by Sarah Helm
Once this evacuation was complete the Swedes were planning to pack up and go home, as the possibility of further rescue seemed slim. Even the road east to Ravensbrück would not be open for long.
Bernadotte left at once for Berlin, arriving early on 20 April. There was a lull in the bombing, and as the count was driven to the Swedish legation he found a silent smouldering city. Sheltering in the legation cellars, he made contact with Schellenberg and requested an urgent meeting with Himmler, but Himmler was not to be found. He was in fact at a reception in the Führer’s bunker congratulating Hitler on his birthday, along with Göring and Goebbels and others of the inner circle. Bernadotte waited. There were more air raids. The birthday reception was over, but now Himmler and the others were deep in conference with the Führer, discussing what was to be done when all land routes south were severed, which would happen any hour. Hitler should get out while he still could, said those with him, but still he refused.
Bernadotte, still waiting, received another message from Schellenberg: Himmler would see him that night at Hohenlychen. He took the legation car and headed north. The journey was slow, as refugees fled west and filled the road.
After some two hours Bernadotte passed once again close to Ravensbrück. With the Russian guns now clearly audible, and Katyushas lighting up the sky to the east, it must have occurred to him that the women’s concentration camp was now the most vulnerable of all. He knew that any new concessions to be won from Himmler were likely to centre on Ravensbrück, not least because it was now almost the only camp his White Buses could still reach. Any rescues feasible at Mauthausen or Theresienstadt, both also yet to be overrun, would have to be made by the Swiss, to the south.
But what Bernadotte felt he could achieve, now that he was on his way to see Himmler for the third time, is hard to say: the evidence from Bernadotte himself is contradictory. The fact that during his stopover at the Danish border he had allowed several of his White Bus convoys to start heading home suggests that he did not expect a lot. He said later that he had sensed something significant was coming, but ‘nothing as momentous as what happened’.
At Hohenlychen there was still no Himmler. Instead, Karl Gebhardt again welcomed Bernadotte. The two had dinner, which Bernadotte later described as perfectly convivial, suggesting that even as he wrote (a month after the war) he had no inkling of Gebhardt’s own crimes. After dinner Himmler had still not appeared, so Gebhardt showed Bernadotte around the clinic, which was now packed with wounded soldiers from the eastern front. ‘Professor Gebhardt even invited me to be present as some German soldiers were operated on,’ wrote Bernadotte.
A message then came through that Himmler was even further delayed and would not be there until six in the morning. So with air raids sounding, Bernadotte turned in for the night.
—
After leaving the Führer’s birthday party, and before seeing Bernadotte at Hohenlychen, Himmler had decided to stop off for another meeting at an estate close to Hohenlychen called Gut Hartzwalde. This was the estate that Himmler had given to Felix Kersten, his masseur. Here Kersten was also waiting to see the Reichsführer and to introduce him to another possible bridge to the Western Allies, a German Jew called Norbert Masur, who was a representative in Sweden of the World Jewish Congress.
In the past few days the parallel negotiations involving Kersten as intermediary had come to fruition. Himmler had given Kersten the go-ahead to set up a meeting at Gut Hartzwalde between him and a Jewish interlocutor whose personal safety while in Germany the Reichsführer SS had guaranteed. Himmler had even convinced Kersten that he was ‘prepared to bury the hatchet with the Jews’.
While waiting for Himmler, Masur talked to Schellenberg and others in Himmler’s entourage, finding ‘these gentlemen’, as he called them, ‘courteous and ready to help’; he was particularly impressed by Franz Göring, Schellenberg’s assistant, who was ‘very efficient’. Masur formed the view that the men working for Himmler would try to help implement any agreement. ‘We are definitely of the opinion that they will not carry out possible orders from Himmler regarding more acts of violence,’ wrote Masur. ‘They declare that they quite understand that every outrage—even against Jews—is a crime against the future Germany.’ They were also, he noted, ‘young men who wanted to live’, and would therefore behave accordingly.
Masur’s comments are contained in a report of his meeting with Himmler that he wrote for the Swedish government the very next day, and which is therefore remarkably fresh and almost contemporaneous.
At two in the morning Himmler appeared, ‘impeccably dressed in a spotless uniform, and with decorations prominently displayed’. His manner was ‘calm and self-controlled’. Masur was relieved to be greeted with a ‘Guten Tag’ instead of ‘Heil Hitler!’, and the small group sat down to tea and cakes, brought from Sweden.
Himmler then launched into a long monologue, reviewing Germany’s history and rationalising the policy of ‘driving out the Jews’, though not, it seems, touching on their extermination. At one point he attacked the ‘lies’ told about Belsen. The foreign press had been ‘mud-slinging’, he complained; the crematoria at Belsen were built to help wipe out epidemics, not to commit mass murder.
Masur chose his moment to give Himmler a list of names of specific prisoners whose release was demanded by prominent Jewish families, but who, he must have known, were almost certainly dead by now, or would not be found in the mayhem of the camps. Masur called for a halt to more Jewish evacuations from the camps and good treatment for those remaining. In response, as Masur reported it, Himmler said that ‘no more Jews were to be shot’ and ‘all evacuations to halt’.
Himmler then made another more specific offer—one that nobody had expected: he proposed the release of 1000 Jewish women from Ravensbrück ‘as long as they were immediately fetched by the Red Cross’. The offer took Masur aback. Himmler’s word was of course ‘absolutely unreliable’, he commented in his report the next day, and he was well aware that ‘at the last moment there could be an order for the mass murder of all Jews’. Masur added: ‘The danger for non-Jews is considerably less, and it is hardly probable that any Nazi leader would dare to give an order to mass murder non-Jews belonging to any of the enemy countries of Germany.’
Masur thought it was possible that Himmler ‘really did want to do something at the last moment, and therefore I think he will give the promised orders’. On the offer to spare 1000 Ravensbrück Jews, Masur had particular reason to think it would happen, because the ‘efficient’ Franz Göring had already told him it would. Göring was already ‘working on arrangements’, Masur reported, and the women could be in Sweden within three days.
Himmler left Gut Hartzwalde just before dawn, telling his driver to take him on to Hohenlychen, where at 6 a.m. he sat down to breakfast with Bernadotte. According to Bernadotte, Himmler now seemed ‘very tired and weary’. He couldn’t sit still and kept ‘tapping his teeth’—a sure sign, or so Bernadotte had been told by Schellenberg, that he was nervous.
Once more the discussions centred on the release of prisoners. After Bernadotte sought more concessions on the Scandinavians, Ravensbrück was back on the table. Bernadotte presented his proposal for the release of French women, and Himmler not only instantly agreed, but said that Bernadotte could ‘take all nationalities’.
Himmler had just massively increased the offer he had made a few hours earlier to Masur. Bernadotte could send his White Buses to collect all the remaining prisoners of Ravensbrück—Jews and non-Jews—he declared. All of this was possible, said Himmler, simply ‘because the camp was about to be evacuated’.
Himmler then left and Bernadotte headed off to his mission’s HQ at Friedrichsruhe to try to stop the White Buses from leaving for home. The Swedish mission was about to become the biggest prisoner rescue of the Second World War.
Chapter 40
White Buses
Franz Göring, not Bernadotte, delivered the message to the Swedish drivers first. He ha
d signalled to the Gestapo men on board the buses, just as they were about to cross the Danish border, ordering them to turn round and head to Ravensbrück because there was more work to be done. Göring, still in Berlin, then set out to reach the camp himself. According to his account, given to British intelligence after the war, he left Berlin ‘at the last minute’ on the evening of 21 April as the Russians were fighting their way in. On his drive north further instructions reached him from Schellenberg that on arrival at Ravensbrück he was to ‘inform the camp commandant of Himmler’s decision and to make preparations for the removal of the women’. Schellenberg told Göring ‘the transfers were to be continued on the largest possible scale, even if there were orders to the contrary’. He found instead that it was Hitler’s orders Suhren was following.
At about midday on 22 April, Göring drove up to the Ravensbrück gates. There followed an immediate and ‘fairly long’ discussion during which Suhren showed a ‘negative attitude towards the release of the detainees’ and refused even to tell him how many women were in the camp, claiming he had ‘destroyed documents and registries on orders of the Führer’.
It was clearly understood that the German prisoners, along with the Italians, Russians and other East European prisoners, were not included in the Swedish rescue deal, so Göring was less concerned about those. But to plan the transports he needed to know precisely how many Western prisoners there were, and Suhren would not tell him. The commandant was ‘vague’ about numbers, and ‘avoided the question’, eventually saying there were about 9000 Poles, 1500 French, Belgian and Dutch and about 3000 ‘Jewesses’, though Suhren knew there were many more.
Suhren was particularly evasive when asked about two French women, a Madame Buteau and a Madame del Marmol, both Jews from Masur’s special list. ‘When I explained that Himmler was particularly interested in these persons, and had already ordered their release, Suhren became very nervous and after another half an hour told me that both had died in the camp a few weeks ago.’ Göring tried to make his own arrangements for the rescue, but the commandant refused to cooperate. When Göring asked why not, Suhren replied that he was following orders from the Führer, not to let the women leave the camp.
Exasperated, Göring managed to get through to Karl Brandt, Himmler’s personal secretary, asking for Himmler to intervene. A short time later Brandt called back, telling Suhren that Himmler’s orders were to set the prisoners free. Suhren now turned to Göring. ‘Suhren told me, between ourselves, that he no longer knew where he stood, for he had received the express order from the Führer, via Kaltenbrunner, to keep the prisoners in the camp and on the approach of enemy troops to liquidate them all.’
Suhren ‘became very uncertain’ and confided to Göring ‘amongst other things’ that he had another dilemma. Also in the camp, he said, was a special group of prisoners whom he was under express orders to kill. The women—fifty-four Polish and seventeen French—had had ‘experiments made on them’. Suhren was referring to the rabbits, though who the French were is not known. Karl Gebhardt had ordered the rabbits’ murder some weeks ago, but Suhren had not yet obeyed. Göring asked what sort of experiments they were, and Suhren told him the women had been subject to bone and muscle experiments and had been injected with bacteria.
Göring said later he could hardly believe it. ‘I thereupon had two women brought before me to get proof of this affair.’ Having seen the scarred legs of the two women—Jadwiga Kamińska and Zofia Baj—he told Suhren he was under no circumstances to kill them ‘until a decision from Himmler was to hand’. Göring claimed later not to have known that it was Himmler who had ordered the experiments in the first place.
In any case, after seeing the women he called through to Himmler’s office again, seeking a decision that ‘on no account should these women be liquidated, because others who had been released already had knowledge of the experiments’, by which he meant the world already knew about them. Göring had learned this because Jadwiga had told him so to his face.
Jadwiga and Zofia later gave their own version of this curious encounter to the other rabbits, as Wanda Wojtasik recalled:
On entering Suhren’s office, they saw a stranger in civilian clothes with a briefcase full of documents. Suhren whispered something to the stranger and pointed at their legs, saying these two ‘weren’t so bad but the others are in far worse shape’. The strange man didn’t say a word and just stared at their legs.
Then, always the reckless one, Jadwiga spoke out, telling the two SS officers that ‘the whole world knew about the experiments’, and she reminded Suhren about the parcels that had come for them from the outside world—the ‘blessings of the Pope’. And she dared to say that the war was as good as over now and that if they were to shoot us now the consequences for them would be catastrophic…
At this Suhren looked uncomfortable and muttered something about ‘orders from Berlin’ and ‘reaching an understanding’ and dismissed them.
Shortly after this Suhren, seeing Jadwiga on the Lagerstrasse, gave his ‘word of honour’ that nothing would happen to them, and ‘for once we believed him and began to crawl out of our holes’. In fact, Göring’s request for them to be spared had been granted and Himmler had rescinded the order to shoot them. The Polish rabbits, once fodder for Himmler’s butcher-doctors, were suddenly valuable bait to be offered to the West.
All over the camp, women were now crawling out of holes, as they’d heard the rumours that more White Buses were on their way. Even as Göring was talking to Suhren, a convoy of rescue vehicles, made up of fifteen Danish ambulances—the Danes had offered to supplement the mission—turned up outside the Ravensbrück gates. The ambulances had the capacity to take 115 women at the most, and Hans Arnoldssen, the Swedish doctor leading the convoy, had been instructed to take the sick first and come back for more. To everyone’s astonishment, however, Suhren now strode out of his office and told Arnoldssen he could take every Western prisoner in the camp—about 15,000 women were left—and take them ‘straight away’.
In the course of his conversation with Göring, Suhren had obviously changed his mind about the releases, influenced no doubt by the news that the Red Army was already ringing Berlin. Now the Swedes didn’t know what to do, as even with every vehicle they had, they couldn’t possibly remove that many women straight away. Göring said he’d try to requisition a train, but nobody believed he could do that, and anyway, warned Suhren, the Russians had now cut off the route to Berlin and could reach the camp ‘within hours’.
All Arnoldssen could do for now was load up the first fifteen ambulances, requesting that the sick be released to him first. As soon as he directed the vehicles to roll into the camp, chaos erupted as women literally stormed the vehicles. ‘They were grey, thin and tired,’ he noticed, ‘but most could at least walk.’
Rumours that the sick might be taken first this time were viewed with fear in Block 10, as this normally meant a gassing transport. The morning the ambulances arrived, Erika Buchmann, the Blockova, was given a list of twenty-four names, all of them acutely sick, and told to bring them outside. Instead Erika hid as many as she could around the block, or said they had died, which brought the list down to seventeen.
The seventeen were led to the offices and told to wait, which was unusual, so Erika dared to hope they were to be rescued after all, especially as she’d now seen the sick from ordinary Revier blocks taken to the ambulances. However, when the last of the ambulances pulled away, the seventeen Block 10 women were left behind. Soon after that, recalled Erika, they were returned to the block.
They came back frozen and wet with rain—but at least they came back. Now the whole block hoped this was a sign that they were really going to let them go home next time, and the women themselves were convinced of it. That night our sick veered between the greatest hope and the greatest fear, and we with them. We all understood now that the whole camp had to be evacuated before the Red Army arrived. Some of the Germans had already left on foot. The Swe
dish Red Cross had already taken away some of the sick. Would they take ours?
At dawn the following day, 23 April, more prisoners were prepared for the next Swedish transport, and the same seventeen women were taken to stand by the offices again. After standing in the cold the night before, most were by now at death’s door, said Erika, but not all. Edith Glodschey, a German from Königsberg, was one of the strongest—‘After each cough of blood, she stood up straight again.’ The German Gypsy called Pfaus had a pneumothorax but she was well in general. Marta Meseberg, a German, was in a good state, ‘and had only been with us two days’. Silvie Cernetic, a Yugoslav partisan, was also ‘quite strong and well’.
When the group left the block for the second time the prisoner nurse Nadja Bunjac accompanied them, which was taken as another sign of hope. It was dawn when they left, but after three hours, Nadja came back, alone. She was weeping in despair.
She told us that she had to wait with the patients all this time in the terrible cold in front of the office. The sick were lying on their thin coats on the ground. It was raining. They were in the worst state you could imagine. When the truck arrived eventually the SS who were with it made no attempt to hide the fact that they were going to murder them all. Nadja was ordered to carry each of the sick in her arms to the truck. She was ordered by the guards to drag them on the ground to make it easier. And when, beside herself, she cried, ‘These are human beings and sick human beings,’ the guards just laughed.
Erika now felt stupid for even thinking that anyone would be rescued from Block 10, or from the other sick blocks. That day Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier made another note in her diary: ‘This day, in the Revier, they selected sick French women for a Red Cross Transport, and women with tuberculosis were selected for gassing. Sixteen were taken from Block 10.’ The fact that Marie-Claude counted sixteen and not seventeen, as counted by Erika, meant that one had died before the gassing truck came.
