by Larry Loftis
Sonderbehandlung: Rürup, 99, 106.
“Is this my new”: Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 126.
improved Odette’s lot: Ibid., 132.
Kurt von Schuschnigg: Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 974.
“The slogan that”: Nikolaus Wachsmann, kl: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 100.
Death’s Head units: Ibid., 101. For background on the SS, see Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head.
“There is a path to freedom”: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 100.
“There is a path to the SS”: Ibid., 101.
forty thousand: Ibid., 628. Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 974, estimated the number at a hundred thousand, though Wachsmann’s figure of thirty-five thousand to forty thousand seems more accurate, given his focus and meticulous research on the concentration camps.
Sachsenhausen . . . Bernhard: Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 974. For details on Operation Bernhard, see Walter Schellenberg, The Memoirs of Hitler’s Spymaster, 419–20.
He thought of: Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 149.
On May 12: HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives.
“I wanted to say” . . . “not very beloved”: Tickell, Odette, 251. Angered by Father Paul’s compassion and love for Fresnes prisoners, the Gestapo eventually forbade him from seeing male inmates. HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives.
“Frau Churchill, I have”: Tickell, Odette, 251. Amazingly, an identical scene was occurring simultaneously five hundred miles away, in Berlin. From his cell in the Tegel interrogation prison, German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer recorded his own struggle with the irony:
Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I would talk to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I would bear the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing
my throat, yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 347–48. See, generally, Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Vera Leigh . . . Diana Rowden: Foot, SOE in France, 414–16; Tickell, Odette, 252; Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 292, 297.
Vera Leigh . . . dress designer . . . 30 October: Foot, SOE in France, 261, 264.
Diana Rowden’s arrest: Ibid., 263–64. See also Rita Kramer, Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France.
Andrée Borrel, the first female: Foot, SOE in France, 178. Borrel parachuted in close to Paris the night of September 24–25, 1942.
“the best of us all”: Ibid., 230. PROSPER circuit leader Major Francis Suttill wrote to Baker Street in March 1943: “Everyone who has come into contact with her in her work agrees with myself that she is the best of all of us.”
fearless contempt: Foot, SOE in France, 280.
Yolande Beekman: Ibid., 99, 240, 324.
Madeleine Damerment: Ibid., 83, 302.
Eliane Plewman: Ibid., 229, 330–31, 378. See also Elizabeth Nicholas, Death Be Not Proud.
“That is the work”: Tickell, Odette, 254.
“Where are we going?”: Ibid., 255.
CHAPTER 17: THE BUNKER
Something told him: Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 149.
He thought of her: Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 149.
Karlsruhe: HS 9/648.4.012 and HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives.
handcuffs: HS 9/648.4.012, UK National Archives.
“Poetic knowledge”: A mother’s certainty that something has happened to a child who is far away or who is in some kind of danger is no old wives’ tale, some experts contend, but an aspect of poetic knowledge. It is a step beyond Aquinas’s connatural knowledge—accumulated experience yielding a way of knowing placed deeply within the poetic. Rather, as one philosopher put it, it’s a knowledge where the intellect is guided and directed by affective inclinations and dispositions of the will. See, generally, James S. Taylor, Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education. See also Gerald Gutek, Philosophical and Ideological Perspectives on Education, 17 (citing philosopher Jacques Maritain).
dehydrated mules’ brains . . . animal blood: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 73.
306 messages . . . “Vilma vous dit oui”: Ibid., 240–41.
Maquis were dispatched: Ibid., 244.
“Well, Frau Churchill”: Tickell, Odette, 256–57.
July 6 . . . Natzweiler-Struthof . . . Dachau: Foot, SOE in France, 414–16.
July 18: HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives.
“Encore un peu”: Tickell, Odette, 258.
cage . . . iron mesh . . . five feet: HS 9/648.4.012, UK National Archives.
no water and no sanitation facility . . . two other women: Ibid.
Halle . . . prison attic: HS 9/648.4.012, HS 9/648.4.013, and HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives.
forty-odd Ukrainian women: HS 9/648.4.012 places the number at forty-five, while HS 9/648.4.077 puts it at thirty-seven.
Sanitation . . . dysentery . . . heat . . . sand: Ibid.
Gestapo . . . local police . . . struck her: HS 9/648.4.012 (“Gestapo”) and HS 9/648.4.077 (“regular police”), UK National Archives.
On July 26 . . . Ravensbrück: HS 9/648.4.077 and HS 9/648.4.013, UK National Archives.
feared by every woman: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 173 (“the notorious women’s extermination camp whose name we had heard even in Haarlem”).
labor camp: Jack Gaylord Morrison, Ravensbrück: Everyday Life in a Women’s Concentration Camp 1939–45, ix, 12–13; Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 98, 227. Ravensbrück was a labor camp (Arbeitslager) rather than an extermination camp (Vernichtungslager), which were all located outside of Germany.
4,000: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 16.
more than 36,000: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 181–82. Ten Boom states that her barracks contained 1,400, and the others, some 35,000.
Poles . . . Germans . . . Jews . . . Russians: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 86.
133,000: Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 929.
40,000: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 628. Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 929, cite a figure of up to 92,700, although Wachsmann’s 30,000 to 40,000 appears more accurate, given the depth of his research.
July 27: HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives.
two-mile . . . “Is there really”: Ibid., 30–31.
SS homes . . . fourteen-foot walls . . . towers: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 173; Tickell, Odette, 261; Morrison, Ravensbrück, 31.
valley . . . cinder . . . skull-and-crossbones . . . electrified: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 173; Morrison, Ravensbrück, 32.
Aufseherinnen . . . weibliche SS-Gefolge: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 23–24.
washroom . . . concrete floor: Imperial War Museum (IWM), Oral History, interview with Odette Marie Céline Sansom, produced October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2; Tickell, Odette, 262.
Ravensbrück prisoner intake . . . naked . . . ins
pected: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 175–76; Morrison, Ravensbrück, 32–35, 119.
others committed suicide: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 33.
medical exam: Ibid., 33–34; ten Boom, Hiding Place, 178.
Sühren . . . Nazi Party . . . 1928 . . . SS three years later: Tom Segev, Soldiers of Evil: The Commandants of the Nazi Concentration Camps, 71, citing the Fritz Sühren personnel file, Berlin Document Center Personnel File (SS Service Files); Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 401.
Sachsenhausen: Segev, 71.
Naujoks . . . winch . . . gallows: Jerzy Pindera, Liebe Mutti: One Man’s Struggle to Survive in KZ Sachsenhausen, 1939–1945, 71–72; Harry Naujoks, Mein Leben im KZ Sachsenhausen, 1936–1942.
hard labor and starvation: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 243.
Dr. Karl Gebhardt . . . medical experiments: Klaus Dörner, et al., eds., The Nuremberg Medical Trial 1946/47: Guide to the Microfiche-Edition, 91; Affidavit, Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky (camp physician at Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, Natzweiler, and Buchenwald), NO-508, sworn on August 7, 1945, Holocaust Texts, http://madness-visible.blogspot.com/2011/06/no-508-affidavit-dr-gerhard.html; Morrison, Ravensbrück, 245–49.
fearing legal repercussions: Patricia Heberer and Jürgen Matthäus, eds., Atrocities on Trial: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes, 136.
sterilized . . . X-rays: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 53; Vera Renouf, Forfeit to War, 303.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”: Tickell, Odette, 265–66.
Frau Schurer . . . Churchill name: Ibid.; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2.
seventy-eight cells . . . written report . . . pregnant woman: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 231–32.
four and a half paces long by two and a half: Ibid., 231 (citing a prisoner statement from the Guide to the Cell Building of the Ravensbrück Memorial).
Margarete Mewes: Tickell, Odette, 266.
Bunker . . . pitch dark . . . food hatch: HS 9/648.4.013, HS 9/648.4.077, and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 3; Tickell, Odette, 267; Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 232. See, generally, Morrison, Ravensbrück, 231–33.
coffee . . . bread: Ibid., 267; ten Boom, Hiding Place, 174.
turnip soup: Tickell, Odette, 267; ten Boom, Hiding Place, 174; Morrison, Ravensbrück, 112 (“cabbage or turnip”).
“punishment room” . . . screams . . . strokes: IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2; HS 9/648.4.013, National Archives.
caning . . . shackled . . . dress . . . blanket . . . twenty-five: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 233 (citing testimony of Martha Wölkert, who received this punishment); Affidavit, Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky, NO-508, sworn on August 7, 1945, Holocaust Texts.
“elf . . . zwolf . . . dreizehn”: Tickell, Odette, 268; HS 9/648.4.013, National Archives.
Odette counted every: IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2.
the charrette: Tickell, Odette, 264.
leaf: Starns, Odette, 103 (citing the London Dispatch, November 30, 1958).
“the sounds of hell”: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 177.
“Yes, thank you”: Tickell, Odette, 270; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2.
“you must take over”: Starns, 103 (citing the London Dispatch, November 30, 1958).
scabs . . . glands: HS 9/648.4.013, UK National Archives.
August . . . they were on full blast: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2; Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 232.
blanket . . . soaked it: HS 9/648.4.013, UK National Archives.
six days and nights . . . no food . . . inferno: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives.
scurvy and dysentery . . . grapefruit: Ibid.; Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 232; Tickell, Odette, 271.
Everything went black: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives. Odette passed out and was found unconscious on the floor by a guard. Ibid.; Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 232.
CHAPTER 18: THE SLAUGHTER
unconscious . . . semicoma . . . revived: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives; Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 232.
Dietrich von Choltitz: See, for example, Hassell and MacRae, Alliance of Enemies, xix.
“Permit me”: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 261.
“Have you any complaints?”: Tickell, Odette, 271. See also HS 9/648.4.077, UK National Archives, regarding punishment in retaliation for the Allied invasion in southern France.
Provence . . . little resistance: Buckmaster, They Fought Alone, 253.
“Peter Churchill and Odette”: Ibid., 235–36.
“You are aware”: Tickell, Odette, 271.
medical exams . . . nude: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 178, 190.
X-rays . . . tuberculosis . . . extermination . . . plates: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives; Imperial War Museum (IWM), Oral History, interview with Odette Marie Céline Sansom, produced October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2, Reel 3. The recorded dates of Odette’s treatments vary slightly—from August through October 6—in all probability due to her multiple visits to the camp hospital.
dead within a few weeks: HS 9/648.4.013 (“few weeks”) and HS 9/648.4.078 (“two months”), UK National Archives.
he needed insurance: Ibid.
injections . . . hair . . . vitamins: Ibid.
gland . . . grapefruit . . . operate: HS 9/648.4.013, UK National Archives.
Heinrich Himmler: IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2.
seven hundred . . . Vught: ten Boom, Hiding Place, 169.
November . . . Siemens factory: Ibid., 185.
December . . . new cell: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives.
three months and eight days: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2 (“three months and eleven days”).
new cell . . . six yards: HS 9/648.4.013, UK National Archives; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2.
ashes . . . hair . . . smell . . . screams: Ibid. About this time, Corrie ten Boom watched an unusual proceeding while she was walking by the infirmary. A truck had backed up to the entrance, and some elderly patients were being helped in; weak and extremely sick prisoners followed, including several loaded from stretchers. Corrie grieved at what followed. The truck drove directly to the crematorium. Ten Boom, Hiding Place, 193.
gas chamber: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 289–91.
January 12 . . . Prussia . . . Warsaw: Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 1335.
One in four . . . “death march”: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 556; Morrison, Ravensbrück, 300–303.
Himmler ordered . . . Johann Schwarzhuber . . . Dr. Richard Trommer: Ibid., 288. See also Affidavit, Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky, NO-508, sworn on August 7, 1945, Holocaust Texts, noting that Dr. Trommer was his replacement after he was reassigned to another camp.
“Mittwerda” . . . 150: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 290.
“I heard moaning”: Ibid.
714,211 . . . 550,000: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 627.
1,500 . . . 4,500 . . . 6,000: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 291, 294.
“I could hear them”: Tickell, Odette, 276; IWM, interview with Odette Sansom, October 31, 1986, catalogue number 9478, Reel 2.
SS simply shot: At Ravensbrück, prisoner Olga Körner witnessed forty-eight inmates being shot by SS guards. Morrison, Ravensbrück, 291.
250 . . . Fürstengrube: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 558.
Palmnicken . . . Dachau: Ibid., 560–61.
1,300 infirm . . . Lieberose: Ibid., 557.
3,600 girls: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 568.
3,858: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 294.
“The town is”: Bleicher, Colonel Henri’s Story, 163.
“You are a soldier”: Ibid., 165.
February 26 . . . Düsseldorf . . . March 7 . . . Remagen: Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 1335.
Austria . . . 30th . . . Danzig: Ibid., 1336.
April 4 . . . American and Canadian Red Cross: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 296.
April 9 . . . Königsberg: Gen. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 1939–45, 513.
the Elbe . . . Vienna . . . 13th: Dear and Foot: Oxford Companion to World War II, 1336; Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 513; Michel, Shadow War, Shadow War, 381.
Three days later . . . Zhukov: Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to World War II, 1301; Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters, 513; Michel, Shadow War, 381.
Buchenwald and Dora: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 577.
April 15 he called a meeting: Ibid., 579.
Execute every prisoner: Tickell, Odette, 277.
“There is no question”: Wachsmann, History of Nazi Concentration Camps, 580.
“Keep your chin up!”: Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 201.
Canaris and Oster . . . St. Anne’s . . . Bonhoeffer and Niemöller: Hassell and MacRae, Alliance of Enemies, 51.
Prince Philipp . . . von Flügge . . . Innsbruck: Ibid., 201–8.
Fabian von Schlabrendorff: See, generally, Rürup, Topography of Terror, 175–76.
“I shall not be”: Ibid., 204.
Whose wife was killed: Churchill, Spirit in the Cage, 203.
“I’m sorry”: Ibid., 210.
Count Folke Bernadotte . . . Red Cross . . . four thousand: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 297–99.
walk to Malchow: Ibid., 301–3.
three thousand: Morrison, Ravensbrück, 306.
It was midnight: Tickell, Odette, 277.
CHAPTER 19: STILL WARM
“You will be”: Tickell, Odette, 277.
Black Maria for transport: HS 9/648.4.013 and HS 9/648.4.078, UK National Archives.
executed Mussolini: Michel, Shadow War, 381.
fourteen straight hours . . . Neustadt: HS 9/648.4.013, UK National Archives.
more were being executed at Neustadt: Ibid.