The sinking of the Cap Arcona is one of the great tragedies of the Second World War, sunk on the last full day of the war.
5,000 people died, including American/British POW’s and 4,200 concentration camp political prisoners that had been put aboard just days before, as the camps were over-run.
The prisoners were from 28 different nationalities: American, Belarussian, Belgian, Canadian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourger, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian and others.
I once read that SS men stood on the beach, machine gunning survivors who swam ashore, then turned around and surrendered to the British troops arriving on the scene.