by Sarah Helm
facts of extermination: For example, Schwarzhuber, WO 235/309.
From 5 Jan: WO 309/693 and WO 235/526.
‘She signed it…’: WO 235/526.
This chamber was to stand: Jahn had given a statement about the men’s and women’s camps, including the gassing, to US investigators as early as 9 May 1945. NARA, Memorandum, Walter Jahn, Atrocities Committed in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. For his later evidence on the stone gas chamber—including a plan—see Staatsarchiv Nürnberg NO-3109.
for want of materials: Charlotte Müller, a German prisoner, had even been sent to Berlin to bring back fire clay and firebricks.
There had also been some dispute: In his 1946 evidence Suhren again placed the blame on Sauer, saying Sauer had installed the gas chambers in his absence, on orders from August Heissmeyer, a senior SS administrator.
It was Hanna Sturm: Sturm, Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin.
Zyklon B: There was a lot of talk in the Schreibstube about orders for Zyklon B at this time, though nobody was sure if it was for gassing people or killing lice. ‘Conrad decided the amount and signed the orders,’ said a prisoner secretary (WO 235/526).
‘We passed in front…’: Cited in Anise Postel-Vinay (née Girard), ‘Les exterminations par gaz à Ravensbrück’, in Tillion, Ravensbrück (3rd edition).
‘First of all…’: Treite statement, 5 May 1945, WO 235/309.
‘young women capable of work’: WO 235/309.
‘The dawn was enough…’: Ibid.
‘festival that happened…’: Note in Nikif papers.
Polish teachers organised classes: Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück.
seventy pregnant women: From November there were about 100 births per month, according to Gerda Schröder, the German camp nurse. Most died of pneumonia. WO 235/318.
‘We were the only men…’: Author interview.
‘not as we think of children…’: Salvesen, Forgive. Also see Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne, on the party.
‘he had a wonderful voice’: Author interview.
‘she’d lost him in the bomb’: Author interview.
German communist Erika Buchmann: Erika had been released in 1941 but was brought back to the camp a year later, charged again with ‘treason’. On return she was first made Blockova of the Strafblock, then Block 10.
‘a little man called the professor’: Salvesen, Forgive.
All the Gypsies: WO 235/317. There is further extensive evidence about the sterilisation of children. See Mant report, WO 309/416, and Winkowska (Treite’s secretary), Lund 285. Other forms of medical experimentation on prisoners took place until the last days. See evidence of Dr Trommer’s butchery of Russian male prisoners in the cellar of the Kommandatur (WO 235/526). Several Warsaw women later claimed they were subject to gynaecological experiments and Treite spoke of cyanide experiments (WO 235/317), but the true extent of the experimentation will never be known.
Chapter 32: Death March
Several women who witnessed the last days at Auschwitz and then set off on the death march to Ravensbrück left accounts at Yad Vashem, including Lydia Vago and Allegra Benvenisti. Maria Rundo’s account is in Lund 189. Alina Brewda’s story is recounted in I Shall Fear No Evil by R. J. Minney. Rudolf Höss’s account is drawn from his memoir, Commandant of Auschwitz. I also interviewed survivors including the Belorussian Valentina Makarova.
Chapter 33: Youth Camp
The account of the Youth Camp and gassings makes use of almost all the Hamburg testimony, but the most important material is in the first trial (series beginning WO 235/305) where Schwarzhuber and Salvequart were accused, and in the trial of Ruth Neudeck (WO 235/516a). I also drew on testimony at Rastatt and that given to German investigators in the 1970s when a new investigation was carried out in the Youth Camp. See series BAL B162-9810. Most survivor testimony and memoirs of this period contain accounts of selections and gassings. Remarkably, several prisoners survived the Youth Camp and returned to tell the tale. I interviewed one of them, Irma Trksak.
‘excellent’ reports: Salvesen, Forgive.
‘Suhren told us…’: WO 235/309.
‘Now we have gas’: WO 309/421.
‘SS Schwarzhuber’s son’: Langbein, People in Auschwitz.
two male SS hospital orderlies: Very little known about these men. Franz Koehler was Slovakian, Rapp (who is never given a first name) a Yugoslav. Both disappeared after the war.
‘transferred elsewhere…’: WO 235/318.
asking for a divorce: Atkins.
‘Though we had experience…’: WO 235/318.
‘You see, we wanted…’: Author interview. For further testimony of others in this group, see Lund, BAL and TNA.
‘presumably through exhaustion’: Mary O’Shaughnessy’s testimony about the Youth Camp is the most valuable. She began writing her account almost as soon as she was liberated, and then made a series of statements for the Hamburg trial. The most vivid details are in her six-page handwritten account (WO 235/516a). Also see WO 309/417 and Atkins.
‘Rest Camp Mittwerda’: WO 235/516a.
‘or I’d be shot’: WO 235/317.
‘women were put on half-rations…’: 5 May 1945 statement, WO 235/309.
‘It took a long time…’: WO 235/317.
After that I paid: BAL B162/9814.
Chapter 34: Hiding
‘When we checked…’: WO 235/318
‘The bodies of the gassed…’: WO 235/526.
‘I often stood and counted…’: Vavak, ‘Siemens & Halske im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück’, DÖW, Ravensbrück file 49.
‘Extermination transport…’: Useldinger diary, ARa.
‘She was smiling…’: Dragan, Lund 239.
It was the new SS doctor: Several prisoners talked about Lucas’s help, particularly Loulou Le Porz and Salvesen in Forgive.
Aka Kołodziejczak: Author interview with Mary Bielicka, and Lanckorońska, ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, AICRC.
Denise Dufournier received a parcel: From her autobiographical essay, written before La maison des mortes. A copy of the essay was kindly passed to me by her daughter, Caroline McAdam Clark.
she gave interviews: Aka gave interviews to Time magazine and the Hearst Press, with headlines such as SHE SCREAMED THROUGH THE NIGHT. In a radio interview in New York in February 1945, Aka was asked, ‘Is everything we hear about the cruelty of Germans to women and children actually true?’
taken away to be shot: Frank Chamier—‘Frank of Upwey 282’ (see p. 354)—was probably tortured and executed at this time. Chamier was the only MI6 agent known to have parachuted into Germany during the war. He was captured on landing and questioned, probably at the security police HQ at Drogen, five miles from Ravensbrück, which was why he was kept in a cell at the camp. For the story of Chamier, his German torturer and the post-war British cover-up about his death, see Sarah Helm, ‘The Wartime Hero Abandoned by MI6’, Observer, 21 May 2005, and ‘A Nazi in Her Majesty’s Secret Service’, Sunday Times Magazine, 7 August 2005.
drawing intricate maps: Krysia’s drawings hang in the Museum of Martyrology ‘Pod Zegarem’ (Under the clock), a branch of the Lublin Museum (Muzeum Lubelskie w Lublinie).
An incredible, unheard-of thing: This account of the hiding is drawn from Sokulska (WO 235/318), Dreams and several other Polish testimonies.
‘They’re coming for them!…’: The uproar is best described in Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück. See also Lanckorońska, ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, AICRC.
plunged into pitch darkness: Lanckorońska says that if it hadn’t been for the presence of mind and courage of the Red Army women who short-circuited the lighting at the crucial moment, the hiding might have failed. See ibid., and also the descriptions of the drama in Beyond and Dreams. The same sources contain the account of Suhren’s ‘new initiative’ and his subsequent retreat.
Suhren explained: In a post-war statement Suhren said he had once refused a request from Gebhardt to
hand over ‘human material’ for experiments, and as a result Gebhardt ‘insulted’ him and said he’d speak to the Reichsführer and have him sacked. ‘Annoyed and a little frightened’ Suhren then apologised to Gebhardt and was forced to ‘obtain humans’ for him after all. WO 235/318.
‘The girls succeeded…’: In her ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, written and delivered while the events were still going on, Lanckorońska also said that the SS’s main motive in meeting with the rabbits at this time was to elicit information about Aka Kołodziejczak. They knew Aka had been talking about experiments in the US and that SS names were known. ‘Furthermore new arrivals at the camp were well informed on the subject, which had been commented upon at length by the London wireless’—a reference to SWIT broadcasts.
Chapter 35: Königsberg
For the last weeks of Königsberg I drew particularly on An American Heroine in the French Resistance, the memoir of Virginia Lake, on Jacqueline Bernard’s 1946 letter about Lilian Rolfe and on a letter sent to me in 2008 by Christiane Cizaire, recalling her friendship with Violette Lecoq.
more like a pigsty: Guyotat, Königsberg sur Oder.
‘I want to die…’: Litoff (ed.), An American Heroine in the French Resistance.
‘They were all black…’: Barry, WO 309/417 and Atkins.
‘This was the last time…’: Baseden testimony for the Hamburg trial: she was too sick to attend in person (HS 437) and author interviews. For details of the French parachutists, see Tillion, Ravensbrück, and testimony at the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon.
‘Suhren read out…’: Schwarzhuber statement in Atkins and WO 235/309.
‘the remains of…’: Dufournier, La maison des mortes.
‘a terribly emaciated…’: De Gaulle-Anthonioz, Dawn of Hope.
Chapter 36: Bernadotte
‘What ugly creature…’: Litoff (ed.), An American Heroine in the French Resistance.
‘The committee has been…’: ‘Note à l’intention de Monseiur Berber’, 15 September 1944, AICRC, B G 44/CP-227 023.
‘If any different…’: La Guardia Gluck, Fiorello’s Sister.
‘The object of this action…’: KV 2/98.
‘a pretty caravan…’: Cited in Persson, Escape from the Third Reich.
via the Swedish diplomatic bag, ‘to the very last detail’: See Persson, Escape from the Third Reich, and Heger, Tous les vendredis. Wanda Heger (née Hjort) describes how the neutral Swedes, through their legation in Berlin, had shown ‘extraordinary zeal’ in putting her Norwegian Gross Kreutz cell in touch with the Norwegian delegation in Stockholm. Norwegian officials had begun to view the cell as their own ‘secret committee in Berlin’.
had visited Ravensbrück in December: Johan Hjort, BAL B162/27217.
‘in green Waffen-SS uniform…’: Bernadotte, The Fall of the Curtain.
Gerda Schröder: The German camp nurse is an elusive figure. One of only a handful of German women employed by the SS who were universally liked and even admired by prisoners, she was not called to give evidence at Hamburg, but did give a statement to Vera Atkins, saying she had worked as theatre sister before the war and was ‘forcibly’ transferred to Ravensbrück. She assisted Treite with his experimental operations, including sterilisations and abortions ‘on debilitated German women and gypsies’: WO 235/318. Letters written by Gerda after the war to Sylvia Salvesen, who remained a close friend, show her anguish: ‘I was not a prisoner, but I was locked up. My hands were tied but I tried to help.?’ Salvesen archives, Norges Hjemmefrontmuseet.
‘Goodbye, Sister…’: Salvesen, Forgive.
pleading with the Hjorts for refuge: Johan Hjort said Lucas turned up at Gross Kreutz on about 23 April, pleading for refuge. On learning that the Americans had stopped at the Elbe he feared falling into Soviet hands. Hjort hid Lucas for a few days, then gave him an old bicycle and the SS doctor pedalled away. BAL B162/27217.
Chapter 37: Emilie
‘Prisoners are sleeping…’: Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.
‘It was clear…’: Cabaj, Beyond. The testimony of the Belsen transport is some of the most horrifying. Stanislawa Michalik, in ibid., says the women were so weak on arrival that ‘just one strong blow was enough for someone to fall down dead. The same thing happened to women and children.’
‘The Dutch prisoners…’: Lanckorońska, ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, AICRC.
‘…with her knee’: Wasilewska, Lund 434.
‘Very tall…’: Author interview.
She told us: Author interview.
‘That morning…’: WO 235/516a and related testimony, TNA.
now writing a daily diary: Tillion, Ravensbrück.
She marched: Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.
‘I was in the sickbay…’: Dictators, and Tillion, Ravensbrück.
We stood: Nedvedova, Prague statement.
In the yard: Emanuel Kolarik, ‘Tábor u jezera’, Roudnice 1945.
‘I did the electrical equipment…’: Jahn statement, NO-3109-311, Staatsarchiv Nürnberg.
‘The motor bus…’: Lanckorońska, ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, AICRC.
a British diplomat: FO 371/50982.
‘two gas chambers’: Barry, WO 235/318.
‘gas vans’ and ‘gas lorries’: For samples of testimony about gassing trucks see: Erna Cassens, BAL B162/9816; Dragan, Lund 239; O’Shaughnessy, WO 309/690; Tauforova, GARF; Sturm, Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin and WO 309/416; and Nedvedova, Prague statement.
‘to liquidate the entire camp’: KV 2/98.
‘We sensed something unusual’: Dufournier, autobiographical essay, Dufournier family papers.
‘screamed like a child’: La Guardia Gluck, Fiorello’s Sister.
Everyone had to stand: Author interview.
‘We had a selection…’: Zajączkowska, Lund 50.
‘skinny, hollow-eyes…’: Wynne, No Drums, No Trumpets.
final clear-out: See multiple testimony in the Hamburg trial papers, for example WO 235/516a for the trial of Youth Camp guards. Also: Tillion, Ravensbrück; Nedvedova, Prague statement; testimony in Lund; Les Françaises à Ravensbrück; and Dufournier, La maison des mortes.
Chapter 38: Nelly
smuggled out letters: Wanda Hjort says today that Bernadotte was well aware of the content of Sylvia’s letters by this time. Author interview.
‘not only grave, but nervy’: Bernadotte, The Fall of the Curtain.
Before joining the ICRC: On Meyer’s role, see his report and personal file, AICRC, BRH 1991 000.491/DP 4066; also author interview with Loulou Le Porz.
‘The sick were sent…’: Cited in Les Françaises à Ravensbrück.
‘She asked Binz…’: Author interview.
‘bon voyage’: According to Denise Dufournier in La maison des mortes, before Suhren bade farewell the German camp staff handed each departing prisoner half a pound of butter, a packet of cake and a large piece of cold sausage.
also become lovers: Heger, Tous les vendredis. Wanda and Bjørn Heger were married in the summer of 1945.
The next day we came out: Author interview.
‘A Doctoresse Le Porz…’: See reports of the ICRC escorts Dr Auguste Jost and Mademoiselle Jung, who met the arrivals at the Swiss border and accompanied the train to France, in AICRC, BRH 1991 000/390.
‘some high-up person…’: Author interview.
‘a convoy of martyrs…’: Special Agent Edward A. Chadwell was assigned to a US war crimes investigations unit in Lyon, France, when he was sent to report on the Ravensbrück arrivals. Chadwell noted that the women recounted the horrors with ‘a complete absence of emotion and feminine sentiment’. He reported: ‘It is impossible to feel their emotion when they speak of the death of their mothers or sisters who were there with them or of the death of their husbands.?’ They still seemed to be in a state of shock, he said, but the majority had ‘splendid morale and were still determined to fight for their country; some
of them have even asked how they can go about volunteering’. NARA war crimes file.
‘conduct herself loyally’: Letter from SS General Ernest Kaltenbrunner to the President of the ICRC, 2 April 1945, reproduced in Lanckorońska Those Who Trespass Against Us.
‘They are under threat of death’: Lanckorońska, ‘Report of the Camp of Ravensbrück’, AICRC.
Chapter 39: Masur
‘After the gas chamber…’: Nedvedova, Prague statement.
‘I stood with my eyes closed…’: BAL B162/9814.
‘When the first warm rays…’: Ottelard, WO 235/310.
rambling depositions: WO 235/317.
As the Allied planes: Author interview.
‘When mother saw us…’: Author interview.
Eisenhower had told: On the Americans at the Elbe see Beevor, Berlin.
Suhren revealed later: WO 235/318.
‘So that’s what thanks…’: Sokulska, WO 235/318.
‘ “But that’s a scandal…” ’: Les Françaises à Ravensbrück.
‘One was a woman…’: Salvini, WO 235/318.
‘orderly evacuation’: Kersten, Memoirs.
commando missions: These were to be carried out by special forces of Operation Vicarage and the SAARF (Special Allied Airborne Reconnaissance Force) teams who would drop by air into camps to warn the SS that the Allies were approaching in the hope of preventing more atrocity. One or two such missions to POW camps had limited success. See Foot and Langley, MI9.
refuse safe passage: The Swedes provided the British with routes and timings of the convoys. On 5 March the British promised that their planes would be instructed to avoid attacks on the Swedish convoys, but no concrete guarantees came. On 8 March the British told the Swedes the government was ‘in principle in agreement with the action but was unable to give a safe-conduct’, saying Swedes entering Germany did so ‘at their own risk’. Cited in Persson, Escape from the Third Reich. Also see correspondence in FO 371/48047.
