A Titanic survivor pretended to be an aristocrat before becoming a member of the Nazi SS.
German passenger Alfred Nourney was on board the RMS Titanic having been forced to head to America amidst a scandal in which he got a rich woman pregnant.
The boat hit an iceberg and sank into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic, killing all but 705 of the 2,224 passengers on board.
Before the Titanic went down Nourney had claimed to be the Baron Alfred von Drachstedt, a Dutch-born German gentleman, to get extra privileges onboard, journalist Jens Ostrowski writes in his new book.
The 20-year-old had been sent from his home city of Cologne to America to stay with relatives by his mother, having impregnated a young woman.
(Image: Newsflash)
He then managed to change his second-class ticket to a first-class one for a small surcharge and gambled with posh passengers to gain influential contacts.
His ticket exchange paid off as he was one of the first to climb into a lifeboat.
He would later maintain that he had drifted in the ice-cold water before being rescued so as not to appear a coward.
While others were rowing him to safety Nourney sat smoking cigarettes and firing a pistol into the night’s sky until they were rescued by the RMS Carpathia at 5.10 am.
After his brush with death and short stay in the US, Nourney returned to Germany and took up car racing.
There he joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and became a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1934.
(Image: Newsflash)
The major paramilitary organisation was formed by Heinrich Himmler and was guilty of some of the worst atrocities committed during the period, including enforcing the Aryan racial policy and running the concentration camps.
It is unclear what his role was and what rank, if any, he obtained.
After the war Nourney opted for a low-profile and became a car salesman.
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He was buried in the Melaten cemetery in the city of Cologne after his death in 1972.
Mr Ostrowski, a journalist from Dortmund, detailed the fate of Nourney in his book ‘The Titanic Was Their Fate: The History of German Passengers and Crew’.