If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (128 page)
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Authors: Sarah Helm
BOOK: If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
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PART FOUR
Chapter 21: Vingt-sept Mille
| 351 | The inspection by Himmler : Tanke, BAL B162/472. |
| 351 | ‘depressed in mind …’ : Kersten, Memoirs . |
| 354 | it was only when her brother : Isa’s account of her brother’s defection and how it led to her arrest is given in a long statement to British investigators in Capri in May 1945. Isa found herself in Capri with a group of other Allied hostages ( Prominente ) who had been smuggled out of Germany and into Austria under SS escort in the last days, and were then liberated by the British who took them to Capri for immediate debriefing. See Vermehren statements, TNA TS 26/895. |
| 355 | so, in the strictest secrecy : Himmler’s letter to Burkhardt, dated 21 July 1942, in reply to Burkhardt’s letter of 1 June 1942, is in the ITS archives (TID 800 176). For later correspondence see Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust , and below, p. 576. |
| 357 | ‘protected’ Jews : On ‘protected’ Jews, see Buber Agassi, Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück . |
Chapter 22: Falling
| 362 | ‘ Clap’ Wanda : Lundholm, Das Höllentor . |
| 362* | ‘Holy Ghost-Kommando’ : Baumann, BAL 162/448. |
| 365 | ‘It is for the Reich …’ : WO 309/416. |
| 365 | Someone said : ‘Come and see …’ : Author interview. |
| 365 | ‘were very emotional …’ : Author interview. |
| 365* | unprecedented visit : Siemens monthly report, 23 February 1944, SA. |
| 366 | ‘high culture’ : Lanckoroń ska, Those who Trespass Against Us . |
| 368 | I came onto : Author interview. |
| 369 | ‘From my window …’ : WO 309/149 |
| 370 | promptly destroyed : Germain Tillion said in evidence at the Rastatt trial that she received information from camp secretaries and others to suggest that about sixty small ‘black transports’ left the camp in 1943 and 1944. Tillion, ‘Procès Verbal’, 11 June 1949, Tribunal General de Rastatt; held at Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Colmar. |
Chapter 23: Hanging On
| 375 | ‘Oh yes, Elfriede …’ : Author interview. |
| 376 | ‘Sometimes they would …’ : Author interview. |
| 376 | ‘and put it at the back …’ : Silbermann, ‘SS-Kantine Ravensbrück’, DÖW, Ravensbrück f. 140. |
| 377 | ‘international association’ : Moldenhawer, Lund 420. |
| 378 | ‘Every morning …’ : Lundholm, Das Höllentor . |
| 378 | ‘She believed …’ : Author interview. |
| 378 | ’At first …’ : Author interview. |
| 379 | I asked her : Author interview. |
| 380 | ‘… punched me violently …’ : Mary O’Shaughnessy statement, Atkins. |
Chapter 24: Reaching Out
| 383 | ‘We are in touch …’ : Dufournier family papers, courtesy of Caroline McAdam Clark. |
| 384 | German officials evacuated : Falkowska said ‘the big Eichmann office’ was re-located here, in other words the staff of part of Eichmann’s notorious department for Jewish affairs, 1VB4 of the RSHA (Reich Security Head Office) were evacuated to the Ravensbrück woods. Report . |
| 384 | Those lucky enough : Maurel, Ravensbrück . |
| 385 | ‘Look at the colour …’ : Buber-Neumann, Dictators . |
| 387 | ‘But Germaine …’ : Author interview. |
| 387 | ‘These other women’s …’ : Czyż letters. |
| 388 | ‘If the idea …’ : Private letter cited in ibid. |
| 389 | conditions were ‘tragic’ : Note in Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust . |
| 390 | The daily routine : FO 371/39395. |
| 390–1 | ‘At first sight …’ : Dreams . See also Kiedrzyń ska, Ravensbrück . |
| 391 | Allied landings : Falkowska, ‘Report to the History Commission’, Institute for National Memory, Poland. |
| 391 | ‘in a loud voice’ : Lanckoroń ska, Those who Trespass Against Us . |
| 391 | ‘Now ladies …’ : Author interview. |
| 392 | A Hungarian Jewish woman : La Guardia Gluck, Fiorello’s Sister and notes on her ITS file. |
| 393 | Among the group was : Vaillant-Couturier, Nuremberg testimony, proceedings of 28 January 1946, Staatsarchiv Nürnberg. |
| 394 | ‘But I thought …’ : Author interview. |
| 395 | In a little-noticed footnote : Bundsarchiv Koblenz, N 1126/38. |
| 395 | cars with covered windows : Schinke, BAL B162/9817. |
| 396 | ‘He sat on a chair …’ : Vermehren, Reise durch den letzten Akt . |
| 397 | Outside women : Author interview. |
| 397 | ‘ridiculous dresses …’ : Dufournier, La Maison des Mortes . |
PART FIVE
Chapter 25: Paris and Warsaw
| 401 | train de la mort : Livre Mémorial . |
| 402 | ‘And the Allies? …’ : Litoff (ed.), An American Heroine in the French Resistance . |
| 404 | A sixteen-year-old girl : Krystyna Dą brówska, author interview and her unpublished essay, ‘Through the Concentration Camp to Freedom’. |
| 405 | ‘What news of Warsaw?’ : Author interview with Półtawska and Dreams . |
| 406 | ‘There were badges …’ : Lanckoroń ska, Those who Trespass Against Us . |
| 406 | The original tent : Wasilewska’s report on the tent, ‘Block 25, Zelt’, Lund 434. |
| 407 | ‘The strong snatched …’ : Hand, BAL B192/9819. |
| 407 | ‘They seemed to have …’ : Dreams . |
| 409 | She had faced Mengele : Wellsberg and Minsburg, author interviews; also testimony in YV. |
| 409 | not be ‘recorded on the lists’ : Stutthof Camp Archives, AMSt. I-IIB-7, cited in Hördler, Ordnung und Inferno . |
| 410 | Her long hair : Lundholm, Das Höllentor . |
Chapter 26: Kinderzimmer
| 411 | ‘on the grounds …’ : Lanckoroń ska, Those who Trespass Against Us . |
| 412 | Stasia Tkaczyk : Author interview. |
| 412 | felt contractions : Kopczynska’s account in Die Frauen von Ravensbrück (1980), a film directed by Loretta Walz. Also see Ravensbrückerinnen (Berlin: Hentrich, 1995). |
| 412 | allow the birth of babies : The details of births come from my interview with Marie-Jo Chombart de Lauwe (née Wilborts); Nedvedova, Prague statement and WO 235/317; Sylvia Salvesen, WO 235/305 and Forgive ; Ilse Reibmayer, interview with Loretta Walz and in DÖW; Anna Weng Seidermann statements in WO 235/318 and Nikiforova, Plus Jamais . |
| 415 | ‘hanging pictures …’ : Himmler, The Himmler Brothers . |
| 416 | deliberate starving of babies : See Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide . |
| 416 | Hermann Pfannmüller : Ibid. |
| 418 | ‘They would count them off’ : Cited in Les Françaises à Ravensbrück . |
| 418 | ‘It was a dreadful sight …’ : Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück . |
| 418 | ‘They died without crying …’ : Author interview. |
Chapter 27: Protest
| 421 | ‘Do you know that feeling …’ : Author interview. |
| 421 | Her friends could see : Testimony of Anne-Marie de Bernard, in the archives of Loir et Cher, 55.j.4, and of Marguerite Flamencourt, HS 6/440. Both Bernard and Flamencourt were members of the illfated British Prosper circuit. |
| 422 | ‘Ravensbrück was by this time …’ : Moldenhawer, Lund 420. |
| 422 | satellite network : See Tillion, Ravensbrück , on multiplying transports to satellite camps. |
| 428 | ‘piled high …’ : Wynne, No Drums, No Trumpets . |
| 428–9 | ‘She always thought …’ : Author interview. |
| 429–30 | ‘I told him …’ : WO 235/318. Odette was given a cover name in the camp of ‘Shurey’, probably ‘so others wouldn’t know there was an important person in the camp,’ she thought. |
| 430 | ‘too close to the Germans’ : FO 371/50982. See also Julia Barry in same, and her testimony in Atkins and WO 235/318. The stories of the ‘British’ women – including Sheridan – also came to light in letters they wrote to Aubrey Radnall Davis, an autograph collector, after the war. |
| 431 | ‘already belonged here’ : Litoff (ed.) An American Heroine in the French Resistance . |
| 431 | ‘She talked of …’ : Author interview. |
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