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By September 1944, almost every state in Europe had been involved in World War II for five years. Sweden was one of the few countries that managed to stay out of it, but the war was still constantly present.
Not least in much of western Sweden, where neighboring Norway and Denmark were occupied by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Kattegat and Skagerrak were mined and often became regular battlefields. Many ships sank.
On September 7 and 8, 1944, the surf rose when a storm from the southwest crashed on the west coast. Around dawn on September 8, west of Marstrand, he passed allthe Norwegian fighter Karlskrona the German troop carrier SS Westfalen. The arms of the ship had a south course.
On the way to the concentration camps
Westphalia was heading from Norway to Germany with about 200 German soldiers who were going home on leave. There were literally 75-80 Norwegians in the shipment. They had been imprisoned by the German occupiers accused of belonging to the resistance movement. Now they were to be taken to the German death camps.
At noon, the Karlskrona telegraph operator was notified that a ship had been flown between Vinga and Stora Pölsan. It was Westphalia. The fighter was then southeast of the crash site and had completed the task of escorting two Red Cross ships from Strömstad.
But there was no lightning-fast rescue operation. Officers were well aware that mines were swarming the waters directly toward the crash site. Furthermore, it had exploded even more, the villages must have had the force of a hurricane and the violent waves were many meters high.
You have to walk around the minefield and Karlskrona’s men could follow the disaster in the form of explosions and pillars of fire; soon you could see Westphalia. The German ship was about to sink stern first.
On board the Karlskrona are a large number of young recruits. One of them is Åke Grimgaard, 19 years old.
Difficult rescue work
Åke passed away in the fall of 2017, says his daughter Christina Mattsson.
But when Grimgaard turned 90 two years earlier, he was interviewed at Norra Halland and then told, among other things, about the drama.
– In February 1944, I boarded the destroyer Karlskrona and on September 8 we were involved and saved most of the survivors of the troop transport ship Westfalen in a severe storm at Stora Pölsan. The ship had run aground in two mines. More than 200 people drowned, most of them Norwegians trapped in the hold. The prisoners were heading to concentration camps in Germany, Åke Grimgaard said.
Large numbers of Germans and a few Norwegians had managed to get into the lifeboats. Karlskrona crew members detained the survivors who were in mortal danger. The waves hit Åke Grimgaard and his colleagues on the deck with violent force.
Many were seen being dragged into the boiling sea, but they also managed to drag around 50 people. Some had severe burns, others had broken bones or broken faces.
– Dad told about the drama when we were little, but I don’t have a clear memory of it, says his daughter Christina Mattsson, 73.
“The rescuers were incredible”
The drama did not deter Åke Grimgaard from continuing his life at sea. After the war, he began working professionally with maritime rescue, starting in 1955 at Gothenburg Radio. The family moved to Kungsbacka the same year and stayed there. Among other things, Åke Grimgaard led the rescue efforts in 1979 when the passenger ship Winston Churchill ran aground in Vinga, very close to disaster with Westphalia 35 years earlier, according to Christina and her husband Erling.
Despite the successful efforts of the men at Karlskrona and some other smaller ships that participated in the operation, the vast majority of those traveling Westphalia perished.
The infamous SS and Norwegian national hero among the victims
Some of the Norwegian resistance fighters who lost their lives in the disaster are well known. The most described was Petter Moen.
The 43-year-old published the banned newspaper “London-News” and became a spider on the web for all the resistance writing that spread in Norwegian-occupied Norway. He was arrested by the occupiers in February 1944 and spent more than six months in prison at Möllergate 19 in Oslo. There he was subjected to torture to betray other Norwegian resistance fighters. With a pin, Moen wrote down on toilet paper what he was exposed to. The notes were hidden among the boulders of the cell and remained there when Moen was taken to SS Westphalia. They were found after the end of the war and were published in book form in 1949. “Petter Moen’s Diary” It was translated into a variety of languages and is still available for purchase today.
Även SS-Sturmscharführer Wilhelm Heinze omkom. He was a notorious SS officer who in Norway went by the nickname “The Banker” because of his brutal methods of interrogation. According to newspaper reports from 1944, it became known which body bag Heinze was in at Marstrand Quay. Then it must have been covered in nettles. Heinze, like many other German victims, is buried in the Kviberg cemetery in Gothenburg.
Hans Werner Weber was a sailor in Westphalia when she sank. In a booklet on the drama, “From Westphalia to the Gripen,” which Lysekil resident Terje Fredh wrote and published in 1978, Weber said:
– I was lucky enough to get on one of the lifeboats. One low more or less. I have never seen such a violent sea. The rescuers of the Swedish fighter were fantastic.
45 men were arrested at Karlskrona and seven in distress were picked up on other boats, including a Marstrand pilot boat.
More than 200 died
There is no reliable information on how many people died, but it is about 200 because there must be more than 250 men on board, including the crew.
The bodies floated ashore along much of the southern Bohuslän coast for several days.
The correspondent for Dagens Nyheter reported the following from Marstrand in the days after the disaster: “The sea is still giving back to the victims of the Stora Pölsan shipwreck. Tonight, a total of 58 dead Germans are in the Marstrand morgue and in Strandverken. At Orust and 33 bodies floating on land, at Tjörn 21 and at Mollösund 14 they have been introduced. “
Some of the deceased Germans were placed in coffins at Strandverket in Marstrand. Others were transported to Gothenburg. The Norwegian bodies that were identified were placed in flag-wrapped coffins.
Solemn memorial services were held, including at Marstrand in the days after the disaster.
Given the scale of the disaster, the fate of Westfalia is relatively unknown to the general public, especially in its home country.
Something that Sebastian Dellwig from Bonn in Germany hopes to change.
– The history of Westfalia is important to me. I mean, the last dark chapter in the history of the ship should be told and reach a wider audience here in Germany.
Dellwig has investigated the disaster and made a large number of visits to southern Norway and western Sweden. He also dived into the wreck a few years ago. Like many other ships that sank during World War II, Westfalia was never rescued.
– It was a very special dive emotionally.
Dellwig works in his spare time to find out as much as possible about Westphalia’s tragic fate and hopes to publish his documentation in book form.
That the catastrophe is practically unknown in Germany is perhaps not so strange. It was a relatively insignificant footnote when summed up the shameful points of Hitler’s regime that claimed millions of victims.
In two parts at the bottom of the sea
Surprisingly, there is also little documentation on the drama in Sweden. But thanks to a small number of non-profit enthusiasts interested in the history of southern Bohuslän who have saved documents and photos, the disaster is not entirely forgotten.
And it will be many generations before the tracks of SS Westphalia disappear. Therefore, it remains on the bottom west of Rörö and has been seen by many divers over the years. The 124-meter-long, 16-meter-wide ship is divided into two parts that lie one on top of the other, but has otherwise been well preserved for 76 years on the seabed, according to a dive log.
Westfalia is found at a depth of 38 to 53 meters.
Sources: “From Westphalia to the Gripen” by Terje Fredh, Marstrand’s local history association, various newspaper articles.
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