08/10/2025: The Cap Arcona and Jamie Lee Curtis

60 Minutes

CBS News

News, Tv & Film, Society & Culture

4 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Correspondent Bill Whitaker reports from Germany’s Baltic Coast on the bombing of the Cap Arcona, a little-known human tragedy in the closing days of World War II in Europe. Once a luxurious German ocean liner, the Cap Arcona was commandeered by the Nazis and, at war’s end, turned into a floating concentration camp. Thousands of prisoners were killed in the aerial attack. Whitaker interviews historians and speaks with Holocaust survivors who witnessed the bombing to bring this largely overlooked chapter of history to light. This is a double-length segment. Jamie Lee Curtis has been making movies for almost 50 years. Not surprising for a child born into Hollywood royalty. But to hear her tell it, leaving school as a teenager, only to graduate into an A-list movie star before she was 30, was never the plan. Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi talks with Curtis in Los Angeles about her long career in Tinseltown and about her recent wave of award-winning performances that came to her in her 60s. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's a lot going on right now.
0:02.9	Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air.
0:11.2	I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media.
0:15.0	Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here, and maybe how to head them off at
0:22.3	the pass, that's on the media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:36.6	The Caparcona was once a German version of the Titanic.
0:40.3	It had its own tennis court. It had a heating swimming pool.
0:44.3	It had the most wonderful restaurant where you could look out onto the sea.
0:47.3	The most wonderful first-class cabins.
0:49.3	It was a luxury cruise.
0:51.3	It was a luxury cruise liner.
0:53.3	Absolutely was. But during World War II, the Nazis turned the Caparcona into a floating concentration
1:00.0	camp.
1:01.0	Just days before liberation, the ship was bombed, killing thousands on board.
1:07.0	Why was it targeted and who sent the warplanes?
1:10.0	The answers might surprise you.
1:15.5	Four decades after she cemented her place in Hollywood with the horror movie Halloween,
1:21.2	Jamie Lee Curtis is savoring a new wave of award-winning performances,
1:25.9	playing a string of raw, volatile characters that suck the oxygen
1:30.3	out of the room.
1:32.0	Donna, the images in my mind of her buttering the bread with the nails and the eyelash
1:37.7	on the cheek.
	...

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