakenly targeted by British fighter bombers, an attack that cost the lives of approx. 5,000 prisoners. Bertram survived. After the war, he worked on fisheries issues for the German Ministry of Agriculture and Food.[15] (Photo: https://hochhaus-schiffsbetrieb.jimdo.com/vor-75-jahren-versenkung-der-kz-h%C3%A4ftlingsflotte-in-der-l%C3%BCbecker-bucht/).
SKL’s overview of the transport situation on 1 October states that the Wartheland and the Moero were ready in Copenhagen. (As mentioned, the Wartheland had been in Copenhagen for over three weeks, while the Moero had arrived at 10:00 the day before). The Lappland had left Aarhus at 08:30 the same morning and was expected to arrive in Copenhagen at 19:00 carrying cargo from Oslo, which had to be unloaded before the prisoners could be brought on board.[16]
When the Gestapo, the German police and their Danish helpers (including some Waffen-SS volunteers at home on leave) started the arrests at 09:30 pm on Friday 1 October, the Wartheland, Lappland and Moero were docked at Langelinie, ready to take the prisoners on board. Fifty men from Wachbataillon Kopenhagen and Danish police officers from Station 3 at Store Kongensgade 108 blocked access to the pier at Pramrenden canal and the start of the upper promenade.
The round-up was completed around midnight. After that, the prisoners were taken to various centres in Copenhagen – including the Synagogue and the tram depot at Svanemøllen, whence they were taken to Langelinie in the early hours of the morning.[17]
Several eyewitnesses have described the scenes on the quay. For example, Leo Säbel, 19 at the time, later wrote:
To begin with, we were gathered on the quayside, where a few who were married to non-Jews were released. The Germans were shouting and screaming and pushing us around. Everything had to be quick. “Schnell, schnell!” was the constant cry.
It was dark and cold.
A single floodlight lit up the gangway leading to the very big ship. We had to go up it, which was no problem for us youngsters, but some had been taken from the old people’s home in Krystalgade, and a lot of them couldn’t walk. It took a while to get them up there, but up they had to go. There was a sick old woman, I don’t know who she was. She couldn’t walk and they ended up putting her on a mattress or something like that. Then ropes were tied around it, and she lay there and was hoisted up by a crane ...[18]
The last to come up the gangway was Chief Rabbi Friediger:
They must have been terribly busy, as they struck me hard on the back, letting me know I had no time to pick up one of my bundles that I had dropped on the gangway, nor one of my galoshes that had slipped off my foot. Weiter! Weiter! [Get a move on!] they kept shouting. As soon as I was on deck, the gangway behind me was hoisted up! One last look towards Langelinie, towards the pier, towards the vast dome of the Marble Church, towards the big petroleum tanks – and again a hoarse shouted command:
Get down, Jew-pig!” [...][19]
Wartheland left Langelinie Quay as planned at 10:00 on Saturday 2 October. Onboard were, as mentioned, 198 members of the Jewish Community and 150 Communists. The original plan to have 50-60 SS men as guards was reduced to two or three SS men and a platoon of German police officers (probably 25-30 men).[20] Wartheland sailed out to the roadstead to wait for the convoy from Oslo, which she was to accompany to Swinemünde. Fog near Elsinore delayed the convoy, which consisted of the transport ships Donau and Isar and the escort ship Iller accompanied by Sperrbrecher 172.[21] The wait added to the dread felt by the prisoners. Chief Rabbi Friediger wrote:
We had no idea what they were going to do with us. The ship stopped for hours in open sea. Are we going back home? Or is a hatch going to be opened so we all drown?”
When Convoy 407 finally passed Copenhagen, the Wartheland joined it, and at 5:00 the next morning, the five ships arrived off Swinemünde. The Donau, Isar, and Iller continued up the Oder to Stettin, while Sperrbrecher 172 and the Wartheland docked at Swinemünde.[22]
On the morning of Sunday 3 March, the command was given: Up on deck! A glorious blue sky stretched out above us. After 24 hours in a dark room, we saw the light of day again, and the sun shone more beautifully than ever before – or so it seemed.
We had reached Swinemünde, where a train was waiting for us.[23]
In Swinemünde, the Danish prisoners were split up: The Communists were sent east to the Stutthof concentration camp at Danzig (Gdansk), while the Jewish prisoners were transported to Theresienstadt, some 60 km north of Prague, arriving on the evening of 5 October. A train carrying 83 prisoners from Funen and Jutland had arrived that same morning.
Approximately 6,000 Danes were sent to concentration camps. As mentioned previously, 472 of them were Jewish, 53 of whom perished in Theresienstadt: 29 women and girls, 22 men and boys and two infants born in the camp. Approximately 3,000 were political prisoners, including the 150 Communists on the Wartheland. A total of 260 Danish political prisoners died in various concentration camps. The rest of the deportees consisted of approx. 1,900 police officers (80 of whom did not survive), 141 border guards (about 40 of whom did not survive) and 420-450 “antisocial elements” and “criminals” (165 of whom did not survive).
On 2 October 2008, the 65th anniversary of the deportations, the Theresienstadt Association unveiled a memorial stone at the end of the Langelinie Quay. The donor was an anonymous former Theresienstadt prisoner. (Photo: Lene Ewald Hesel)
I would like to express my gratitude to Hans Strelow and Hans Krensler at https://forum.skalman.nu/viewtopic.php?t=39282, to Simon True, to Sebastian Remus and Nina Stähle, who helped find German archive material, to Siegfried Matlok, who shared his knowledge of Lübke and Bertram, and to Poul Groos and Christopher Munthe Morgenstierne, who helped clarify the concepts of the Sicherungsschiffe and Sperrbrecher.
Sources
Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen
Københavns Havn, Havnekaptajnen: Mørklægning (1940-1945) 284: 1940 - 1945 mm.
Bundesarchiv – Militärarchiv, Freiburg
RM 7/2162 Reichsmarine, Seekrigsleitung
RM 45 III/6 Ärtzliches Kriegstagesbuch des Leitenden Sanitätsoffiziers beim Admiral Skagerrak, 1944 Dezember 1 – 1945 Februar 28
RM 45-III/243 Kriegstagebuch, KMD Stettin, Zweigstelle Kopenhagen bezw. Der KMD Kopenhagen bezw. Des Seetransportchefs Skagerrak Kopenhagen, 14. Juni 1940-31. Oktober 1943, 16. November 1943-31. Dezember 1944, 15. Januar 1945-31. Januar 1945
RM-45-III-245 Kriegstagebuch, KMD Kopenhagen, Zweigstelle Aarhus
Bibliography
- Bak, Sofie Lene (2002): “Jødeaktionen oktober 1943” i Gads leksikon om dansk besættelsestid 1940-1945, Gads Forlag.
- Barfod Jørgen (2002): “Koncentrationslejre”, Gads leksikon om dansk besættelsestid 1940-1945, Gads Forlag.
- Blum, Jacques & Bøggild, Eva (2010): Jødeaktionen i Danmark – Oktober 1943, Forlaget Goldberg & Mor, i kommission hos Syddansk Universitetsforlag.
- Curilla, Wolfgang (2020): Die deutschen Ordnungspolizei im westlichen Europa 1940-1945, Ferdinand Schöningh.
- Fracapane, Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini (2008): “Myter og misforståelser om deportationerne til Theresienstadt”, Rambam Tidsskrift for jødisk kultur og forskning, årg. 17, nr. 1. https://tidsskrift.dk/rambam/article/view/105343/154155
- Fracapane, Silvia Goldbaum Tarabini (2021): The Jews of Denmark in the Holocaust Life and Death in Theresienstadt Ghetto, Routledge.
- Friediger, Max (1946): Theresienstadt, J.Fr. Clausens Forlag, København.
- Harder, Thomas (2020): De uønskede – De tyske flygtninge i Danmark 1945-1949, Gyldendal.
- Jerichow, Anders (2013): Oktober ’43 – Danske jøders flugt til Sverige eller deportation til Theresienstadt, kildesamling, Humanity in Action.
- Kreth, Rasmus og Mogensen, Michael (1995): Flugten til Sverige – Aktionen mod de danske jøder oktober 1943, Gyldendal.
- Lauridsen, John T. (2012), under medvirken af Jakob K. Meile: Werner Bests korrespondance med Auswärtiges Amt og andre tyske akter vedrørende besættelsen af Danmark 1942-45 (i noterne forkortet WBK), Det Kongelige Bibliotek & Selskabet for Udgivelse af Kilder til dansk Historie, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2012.
- Schmidtke, Martin (2006): Rettungsaktion Ostsee 1944/1945: Zusammenfassende Dokumentation einschließlich Darstellung der beteiligten Schiffe und Boote von Handelsflotte, Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe und Heer, Bernard U. Graefe Verlag
- True, Simon (2018): “De tyske troppetransporter til Norge”, https://blog.dengamleby.dk/aarhusogandenverdenskrig/author/simon/
(Translated from Danish by Tam McTurk)
The Danish version of this article was published in the February 2022 issue of Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift – The Journal of the Danish Society of Naval History
[1][1] ”Werner Best an das Auswärtige Amt 8 September 1943” (Lauridsen 2012). These estimates were based on a number of sources, including a card index that the anti-Semitic genealogist Lorenz Christensen drew up for the German Embassy. He completed his index of more than 2,000 cards in August 1942 and handed it over to the Gestapo. Best also had access to material from two raids: on 31 August 1943, three armed Gestapo officers, including the Dane Paul Hennig, broke into the office of Supreme Court lawyer C.B. Henriques in Nybrogade and seized community records. On 17 September 1943, the Gestapo raided the Jewish Community office on Ny Kongensgade, confiscating ledgers for 1942–43, a 1935 voter roll and an overview of Jewish immigrants to Denmark since 1933. (Kreth & Mogensen 1995, p. 24; Jerichow 2003, pp. 107-108; 119).
[2] Bak 2002, et al.
[3] Fracapane 2008, p. 57. 470 were sent to Theresienstadt, one to Sachsenhausen and one to Majdanek.
[4] Cited from “Landsretsdommen over Werner Best m.fl. – 18. juli 1949”, in Jerichow 2003, p. 573.
[6] RM 45 III / 6; RA, 1256, Port of Copenhagen, Harbour Master, 1940–1945, 284; Schmidtke 2006, p. 256; about the mass exodus from the occupied territories in the east and the refugees in Denmark: Harder 2020.
[7] RM 7-2162. The KMD was the German naval authority responsible for transport, auxiliary vessels, etc.
[8]“Escort ship” is used in this article to cover the German term Sicherungsschiffe, a broad category of vessels that had usually been built for other purposes – ferries, trawlers, cutters, etc. – but were converted/fitted out for use as escort ships. Many of them had anti-aircraft guns of various kinds, they often carried depth charges and sometimes a hydrophone (but not active sonar).
[9] RM 45 III/243; RM 7/2162.
[10] RM 7/2162; True 2018.
[11] RM 7/2162. The Reichskommissariat Ostland covered the occupied territories in the Baltic states, eastern Poland and the western parts of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.
[12]The Peter Wessel was a Norwegian ferry seized by the Germans and used as a transport ship and later an escort ship. http://warsailors.com/forum/archive/forum/read.php-1,1840,1840.html
[14] “En tysk Søofficer i Aarhus gav advarslen til de danske Jøder”, Jyllands-Posten, 25 January 1946; see also Peter Præstgaard: ”Monte Rosa, jøderne og Aarhus”, Besættelsesmuseets Venners årsskrift, 2013; and Siegfried Matlok: “Happy end i Aarhus midt i Holocaust”, Jyllands-Posten, 9 November 2013. The 1946 article says of Lübke: “He trained in the German Navy, was a shipmaster for the Hamburg-South America Line and was commissioned as an officer in the German Navy during the previous World War. He has translated his experiences at sea into a number of widely read novels. He was one of the most prominent opponents of Nazism in Schleswig-Holstein and had to flee to South America when the Nazis came to power. He came back when the authorities threatened to arrest his family. On his return, he spent weeks in prison and was repeatedly arrested in the years leading up to the outbreak of the new war. Only his position as a leading member of the Farmers’ Union in South Schleswig saved him from the concentration camps. When war came, despite his age – he is now 59 –· he was called up for active service as a naval officer and put in charge of maritime transport between Jutland and Norway from a base in Aarhus. He faced a court martial in Aarhus in 1944 for declaring in the company of other officers that Germany had lost the war from the start. After the capitulation, he returned to his farm in Angel.” See also, e.g.: https://www.kas.de/de/web/geschichte-der-cdu/personen/biogramm-detail/-/content/friedrich-wilhelm-luebke-v1
[15] https://thomasharder.dk/da/prammen-i-klintholm-og-katastrofen-i-neustadt-bugt-maj-1945-overskudskapitel-fra-de-uonskede-de
[17] Chief of Police, Confidential Messages, 1 October 1943 at 10:00–2 October 1943 at 10:00 (HSB; excerpt reproduced in Jerichow 2003, p. 186); Curilla 2020.
[18] Säbel 2010. https://joediskinfo.dk/artikler/arrestation-deportation. Säbel’s description is in Blum & Bøggild, 2010. The woman on the mattress was most likely the 88-year-old, terminally ill Eva Salomonsen, who had been dragged from her home at Bredgade 51. In July 2020, a stumbling stone was laid in her memory in front of the property.
[19] Friediger 1946, p. 28.
[20] The police belonged to the 1st Company of the Reserve-Polizeibataillon 65 ”Cholm” under the command of Lieutenant of the Reserve, Kneifel. (Curilla 2020, p. 137). About the ships: “Transportlage Norwegen und Ostland vom 1. October 1943 ”(RM 7/2162) and RM 45 III / 243; RM 61-I / 65; RM 73/7.
[21]The convoy carried a few thousand troops from Infantry Division 181 with 105 tons of equipment, 98 soldiers on leave, approx. 420 convicts with 70 guards and a solitary civilian.
Sperrbrecher (“mine barrage breakers”) were usually merchant ships. Sometimes called “pathfinders”, they were converted to sail ahead of convoys and protect them from mines. They had reinforced bows and were loaded with timber for extra buoyancy in case they struck a mine. Their job was to pave the way through mined waters by setting the mines off before more vulnerable transport ships or submarines hit them on their way to or from their bases. The Sperrbrecher were also equipped with VES equipment, which with the help of electrical cables pulled around the hull formed a powerful magnetic field far in front of the ship to set off magnetic mines at a safe distance. They had fairly powerful anti-aircraft guns and often barrage balloons as well.
[22] RM 73/7.
[23] Friediger 1946, p. 30.