Neon Homecoming Dresses

LOS HÉROES RUSOS

ALEXANDER MARINESCO, EL HOMBRE QUE PERDIÓ LA GLORIA
II


Karl H. Guderian:
Wilhelm in the accident which led to the friend Gusttloff Marinesco some are considering the figure of 9,000 dead ... Which one would consider more correct?

During the cold night of January 30, 1945, over 60,000 German refugees of both sexes are crowded, fighting the fear and cold, in the spring Gotenhafen.En Baltic port of a jungle of pushing , hitting and shouting, strove desperately to climb the Wilhelm Gustloff cruise, on board which could come to Denmark.

The boat had a capacity for 1,865 passengers, but eventually occupied by 10,582 persons among whom were soldiers, but also women, children and elderly. In its warehouses was also houses some of the choicest fruits of the terrible plundering of the German forces were under the Soviet Union, as part of the Amber Room Tsarskoe Selo, the czarist palace near the present St. Petersburg . The Wilhelm Gustloff

had been used before the outbreak of war requisites of the beneficiaries of Force by Joy, a Nazi organization dedicated to the workers enjoy good holiday. In fact, his name was that of a Nazi party leader assassinated in 1936 in Switzerland.

In May 1939, Wilhelm Gustloff was one of four boats used to repatriate to Germany to the volunteers of the Legion who had fought in the English Civil War by Franco. At the start of World War II, the cruiser came to be used as a place to stay for submariners who were receiving training and, subsequently, was classified as a hospital ship.

dedicated to this task took more than four years when Admiral Doenitz, commander of the submarine fleet, ordered to be used for evacuation of the sailors. The Wilhelm Gustloff

had a dual command structure. As a civilian vessel was under the command of Captain Friedrich Petersen in the merchant navy vessel and a submarine crew accommodation was under the command of Wilhelm Zahn.

During the afternoon of January 22, 1945, with a temperature of 14 degrees below zero, then proceeded to prepare to serve the cruise ship evacuation. Of the 60,000 people who had struggled to raise the boat, just got a sixth.

Moreover, when the cruiser was already literally packed, arrived about four naval auxiliary aged between 17 and 25 years. Given the real danger was that they were raped by the Soviets, we proceeded to load in the area it had occupied the pool on deck E.

Finally, during the morning of 29 came a train of wounded Gotenhafen and proceeded in the worst conditions to transfer their ticket to the cruise. By then, corridors, rooms and offices presented an overview of overcrowding in which only 60% of passengers had vests salvavidas.A 1230 Tuesday 30 January 1945 the cruiser drove in four boats off the dock for could get away from the port.

The weather was hellish. The wind had a speed of seven knots an hour, the temperature was below 10 degrees below zero, snowing and the ice floes dangerously quilted sea surface.

When night fell, the refugees who had vomited or were beginning to become demoralized thousands. Nevertheless, most hoped that in a few days could reach the coast of Denmark. About

at 9.10 pm, passengers felt an impact against the hull of the Wilhelm Gustloff. They could not know but had been hit by three torpedoes fired from the Soviet submarine S-13.

The first bullet had reached the boat under the waterline but the losses caused by the following two would be much worse. The second had reached the pool deck E killing almost all the nurses while the third occurred in the engine room almost completely destroyed.

While the passengers were panicked and fought desperately to reach the upper decks and not a few rushed to the icy waters of the Baltic, the crew began throwing SOS calls from the coast of Stolpmunde, in Pomerania. While commanders insisted that women and children should be the first to board the lifeboats the order was disobeyed and pregnant women and wounded became the first victims.

After 50 minutes, the cruiser had sunk beneath the waves carrying the most passengers. Those who had managed to reach a boat or swam desperately were collected by the German torpedo boat T-36 and another boat of similar characteristics, like the one he belonged to a small flotilla of escorts accompanying the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper.

Although many of the passengers gathered died of cold, among the survivors there were some women embarazadas.Incluso in the course of the evening had three children who were assisted by soldiers-turned-makeshift midwives, an episode that has served the nobel Günter Grass Im Krebsgang to acclimate his latest book. Paul, the protagonist of the novel, was born shortly after his mother was rescued from the Baltic and reached his retirement, is faces the difficult task of writing his memoirs in a country that has decided to make a clean sweep of the tragedy.

shortstop T-36, meanwhile, came under new attack submarines and one of those times when you had to maneuver to dodge a torpedo some of their passengers fell overboard and died. However, around 14.00 pm on January 31, 1945, two ships arrived with their cargo to Sassnitz. Of the more than 10,000 vessels had managed to save the two to 996 people. Finally, the nearly 1,000 survivors were welcomed aboard the Danish hospital King Olaf.

The tragedy of the Wilhelm Gustloff was the greatest naval disaster of the twentieth century the 1,495 victims sixfold the Titanic.Y as serious as the quantitative aspect is the qualitative, as the wreck was not due to an accident of natural causes.

The motivations of the Soviet commander Alexander Marinesco to sink a ship of refugees were, by all indications, most military personal. Marinesco had recently had run-ins with his superiors and was rumored to be detained and deported at any time. The Soviet navy concluded that a military success as the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was committed out of such a situation and acted accordingly.

was not mistaken in their calculations. The death of over 9,000 military and civilians was considered by the Soviet authorities a fact worthy enough to decorate Marinesco with the medal of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Since then, the episode became a topic tabú.Los Western allies did not want to cast shadow on the reputation of the Soviets and they had no interest in highlighting the brutality with which they acted. Neither the communist dictatorship in the GDR wanted to remember how Germany had entered their political mentors.

had to wait to 1955 for a film called faithful über Nacht Gotenhafen discuss the issue, and even more recently for a book SOS Wilhelm Gustloff, Heinz Schon, address the historical study of the tragic episode. At the end of the day, the existence of surviving witnesses had become impossible task bury an episode where they had been shown the worst impulses of human nature.

Journal World.