If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (47 page)

At almost the same time, another of the five recalled women, Zofia Stefaniak, was lying in the
Revier
, still recovering from a previous operation. With three holes drilled through her leg, she had stayed longer than others and had witnessed some of the worst of the later atrocities, Stumpfegger’s work. So horrified was she by now, that when Zofia heard that she was to be operated on yet again, she found sudden strength to clamber down from bed, heave herself over to the window and leap out.

‘I was so frightened of the operation that this time I had to escape,’ Zofia said. ‘I thought this time they would cut my legs off. I had just seen a Russian girl with her legs cut off. So I just jumped out onto the grass.’ Zofia escaped after evening roll-call, so nobody saw her. Somehow she made it back to Block 15, and only then did she hear that Dziuba had also refused. They hid her in the attic.

The refuseniks now waited for a response from the SS, but none came. It was as if the entire SS staff were pretending the experiments had never happened. ‘They act as if we are nothing to do with them,’ said Jadwiga Kamińska.

A standoff ensued, until next day a second list of five names came from the
Revier
. Nobody responded. Inside Block 15 someone, probably Jadwiga, suggested a
protest march
, and this time the idea was not laughed off. ‘If the commandant wants to pretend there have been no medical experiments in the camp, let’s go and stand in front of him and show him,’ said one of the ringleaders. ‘Our attitude was that if we were going to be murdered let’s be murdered for a reason – not cut up first,’ Eugenia Mikulska recalled.

Someone else suggested it would be better to march to Langefeld’s office, not Suhren’s, as she might at least listen. They should take a petition that each of them should sign, said Dziuba Sokulska. Halina Chorążnya, the chemistry professor, offered to draft a brief statement for one of them to read. Jadwiga Kamińska and Zofia Baj were elected as the marchers’ spokeswomen. They would march the next day. Everyone was to go to show unity. Those too badly injured to walk would be carried by the stronger. Others would go on crutches, or hobble as best they could.

Testimony about the date is conflicting, but Krysia states in her letter, in her characteristically matter-of-fact tones: ‘On March 14th all the women who had had operations gathered before the
Oberaufseherin
, demanding an explanation as to what grounds there were for performing operations on political prisoners, and whether they were envisaged in special sentences.’

It was probably mid-morning when the marchers set off, as that was when the Lagerstrasse was quiet. The women lined up slowly outside the block and their procession began. ‘It seemed a long way for us – 300 metres or more. And the ground was very rough,’ Wojciecha recalled.

Pelagia Maćkowska remembered the scene like this: ‘A column of crippled
women, some leaning on crutches, others on walking sticks or carried by healthy companions, moved slowly in the direction of the camp office. I shall never forget that sight.’

At the head of the column were the most disabled of all. ‘I was at the head of the group and the silent procession of young cripples walked behind me,’ recalled Mikulska. The column moved the entire 300 metres in total silence, except for the clicking of sticks on the Lagerstrasse. Each woman took one step and then gathered herself for the next. It seemed to take an age.

The first few metres were the most dangerous, for surely the guards must appear, but no attempt was made to stop them, or to interfere in any way. Gangs of prisoners returning early from work simply stared in astonishment. Others, inside the barracks, looked out through windows, but still no guards appeared.

‘We reached the main square, where the camp office was, without any obstacles,’ said Pelagia, though they were aware of eyes watching from inside the
Kommandantur
. The procession arrived, and someone called the column to halt. The two who carried Eugenia Mikulska moved out to the front and put her down.

‘In front of the
Schreibstube
they put me on the ground and went back to the ranks standing about fifty metres behind. I couldn’t stand, so I knelt on my sound leg and stretched the operated one out in front of me, as I couldn’t bend it.’

Once all the marchers were gathered in position, their spokeswomen, Jadwiga Kamińska and Zofia Baj, approached Langefeld’s office. As they did so, a single woman guard appeared, and they informed her that they wished to see
Oberaufseherin
Langefeld. The guard went back inside and for some time nothing happened.

‘We were prepared for the worst,’ recalled Eugenia. More time passed. ‘All was silent around us. There was not a soul in the camp roads.’ According to Pelagia: ‘We waited in deep silence and we all stared fixedly at one place.’

When Langefeld still failed to appear, Jadwiga Kamińska read out her short statement of protest, in a quiet voice, in front of the office: ‘We, the Polish political prisoners, categorically protest against the experimental operations performed on our healthy bodies.’

Still Langefeld did not appear, and nor did Suhren, nor anybody else. So the women continued to stand there, staring ahead. The flame-coloured salvias were out, and the midday sun was beating down. Jadwiga read the statement again, in the same quiet voice: ‘We, the Polish political prisoners, categorically protest against the experimental operations performed on our healthy bodies.’

There was still only silence.

After a while, according to some of the women, a German office worker emerged and told Jadwiga and Zofia that the
Oberaufseherin
‘knew nothing of the operations’
,
they ‘must be a figment of the prisoners’ imaginations’. The new call-up for rabbits to go to the
Revier
had simply been a request for them to have temperatures taken. They should all now behave and go back to their barracks.

Krysia, however, recorded in her letter home that Langefeld’s message was quite different. The chief guard informed the marchers, through her official, that she had referred the matter to the commandant, who would respond himself. Most protesters also remember that Johanna Langefeld did, briefly, appear before them outside. ‘She came out and looked at us for a moment,’ said one. She ‘looked embarrassed’, said others. ‘She looked paralysed somehow and awkward, as if in pain,’ said another. But all agreed that Langefeld said nothing, turned around and quickly went back inside.

Grete Buber-Neumann, now Langefeld’s personal secretary, is disappointingly silent on this episode – perhaps she was not in Langefeld’s office that day. But she tells us enough of Langefeld’s mood to suggest what ‘paralysed’ her, as she looked out at the massed ranks of rabbits. Around this time, Langefeld had told Grete that she had been having bad dreams.

One morning she entered the office tired and depressed. She had had a dream, which she wanted to tell me, so I could interpret it. In the dream, bombs were landing in the camp, and foreign tanks came and conquered Ravensbrück. I said without hesitating: ‘Frau
Oberaufseherin
, you are afraid that Germany will lose the war,’ and I added, after a moment: ‘And Germany will lose the war.’

For this I should have been thrown straight in the bunker. But she just looked at me in horror and stayed silent. From this point I knew that this woman would never harm me.

Grete tells us that Langefeld’s position at this time was in growing jeopardy. She already stood accused by the SS of sympathising with Polish prisoners, and Suhren had been gathering other evidence against her, with Ramdohr’s help. Grete goes to some lengths to tell us that Langefeld was increasingly ‘torn’ in the early months of 1943 between right and wrong. And Grete herself takes considerable credit for shifting Langefeld’s perspective to see things from the prisoners’ point of view. ‘I had not only shaken her conviction in a German victory, but I had also made her see the concentration camp system through the eyes of its victims,’ she says.

Grete’s influence upon Langefeld was no doubt significant. However, as Langefeld’s secretary, her own position was also compromised at this point. Her eagerness in retrospect to claim credit for ‘turning’ Langefeld may well have helped her gloss over the fact that, sitting in Langefeld’s office, she was by now the most privileged prisoner in the camp.

And however torn Langefeld was, she had done nothing since her return from Auschwitz to stop the murders and atrocities committed at Ravensbrück. Even now, faced with the rabbits’ protest, she simply passed the buck to the commandant, as Krysia reported. Suhren had no idea what to do; there were no rules on his desk saying how to crush an uprising of women on crutches. So with one eye on the crowd outside his window, the commandant picked up the phone to seek instructions from Berlin.

The protesters, meanwhile, were in pain and could not wait for an answer, so their leader gave the signal that they should return to the block. Eugenia was still balancing on her plastered leg. Later she recalled: ‘My companions again came up to me and lifting me up, carried me back to the barracks and put me to bed.’ All the others turned around and made their way back. ‘We felt we had put up resistance, we were a united group with a kind of strength,’ said Pelagia Maćkowska.

Protests were not over, however. The next day, still lacking a response from Suhren, the women resolved to write again: ‘We have not been told and would like to know if these operations are envisaged in our sentences, whose contents we do not know. We request a hearing or an answer.’ The letter was delivered direct to Suhren.

A response of sorts came – not from Suhren but from the
Revier
. As if to prove the claim that the summonses had been a ‘misunderstanding’, a message went round, requesting the women to ‘volunteer’ to attend the
Revier
‘to have their temperatures taken’. Nobody did. The five called up earlier for new operations were not recalled, and the protests spread.

No doubt emboldened by the rabbits’ uprising, and by the lack of an SS response, a group of ‘healthy’ Polish prisoners now made their own ‘energetic protest’, as Krysia put it. Again the authorities ‘did not apply repressions or use force’, she wrote in her letter home.

The protest by the ‘healthy’ Poles was
a near-mutiny
staged three days later. The incident was sparked when, just before the start of evening
Appell
, nine women, all from Warsaw, were suddenly called and ordered to report to the
Effektenkammer
. Clearly this meant execution. Perhaps because of the febrile atmosphere following the disabled protest, or because the women were part of a particularly strong group, this announcement raised unusually high emotion. Friends of the victims, angry that they had not even had time to say goodbye, broke ranks and moved spontaneously towards the
Effektenkammer
to try to glimpse the condemned women one last time.

Helga Gallinat, one of the guards, got wind of what was happening and came chasing after the prisoners, yelling and hitting out at them. The women astonished Gallinat by hitting back and nearly lynching her. Other guards went to her help and were also attacked. As uproar erupted, Langefeld’s
Polish interpreter, Helena Korewina, asserted her considerable authority by setting off the siren calling the night shift to work. As the siren rang out, thousands of night-shift workers flooded the Lagerstrasse, the disturbance subsided and the camp sank back into order.

But everyone knew Ravensbrück had been minutes away from mutiny. The mood was now all the more inflamed, and Fritz Suhren had more proof to use against Langefeld, as the riot showed she was plainly no longer in control.

It was another incident, however, soon after the near-riot, that tested Langefeld’s loyalties and Suhren’s patience to breaking point. Once again the rabbits were involved. Grete Buber-Neumann, who on this occasion was at Langefeld’s side, gives a detailed acount. According to her, Langefeld was particularly horrified by the rabbits’ plight because they had been lied to by the promise to send them home in return for agreeing to operations; instead the ‘used’ victims were being shot.

It was not, however, until one day in early April that the reality of this deception hit Langefeld. On this day, as Grete worked with the
Oberaufseherin
in her office, a memo came from the Gestapo office asking for ten Poles with numbers between 7000 and 10000 to present themselves
nach vorn
. Grete saw the memo and knew what it meant, as of course did Langefeld. A messenger fetched the women from their blocks. Grete recalled:

I sat at my typewriter
and looked through the window. As the group were brought across the square I noticed that two of them were on crutches.

‘Frau Langefeld,’ I called out. ‘They are going to shoot the rabbits. They are coming now.’

Langefeld sprang up, gave one glance out of the window, picked up the telephone receiver and demanded to speak to the commandant.

I sat there listening anxiously.

‘Herr
Lagerkommandant
,’ she said. ‘Do you have permission from Berlin to shoot the rabbits?’

Grete didn’t hear Suhren’s answer. Langefeld hung up and turned to Grete, telling her to go out and send the two prisoners on crutches back to their block.

After four years as chief guard at the women’s camp, and six months at Auschwitz, Johanna Langefeld had finally chosen between right and wrong, shaken off her indecision and acted to save two Polish prisoners’ lives. Grete, knowing that Langefeld was disobeying SS orders, and therefore at considerable risk to herself, carried out her boss’s instructions and told the rabbits to return to their block.

Two weeks later, Grete was in the office again and watched as Langefeld
took a brief call from Fritz Suhren. On this occasion, Langefeld listened in silence, replaced the receiver and left, saying nothing.