Exceedingly rare Album for the June 1938 cruise on board of the K.d.F. Ship Wilhelm Gustloff from Hamburg to Portugal, Madeira and Italy.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was originally constructed as a cruise ship for the Nazi “Strength Through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude) organization in 1937, Wilhelm Gustloff had been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine (German navy) in 1939. She served as a hospital ship in 1939 and 1940. She was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel in Gotenhafen before being fitted with anti-aircraft guns and put into service to transport evacuees in 1945. She was a German military transport ship which was sunk on January, 30 1945, by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea while evacuating civilian evacuees from East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Estonia and German military personnel from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate, 9,400 people died, making it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.