by Paige Bowers
Much to Geneviève’s dismay, they lived through the daily horrors with children in their midst. In the camp’s earliest days, pregnant internees were sent to a nearby hospital to give birth. Their babies were then sent to children’s homes so the mothers could return to work at the camp. For a period of time after that, pregnant mothers were given abortions, sometimes into the eighth month, or their newborns were strangled and drowned right in front of them. By late 1943 Himmler said that babies born in the camp had the right to live. Their rights didn’t mesh with reality, though. Pregnant women sometimes gave birth during roll call. The baby rested on the ground for a half hour until mother and child could be taken to the infirmary, where the umbilical cord could be cut. Even in the infirmary nothing was certain. Mothers were poorly fed, and milk was never a guarantee. Rounded newborns lost their soft edges and began to look like wizened old men. Each morning nurses headed to the morgue with the pint-sized dead.
Those children who survived or arrived in later convoys wore cast-off clothing from youngsters who had been gassed at Auschwitz. They got the same meager food rations as adults, many of whom deprived themselves so the children could eat more. Youths stood with their mothers for roll call and stayed behind while they went out to work in the fields. In the camp streets and barracks, they played with dolls and toys that prisoners made for them, pretended to be SS guards, or played school. Naughty students would be punished with a trip to the bunker or punishment block. They were a “little horde, abandoned and savage,” but they brought out maternal instincts in many of the women who endeavored to shield them from the worst aspects of Ravensbrück.
Roll call, for all its harshness, could be a refuge where beautiful sunrises and sunsets temporarily wiped away thoughts of all these hardships. Long waits afforded some women the perfect opportunity to stand alone and untouched so they could simply think. As the numbers were tallied, Geneviève stood straight and still, meditating on the horizon as a soft orange sunrise bled into the night sky and transformed it into a watercolor of the softest gunmetal blue. She lost herself in the beautiful colors of the heavens until prisoners were ordered away with their work detail for the next twelve hours of hell.
* * *
Himmler’s advisors warned him that the proposed spot for Ravensbrück was not only too small but also too marshy for construction. Everything would take longer to build because of the effort required to tame the terrain. The camp’s rising population made it necessary to erect more inmate blocks at the back of the camp. Laborers didn’t bother laying foundations for these new buildings, and by the time they were completed, there were not enough of them to accommodate the large numbers of women who continued to arrive.
Construction also began on a network of subcamps that could supply prisoners for Ravensbrück’s forced labor projects, and Geneviève was drafted as a worker for one of these outposts shortly after her release from quarantine. Her friend Jacqueline d’Alincourt joined her in the group after arriving at the camp in late March. The duo headed out each morning, their shovels over their shoulders, as guards harassed them on the way to the construction site. Geneviève drained marshes and created roadbeds for the satellite complex. Then Jacqueline flattened the roadbeds with an enormous stone roller that was strapped to her back. Geneviève and Jacqueline struggled through it, knowing that those who stopped or dropped would be whipped by guards or attacked by snarling dogs. By now they knew they were not allowed to look at the guards directly, but Geneviève found it hard to ignore the look of joy on their faces when they beat one of her peers. There was always the danger that Geneviève and Jacqueline could be next if they slackened their pace. They were always at the mercy of someone who could kill them. One day at the construction site, a guard killed an unproductive woman by slicing into her carotid artery with a spade. Some grew numb to the beatings and killings, especially because they had all their rights stripped away. They quietly decided that they would not let the Germans crush them completely, and they banded together to fight for their dignity.
They began with avoiding bad work squads, which became something of an art form. Some women slipped into the long line of prisoners waiting outside the infirmary so they could avoid a day in the field. Others fell in step with the delirious night workers returning from their shifts at the nearby Siemens & Halske plant. Instead of heading to a workshop, the women hiding with the Siemens workers would head back to their barracks for a few more hours of sleep. There were so many women in the camp that it was difficult to keep track of who was truly injured or who was faking it. So some faked it and got out of the hardest toil.
Because Jacqueline and Geneviève did not have set jobs—they were marked as Verfügbar, or available workers—they were in danger of being chosen to work in a munitions factory. They wanted to avoid this assignment because it entailed making weapons that could be used against the Allies. One day Jacqueline was selected. When she heard that “mangy women” would not be taken, she began scratching herself with a pin and infecting her wounds. The SS doctors inspected Jacqueline’s sores and deemed her ineligible for the position. Geneviève, meanwhile, had been reassigned to load coal cars. Because she was underfed and weak, it was strenuous work. The cars had to be pushed across a crude wooden bridge and then uphill to a dump. When women fell off the planks and into the water, the guards kicked them. Everyone had to keep going, and by the end of the day, they were covered with dust and filth. As they walked back to camp through the SS village, children threw stones at them.
Until someone could save them, all they could do was lift each other up. Every evening Jacqueline climbed onto the narrow straw mattress next to Geneviève and told her friend good night. All around them women picked lice out of each other’s hair, comforted their peers, discussed literature, and recited what lines of poetry they could remember. Émilie Tillion gave hushed talks about French art and culture from her bed. After drifting off to the soft sounds of these conversations, Jacqueline and Geneviève turned over in unison throughout the night, never rousing each other. Geneviève dreamed of lighthouse beams sweeping over the waves on an ink-black night. Fog rolled into her reverie, revealing a snow-covered forest full of knife-like icicles glistening in the trees. Geneviève emerged from these woods in a jingling horse-drawn sleigh with her grandmother snuggled beside her underneath a large red blanket. Geneviève felt safe, warm, and loved. Then the siren wailed, stirring her from her slumber. She and Jacqueline scrambled out of bed for a new workday, with Jacqueline singing softly on the way to roll call.
“Awake, O sleeping hearts, the Lord is calling you,” she’d sing, her voice bringing joy to the tired, frightened women in her midst.
But there was another voice that people wanted to hear. Although none of the guards or SS administrators knew who Geneviève was, the detainees quickly learned that the unassuming young woman in their midst was the niece of General Charles de Gaulle. Her presence caused great excitement, especially for some of her French comrades who believed that her uncle was the only one trying to reclaim France’s honor. No one knew anything about him otherwise, so they encouraged Geneviève to give a talk about him in the block’s washroom. The speech was planned for a Sunday, the lightest workday of the week, and women crowded in to hear her speak. Anise Girard, who had been arrested in 1942 for her intelligence activities, considered herself a proud Gaullist and was excited to learn more about the leader of the Free French from one of his own family members. She and Germaine Tillion had arrived at Ravensbrück four months before Geneviève and the 27,000 convoy and had become two of the camp’s most influential prisoners. They were so inseparable that they were nicknamed Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, a reference to two fictional characters by Miguel de Cervantes who were determined to bring justice to the world.
Anise slipped into the washroom and looked over the sea of heads that had filed in around her to hear Geneviève. She was surprised at how frail and ashen the young woman already looked. A couple of prisoners lifted the general�
�s niece onto a table so people could see her better. When Geneviève began to speak, Anise was impressed with her confidence and spirit as she addressed questions about who her uncle was, who her family was, what their political convictions were. Germaine Tillion listened to the lecture “with infinite gratitude,” because the general’s story assured her that she was on the side of right and that her suffering was not in vain.
“Somewhere it was all coordinated and made use of for a reasonable end or purpose by a clear-minded, honest and unyielding man who deserved our trust,” she added.
As Geneviève’s words began to energize the crowd like a deep breath of oxygen, Anise was asked to be the lookout person so they wouldn’t get caught. She stood sentry outside the washroom, hearing just enough to understand that she and this speaker were so much alike they could be sisters.
Sisters looked out for each other. Geneviève learned that you could lift someone’s spirits by sharing your bread morsels or giving someone a kind look or friendly handshake. Little gestures in an environment where compassionate acts were forbidden kept other women going through the cold, starvation, and punishments. Women surreptitiously picked flowers while they were out on work detail, sneaking them back to the barracks to give to a friend for her birthday. Some stole wool to knit thick socks for ill comrades, while others pilfered thick sweaters that they could wear under their flimsy dresses. Although books were forbidden, some prisoners picked through the luggage of incoming prisoners to find tomes to read and share. Geneviève leafed through a German edition of Moby Dick, an anthology of French poetry, and a copy of Gustave Flaubert’s Salammbô. As she did she was transported far away from her prison to places like Africa, where she imagined basking in the hot sun and witnessing a war that seemed as real as the one being fought around her.
7
What Can Be Saved
After heaving coal in the sweltering July heat, Geneviève was grateful to be reassigned to the uniform workshop one morning during roll call. It was indoor work and she hoped that it would be less physically demanding, especially now that her corneas were inflamed and she had painful scurvy sores that had begun to ooze. When she walked into the hot atelier for her first day on the job, the first thing she noticed was the smell. A mountain of tattered army uniforms had been sent back from the eastern front, all of which were bloody, crusted with human remains, and full of lice. Because the room was poorly ventilated, the scent of the prisoners’ own filth mingled with the odor of this fouled attire to create an unbearable stench. SS guards looked on as the women picked through the garments to salvage pieces that could be reused. They snipped off buttons, unstitched jacket lining, found what they could as fast as they could, before moving on to the next piece. All around them the SS guards yelled, “Work, work, work!” They had daily quotas to meet.
The sores on Geneviève’s eyes made it hard for her to see and even harder for her to work quickly. To ease the pain from her abscesses, she folded some uniforms into a makeshift cushion to sit on while she worked. Anise worked nearby and could see that she was struggling to keep pace. Jacqueline, who had been reassigned to the workshop too, also began to fear for her friend’s welfare. The work group, run by a ruthless guard named Syllinka, was one of the hardest in the camp.
“Work, work, work!” the guards shouted, hitting women who scavenged too slowly.
The good pieces of fabric were gathered and passed on to another group of prisoners who washed them. When the SS guard wasn’t looking, one woman quickly slipped off her underwear and tried to clean it. The guard turned around and caught the prisoner in the act, then immediately beat her to death. As soon as the woman succumbed, Geneviève wished she was working outdoors again.
After spending her first week in the uniform workshop during the day, Geneviève spent her second there working nights. Her body struggled to adapt to the new schedule. It was difficult to sleep in the barracks when the sun was out and the camp was noisy with activity, so her health worsened and her stamina declined dramatically. As Geneviève labored to disassemble uniforms, her wounds spilled onto the fabric and guards beat her savagely and repeatedly. Anise feared that Geneviève would be killed if someone didn’t intervene, and she began looking for ways to get her reassigned.
Anise approached her former work chief, a young Czechoslovakian prisoner named Milena. Milena ran the camp’s fur workshop and agreed to take in Geneviève, but only if the SS guard in charge, Herr Schmidt, would allow it. Schmidt had worked as a tailor before being conscripted by the SS. He did not embrace the Nazi Party’s ideology or the SS’s methods, so Milena knew that while it was risky to enlist his help, she could persuade him. She approached him one day with a big smile on her face and asked if he knew that General de Gaulle’s niece was at the camp. He did not.
What Schmidt did know was that news of the Allied landings in Normandy had spread throughout Ravensbrück. Prisoners had either overheard reports on SS radios or got their updates from heavily censored German papers that they fished out of the trash. They brought the broadsheets back to their barracks to share with others or whispered about what they knew with their work column cohorts. Many internees were excited about Germany’s changing fortunes, but the French opted not to celebrate until Paris was liberated. Prisoners working in the uniform shop were already discovering grisly evidence that confirmed the Nazi lies. Lopped-off hands occasionally thumped out of pieces brought back from the front.
The news slowed as German defeats multiplied. All the prisoners knew was that fierce fighting continued across Europe. In late August a Czech prisoner named Vlasty stood in an SS office and heard on the radio that Paris had been freed of the Nazis and that General de Gaulle was walking triumphantly down the Champs-Élysées. She turned up the volume and heard the roar of Parisians cheering their newfound freedom. At the end of her work shift, she found Geneviève to share the news. Geneviève went from barracks to barracks telling French prisoners that Paris was liberated.
After receiving several cryptic, worrisome postcards from Geneviève, Xavier de Gaulle, now the French consul general in Geneva, had begun pressuring the International Red Cross to inquire about his daughter’s specific whereabouts and well-being. Milena and Anise did not know about Xavier’s maneuverings when they endeavored to save his daughter in the camp, but concerns about area food shortages, air raids, and the possible arrival of the Russian army certainly helped their cause.
“Herr Schmidt,” Milena cooed. “You know, things don’t look good for Germany these days. I know how you can do yourself a favor. General de Gaulle’s niece is in bad shape right now and if you take care of her, you’ll look much better after the war. You don’t have to tell anyone who she is. All you have to say is that the French are good couturiers and you would like to have 27,372 working in your atelier.”
Schmidt saw the wisdom in this arrangement and requested 27,372’s services shortly afterward. When Geneviève arrived in Schmidt’s workshop, Anise and Milena hid her underneath a large pile of rabbit pelts that were used to line SS raincoats. A few weeks later they discovered that the workshop would be inspected. Continuing to hide Geneviève in the furs would be too risky, so Milena and Anise looked for another group of comrades who were willing to help. An elderly German internee who oversaw the textile group’s replacement parts warehouse agreed to conceal Geneviève. The woman, Maria, was a Communist who was often willing to make exchanges like these for a piece of bread. Milena appealed to Maria’s political sensibilities, telling her that it might be wise for her and her Communist comrades to help General de Gaulle’s ailing niece. Maria agreed but was not happy about it. On Geneviève’s first day in the warehouse, Maria looked her up and down. She was struck by how petite and frail the young woman was as she stood there racked by coughing and sneezing. “I’m taking you in,” Maria told her. “But this is the first time that I’ve taken in a woman who wasn’t in the Communist Party.”
Shortly after Maria agreed to protect her, a guard showed up looking
for Geneviève. After verifying her camp registration number, the guard ordered Geneviève to come with her to see the commandant. They walked through the main gate of the camp together to SS headquarters and found Suhren waiting for them in his first-floor office. Earlier that day Himmler had offered Geneviève to her uncle in exchange for a German prisoner held in France. Geneviève was not aware of this, nor was she aware that her uncle had refused the deal. When Suhren approached her, she lowered her head and recited her inmate number in German to him. The commandant asked her how she was feeling.
Surprised that Suhren would take an interest in her health, she replied, “Very poorly, thank you.”
He could see that, he said. Then he asked about her work detail. Geneviève told him she was in Syllinka’s uniform workshop, which was still her official posting. Suhren, who had no idea of Anise’s and Milena’s machinations to save Geneviève, winced when he heard about her assignment. He sat down on the front of his desk and asked her which barracks she lived in. She looked directly at him and said Block 31. He winced again.
“Starting immediately, you’ll be assigned to the infirmary, and you’ll be transferred to Block Two,” Suhren said. “I think you’ll find it less arduous.”
Geneviève protested the reassignment, saying she had no experience taking care of sick people. Suhren told her she would be assigned to record keeping because she knew German. He picked up the telephone and called the head nurse to inform her that 27,372 would be joining her staff. After that he called the chief guard and said 27,372 would be moving to Block 2. When Geneviève said she wanted to stay with her French friends in Block 31, Suhren shot back, “That’s an order.” He asked her if she needed anything else. “Some warm clothing, perhaps? Or, some fresh underwear?”