by Sarah Helm
—
After nearly three months in isolation, Hanna had lost track of time, but she knew autumn had come, as it was icy cold in her cell and she still had only a thin summer dress. Olga had left the neighbouring cell long ago, but Hanna could still hear Hedwig Apfel. Each time Mewes, the new Strafblock guard, entered Hedwig’s cell the opera singer shrieked and laughed and threw her pot back in Mewes’s face.
Since war had begun, numbers in the Strafblock had swelled, and Mewes was brought in to help Zimmer, handing out the food and patrolling at night. A sullen brute, Mewes had had three children, all by different Fürstenberg men, or so Hanna had picked up by listening to gossiping guards. At least, thought Hanna, she could be thankful that Margot Kaiser had been moved on. Under the commandant’s new regime, the twenty-year-old green-triangle prisoner from Chemnitz had been promoted and was now the camp’s most powerful inmate.
In any male concentration camp, Margot Kaiser would have been called a Kapo (‘trusty’, inmate foreman), or Senior Kapo. Here in Ravensbrück the word was less commonly used, but the practice of co-opting prisoners to carry out the day-to-day work of running the camp was to all intents and purposes the same as it was in Buchenwald, Dachau or Sachsenhausen. The female prisoner guards were more likely to be called by their official titles—the Blockova was the block chief, the Stubova the room chief—but they were all put in post to assist the SS, just as the Kapos were in male camps. Such prisoner jobs had existed from the start, but in the autumn of 1939, in line with the new harshness, the Kapo system had been tightened up, with a new hierarchy. The job of Lagerläuferin—camp runner—was introduced: prisoners whose job was to carry messages back and forth as required. And a ‘head prisoner’ was appointed; Margot Kaiser was the first to get the job. Her official title was Lagerälteste, camp senior, though the prisoners called her Lagerschreck—camp terror.
The Kapo system had always been at the very heart of the concentration camp blueprint. For one thing, it saved on staff and money: without these willing prisoner helpers, the SS would not have been able to control the vast numbers held in their camps. But as Rudolf Höss explained in his memoir, the Kapos were far more than just free labour. ‘The more there are rivalries, the more battles between the prisoners, the easier it is to control the camp. Divide and rule—that is the principle not only of high politics but also in a concentration camp.’ And the prisoner staff in no way represented the needs or wishes of the prisoners. Their job was to obey SS commands; as soon as they failed to do so they were removed. And this was the trap, as Heinrich Himmler himself explained in a speech to officers of the German army. ‘The Kapo must make the men march,’ he said, ‘and as soon as he doesn’t do his job we make him return to his block with fellow prisoners and there they will beat him to death.’
From the beginning, the system worked just as well with women as it had with men; there was no lack of prisoners willing to take bribes of better clothing, more food and their own bed. As in the male camps, the women Kapos also wore green armbands, indicating their privileged jobs and allowing them to move around freely. In the early days, just as in the men’s camps, the women chosen were often the green triangles; co-opting the criminal class to rule over political prisoners was the most obvious way to institute ‘divide and rule’. The experience of the male camps had proved that the ‘greens’ were most likely to bring zeal to the work. A ‘green’ Kapo at Mauthausen called August Adam, a gangland criminal, had the task of assigning work to new arrivals and boasted later about how he used to pick out lawyers, priests and professors and tell them: ‘Well, here I am in command. The world has turned upside down.’ Then he would beat them with his bat and send them to the Scheisskompanie—latrine gang.
The green triangles at Ravensbrück were never in the same criminal league as August Adam; those chosen as Kapos here were more likely to be simply feckless women who’d fallen into a life of petty theft, illegal abortion or dodging work. Even Käthe Knoll—a Kapo of sorts since the earliest days in Lichtenburg—had not, as it later turned out, murdered her mother but was arrested for ‘race shame’ after relations with a Jewish man; she had also led a life of petty crime. Margot Kaiser, the new Lagerschreck, had never murdered anyone before she arrived at Ravensbrück. Throughout her teens she’d tricked and thieved, until she was sent to work in a munitions factory, from which she ran away. By the time she left Ravensbrück, however, she had beaten at least ten women to death, as she admitted at her post-war trial.
Although the green triangles held most power, Ravensbrück also employed a large number of black triangles as Kapos particularly in the blocks, and in this respect the women’s camp differed from the men’s. Among the black triangles Ravensbrück had a useful resource that the male camp didn’t have: Puffmütter, brothel madams. Langefeld liked to appoint these women: if a Puffmutter could run a brothel, she could run a Ravensbrück block.
Philomena Müssgueller, a forty-one-year-old prostitute who had run a brothel in Munich for many years, was happy to be plucked out of the mayhem of the asocial block to work as a Blockova keeping order over ‘politicals’, especially as it won her an extra sausage and her own bed. Philomena already had her own gang of black-triangle acolytes, who fawned around her, and together they easily had the muscle to keep down a bunch of red triangles.
Marianne Scharinger, an Austrian, arrested for carrying out illegal abortions, was made Blockova of the Jewish block, while the Düsseldorf prostitute Else Krug had been chosen for the prize job of running the potato cellar. Peeling mountains of root vegetables to a strict deadline was gruelling and repetitive work, but much sought after thanks to the chance of pocketing a potato, cabbage or swede. Since the outbreak of war, prisoners were getting one less ladle of soup a day, and Else had set up a smuggling ring, getting extra vegetables out to the hungry in her block.
As their power spread, nobody despised the Kapos more than the German and Austrian red triangles. The ‘September prisoner’ Luise Mauer was harassed by a prostitute Blockova called Ratzeweit, a ‘despicable’ character who lashed out and screeched when the women were late getting up for Appell. Ratzeweit liked to pick on older women, and harassed Lisel Plucker, an elderly political prisoner, so Lisel tried to kill herself by walking into the wire.
Maria Wiedmaier, who had organised Red Help committees for the Communist Party, had never had to take orders from such a lowlife as Müssgueller. ‘Zimmer surrounded herself with green triangles,’ she said, ‘and she made use of their meanness, and their brutish methods.’ These Kapos were also used as SS spies; one such spy spotted Minna Rupp, another newly arrived German communist, stealing half a carrot and reported her to Koegel, so Minna was sent to the Strafblock. Prisoners were barely able to meet at all any more, as the Spitzel (informers) were watching and would report not only to Koegel but to Langefeld as well.
Johanna Langefeld saw the value of the Kapo system too, particularly as Koegel tried to further undermine her authority. In the first six months of the camp the Oberaufseherin had lost several battles with the commandant, and now there was to be a new camp prison—or ‘bunker’—against her wishes.
Langefeld had been as eager as anyone to fulfil Himmler’s edict on ‘protecting the homeland from internal enemies’. The mere sight of women standing for hours in the cold and wet demonstrated her iron discipline. Nevertheless, Koegel’s methods were not hers, and later she would tell American interrogators that she had always known Koegel was a sadist, though her statement suggests that she was just as angered by Koegel’s refusal to inform her of his plans as she was by his brutality.
In particular, he had secured the right—behind her back—to order women to the Strafblock and isolation cells without consultation. Worse, women guards—other than those assigned to work there—would be barred from entering the new stone bunker without Koegel’s permission. To counter this affront, Langefeld shored up her own power base in the living blocks, kitchen, Wäscherei and Effektenkammer by making sure that Kapos
loyal to her were put in key positions. And she insisted on choosing these prisoner staff herself. She took her time, watching women on the Lagerstrasse and reading their files. She also listened to her informers, often other Kapos.
Doris Maase said later that from the very earliest months, Johanna Langefeld had recruited her ‘men of confidence’ from amongst the prostitutes. If she heard that a Blockova was losing control, the woman was sacked. Langefeld would then stride out onto the Lagerstrasse at Appell and pick another woman who had caught her eye.
In the autumn of 1939 Langefeld was looking for a new Blockova for the Jewish block. The place was in chaos: women always late for Appell, the lice count high, food being spilled. A group of orphaned Gypsy children had been put in the block too, which didn’t help. Even Doris Maase described the Jewish block as ‘a rabble’ as she watched the women line up at the Revier.
—
From the start the Jewish prisoners had been deliberately brought lower than any other group. Just 10 per cent of the prisoner strength, the Jews had been isolated in a single block at the end of the Lagerstrasse, subject to constant harassment. Rations were meaner, and they worked longer hours, without a day off. Not surprisingly, many Jewish women soon fell ill, suffering mostly from swollen legs, nervous fits and chest infections. Many were also afflicted by sores and wounds caused by beatings. It was the practice of the night shift guards to sit around in the canteen talking about what they’d read about ‘Jewish sluts’ and ‘rich Jewish bitches’, before striding off to lash out at any Jewish ‘swine, whore or bitch’ they saw.
The outbreak of war brought an escalation in abuse, as Marianne Wachstein observed when she returned to the block after her period in the isolation cells. She saw sick women forced out into the early morning cold by Blockovas, and made to stand at Appell having epileptic fits and seizures, while others fainted as they stood to be punished in the rain. ‘A Jewish woman called Rosenberg who was at that time in side B of the Jewish barrack, had to undergo a standing punishment inside the block with the door and windows open in the freezing cold—even though she had a bad chest,’ said Marianne. ‘The Rosenberg woman had been reported for failing to make her bed properly.’
The fear of standing obsessed Marianne because she herself could hardly walk or stand. On arrival in the camp in June a ‘humane’ SS doctor excused her from Appell, but in the autumn a new SS doctor told her she would have to attend. Marianne objected and demanded that he should examine her first to see if she was well enough, but he refused ‘and said something rude and disparaging about Jews’ and the nurse sitting behind the desk ‘followed with a jeering smile’. Marianne said: ‘I will tell people abroad how one is treated in a concentration camp,’ upon which the doctor grabbed her and threw her out. ‘I’ll report that too,’ Marianne said, clearly believing that the wrongs she was suffering would soon be put right.
After the incident, Marianne returned to her block and told her friends: ‘The physician has taken his oath and must examine me, the Jew, just as he examines an Aryan woman when he checks if she is fit or not,’ and the others all agreed, including Edith Weiss, Modesta Finkelstein, Leontine Kestenbaum and several more of the Vienna ‘rabble’.
Such a rise in anti-Semitic abuse in the camp was hardly surprising given the increasing Jewish persecution across the Reich. The Führer was not yet ready to order wholesale German-Jewish roundups—not least because there were no firm plans about where the Jews would go—but persecution had intensified, and by the time war started in September 1939, 500,000 German Jews had found the means to leave Germany; 250,000 remained, two-thirds of them women—widows, divorcees, single mothers, the destitute and the homeless, none standing any chance of securing a visa and all at high risk of being picked up by the police and accused, like Herta Cohen, of the crime of ‘infecting German blood’.
The pickup happened, said Herta, in one of her many statements to the police, in a restaurant called Bremer Hafen in Essen, where she went for a glass of beer.
It was 5 p.m. And I sat down on the table where there was nobody. On another table were two men in uniform. Grey uniform. The two men came to my table and sat down. They wanted a beer too. One left. And the other stayed. When we were alone I told him I was Jewish but for him this was not important and he wanted to sit here. He gave me a drink. I got dizzy. After two hours I was leaving and the man paid for the drinks. On the way home he asked if I wanted to drink beer near my flat in Adolf Hitler Strasse.
He asked her to go to his flat. ‘I say I cannot do this as I am Jewish. And he says be quiet it doesn’t matter. I stay with him. He gives me more beer. The next morning I am lying next to him. I don’t know what happened to my clothes. The next morning we had sex.’
The interrogator wants to hear more, and now asks exactly what happened, where it happened, and how it happened—‘Was it full sexual intercourse?…Was he inside you?…Was he right inside you?’ But that left the man unsatisfied, so the questions resumed next day. To one of them Herta answers: ‘I had to clean up the semen,’ and the questions go on until finally there is no more to say, so she is sent to Ravensbrück. The ‘reason for arrest’ given on her file was ‘infecting German blood’.
So desperate were some of these abandoned German-Jewish women that several had tried to flee across the Dutch border, but travelling alone made them conspicuous. A Frau Kroch, from Leipzig, had sacrificed her own chance of freedom by letting her husband go on ahead with her children, staying behind to cover their tracks. When the coast was clear she set off to join them but was arrested and brought to Ravensbrück. A German political prisoner who had known her before recognised her in the camp one day. ‘They had cut off her hair and she went about in bare feet. I shall never forget the sad look she gave me.’
Mathilde ten Brink never had much hope of getting away, as she had no papers. Mathilde was a fifty-one-year-old homeless woman from Osnabrück. She had lost her job as a cleaner in the family shop when it was destroyed in the Kristallnacht pogrom, which may also explain how she lost her Reichspass, identity card. In any event the Dutch police arrested her at Emmerich and handed her back to the Gestapo. A German police report noted that she was ‘Not married. 138 cm [4′ 6″] tall and weak.’ She had Jewish features. ‘Nose is very big. Big ears. No teeth. Speaks German and poor Dutch.’ Mathilde had ‘No children and no home,’ said the police report, which included dozens of pages of official correspondence, before Mathilde had even been sent to Ravensbrück, as did the report on Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman accused of Rassenschande. Irma and her ‘Aryan’ husband—who was also jailed—had two little girls who’d been taken away; one was now living with Irma’s parents, the other taken to a Nazi orphanage.
Irma received only scraps of news about the girls in censored letters from her parents. In one of her replies it is evident that Irma had been toiling on an outside work gang, because she says she’s seen children roller-skating—villagers perhaps, or children of the SS, playing in their villa gardens:
Dear Mutti,
I was terribly happy about your letter. Yes, that’s the way I imagine Ingrid to be. She’ll be someone who knows how to stand up for herself in life. Roller-skating seems to be in fashion. Here at work I often see the children roller-skating. Now you’ll be getting the garden in order. You don’t say anything about emigrating any more?
Tender wishes and kisses also to my roller-skater,
Your Irma Mutti.
When Doris Maase described the Jewish block as a rabble, however, she meant not only that these women were the most desperate, but also that they had no discipline, no organisation, no common cause. Though identified as Jews, religion meant little or nothing to them and few shared any political beliefs. In Blocks 2 and 3 the communists and other politicals were planning how to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on 7 November, but the tiny group of Jewish communists in Block 11 were reviled by other Jewish women as Reds, and they in turn scorned the ‘bourgeois’ Viennese women
and recoiled from the prostitutes. A minority of the Jewish women could console themselves that they were here for fighting fascism, which was what Maria Wiedmaier and her comrades tried to remember as they were herded every morning into line.
Within weeks of her release from the isolation cell, Marianne Wachstein herself was once again demanding to know why she was in the camp at all, and was brought again before the commandant. Evidently she still thought she could make Koegel see sense, but instead ‘The Herr Director took the file that was lying in front of him and hit me several times on the hands and I realised that I was not allowed to defend myself.’ Koegel ordered Wachstein back to an isolation cell and told Langefeld to sort out the block of ‘Jewish whores’.
Langefeld’s response was radical. She dismissed the Blockova of the Jewish block and walked out onto the Lagerstrasse at Appell to choose another. But rather than turn to the criminal or asocial blocks, she walked towards the Jewish women, and observed them with silent disgust. Johanna Langefeld hated the Jews as much as anyone, but one of these women stood out. Olga Benario was a striking, handsome figure even in her striped uniform and Langefeld, who had known Olga since Lichtenburg, was well aware of her story. She called her out of line, made her stand to attention, and told her she was the new Blockova of the Jewish block. Till then, no political prisoner—Jew or non-Jew—had been offered the poisoned chalice of ruling over fellow inmates.
—
The SS burned all documents about the appointment of Kapos and other prisoner staff, so we have no official information on why Olga was given the Blockova job. Accounts from the prisoners in Block 11 are rare, as few of the Jewish prisoners survived.
