Rescue of Stutthof victims in Denmark

The rescue of Stutthof victims in Denmark took place on 5 May 1945 at Klintholm Havn, a small fishing village on the south coast of the island of Møn, when a barge full of famished Nazi concentration camp prisoners was towed into harbour.

On 5 May 1945, the day Denmark was liberated from German occupation during World War II, a barge with 370 starving prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig (now Gdansk) was brought into Klintholm Havn.

This was allowed to drift across the Baltic Sea until it was finally towed into the harbour at Klintholm Havn by a German tug two days later.

There were also small numbers of Czechoslovaks, Germans, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Turks and Frenchmen as well as a few citizens from the Free State of Danzig.

Shortly after the barge was towed into the harbour, Rasmus Fenger, the local doctor, boarded the vessel and assessed the health of the prisoners.

The most critically ill prisoners were moved to Stege hospital or to Hotel Søbad, a few hundred metres from the harbour.

The local Red Cross organised the rescue operation assisted by Danish doctors and nurses and by those prisoners who were fit enough to help.

The English reads: In her autobiography Unfettered Joy, Hermine Schmidt, a German woman who had been a prisoner at Stutthof because of her religious beliefs as a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, tells her own story of the desperate voyage across the Baltic Sea.