If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (129 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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Chapter 28: Overtures
| 433 | Vera Atkins travelled : See Sarah Helm, A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE (London: Little, Brown, 2005). |
| 433 | ‘delivered to this country by hand’ : From the files of the Liaison Committee of the Women’s International Organisation, IISH. |
| 434 | Born in the United States : Details on Aka Kołodziejczak were kindly provided by her sister Irena Lisiecki in Michchigan, and also came from Maria Bielicka. |
| 434 | rules forbade : Minutes in the files of the Liaison Committee of the Women’s International Organisation, IISH. |
| 434 | ‘The information is so terrible …’ : Minutes of the 133rd meeting of Polish station managers to discuss BBC/Polish broadcasts, E.1. 1,148, Poland, BBC Written Archives, Caversham. |
| 434 | ‘probably the greatest …’ : Churchill to Anthony Eden, 11 July 1944, facsimile, Churchill Papers, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. |
| 436 | When they met in Paris : Bernadotte, The Fall of the Curtain . |
| 436 | There were other reasons : On early overtures see also Persson, Escape from the Third Reich . |
| 437 | ‘No truck with Himmler’ : Cited in ibid. |
| 438 | ‘He seemed put out …’ : de Gaulle, WO 235/318. |
| 439 | ‘I saw a Russian girl …’ : WO 235/318; see also Tickell, Odette . |
| 439 | ‘Madame Baroness’ : ten Boom, The Hiding Place . |
Chapter 29: Doctor Loulou
For the story of Block 10 I drew on several long interviews with Dr Louise Liard (née Le Porz) at her house in Bordeaux, as well as her testimony and private archive. The Hamburg trial evidence on Block 10 is extensive, and is largely in WO 235/317, WO 235/318 and WO 309/416.
| 440 | ‘Instead we hoped …’ : Litoff (ed.), An American Heroine in the French Resistance . |
| 440 | ‘Sunday : My bread …’ : Maurel, Ravensbrück . |
| 442 | It was night : Author interview. Loulou was by no means the only prisoner to talk of making a film. Many others, including Käthe Leichter, Antonina Nikiforova and Milena Jesenka, thought a film would be the only way to make people believe what happened at Ravensbrück. |
| 443 | ‘neglect killing’ : Mant report, WO 309/416. |
| 447 | an English teacher : Like the Poles, a large number of the French prisoners had been teachers, probably because they were useful to the resistance as couriers – they could move around unobtrusively and had good contacts. |
| 449 | She was called Joanna : Author interview. |
| 449 | they were a little odd …’ : Maurel, Ravensbrück . |
| 450 | In her own testimony : Mory’s trial statements (particularly to the Belgian commission, WO 309/419); also Spoerry, Lecoq and Héreil in WO 235/318 and Spoerry’s May 1945 report to the ICRC. |
| 452 | attacking each other : See Le Porz, Héreil, Lecoq and Mory, WO 235/317 and 318. |
| 453 | ‘because Mory detested her’ : WO 235/318. |
| 453 | ‘When they passed …’ : Barry, WO 309/417, and letter, Atkins. |
PART SIX
Chapter 30: Hungarians
| 459 | ‘We were taken …’ : Author interview. |
| 461 | a tiny station : In 1944 the railway was extended from Fürstenberg to Ravensbrück village, where a small station opened, to be closer to the camp. |
| 462 | On one of the trains : Zają czkowska, Lund 50. |
| 462 | ‘Entering the tent …’ : Wasielewska, Lund. |
| 462 | typhus : See Nedvedova, Prague statement. Nedvedova also talks of a diphtheria epidemic when innoculations were carried out. In some cases the diphtheria caused paralysis: ‘It passed to me to obtain strychnine injections so that the diphtheria cases with paralysis were also healed.’ |
| 463 | ‘a carving …’ : ten Boom, The Hiding Place . |
| 464 | ‘women all around …’ : Mittelmann, YV. |
| 464 | ‘If you don’t behave …’ : Okrent, YV. |
| 464 | ‘We were put …’ : Author interview. |
| 465 | I’d filled the jug : Author interview. |
| 465 | I saw in the yard : Lecoq, WO 235/318. |
| 465–6 | ‘The women arrived …’ : Barry, WO 235/318. |
Chapter 31: A Children’s Party
| 468 | Bank records : Copies in ARa. Höss has also been made head of Bureau D of the WVHA (camp inspectorate), a job performed while lending a helping hand at Ravensbrück. |
| 469 | appears to have been irked : See Suhren’s three statements in 1946, WO 235/318. Suhren claims he handed over command of Ravensbrück to Sauer for several weeks early in 1945 (when the mass killing began) as he had to go away to deal with the disbandment of subcamps. It was easy for him to claim this as Sauer was by now dead, killed in action during the battle for Berlin. Suhren’s direct role in the extermination would be set out by Johann Schwarzhuber – see statements of 15 and 30 August 1946, WO 235/309 – and would emerge at the Rastatt trial. |
| 469 | facts of extermination : For example, Schwarzhuber, WO 235/309. |
| 469 | From 5 Jan: WO 309/693 and WO 235/526. |
| 469–70 | ‘She signed it …’ : WO 235/526. |
| 471 | This chamber was to stand : Jahn had given a statement about the men’s and women’s camps, including the gassing, to US investigators as early as 9 May 1945. NARA, Memorandum, Walter Jahn, Atrocities Committed in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. For his later evidence on the stone gas chamber – including a plan – see Staatsarchiv Nürnberg NO-3109. |
| 471 | for want of materials : Charlotte Müller, a German prisoner, had even been sent to Berlin to bring back fire clay and firebricks. |
| 471 | There had also been some dispute : In his 1946 evidence Suhren again placed the blame on Sauer, saying Sauer had installed the gas chambers in his absence, on orders from August Heissmeyer, a senior SS administrator. |
| 471 | It was Hanna Sturm : Sturm, Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin . |
| 471 | Zyklon B : There was a lot of talk in the Schreibstube about orders for Zyklon B at this time, though nobody was sure if it was for gassing people or killing lice. ‘Conrad decided the amount and signed the orders,’ said a prisoner secretary (WO 235/526). |
| 471 | ‘We passed in front …’ : Cited in Anise Postel-Vinay (née Girard), ‘Les exterminations par gaz a Ravensbrück’, in Tillion, Ravensbrück (3rd edition). |
| 472 | ‘First of all …’ : Treite statement, 5 May 1945, WO 235/309. |
| 472 | ‘young women capable of work’ : WO 235/309. |
| 472 | ‘The dawn was enough …’ : Ibid. |
| 473 | ‘festival that happened …’ : Note in Nikif papers. |
| 474 | Polish teachers organised classes : Kiedrzyń ska, Ravensbrück . |
| 474 | seventy pregnant women : From November there were about 100 births per month, according to Gerda Schröder, the German camp nurse. Most died of pneumonia. WO 235/318. |
| 474 | ‘We were the only men …’ : Author interview. |
| 475 | ‘not as we think of children …’ : Salvesen, Forgive . Also see Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne , on the party. |
| 477 | ‘he had a wonderful voice’ : Author interview. |
| 479 | ‘she’d lost him in the bomb’ : Author interview. |
| 479 | German communist Erika Buchmann : Erika had been released in 1941 but was brought back to the camp a year later, charged again with ‘treason’. On return she was first made Blockova of the Strafblock , then Block 10. |
| 480 | ‘a little man called the professor’ : Salvesen, Forgive . |
| 480 | All the Gypsies : WO 235/317. There is further extensive evidence about the sterilisation of children. See Mant report, WO 309/416, and Winkowska (Treite’s secretary), Lund 285. Other forms of medical experimentation on prisoners took place until the last days. See evidence of Dr Trommer’s butchery of Russian male prisoners in the cellar of the Kommandatur (WO 235/526). Several Warsaw women later claimed they were subject to gynaecological experiments and Treite spoke of cyanide experiments (WO 235/317), but the true extent of the experimentation will never be known. |
Chapter 32: Death March
Several women who witnessed the last days at Auschwitz and then set off on the death march to Ravensbrück left accounts at Yad Vashem, including Lydia Vago and Allegra Benvenisti. Maria Rundo’s account is Lund 189. Alina Brewda’s story is recounted in
I Shall Fear No Evil
by R. J. Minney. Rudolf Höss’s account is drawn from his memoir,
Commandant of Auschwitz
. I also interviewed survivors including the Belorussian, Valentina Makarova.
Chapter 33: Youth Camp
The account of the Youth Camp and gassings makes use of almost all the Hamburg testimony, but the most important material is in the first trial (series beginning WO 235/305) where Schwarzhuber and Salvequart were accused, and in the trial of Ruth Neudeck (WO 235/516a). I also drew on testimony at Rastatt and that given to German investigators in the 1970s when a new investigation was carried out in the Youth Camp. See series BAL B162-9810. Most survivor testimony and memoirs of this period contains accounts of selections and gassings. Remarkably, several prisoners survived the Youth Camp and returned to tell the tale. I interviewed one of them, Irma Trksak.
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