SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

Short Synopsis

The harrowing story of a German-Canadian who survived the worst maritime disaster in history: The
sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Returning to his former home in Poland, he recounts a terrifying journey
that ended when he immigrated to Canada.

Sinking The Gustloff

G E N E R A L

GERMAN-CANADIAN HORST WOIT EN ROUTE TO LOCATION OF THE SINKING

Wilhelm Gustloff Quick Facts:

Date Launched:

May 5, 1937

Date of Sinking:

January 30, 1945

Tonnage:

25,484 Gross Register Tons

Length:

208.50 metres (684.1 ft)

Beam:

23.59 metres (77.4 ft)

Capacity:

1,465 passengers (designed)

Gustloff Sinking Quick Facts:

Number of Passengers:

10,500+

Number of Civilians:

~9000+

Number of Military Personnel: ~1000-1500
Number of Children under 14: ~6000+
Casualties v. Titanic:

Gustloff: 9,400

The

Titanic:

1,490

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

A unique human story about witnessing and surviving the worst maritime disaster in history and the
challenges faced by survivors in confronting their dark personal tragedies in the face of resistance by
their countrymen, neighbours, friends and family members.

German-born Canadian, Horst Woit, journeys back to his childhood home in the Polish city of Elblag to
recount how, as a 10 year old boy in January 1945, he and his mother escaped the terrifying revenge of
the Soviet Red Army by fleeing. They joined the sea of humanity - mostly women, children and elderly-
that poured into the Baltic port of Gotenhafen in search of sanctuary. With renewed hope, Horst and his
mother, along with 10,000 others, board the former German cruise ship, Wilhelm Gustloff, to escape to
Western Germany. Despite the risk of mines, hostile submarines and aircraft en route and cramped,
uncomfortable conditions onboard, Horst and his mother are relieved to escape. However, prowling off
the Polish coast is a Soviet submarine with a captain in desperate need of a ‘kill.’ Relief is displaced by
doom as three Soviet torpedoes hit the Wilhelm Gustloff. The ship sinks within an hour. The tragedy
claims the lives of over 9000; most of the dead, are children.

Horst Woit is joined in Gotenhafen/Gdynia by two other remaining survivors, Eva Rothschild, who volun-
teered to work on the ship in 1945 and Gustloff expert, Heinz Shoen, assistant purser on the Wilhelm
Gustloff.

In addition to exploring the tragedy through the eyes of the survivors, the film examines the unique bond
between the survivors as they travel to the resting place of the ship to commemorate the 60th anniver-
sary of the sinking, and the personal challenges they have faced in telling their stories to friends and
family and the world.

Shot in locations in Canada, Poland, Russia, Switerland and Germany, “Sinking The Gustloff” also
features interviews with former UN High Commission on Human Rights Secretary, Alfred De Zayas and
Russian Naval Expert and director of the Russian Central Naval Museum, Sergei Kurnosov.

Sinking The Gustloff

SY N O P S I S LO N G

HORST WOIT, EVA ROTHSCHILD AND HEINZ SHOEN AT LOCATION OF SINKING

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

An award winning independent documentary filmmaker, graphic designer, journalist and political activist,
Marcus Kolga produced, wrote and directed Sinking The Gustloff. Kolga was inspired by Günter Grass’ book,
“Crabwalk” published in 2004, which gives a fictional account of the sinking of The Wilhelm Gustloff and explores
the past and current political nuances of the event and the subsequent historical narrative that has since
emerged.

Kolga was born in 1973, and raised in Toronto by his Estonian parents, who as children, were forced to flee their
homeland when Red Army troops attacked and occupied the tiny independent Republic of Estonia in 1944.

In the early 1990’s Kolga moved to the United States, where he studied political science at The University of
Illinois. As an editor at the student weekly newspaper, he was a regular political columnist and music critic.
Kolga has continued writing since then and his pieces have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader
and his foreign policy commentaries have been published in The Globe and Mail.

In 1999, Kolga founded a weekly North American newspaper, The Northern European, which published news and
cultural pieces about the Northern European region. At the same time he founded Toronto based Liefa Commu-
nications, a graphic design and communications firm that is currently developing the Global Museum on Com-
munism for the Washington D.C. based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, whose hounourary
chairman is President George W. Bush.

Kolga’s first documentary project, (also funded by OMNI Television) GULAG 113, is about his grandfather’s
experience and escape from the Soviet forced labour camp system. The documentary was filmed on location in
Russia, Estonia and Canada and features an interview with Pulitzer Award winning author and Washington Post
columnist, Anne Applebaum. The film has been screened and broadcast around the world and won several
international awards.

As a lifelong political activist, Kolga is an
active participant in Canadian federal politics
and other international organizations whose
primary aims are social justice and democratic
issues.

Kolga currently has two historical documen-
tary projects, as well as his first feature film in
development.

Kolga lives in Toronto with his wife and two
children.

Sinking The Gustloff

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER: MARCUS KOLGA

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

Sinking The Gustloff

HISTORY OF THE WILHELM GUSTLOFF

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a German passenger ship constructed by the Blohm and Voss shipyards. She was named after

Wilhelm Gustloff, the assassinated German leader of the Swiss Nazi party (NSDAP). The Wilhelm Gustloff was launched on

May 5, 1937 measuring 208.50 meters (684 feet) long by 23.59 meters (77.39 feet) wide with a capacity of 25,484 Gross

Register Tons. She was requisitioned into the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) on September 1, 1939 and served as a hospital

ship during 1939 and 1940. Beginning on November 20, 1940 she was stripped of her medical equipment and repainted from

her hospital ship colors (white with a green stripe) to standard naval grey. The Wilhelm Gustloff was then assigned as a

floating barracks for naval personnel at the Baltic port of Gotenhafen (Gdynia) – near Danzig from 1940 onwards.

The Wilhelm Gustloff's final voyage was during Operation Hannibal in January 1945, when she was sunk while participating in

the evacuation of civilian refugees, German soldiers, and U-boat personnel trapped by the Red Army in East Prussia. She was

hit by three torpedoes from the Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945 and sank in under 45

minutes, taking an estimated 9,400 people with her. The sinking of the Wilhem Gustloff ranks as the largest known loss of life

in a single sinking in maritime history.

SHIP’S HISTORY

The Wilhelm Gustloff was the first purpose-built cruise liner for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (KdF) ("Strength Through Joy")

labor organization. The purpose was to provide recreational and cultural activities for German functionaries and workers,

including concerts, cruises, and other holidays. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the flagship of the KdF cruise fleet until the spring

of 1939. That was her last civilian role. From then on she served the needs of the German military.

During the summer of 1939, she was pressed into service to bring the Condor Legion back from Spain after the victory of the

Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

From September 1939 to November 1940, she served as a hospital ship with her official designation being Lazarettschiff D.

On her first mission to the Baltic Sea, she

treated 650 wounded Polish soldiers.

Beginning November 20, 1940, the

medical equipment was removed from

the ship and it was repainted from the

hospital ship colours of white and green

to standard naval grey. As a consequence

of the British blockade of the German

coastline, she was used as an accommo-

dations ship (barracks) for approximately

1,000 U-boat trainees of the 2nd Subma-

rine Training Division (2. Unterseeboot-

Lehrdivision in the Baltic port of

Gotenhafen (Gdynia) – near Danzig

(Gdansk). The Wilhelm Gustloff sat

dockside for over four years until she was

put back in service to transport military

personnel and civilian refugees as part of

Operation Hannibal.

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

What inspired you to tackle this subject?

As a Canadian of Estonian heritage, I tend to identify with lesser known aspects of 20th century history. My parents, along
with their own parents were forced to flee from their homes and farms in Estonia in 1944 because the return of Soviet
occupation meant certain death and deportation for them and thousands of other Estonians. In fact, the Baltic States lost
over 25% of their population from 1939-1945. This statistic – and its accompanying history – is difficult to comprehend for
the average North American because since 1945 we have been presented with a largely polarized view of this history: that
there was one evil when in fact there were two. What Western historians and writers tend to forget is that Stalin occupied
the independent Baltic republics at the same time as Hitler was attacking Poland, yet the allies remained silent about the
occupation of the Baltics and the deliberate ethnic cleansing of those populations. The Baltics were then forced to suffer
under Nazi occupation from 1941-44 and once again occupied by the Soviet Union until 1991.

Similarly, the history of German populations in Eastern Europe has been one that has been overlooked by western histori-
ans. As a student of history, I was shocked to learn about the sinking of The Wilhelm Gustloff after reading Günter Grass’
“Crabwalk,” where Grass presents a fictionalized account of the sinking. That led me to further research the background of
the sinking. After reading Antony Beevor’s “The Fall of Berlin 1945,” and Alfred de Zayas’ “A Terrible Revenge,” I became
convinced that this history needed to be transmitted to a wider audience. I then initiated my search in Canada for survivors
of The Gustloff sinking and found Horst Woit.

The story of the sinking has been described as a political mine field. Did you face any personal or external challenges
while making the film?

When I was researching the project, I described to my own family the brief background to the sinking: the terrifying
revenge of the Red Army in East and West Prussia; the mass evacuation of the German population from the region and the
sinking of the Gustloff. The response from a few of them was: “the Germans deserved everything they got.” This response
caused me to seriously revisit my decision to produce the documentary. For a time I abandoned the project, because I also
believed that the atrocities committed by Hitler and Nazi Germany could justify the actions of the Soviets in the region at
the end of the war.

However, after meeting Horst Woit, who as a 10 year old, was forced to flee his home, along with millions of other ethnic
Germans, I couldn’t help but wonder how he, as a child, bore responsibility for the actions of the Nazi regime. Further-
more, as a Canadian, I was simply not able to digest the overly simplistic justification that the German civilian population in
Eastern Europe “deserved what they got” from the Red Army. While I also believe that most Germans bore some responsi-
bility for enabling the Nazi regime –some obviously more so than others - I do not believe that the slaughter of entire
villages nor the indiscriminate rape of the female populations in the region can be in any way justified by modern western
society as a means of exacting retribution.

If we look at the actions of the Allied forces on the Western Front, you won’t find any instances or statistics of mass rape or
widespread civilian executions – as there were on the Eastern Front. There are no statistics that would indicate a mass
evacuation of the civilian German population as there are for East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, etc. The Allies
punished those Germans who carried out the crimes of the Holocaust and other ethnic minorities in Germany and abroad,
in a thorough, transparent and appropriate manner that ensured justice was –at least in some measure - achieved.

Many Germans and some western scholars have suggested, that because The Wilhelm Gustloff was transporting refugees
fleeing the previously mentioned actions of the Red Army, that the sinking was some sort of “war crime.” I personally don’t
believe this to be the case. The Germans, along with the Soviets, through the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, started the Second
World War. The Gustloff itself was, at the time of its sinking, painted naval grey and was not marked as a hospital ship. And
while the Soviet Navy may have been aware of the mass evacuation of refugees by sea, it would be unreasonable to believe
that the captain of the Soviet submarine, who sank the Wilhelm Gustloff, would have specifically known that The Gustloff
was in fact carrying over 9,000 civilians. To him it was quite simply a naval target and as such, he acted quite properly, as
he was ordered to by his superiors when engaging such a target.

Sinking The Gustloff

I N T E R V I E W W I T H T H E F I L M M A K E R

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

The sinking of the Gustloff is based largely on the experience of German-Canadian, Horst Woit, who was ten years old at
the time of the sinking. Why was his story special?

First and foremost, I wanted to find a Canadian who experienced the sinking. This was a fairly difficult task, as there were
less than a thousand survivors from the Gustloff disaster and most of them have passed away since the event occurred in
1945. There are a few other survivors living in Canada; Horst knows of three others in various parts of the country.

As a Canadian survivor, I believed that his fellow Canadians and Americans might relate to his story. After immigrating to
Canada in the early 1950’s Horst lived a very normal Canadian life: he married his Canadian sweetheart; raised three
typically Canadian children in a Toronto suburb; worked for a large Canadian retail company; and watched Hockey Night in
Canada like his neighbours and friends.

The difference is that Horst was and still is scarred by a tragic childhood. As a child he was forced to flee his home under
the worst possible circumstances. He experienced the worst maritime disaster in history and watched from a lifeboat as
thousands of children and seniors screamed and eventually froze to death in the frigid Baltic Sea. To top that all off, when
he and his mother and aunt settled in a small town in Eastern Germany, after the Soviet occupation, he was forced to
watch the rape of his aunt by a Red Army soldier. But for over 50 years, Horst kept much of this background to himself as
he could not bring himself around to telling his story for both political and personal reasons . . . that is, until now.

And so when Canadians watch this story, I hope that they will identify with him as being “one of us”: a neighbour, a
co-worker, a friend whose story is also a small part of our greater national mosaic. And that his tragic story should not be
excluded from it simply because he is an ethnic German, born and raised on the “wrong” side of humanity’s greatest
periods of crisis. I hope sthat his story will help humanize this very difficult history and may help to open a rational and
objective discussion about it.

Sinking The Gustloff

I N T E R V I E W W I T H T H E F I L M M A K E R

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

Sinking The Gustloff

MAPS

EAST & WEST PRUSSIA JANUARY 1945

APPROXIMATE ROUTE OF THE WILHELM GUSTLOFF

SOVIET FORCES

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

Sinking The Gustloff

STILLS

East Prussian family 1944

German child refugee

SINKING THE GUSTLOFF

A T R A G E D Y E X I L E D F R O M M E M O R Y

p r e s s k i t

Sinking The Gustloff

STILLS

Stern of The Wilhelm Gustloff

The Wilhelm Gustloff as a German naval barrack

The Wilhelm Gustloff

4*/,*/(5)&(645-0''

7 J H 7 = ; : O ; N ? B ; : < H E C C ; C E H O

f h [ i i a _ j

4JOLJOH5IF(VTUMPGG

BC8;;B

%VA2OTHSCHILDAND(ORST7OITATHISFORMERHOMEIN%LBING0OLAND

(ORST7OITATHISHOMENEAR&LESHERTON/NTARIO

4*/,*/(5)&(645-0''

7 J H 7 = ; : O ; N ? B ; : < H E C C ; C E H O

f h [ i i a _ j

4JOLJOH5IF(VTUMPGG

2A438CB

0RODUCER

-ARCUS+OLGA

0RODUCERS
FOR/-.)

-ADELINE:INIAK

0ARITOSH-EHTA

-ALCOLM$UNLOP

6ICKIE'IANNACE

$IRECTOR

-ARCUS+OLGA

7RITER

-ARCUS+OLGA

%DITORS

-ARCUS+OLGA(EIKKI.OVEK

$IRECTOROF
0HOTOGRAPHY

:OE$IRSE

!UDIO2ECORDISTS

*AZCEK:AKEROWSKI

-ARGUS*UKKUM

!DDITIONAL#AMERAS *ON"JORGVINSSON

-ARCUS+OLGA

3OUNDTRACK

-ARCUS+OLGA

!DDITIONAL-USIC

-ARCUS+OLGA*AAN3ILMBERG

#ONSULTANTS

$R!LFRED$E:AYAS

$AVE+RAWCZYK

'USTLOFF3URVIVORS

(ORST7OIT#ANADA

%VA2OTHSCHILD53!3WITZERLAND

(EINZ3CHÚN'ERMANY

)NTERVIEWEES

#LAES7ETTERHOLM4ITANICAND-ARITIME(ISTORIAN

!LFRED$E:AYASFORMER3ECRETARYFOR4HE5NITED.ATIONS#OMMISSIONFOR(UMAN2IGHTS

3ERGEY+URNOSOV$IRECTOR2USSIAN#ENTRAL.AVAL-USEUM