The General's Niece

by Paige Bowers

  “She sized up my situation and whispered: ‘I’ll try to do something,’” Jacqueline recalled. “On the following day I was authorized to remain in the block without working. . . . Thus I survived for two weeks, motionless on my mat, not even moving my fingers, as if in hibernation.”

  Prisoners working in the SS offices scoured copies of the Völkischer Beobachter for news from the front. Although it was a Nazi propaganda newspaper, one could tell that the Allies were advancing and the Germans were retreating. Anise and Germaine shared this information with others in the camp to keep hopes high. Crowds of emaciated women showed up outside the camp gates one day with tales of Auschwitz’s liberation and the Russian army’s westward momentum. Then there was the rumor that Red Cross trucks had been seen nearby. The internees struggled to believe it because the Germans at the camp were so convinced of victory. Behind the scenes one of Himmler’s men had been negotiating with the Swedish Red Cross to release thousands of captives. As the Russians closed in on Ravensbrück, the SS began destroying files and other evidence of their atrocities. They gassed the weak and infirm, sent other inmates on long marches into the unknown, and shipped women off on fatal work assignments. Dead bodies were piled like logs into carts, then dumped in a heap destined for the crematorium ovens, which no longer burned fast enough. Women schemed ways to escape this fate, jumping out of windows, hiding in false ceilings, or shimmying under bunk beds to avoid the roundups.

  Quick thinking saved lives. Yet not everyone escaped these summons. Prisoners were gathered and marched past the SS, who determined their fate. Jacqueline stood in one selection, watching as hundreds of women were sent to the showers. They returned, clothed in new dresses without prisoner badges. After waiting for several hours, they left through the camp gates. They were placed on a Paris-bound train. When they arrived at the Gare de Lyon in mid-April, they were greeted by General de Gaulle and excited crowds. The excitement gave way to speechlessness once onlookers saw the skeletal women leaning out of the windows to wave. No one, not even General de Gaulle, could comprehend the suffering and pain that these women had faced. Seeing it for the first time, there on the platform on that spring day, was an overwhelming experience for many spectators, who struggled to conceal their emotions during a homecoming that should have been joyful.

  At Ravensbrück Jacqueline was desperate to leave. She was chosen twice but called back each time just as she reached the gate. Twelve other women were being treated this way, and they confronted Dorothea Binz about it, who could not believe they had the audacity to speak to her.

  “We are keeping you as hostages,” she told them. “You will be executed if there is any trouble.”

  Binz demanded that the women sign a paper certifying that they had always been well treated. If they signed, Binz said their lives would be spared. Jacqueline and her comrades said absolutely not, and Binz dismissed them, furious with their refusal to comply.

  On April 22 a column of fifteen Danish ambulances and twenty buses left for Ravensbrück. Felix Kersten, an intermediary working on behalf of Himmler, arranged for the release of seven thousand women to the Swedish Red Cross. The ambulances arrived first, and drivers found Suhren very conciliatory. Suhren said he had orders to evacuate the camp, so why not take fifteen thousand women instead of the seven thousand already agreed to? After Red Cross officials discussed it, they decided most of the prisoners would be marched thirty-seven miles west to the Malchow subcamp. Then they loaded the ambulances with sick women and took them to the Danish border town of Padborg, while others stayed behind to prepare for the next departure.

  The buses arrived later that night. Suhren was nervous and eager to load the transports, but the drivers had been driving nonstop for three weeks, so their boss told Suhren that he would not allow them to leave without a rest. The commandant opposed this at first but ultimately relented.

  In the middle of the night, someone emerged from the shadows to present the head of the Red Cross delegation with a letter before disappearing. In the letter were the names of French, English, and American prisoners who the letter’s mysterious author suspected Suhren of wanting to hide. The buses were due to leave at 4:00 AM on April 23. Eight hundred women were gathered in the heart of the camp at that hour. When they walked through the gate, they had no idea that it was toward their freedom. Anise and Germaine were among these prisoners, and when they looked back to see that Jacqueline and others were being held behind, they alerted the Swedes.

  The night of April 23 the convoy arrived at the Danish border safely. Anise was preoccupied with the prisoners who remained behind. She gave a list of those people to the head of the column, explaining that she believed Suhren would beat them or use them as pawns for prisoner exchanges. She begged the Swedish lieutenant to return to Ravensbrück to help these women. He agreed but not before inviting her to dinner. That night Anise’s hair was messy and she was covered with a piece of dirty blanket as the officer took her to a Gestapo-run establishment to eat. Over dinner Anise begged him to save her friends because conditions at the camp had been horrible and promised to get even worse. After her entreaties the lieutenant returned to Ravensbrück and presented Suhren with the list that Anise had given him. The commandant claimed he had no idea about anyone being held hostage and instructed one of his men to get to the bottom of things. Suhren’s henchman returned to say that the prisoners in question did not exist. Sensing the seriousness of the matter, the lieutenant pressed the situation and was eventually able to wrest the final internees free. Jacqueline looked at Suhren as she passed through the camp gates. He pointed at the crematory ovens, then laughed.

  Jacqueline piled into one of the Red Cross trucks and stood silently as she rode into the forest, away from the camp. She looked up through the branches to see diamond-like stars and thought that it was a beautiful evening. On April 25 her convoy arrived in Lübeck, then headed to the Danish border. Young girls in spotless white welcomed the women and offered them milk and cookies, clean blankets, and fresh straw to lie on. They boarded a train to cross Denmark. Although the war was not over yet, the internees looked out the windows to see people gathered together, cheering them. They sang “La Marseillaise” in gratitude. They reached Copenhagen on April 27, boarded a ferry for Malmö, Sweden, and were welcomed there with such respect that they were filled with wonder. The sea sparkled as the women ate the first real meal they had had in months or even years. Gulls followed the boat, swirling in its wake. The birds rushed toward the boat and the internees threw them bread. “Was it possible?” Jacqueline wondered. “We were still alive. We were free.”

  Part III

  REBUILDING

  11

  The Return

  Europeans cheered the end of war on their continent on May 8, 1945, but their celebration was bittersweet. Some forty to fifty million Europeans lost their lives during hostilities, major cities had been pummeled by bombs, industrial production had stalled. On top of that countries had to contend with the return of millions of people who had been deported or had run from fighting or persecution in formerly Nazi-controlled territories. In France alone more than one and a half million people tried to return from Germany within the first three months after the war only to be greeted upon their arrival with what had become a familiar routine: a long wait, followed by a rough physical examination. The workers were cold and correct, their greetings formal. When these former prisoners and political refugees reunited with their families, no one seemed to understand what they had just been through. Some returned to no families or livelihoods at all. As frail and weary as many of the resisters were, they were further exhausted by the seemingly repetitive and never-ending stream of questions their friends and family asked.

  “The questions I was asked were always the same: ‘Tell me, were you raped?’ . . . ‘Did you suffer much?’ ‘Were you beaten?’ ‘Were you tortured?’ ‘What did they beat you with?’ ‘Were you sterilized?’ . . . ‘And just how did you manage to survive?’ I did not re
ally know how to answer this last question,” recalled Micheline Maurel, a resister from Toulon who moved to Switzerland in an attempt to start a new life for herself.

  When journalists asked deportees about their experience after the liberation of the camps, Geneviève often wondered what these reporters imagined. Did they picture these former prisoners waving tricolor flags and cheering for their freedom?

  “This period was perhaps one of the worst we had known,” she said. None of them could think of anything but the deprivation and death they had seen. For Geneviève, who had just arrived at her father’s residence in Geneva, it was even more unsettling to be surrounded by so much abundance.

  “It was a bit traumatic to find yourself all of a sudden in the middle of a country that had not known war,” she recalled. “The stores were full. It was hard to bear.”

  Shortly after her arrival in Switzerland, Geneviève received a letter from her uncle Charles inviting her to visit him at his home in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly. She was eager to see him and to see France, so she drove to the French capital for another emotional homecoming.

  “Don’t forget that this was my uncle, who I loved, and that this uncle was the head of Free France, someone who had inspired hope and unified the resistance,” she said.

  She remained at his house for a month, resting and reveling in simple pleasures like opening her own window to breathe in the smell of chestnut blooms and freshly cut grass. Shortly after Geneviève’s arrival Captain Alain de Boissieu drove up to the gates at General de Gaulle’s residence in Adolf Hitler’s armored Mercedes. Boissieu, who was wooing General de Gaulle’s daughter Élisabeth, presented the führer’s car and personal annotated copy of Towards a Professional Army to the Free French chief. Upon seeing the automobile Charles de Gaulle asked Geneviève and Élisabeth whether they’d like to get in it, to see what it was like to sit where Hitler once rode. Both young women eagerly took their places inside the black sedan.

  Although Charles was busy with his functions as head of the provisional government during the week, he and Geneviève had long talks in his office after dinner or during his Sunday walks in the country. He was preoccupied with the difficulties France faced after the war and concerned about doling out pardons. He wanted to unite the country, not decide whether someone should live or die.

  Geneviève asked him what his criteria were for granting pardons and he told her he would always pardon women. She took issue, telling him she didn’t believe that women should be held to a different standard than men. He added that minors and intellectuals would be pardoned too as a way of showing the country his commitment to the freedom of ideas. They argued about certain things during these discussions and agreed on other things, but the statesman always sought out his niece’s opinions. Although he considered sacrifice a patriotic duty, he struggled with this belief after his niece told him what had happened to her and others at Ravensbrück. As Geneviève asked her uncle how anyone could believe in God or man after experiencing something like that, a lone tear streamed down his nose. She knew she never could have had the same discussion with her deeply sensitive father.

  Charles handed his niece the letter that Heinrich Himmler had written him, in which he offered her as a pawn in a prisoner exchange. He told Geneviève he never responded to Himmler’s overtures, which included a plea to the Allies to negotiate a separate peace with Germany. If the Allies agreed to this arrangement, Himmler promised that the Reich would help them fight off the Russians. Such were the pledges Himmler made at the end of the war.

  Late one night Geneviève found her uncle in his office, working on a plan to begin reconciliation with Germany. He knew that it was important to learn how to live alongside their neighbors on the other side of the Rhine, but he also understood why certain people—his niece included—might struggle with this because of their time in concentration camps. He asked Geneviève what she thought about this, and she gave him her blessing, saying that while the events were still too fresh in her mind, he was the only person who could make such an arrangement palatable. He thanked her for understanding and made plans for his voyage.

  As Charles de Gaulle worked to rebuild France and restore relations with Germany, his niece returned to Switzerland in hopes of helping fellow female detainees, many of whom had no idea just how sick they were. They knew they were tired and weak, but they blamed themselves for lacking courage. They were ashamed for wanting to rest. Yet in the months and years after these women returned to France, it became clear that their time in concentration camps had wreaked more havoc on their bodies than they had realized. Many of them grappled with amenorrhea, anemia, bouts of crippling fatigue, decalcified bones, upper respiratory ailments, vitamin deficiencies, and a variety of other problems. Some women went from being painfully thin to obese. Doctors blamed fatigue for their weight gain and recommended a low-sodium diet and fewer liquids. For those who still struggled, doctors recommended that they get their thyroids checked.

  The provisional government, for all its best intentions and efforts, could not have imagined the challenge it would face when deportees began returning home to France. It set up a group to manage the repatriation, but the outfit expected a slower, less chaotic return. The government was not prepared for the mass evacuation of camps that began in April, and the country’s damaged infrastructure and financial problems made it harder to manage the crisis. On top of that no one could have imagined just how ill some of the deportees would be when they returned.

  It took time for the Provisional Assembly to pass laws that defined the legal rights of deportees and stipulated the benefits they would receive. In the beginning they received 1,000 francs, an identification card that certified their provisional deportee status, and two free medical examinations. It soon became clear that this assistance would not be enough.

  As early as October 1944, some former internees recognized how difficult this return home to France would be, especially for women deportees. That month Irène Delmas, a former deportee, founded the Amicale des prisonnières de la Résistance (APR), which sought to give material and psychological aid to recently released prisoners. Given the meager rights women had had in their homeland up until that point, they feared their unique role as female resisters would not be accepted or understood.

  APR got information about the deportees to their families, who had been anxious and frustrated by the Vichy government’s silence about their loved ones’ whereabouts. Although they were not a formal group, they were known by resistance authorities; the Commissariat of State for War Prisoners, Deportees, and the Repatriated; and the provisional government. Despite the housing shortage in Paris, APR requisitioned a six-story building outside the northwest corner of the Jardin du Luxembourg as its headquarters. The group had a canteen, a reception area, medical suites, administrative offices, and housing for homeless deportees. By 1945 APR had welcome committees throughout Switzerland and had begun collecting financial donations for women who needed long-term care.

  In Switzerland Irène met Geneviève de Gaulle, who convalesced at her father’s home when she was not meeting with Swiss nationals to talk about the health of returning deportees. Geneviève had been giving speeches about her concentration camp experience, urging the Swiss to help fund rest homes for ailing female prisoners. The Swiss were shocked by Geneviève’s tales of Ravensbrück and sent in donations to help the young woman’s cause. Because Irène and Geneviève realized they both had similar goals, they merged their organizations in July 1945, calling their new group the Association nationale des anciennes déportées et internées de la Résistance (ADIR).

  Although ADIR had paltry funds at its disposal in the beginning, it had a big mission. Its large social service operation devoted itself to the moral, physical, and material needs of internees and deportees. It offered free medical examinations every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, ongoing access to rest homes, housing, and reasonably priced meals. It also provided women with clothing, underwear, bedding, fu
rniture, dishes, cookware, and food packages. Through ADIR unemployed deportees were placed in jobs as telephone operators, secretaries, bank employees, babysitters, cooks, cleaners, and saleswomen. The group also provided job training and educational scholarships for women who wanted to develop a new set of skills.

  “After the war, it was difficult because my father died in Germany,” said Michèle Moët-Agniel, a resister and former Ravensbrück deportee. “My mother had to go to work and it was not very easy. She was cultivated, but she did not have a lot of work references. A deportee helped her find something at a gas company that paid fairly well and that’s what she did.”

  It was an office job, and because her mother handled mail, she developed a broad and wonderful stamp collection on the side. After finishing high school Michèle began studying biochemistry at the Sorbonne. She needed to work to pay for some of her school expenses, so her mother helped her find some “little jobs.” Because she was still weak from her time at Ravensbrück, the demanding schedule took a toll on her health, so she quit school and found a job as a teacher.

  Few people could comprehend what it was like to have to rebuild a life after experiencing such hardship. Because of that all the returning deportees had developed strong bonds of friendship between them that Geneviève believed were unlike any she had ever known. They were linked by their combat for France but also by their fight for humankind, which they had seen at its best and worst during wartime. At its worst they saw a people bent on the oppression, humiliation, and destruction of their neighbors. At its best they saw that their solidarity gave them the strength to overcome their struggles.

  “I am not saying it was always easy,” Geneviève said. “But all of the survivors can attest that they survived without losing their dignity. . . . And I can say, without any feminism, that this [unity] was more common in the women than it was in the men.”