by Sarah Helm
After the war Olga’s communist comrades tried to explain her appointment, but their version of events is not always reliable. By the early 1950s the majority of Ravensbrück’s German communist survivors had settled in the East, where they wrote a history of the camp with one main objective in mind: to extol the courageous communist resistance.
In the new German Democratic Republic (GDR) the heroism of camp communists was trumpeted to help bolster the country’s image as a bulwark against fascism. Olga Benario, Stalin’s own revolutionary, was central to this narrative; streets, schools and buildings across East Germany were named after her. Certain elements of Olga’s story, however, did not fit this theme, particularly her appointment as a Blockova—a role that meant she had to implement the orders of the SS.
To sanitise Olga’s appointment, these communist historians omitted to mention that such a job came with privileges and made out that her taking it was not collaboration but a sign that the SS had run out of other ways to break her—they made Olga Blockova to ‘bring hatred on her head,’ they said. And as soon as she was appointed, Olga turned the Blockova role to her advantage, showing these ‘bourgeois Jews the evils of fascism’, wrote Ruth Werner, Olga’s first biographer.
Werner, who was not in Ravensbrück, but trained with Olga in Moscow, and based her biography on interviews with communist survivors, described the other non-communist Jewish prisoners in Ravensbrück as ‘feral women’ with ‘a me-first attitude, stealing clothes and blankets’, giving proof—if it were needed—that anti-Semitism was rife amongst many German communist prisoners in the camp too. Olga herself was not really fully Jewish, some comrades suggested. Maria Wiedmaier said that she looked like ‘an Aryan’ and might have been ‘half-Aryan’.
The communists’ post-war idolatry of Olga reached its zenith with the inauguration of the Ravensbrück memorial site in 1959, when crowds gathered at the foot of a statue called Tragende (Woman Carrying), depicting an emaciated woman, high on a pedestal, carved in bronze, holding the limp figure of another woman in her arms. Tragende is meant to be Olga Benario. The Olga who stands there today seems distant, stark and cold, nothing like the tortured Olga—wife and mother—who accepted the role of Blockova in October 1939.
—
Returning from Berlin in September, there can be no doubt that Olga Benario was at breaking point. Three years spent behind bars, most of them in solitary confinement, had weakened her both physically and spiritually. She came back to Ravensbrück to find the communist group in the camp almost crushed. Hanna Sturm was still in the bunker. Her dear friend and fellow revolutionary, Sabo, was dead, probably from pneumonia, though some reports say beaten to death. Jozka Jaburkova was dangerously ill. And faith in Stalin had been unsettled by news that he had entered into a pact with Hitler.
Olga had her private pain too. She had long ago rejected her Jewishness, but now everything that was happening to her stemmed from it. How she viewed this conflict—did she long to be in the communist block with old comrades, or to join her fellow Jews in Block 11?—we will never know. Nor will we know how deeply she feared for her estranged mother and her brother’s safety. An aunt, her mother’s sister, had fled to America, but Olga’s mother and brother were still in Munich. Her deepest despair, however, clearly lay in the knowledge that during the summer real hopes of seeing Anita and Carlos again had been snatched away.
Olga could have refused the Blockova job—she had shown the courage for such defiance in the past—but that was before she had become a mother. If she refused she risked being shot, or at best put back in the bunker with no mail and no way of hearing news of Anita. If any new chance of emigration came up, she wouldn’t know.
Exactly when Olga became Blockova isn’t clear, but it must have been by 14 October 1939, as on that day she wrote to Carlos saying she could sometimes read a newspaper, which can only mean that she was receiving a Blockova’s privileges, and she was obviously able to move around and see her friends. She adds: ‘The few weeks in Berlin reminded me that it is the most difficult thing to be alone. Here I have my comrades who worry about what I eat.’ Olga worried about how Carlos was coping, as she knew he was still in solitary confinement. ‘Do you walk—do you exercise? It really depresses me to know you are alone.’ As always, her letter returned to Anita. ‘I’m dreaming of you and the little one again and again, but it’s bitter to wake up in the morning.’
—
‘Achtung! Achtung!’ shouts Olga as soon as the morning siren wails. In October temperatures are already dropping fast, and although there is a stove in the block, nobody can use it. Several women refuse to wake, so Olga marches up and down, shaking them. If they’re late, they’ll be beaten by guards, she warns. Another scrum forms around the Kesselkolonne, the soup wagon. The ‘coffee’ is quickly drunk. Olga shouts: ‘Out, out. Appell! Appell!’ Those too sick to work stay behind, but everyone else marches out, and by 4.30 a.m. the women of Block 11 are standing under the stars. ‘Achtung! Achtung! Ranks of five,’ and the ‘crows’ appear in their black woollen winter capes, watching the Blockovas for any slipup in the count.
One by one the women with the green armbands—Ratzeweit, Müssgueller, Scharinger, and now Benario—deliver the numbers to Langefeld. Olga’s tally is checked and approved. The women are dismissed back to blocks where they just have time to make their beds, before labour roll call. Olga watches them march off, then fills out her record book. As Blockova she takes the sick from her block to the Revier, where they line up with others hoping to see a doctor. Olga exchanges a word with Doris Maase, and passes on a message to Maria Wiedmaier in Block 3.
All day Olga has tasks to perform: registering new comers, counting stockings, knickers and vests for the weekly laundry, listing rations, under the block guard’s eye. When the women return at midday she serves the lunchtime soup and counts them again, and when they return at the end of the day she counts them again. Evening Appell is the worst, as women go missing during the day—hiding in the block, perhaps—so the count starts again, and if the missing person isn’t found everyone waits as the food gets cold and temperatures drop. Women slump to the ground and Olga stands and watches as the guard, Fraede, lashes out.
After the evening soup the women trudge to the washroom and fight over the lavatories. They undress and climb onto mattresses. Olga walks up and down. Someone is sleeping in her clothes to keep out the cold. She must take them off and fold them, Olga says, or she’ll get a report. Another woman is moaning, complaining of pains in her legs. The woman tells Olga she is blind. Olga sees her ankles are swollen and blue, and she pauses to show the woman how to stretch to ease the pain.
By 9 p.m. the block is locked and the SS guards leave the women alone till morning. Now Olga gathers friends around her to talk. She has her own bed, and locker. Here is Rosa Menzer, from Dresden, whom Olga has known since Lichtenburg, and Lena and Lenza, her other young comrades.
On Sundays, when the SS watch slackens, Olga’s comrades come together again to write their letters and talk about their families. Rosa, a seamstress, cannot write, so Olga or another comrade writes her letters for her, and Rosa returns the favour by showing them how to stitch old paper into their shirts to keep out the cold.
Olga brings out letters she has received from Carlos and they all discuss his ideas on philosophy and what Olga might say in reply. And they talk about Anita. They all agree that Anita should be part of a collective as young as possible. Olga writes: ‘It is important for her character. I have someone here who says this.’
The days pass. Olga comes to know the women better as she moves around the bunks, and they get to know her and look forward to her rounds; even the ‘bourgeois’ Viennese stop calling Olga a Red and a Bolshevik cow, because she helps them, telling them to eat slowly to ease the hunger, and to pick off lice from each other’s heads. ‘Don’t give up,’ she says. ‘Cling close for warmth.’
Olga finds moments to draw and sketch. Saving the scraps of paper she is allowe
d to have as Blockova, she draws miniature maps so the women can follow the progress of the war. Marking the front in pencil, with tiny arrows, she shows how German forces are advancing across Poland; a dotted line rings off Nazi-occupied lands. Olga’s information comes from snippets taken from the Nazi newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, smuggled to her by Maria Wiedmaier and Doris Maase.
Olga draws beautifully and the women in the block look on in wonder. A new prisoner called Käthe Leichter has arrived from Vienna. She seems to know a lot and tells Olga what is happening in the outside world, saying that before she was arrested the Austrian press were reporting that Churchill would sue for peace by Christmas.
Käthe quickly becomes loved by everyone in the block; she sings to the other women and recites poems. Some say that she seems to know every poem that was ever written. She is older than Olga and seems to want to help her.
And although Käthe is not a ‘comrade’ as such—she is a social democrat, not a communist—the two women have much in common, as do all the women here; they all have children or family far away. One evening Käthe talks of her last days in Vienna. Her husband and two boys managed to get out to safety across the Czech border and are now in Paris. Käthe despairs that she let them leave ahead of her and berates herself for not following sooner. She knows they reached Paris because she received letters via an aunt in Vienna, but she worries how long it will be before Paris will be taken too, and where they will go next. Käthe recites another poem, this time one she has written to an imaginary ‘brother’ in a men’s concentration camp.
Brother, have you been with your wife and children during the last night?
I was with my children.
I covered them both and said:
‘Mother will be there soon, be good don’t cry.’
The light of the lamp shines across a book and a couch.
We were sitting quietly, my husband and I, not to disturb the children.
I jumped up scared. The pale moonlight reflected on the iron bunks.
And I lie here among many, so still, so lonely and cold.
I in Ravensbrück, you in Sachsenhausen, in Dachau or Buchenwald.
—
Throughout November Olga’s letters ceased. Thanks to another Jewish prisoner, Ida Hirschkron, we know why. Ida, arrested in Vienna for resistance activity in July 1939, arrived in Ravensbrück in October. She was sent to the Jewish block, and remained a prisoner there until September 1941, at which point she was suddenly released. ‘My release must have been a mistake,’ she wrote later, ‘because as soon as I returned to Vienna the Gestapo started looking for me again. I was therefore forced to live underground illegally.’ But Ida escaped recapture, and after the war she recounted her experience in the camp. Her most vivid memory was the ‘lockdown’ of the Jewish block that began on 10 November 1939.
On that day all the Jewish women were barricaded inside Block 11. Doors were barred and windows boarded up. Nobody knew why. ‘We were not allowed to leave the block to receive mail or write letters, we were completely cut off from the outside world.’ Even roll call was taken inside the block, by Emma Zimmer. ‘When Zimmer entered the block our hearts beat fast. There was a storm of foul abuse—“Jewish swine”, “Jewish rabble”, “lazy bunch of Jews”. At the same time Zimmer beat us with all her might, haphazardly, and she beat whoever was near her.’
The lockdown went on day after day. Ida does not explain how, or how often, the women received food or water, but they sat in darkness ‘terrified of what might happen next’ and each day Zimmer came to shout and beat. ‘All this time we had no air and were not allowed to open the windows. We nearly went crazy with fear.’
The nightmare continued for three weeks, and it would clearly have gone on much longer if Olga hadn’t taken action. ‘Then our Blockova Olga Benario-Prestes dared ask Zimmer to put an end to this almost unbearable state of affairs.’ This was unprecedented impudence. To date no prisoner—and certainly no Blockova—had dared confront a guard, and according to Ida, Olga’s protest sent Zimmer wild.
‘Zimmer screamed like a madwoman and made a report to the camp commandant, Koegel, of the mutiny. She made everyone stand to attention and shouted: “You Jews, you will all be shot now!” This caused tremendous panic and chaos among the prisoners.’ But Koegel did not order the women to be shot. The threat was just a ‘sadistic little pleasure of Zimmer’s’, said Ida. ‘Instead we had to collect tools and then we went to shovel sand.’
Some time later the women learned the cause of their ordeal. On 8 November 1939, two days before they were incarcerated, a thirty-six-year-old joiner from Württemberg called Georg Elser had tried to kill Hitler and nearly succeeded. He planted a bomb in a beer hall where Hitler was speaking, but by a fluke of timing it went off ten minutes after Hitler left, killing eight bystanders instead. In revenge Jews in all concentration camps were punished.
Ida Hirschkron’s testimony, which was not available to the communist historians writing after the war, gives an almost unique view inside the Jewish block at this time of strife. Without it, nothing would be known of Olga’s courage in demanding an end to lockdown. As a result of Olga’s protest that particular punishment ended, and the doors of the block were opened.
As Hirschkron makes clear, however, being sent to shovel sand instead was no soft option. The guards in the Sandgrube made sure the prisoners continued to suffer from morning until night. ‘Women were attacked by dogs and there were terrible injuries. I myself often had to help carry women into the camp, who were covered with blood. The women had to be carried to the hospital with frightful frostbite.’
There were many old women amongst them, and one was completely blind, though whether this is the same blind woman comforted earlier by Olga in the block, we don’t know. ‘The woman’s feet were also so badly swollen that she couldn’t do the work the rest of us were sent to do. So Zimmer seized the blind woman by the scruff of the neck and beat her down, pulled her up again, and beat her with her hand and again thrust her to the ground so that she was left lying there, moaning.’
It wasn’t until 20 December that Olga was able to write to Leocadia and Ligia again, although only very briefly. She thanked them for continuing to ‘do all you can for me’ and for a telegram she had just received, sent on Anita’s third birthday—27 November—during the lockdown; ‘kiss my Anita-child for me’.
Despite the ‘mutiny’ Olga still held her post of Blockova in December, according to Alice Bernstein, another Jewish survivor. Alice was a Stubova (room chief) in Block 11 at the time, and recalled another incident involving Olga three days before Christmas. That morning she allowed a three-year-old Gypsy girl to sleep in longer than usual. ‘The child was ill and the Blockova, Olga Benario-Prestes, had covered her with a woollen blanket.’ The girl was discovered by the SS man Johann Kantschuster. ‘He grabbed the child by the hair, took her to the lake, and drowned her.’
Chapter 4
Himmler Visits
On 4 January 1940 Heinrich Himmler ordered his driver to head northwest out of Berlin, along the icy roads towards the Mecklenburg forest and on to Ravensbrück. With heavy snowfalls overnight, and temperatures dipping to minus 20°C, the journey was treacherous, with roads often blocked by drifting snow. Given the weather, as well as events in the wider war, particularly in Poland, one might imagine that a visit to the small women’s camp at Ravensbrück in January 1940 would have been low on the Reichsführer’s list of priorities. But Himmler liked to visit his camps, and this would be his first tour of Ravensbrück since it opened in May.
Adolf Hitler showed little interest in the concentration camps—according to the records, he never visited a single one—but they lay at the centre of Himmler’s empire; whatever went on behind their walls was signed off with his pen. Himmler’s childhood obsession with detail had grown into an urge to micromanage his entire empire, particularly his camps. As Reichsführer SS he ruled on everything from the prisoners’ calorie consumption to SS appoi
ntments; he always vetoed a man whose family tree suggested a non-Aryan gene. And during his visits he liked to meet inmates face to face, and might admonish one or two in person, or pick someone out for release.
Himmler would not have been deterred from visiting Ravensbrück by the bad weather; he liked to strike out into the frozen wilderness, indeed he often took the wheel of his Mercedes cabriolet himself. Even now the top would have been down, Himmler warmly wrapped. These woodlands were a far cry from the Bavarian Alps that he had known as a boy, with their tumbling waterfalls and fairy-tale castles, but the forests of the plain were also pure German lands and the woods were a place to seek out the mystical presence of his ancestors.
He also drove out this way to visit his friends. It wasn’t only Oswald Pohl, head of the SS economic office, who had an estate near Ravensbrück; several other top Nazis had property out here too, and regularly came out to hunt. Himmler, however, saw blood sports as ‘the cold-blooded murder of innocent and defenceless animals’. Criticising the ‘bloodhound’ Hermann Göring, he once told his masseur and confidant Felix Kersten: ‘Imagine, Herr Kersten, some poor deer is grazing peacefully and up comes the hunter with his gun to shoot the poor animal. Could that give you pleasure, Herr Kersten?’ Kersten had been hired by Himmler to ease the chronic stomach pains that had afflicted him since boyhood. The Estonian-born masseur—Himmler called him ‘my Black Buddha’—was expected both to massage away pain and to listen to his patient’s theories on the master race.
None of the Nazi elite believed in the master-race ideology more fanatically than the Reichsführer SS, and none had such an obsession with related theories; for information on Indian mysticism or freemasonry and how they related to ideas of racial hygiene Himmler could recite chapter and verse, so that the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who studied Himmler closely, commented: ‘with such a narrow pedantry, such black-letter antiquarianism did Himmler study details of this sad rubbish that many have supposed, but wrongly, that he had been a schoolmaster’. As Trevor-Roper pointed out, however, had Himmler only been a crank, ‘we would have heard far less of him’. As a manager, he was also ‘very efficient’.
