Connection to Curriculum:
History: WWII
Social Studies: History vs. Fact, Critical Thinking, Media Literacy, The Media and History, Public Opinion
Empathy: How other countries see history

Overview:
Disaster at sea is a phrase that makes you think of great ocean liners, sinking with huge loss of life - tragedies like Lusitania, Empress of Ireland, and of course, Titanic. Ships whose death toll exceeded one thousand lives. But imagine a wreck that sank with five times the number of victims as Titanic. It was in the Baltic Sea at the end of the Second World War when a ship crammed with over ten thousand men, women and children, fleeing the advancing Russian Army sank carrying with it nine thousand of these refugees who became the forgotten victims of the largest maritime disaster in the history of the world.