German film maker breaking new ground - making a film about Wilhelm Gustloff sinking

**Ally** · 01-26-2007

Hamburg - Amid changing attitudes about their past, Germans are marking the 62nd anniversary of history's worst sea disaster - the Allied torpedoing of a German refugee and troop ship in the closing days of World War II that claimed up to 9,000 lives, mostly women and children.

In what would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, a major German public television broadcaster has announced plans for a made- for-TV movie about the sinking - a long-forgotten incident which was an embarrassment for the Allies and for post-war governments of both East and West Germany.

Award-winning German filmmaker Joseph Vilsmaier has issued a casting call for the two-part TV movie which goes into production in March, according to an announcement by ZDF television.

Hundreds of extras - primarily women and children - are being sought for the production, and a 60-metre-long true-to-scale mock-up of a portion of the ill-fated vessel is being built for production shooting in waters off the coast of Malta.

In what has become an annual ritual in recent years amid changing attitudes toward the war, German print and broadcast media are devoting extensive coverage and special broadcasts to the sinking of the converted cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30, 1945, as the Red Army crossed the eastern border of the Reich.

The vessel, crammed with up to 10,000 persons - mainly civilian women and children refugees as well as a number of wounded soldiers - was making a frantic nighttime dash across the icy Baltic when it was sent to the bottom by torpedoes fired from a Soviet submarine.

Long overlooked by historians, the disaster has emerged in recent years as a rallying point for neo-Nazis who accuse the Allies of atrocities and crimes against humanity.

The sinking and unified Germany's neo-Nazi resurgance form the plot of a recent book by Nobel Literature Laureate Guenter Grass, who himself reluctantly admitted in recent months that he had been a teenage member of the Nazi SS at the end of the war.

The Grass novel, entitled 'Im Krebsgang' (Crabwalk), interweaves the story of the sinking with the plight of modern-day refugees seeking asylum in Germany.

Christened by Adolf Hitler personally, the Wilhelm Gustloff was launched from Hamburg in 1937 as the flagship of the dictator's Kraft Durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) fleet of holiday cruise ships.

The gleaming white, streamlined vessel was a high-profile Nazi propaganda tool, ferrying hundreds of happy workers on subsidized cruises to the fjords of Norway or the Mediterranean in the months leading up to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

With the onset of war, the ship was converted for use to transport supplies and soldiers. As the tides of war turned, it increasingly was put to use helping Germans flee from advancing Soviet troops.

It was in this role that it set off from Gdynia in the Polish corridor on the icy night of January 30, 1945, woefully overloaded with civilians, wounded soldiers and naval personnel.

Running fast, with windows blacked out, the Wilhelm Gustloff nevertheless had barely made it out to sea before a Soviet submarine got her in its sights and fired torpedoes.

In the chaos that ensued, thousands were trapped below decks in the rapidly sinking vessel and many of those who made it off the ship froze in the darkness. Barely 1,000 were picked up alive.

With a toll estimated at between 6,000 and 9,000, it is history's worst single-vessel sea disaster. By comparison, just over 1,500 died aboard the Titanic, peacetime maritime history's worst sinking.

After the war, the incident was played down by the East German government for fear of antagonizing its communist comrades in Moscow, and the West German government played down the incident for fear of playing into the hands of neo-Nazis.

(Deutsche Presse-Agentur)