Ravensbruck

by Sarah Helm

  spies through keyholes: Mączka, Lund 228.

  ‘Look here,’: Dreams.

  Gebhardt left: Zofia Mączka, the Polish doctor, later said that one day she overheard Oberheuser admit that ‘there was at least one good thing about the operations: I got a bit of practice with surgery, and I have a chance of getting a position at Hohenlychen now’.

  ‘I can also imagine…’: Cited in Mitscherlich and Mielke, Death Doctors. Himmler’s mania for experimentation became clear to Keith Mant, the British war crimes pathologist, when preparing for the Nuremberg cases. ‘I discovered when reading the SS documents in Nuremberg during preparation for the trial of the doctors that he [Himmler] had personally read and initialled virtually every document dealing with human experiments which were in the SS HQ files’. Note on a file, Atkins.

  ‘showed unobjectionably Nordic…’: Mitscherlich and Miekle, Death Doctors.

  ‘very quickly grasped…’: Ibid.

  opposed Stumpfegger’s tests: Nuremberg testimony, cited in ibid. Details of these experiments also in Mączka, Lund 228, and Mant report, WO 309/416.

  A little Gypsy girl: Housková, BAL B162/455.

  ‘marks of hypodermic needles…’: Dictators.

  mostly to Auschwitz: In autumn 1942 the Ravensbrück women were still unclear what happened at Auschwitz, but news arrived with a group of ‘extreme’ Jehovah’s Witnesses, sent from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz for making trouble, then returned—nonsensically—a few weeks later to be executed. Grete Buber-Neumann managed to speak to one of them, who said: ‘You won’t believe it, I know, but living human beings are thrown into the fire there, including little children. Jews chiefly.?’ Grete didn’t believe her. She looked delirious. She’d obviously gone mad. See Dictators. At the same time as the Jewish prisoners left for Auschwitz in October 1942, so Emma Zimmer, the senior guard, was transferred to work there; she said her job was supervising the SS accommodation (WO 309/1153).

  ‘They were often sick…’: Hoffmann, Buchmann coll.

  a Ukrainian girl: Winkowska, Lund 285, and Grabowska, Beyond. There were at least ten of these ‘special experiments’, says Zofia Mączka (Lund 228).

  Russian doctor in Kiev: Mitscherlich and Miekle, Death Doctors.

  shoulder blade: Ibid, and Mączka, Lund 228.

  One of these women: Also see Grabowska, Beyond.

  Chapter 15: Healing

  Kazimiera Pobiedzińska: See Grabowska, Beyond, and Falkowska, ‘Report to the History Commission’, Institute for National Memory, Poland.

  ‘these unscrupulous Kapos…’: Höss, Commandant.

  On the ground: Pery Broad affidavit, 14 December 1945, NI-11397, Staatsarchiv Nürnberg.

  backroom boy: In training SS chiefs found Suhren ‘a little hesitant and awkward’ and lacking ‘military sentiment’ but his conduct was ‘irreproachable’, as were his National Socialist convictions. See Strebel, Ravensbrück. The German prisoner Isa Vermehren noted he had a ‘cultivated demeanour’ (TNA TS/895). Also see note for p. 354, below.

  SS corruption: Ramdohr’s so-called ‘investigation’ centred on SS looting in the fur workshop, but according to Ella Pietsch, a particularly observant guard, it was a cover-up. A key witness—a junior SS man called Verchy—was shot before he could spill the beans. Ramdohr told Pietsch that Verchy ‘died a natural death’ but she didn’t believe him (BAL B162/981).

  lethal toll: Death figures cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.

  ‘Each prisoner’s output…’: Dictators. Also see samples of monthly reports in SA, showing the turnover of ‘useless’ workers and numbers rejected due to ‘death’. In Siemens, Feldenkirchen notes that management found output ‘impressive’ due to ‘exemplary’ fitting out of workshops and ‘order that reigned in the workplace’.

  ‘wriggling between…’: Dictators. Helena Strzelecka, Lund 192, described the couple’s ‘drunken orgies’ in the Revier. Quernheim put on ‘macabre shows’ for those she was going to kill, bathing them first and decorating the bath tub with flowers, then combing their hair.

  sneaking little luxuries: Grabowska and Maćkowska, Beyond.

  ‘I’ll just try…’: Beyond.

  ‘We were silent…’: Dreams.

  ‘painful sight’: Michalik, Lund 117.

  ‘telling the world’: Krysia Czyż-Wilgat (née Cyc?) essay, describing the genesis of the plan, in Beyond, and author interview with Wanda Półtawska (née Wojtasik) and Wojciecha Zeiske (née Buraczyńska). See also Dreams.

  ‘It seemed out of context,’: Author interview.

  ‘This was the only story…’: Author interview.

  The letter writing began: Czyż-Wilgat, Beyond.

  protest march: The march was described to me by Wojciecha Zeiske and is in testimony of several cited above, in particular Pelagia Maćkowska, and Eugenia Mikulska in Beyond.

  ‘knew nothing of the operations’: Lanckorońska, ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, AICRC.

  a near-mutiny: Czyż letters. See also Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück.

  I sat at my typewriter: Dictators.

  PART THREE

  Chapter 16: Red Army

  For the story of the Red Army women I interviewed more than thirty survivors and have also drawn on others’ interviews, notably those with the German historian Loretta Walz, who was the first Western writer to work on an oral history of the camp.

  Trial testimony is limited. Crimes against Russians were not investigated in Western post-war trials, and nor did Russians give evidence, which is in part why the story has never been told. A few ad hoc trials were held at Neustrelitz, near Ravensbrück, by Soviet prosecutors after liberation but details are few.

  Papers relating to a Soviet Investigative Commission into Ravensbrück have recently come to light in GARF, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, and were invaluable though incomplete.

  ‘…orders came to mobilise’: Author interviews. Also see Shneer, Plen, and Mednikov, Dolya Bessmertiya.

  800,000 Soviet women: Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.

  ‘Malygina was…’: The account of the last battle on the Crimean cliffs, the swim, the march west and the shooting of Jews is based on my interviews, as well as the account of Leonida Boyko in Mednikov, Dolya Bessmertiya and Konnikova, GARF. Also Tschajalo, report to the Military Medicine Museum, St Petersburg.

  ‘depraved creatures’: Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück. Also see Shneer, Plen.

  used for slave labour: Author interviews. Also see Tschajalo, report to the Military Medicine Museum, St Petersburg, and Shneer, Plen.

  Chapter 17: Yevgenia Klemm

  From the train: Author interviews. Also: Konnikova, GARF; Tschajalo, report to the Military Medicine Museum, St Petersburg; Losowaja, ARa; and Nikif papers.

  ‘war status’: Author interviews, and see discussion in Strebel, Ravensbrück and Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust.

  ‘official’ Russians: Dictators. Grete Buber-Neumann’s memoir, first published in West Germany in 1949, was viewed in the East as the work of a fascist traitor and is still today not translated into Russian.

  ‘They came from…’: Hájková, ‘Ravensbrück’, Prague 1960, ARa.

  ‘contemptible’: Dictators.

  post-war censorship: On Nikiforova’s fight with censors I drew on interviews with Stella Nikiforova (née Kugelman) and Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow.

  born in Odessa: Klemm’s background is based on survivors’ accounts and Georg Loonkin’s papers, including an article he wrote in 1968 for the Communist Flag. The article was groundbreaking as it extolled the heroism of the Soviet women at a time when Hitler’s Red Army prisoners were still viewed by many in Russia as traitors.

  I found the camp: Yekaterina Olovyannikova, Nikif papers.

  ‘I don’t see Lyusya…’: Anna Fedchenko, Nikif papers.

  ‘extremely beautiful clothes’: Letter in Nikif papers.

  ‘always held high’: Hájková, ‘Ravensbrück’, Prague 1960, ARa.

  more w
ere arriving every day: Increasing overcrowding is described in most accounts of the period; see for example Moldenhawer, Lund 420. Also see the SS photo album showing building work (ARa) and Plewe and Köhler, Baugeschichte Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück.

  her favoured Blockovas: Amongst other Blockovas sacked and sent to the bunker when Langefeld was dismissed were Rosa Jochmann, the Austrian trade unionist and Helena Korewina, the Polish countess.

  Spitzel: Multiple accounts in Hamburg trial testimony and BAL. See Apfelkammer BAL B162/9818, and Ramdohr’s own testimony, WO 309/416.

  ‘strolling up and down…’: Dictators.

  ‘beautiful beast’: Exactly when Binz officially became chief guard is not clear. At first she shared the post with a newcomer to the camp, Anna Klein-Plaubel, but Klein-Plaubel made little impression on prisoners and claimed in post-war interrogations that she had no direct contact with inmates (WO 309/115). From 1943 onwards most prisoners believe Binz was only chief guard; she certainly had the most power.

  Binz paid a visit: Author interview with Ilse Halter, childhood acquaintance of Binz.

  ‘It was 4 a.m….’: Nikif papers.

  stand outside in the cold and rain: Konnikova, GARF. New forms of water torture were always being invented. Anna Stekolnikova recalled digging sand from the lake floor, standing waist-deep in water to do it. Author interview.

  ‘Suddenly from machine to machine…’: Nikif papers.

  sang an aria: Tschajalo, report to the Military Medicine Museum, St Petersburg, says it was an aria from Carmen. Anise Girard recalled singing an aria with the Soviet women when she lived in the same block.

  ‘Only the proletarians…’: Hájková, ‘Ravensbrück’, Prague 1960, ARa, on the march and also author interview with Galina Gorbotsova.

  Chapter 18: Doctor Treite

  he donated: Strebel, Ravensbrück.

  Youth Camp: Construction of the Uckermark camp was carried out at about the same time the Siemens plant was built, and was also done by prisoners from the men’s camp. Once again the death toll was shocking. Witnesses said ten to fifteen men were shot each day, as they collapsed of hunger and exhaustion, or tried to escape.

  ‘I absolutely wanted…’: Vavak, ‘Siemens & Halske im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück’, DÖW, Ravensbrück f. 49.

  ‘It is incomprehensible…’: SA uncatalogued file, cited in Feldenkirchen, Siemens.

  to work at the death camp: Ehlert, BAL B162/452.

  ‘I wanted to go back…’: Strebel, Ravensbrück.

  ‘As the housing…’: Ibid.

  ‘Under our eyes…’: Bontemps, ‘Siemens-Arbeitslager-Ravensbrück’, ARa.

  ‘After three months…’: Author interview.

  ‘It was one of the…’: Author interview.

  had never halted: The sewing shop kept lists of the ‘useless’ too. WO 235/433.

  black transports: Schiedlausky, WO 235/309. Also see Tillion, Ravensbrück and her evidence at Rastatt, Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Colmar. Also Anise Postel-Vinay (née Girard), ‘Les exterminations par gaz à Ravensbrück’, in Tillion, Ravensbrück, 3rd edition.

  ‘They chose us…’: Maurel, Ravensbrück.

  the contracts: See Strebel, Ravensbrück; also Speer, The Slave State.

  ‘whether because of…’: Czyż letters.

  clandestine radio station: SWIT came under the Politcal Warfare Executive, a British wartime secret service, which oversaw all underground radio propaganda. A women’s branch of SWIT was started too, at the instigation of a Polish woman lawyer called Krystyna Marek.

  The first time: Author interview. Poles had also been sent to work as labourers at Hohenlychen clinic, from where they got letters out from in the ordinary mail.

  ‘produced a feast’: Silbermann, ‘SS-Kantine Ravensbrück’, DÖW, Ravensbrück f. 140.

  ‘With such a high rate…’: NI-10815, Staatsarchiv Nürnberg.

  ‘…only those suffering…’: Himmler, NO-1007, Staatsarchiv Nürnberg.

  ‘I didn’t want to do it’: Konnikova, GARF.

  at least two abortions: Rosenthal’s officer file, copy in ARa.

  family background: See Salvation Army yearbooks (various editions), ‘Jubilee Memories of Lt-Col K. Treite’ and other papers in the Salvation Army archives, London. Family tree in Percy Treite officer file, BA.

  reorganised the Revier: See, for example, Maria Grabska, ‘Bericht über das Revier Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück’, ARa.

  ‘After her illness…’: Dictators.

  ‘Even the SS guards…’: Ibid.

  ‘Bolshevik cow’: Konnikova, GARF.

  officially secret letter: Cited in Mitscherlich and Mielke, Death Doctors.

  ‘The conditions…’: Dictators.

  ‘And looking at me…’: Tillion, Ravensbrück.

  This for me: Salvesen, WO 235/305.

  ‘no other hospital on earth’: Salvesen, Forgive.

  ‘Are you the daughter…’: WO 309/149

  ‘Was he a Jew?’: See Nikoforova report in Buchmann coll.

  ‘Treite often came…’: Nedvedova, Prague statement.

  ‘I thought it might…’: Salvesen, Forgive.

  ‘Except one day…’: Author interview.

  ‘The conversation turned to…’: Hanka Housková, handwritten memoir, ARa. Also see Jirásková, Kurzer Bericht über drei Entscheidungen.

  Two inmates: Elisabeth Thury, the camp policewoman, said by 1943 the prisoner-beaters lived in a special room in the bunker, WO 235/318.

  urinating in terror: Multiple testimonies, for example Epker, WO 309/1150, and Konnikova, GARF.

  ‘Flogging of Female Prisoners’: WO 309/217.

  ‘perhaps because he was…’: Nedvedova, Prague statement.

  ‘Armed with a broom…’: Salvesen, Forgive.

  they were to be bribed: Konnikova, GARF, and see French refusal in Les Françaises à Ravensbrück, also Poles refusing in Lund testimony.

  ‘Girls, we must show…’: Quoted in Mednikov, Dolya Bessmertiya.

  Today we have learned: Nikif papers.

  Chapter 19: Breaking the Circle

  own style of terror: Ramdohr’s own trial statement WO 309/416. Unusually for an SS man, he was condemned in court testimony by his own SS colleagues and he condemned them too. Treite spoke of Ramdohr’s brutal methods and Suhren said he ‘heard Ramdohr was very cruel’. Rastatt testimony, Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Colmar.

  Binz looked shocked: Falkowska, ‘Report to the History Commission’, Institute for National Memory, Poland. Also multiple reports of atrocity, for example: Anna Hand, WO 235/318, and Vermehren, Reise durch den letzten Akt.

  ‘When he buried…’: WO 235/312. In Nazi war crimes trials several SS men produced evidence of kindness to animals to support pleas in mitigation of their cruelty to humans.

  network of camp spies: WO 309/416.

  ‘It is not easy to control women…’: Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.

  ‘They were very young…’: Dictators.

  These recruits arrived: Silbermann, ‘SS-Kantine Ravensbrück’.

  ‘The original female supervisors…’: Höss, Commandant.

  women’s prisoner orchestra at Auschwitz: When Mandl arrived at Auschwitz in 1943 a men’s orchestra already existed, and she wanted a women’s orchestra ‘as a matter of prestige’. The two orchestras were kept entirely separate; the men’s was of far higher quality. Author interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the only cellist in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra.

  ‘Girls, look, it’s an airport’: The main narrative of Barth is drawn from my interview in Kiev with Valentina Samoilova from which her comments in the text are drawn, unless otherwise stated below.

  thick with maggots: Sabrodskaja, ARa.

  more locals: See Elga Kaletta in Radau, Nichts ist vergessen und niemand.

  ‘She was the first…’: Maurel, Ravensbrück; see also Les Françaises à Rav
ensbrück.

  the Hangman, Baba Yaga, Squinty Eye: Homeriki, BStU.

  glass eye: Evdokia Domina, author interview on Genthin subcamp.

  Blondine: For the story of Ilse Hermann (later Göritz; aka Blondine) and Ramdohr’s methods see testimony of the 1965 trial in the DDR of three guards, Göritz (née Hermann), Frida Wötzel and Ulla Jürss, in BStU.

  ‘We were never out of touch…’: Author interview. Also her testimony in Buchmann coll. and Tschjalo, report to the Military Medicine Museum, St Petersburg. Contact between Klemm and Red Army women in other subcamps was mentioned in several author interviews.

  Vera Vanchenko: Nikif papers, particularly letters of Antonina Kholina, in prison with her and later in Ravensbrück. Also author interview with Stella Kugelman-Nikiforova.

  ‘Psychology, this is the secret’: Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.

  Julie Wolk: See anon, ‘Report on Julie Wolk’, Prague 1945, Buchmann coll.

  ran into the wire: Nikif papers and Pikula, Buchmann coll.

  strung two nooses up: What happened next is pieced together from several accounts which vary in detail but survivors are in broad agreement that as a result of the protests both Samoilova and Malygina were subjected to water torture and threatened with the gallows, at which one, or possibly both, gave up their resistance.

  Stasi inquisitors: The responses of Ilse Göritz (née Hermann; aka Blondine) to Stasi questioning throws light not only on what happened at Barth but on the Stasi interrogators’ determination to find out about Ramdohr’s spy ring. Göritz was interrogated eighteen times between 6 March 1964 and 25 May 1965, in Rostock Prison, DDR, and each time a little more detail was eked out of her (see BStU, ZUV 1). Göritz’s statements must be read against the backdrop of the Cold War and in the knowledge that her interrogators wanted her to embellish Nazi war crimes; see Angelika von Meyer, ‘ “Ich wollte eine Uniform tragen”: der “Rostocker Prozess” in den Unterlagen des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit’, in Erpel (ed.) Im Gefolge der SS. However, the details she gives of her banal daily routine, carrying out Ramdohr’s orders to crush Soviet prisoners, combined with matching testimony from the prisoners, gives a compelling picture of extermination of subcamp slave labour, and of the Red Army’s desperate resistance at Barth.