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Ship of Hope - The MS Helgoland during the Vietnam War

April 24, 2015

The “Helgoland” was a German passenger ship that had been converted into a floating hospital to treat civilian casualties during the Vietnam War. It was the final hope for many people.

https://p.dw.com/p/1Et6V
Image: DRK

The “Helgoland” mission was Germany’s largest-ever humanitarian operation in a foreign war zone. It was also a symbol of political compromise. In December 1965, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson called for German participation in the Vietnam War. The Americans wanted Bonn to deploy several thousand troops to assist their own forces fighting in Vietnam. But Germany refused this request from its American ally and sent a hospital ship to Vietnam instead.

A Floating Hospital with Three Operating Theaters

It took just six months to convert the passenger vessel into a hospital ship. Thealmost 100-meter-long ship had enough space for three operating theaters, 150 beds and four medical departments on board. Eight doctors and almost 30 nurses lived in the narrow bunks for months and provided around-the-clock for injured patients. Over five years, from September 1966 until the end of 1971, the “Helgoland” fulfilled its neutral mission of providing medical care for the civilian population in Vietnam, treating anyone who turned up unarmed and as a non-combatant. That meant supporters of the Vietcong and members of the South Vietnamese army were often in adjacent beds. The "Helgoland" is still known for its impartial treatment of all-comers in Vietnam today.

DRK-Hospitalschiff Helgoland
Hope for civilians: Two nurses from the “MS Helgoland” with a Vietnamese child.Image: DRK

Doctors and Patients Look Back

The “Helgoland’s” mission drew to a close on 31 December 1971,donating all its medical equipment to three Vietnamese hospitals and a leper colony. The German ship disappeared from Vietnam before the war was over. This documentary tells the story of Germany’s largest humanitarian operation in a war zone to date. German doctors and nurses look back on their dangerous mission on board, and their private photos and films from this period allow us to experience events firsthand. Former Vietnamese patients remember the war, their fears and what they called Germany’s “white ship of hope.”

Vietnamkrieg - Flüchtlingsfrau mit Kindern
The drama of the Vietnam War: a refugee family in 1968.Image: picture-alliance/dpa


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