Ravensbruck

by Sarah Helm

  His sister never talked about the letters after the war: ‘When Krysia returned home in 1945, all she wanted to do was to forget, and to get back to school. She refused to speak about the camp ever again.’

  When I spoke to Wiesław in 2008, Krysia was still alive and living with her daughter, Maria, in Lublin. Maria might know where the letters were, thought Wiesław, but Krysia herself had now lost her memory and was unable to talk.

  Krysia’s daughter, Maria Wilgat, said she knew nothing of the surviving letters and knew little about the camp, as after the war Krysia had never spoken of it to her either. But Maria did offer to help. Twenty years after the war her mother had agreed to write an essay about the secret writing, as it was special to her. ‘This was the only story she wished to tell,’ said Maria, and she sent me a copy of the essay.

  The letter writing began, wrote Krysia in her essay, in order to tell the world of ‘the shameful acts of the German doctors’ and in the hope that if the world spoke out about it, the Germans might halt their crimes. ‘Several of us died as a result of these operations, many were crippled for life and all of us, regardless of the degree of damage done to our health, suffered mental torture that cannot be forgotten.’

  From the start the project was undertaken with the utmost seriousness.

  After we received a sign from my family that the first secret letter had been deciphered this dangerous game absorbed us completely. We began to work on improving and expanding our correspondence. The first improvement we made was to stop writing between the lines. Instead we used the inside of the envelopes of the camp letters. This way we gained some extra space, because we could write more densely on clean paper. It was also safer. In the first period of our correspondence we put a successive number on each envelope so that our families in Poland could know if they were receiving all the letters we had written.

  In order to send longer letters, the girls had the idea of sending part of each letter to each of the four families, who had to meet in secret to join them up and read them. A sign was given to show what had been done. These joint letters were ‘less personal’, as they were to be read out to other families. All four agreed the facts that went in and the letters were usually composed by at least two people. The system was also improved by asking the families to conceal their ‘receipt’ signs in the food parcels they were now sending—a thread of a certain colour left in the package, or the number of a received letter inscribed on a food tin.

  ‘Once we realised what the methods in the camp were for checking food parcels [SS women inspected them in front of the prisoners] we even got secret notes from our families, usually concealed in toothpaste tubes. This accounted for the frequent reference to toothpaste in our letters.’

  Later the girls received food packed in pages of books. ‘In this way our families managed to smuggle to us Pan Tadeusz and Zeromski’s Forest Echoes,’ said Krysia. After a while the group expanded, adding four more who included Dziuba Sokulska, the Lublin lawyer, and the young Warsaw student Wojciecha Buraczyńska. There was a further group who knew about the letter-writing and assisted, but did not write letters themselves.

  For Krysia the letter-writing became a mission to which she now devoted herself, planning what and where to write and how to divide the letters, devising signs and working out how to hide the evidence before climbing into the attic late at night and silently squatting to collect the urine—she doesn’t offer details—and to write. Furthermore, the facts had to be as accurate as possible, checked and double-checked, as this was first-hand evidence of atrocity; no time or space was wasted complaining about conditions or giving general descriptions of the camp.

  In her essay, Krysia quotes from her own letters, apologising to readers for failing in some places to include all names, or getting them in the wrong order. ‘There was room only for the briefest description of operations,’ she explains. She also apologises for the fact that some of the women named in the letters as alive were already dead, but this was because they were executed a short while after the letter was written. Looking back at her own letters, Krysia is struck by their childlike qualities. ‘We must remember that they were written by young girls. Our age and lack of perspective accounts for the way the events are described and for the interpretation of the facts.’

  She has even censored the letters she chooses as illustrations for the essay, to remove ‘irrelevant detail’ or ‘optimistic postscripts’. These were little phrases inserted to give a positive view of the camp—‘we wanted to cheer up our parents after reading the contents of the letters, which brought such dreadful news’. Other bits and pieces she quoted had also been self-censored, and it was obvious from the essay that somewhere most of the original letters must have been preserved.

  In 2010 Krysia’s daughter, Maria Wilgat, told me that her mother was now critically ill, with little time to live. So Maria had been spending more time in her mother’s house and had taken the chance to look around. She had discovered secret letters and other documents hidden in her grandmother’s old rolling pin, and in a carved-out hole in a chopping board. When we met again Maria produced the secret letters—all twenty-seven of them, some just crumbling parchment, barely legible, and in various shapes, including triangular. Some were obviously the backs of envelopes and others had words round the edge of other words. All were lovingly preserved.

  The earliest letters were mostly long lists of names of the executed women and of those operated upon, some with black crosses against them, which the four families meeting in Lublin must have pored over, before passing on bad news. There were also detailed accounts of operations, dates and more names. On 24 March Krysia wrote:

  Up to January 16th 1943, 70 persons were operated on altogether. Out of this number 56 were from the Lublin September transport, 36 of these operations began with infection (3 without incision) and 20 bone operations. In bone operations, each incision is opened again. No more new operations since Jan 15.

  Then follows an almost complete list of surgery dates, with the women’s camp numbers: ‘Infection operations August 1st 1942: Wojtasik Wanda 7709, Gnaś Maria 7883, Zielonka Maria 7771…’ Here too are the names of the doctors, who at that very moment were still operating and hiding behind sheets.

  Apart from Professor Gebhardt, operations are also performed by his two assistants, Fischer and Stumpfegger.

  As a sign that you have read this letter, send me a blue thread in a parcel…You can send a note hidden in the double bottom of a tin. Write at least once, describe the political situation. I am waiting for that! Message continued in letters from Wanda and Janina Iwańska.

  In several letters Krysia writes how eager she is to know if their messages are reaching London and the rest of the world.

  Reading on we found some of the ‘silly postscripts’ Krysia had written to cheer up her parents. ‘We are not doing badly. We are all together,’ she wrote in one letter. ‘All is fine with us. We get up early so I am grateful to papa that from childhood he got us used to that.’ In another letter: ‘We have the chance to wash and the cold water is healthy and really quite pleasant.’

  Later, reading the letters more carefully, I found several that Krysia didn’t mention in her essay. One begins:

  Mama dear, from yesterday I am depressed and I cannot stand it, so I have to write to you my thoughts and imagine we are close and that I can feel you near to me. I feel how nice it is and I start to cry. Sometimes it is so bad I have to talk to you in my head or write, or I have to start thinking about something else because otherwise I collapse.

  Another letter, the date of which has faded but which was probably written at the end of March or in early April, has an entirely different tone; it talks of how the first real camp protest began: ‘The first protest against the lawless acts…On March 12th 1943 five healthy women were again taken for operations. They put up resistance. No physical force used against them. One of them, Zofia [Dziuba] Sokulska strenuously protested.’

  Krysia had
told her parents in an earlier letter that since 15 January 1943 ‘nobody has been taken for an operation’, but by the time they received that letter, the information was already out of date. In the first days of March the Revier was said to be preparing for more operations, and anger reached boiling point again. Five women already cut open once or twice were recalled, among them Dziuba Sokulska.

  Events in Block 15 unfolded fast. As Wanda Wojtasik put it later: ‘Suddenly we had the suicidal courage of those who knew they could act as they chose today, because they would be dead tomorrow. Wordlessly we all reached the same conclusion at the same moment: enough was enough.’ Dziuba, once again, made the first stand. Summoned to the Revier, she asked Dr Oberheuser to explain the reason for operations on healthy prisoners. Oberheuser ignored her. Dziuba now told her that she had had two operations and would refuse a third. She walked out of the sickbay and back to the block, where word had already arrived of what she had done and there was great excitement at her courage.

  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.