by Sarah Helm
Jews in prisons and camps had learned that they could emigrate too as long as they had proof of a visa and funds for travel. Amongst those hoping to receive their papers soon was Olga Benario. Although her own mother was estranged, Olga’s Brazilian mother-in-law, Leocadia, as well as Carlos Prestes’s sister Ligia, had been working tirelessly on Olga’s case ever since securing the release of her baby Anita.
Just before leaving Lichtenburg, Olga had written to Carlos in his Brazilian jail. ‘Spring has finally arrived and the light green tips of the trees are looking inquisitively over the tops of our prison yard. More than ever I wish for a little sun, for beauty and luck. Will the day come that brings us together with Anita-Leocadia, the three of us in happiness? Forgive those thoughts, I know I have to be patient.’
As dawn broke over the Mecklenburg countryside, sunlight streamed through the slits in the tarpaulin, and the prisoners’ spirits rose. The Austrians sang. When the buses neared Ravensbrück it was midday and stifling hot. The women were gasping for air. The buses turned off the road and stopped. Doors swung open and those in front looked out on a shimmering lake. The scent of the pine forest filled the bus. A German communist, Lisa Ullrich, noticed ‘a sparsely populated hamlet situated at a small idyllic sea surrounded by a crown of dark spruce forest’.
The hearts of the women ‘leapt for joy’, Lisa recalled, but before all the coaches had drawn to a halt came screaming, yelling and a cracking of whips and barking of dogs. ‘A stream of orders and insults greeted us as we began to descend. Hordes of women appeared through the trees—guards in skirts, blouses and caps, holding whips, some with yelping dogs rushing at the buses through the trees.’
As the prisoners stepped down several collapsed, and those that stooped to help them were knocked flat themselves by hounds or lashed with a whip. They didn’t know it yet, but it was a camp rule that helping another was an offence. ‘Bitches, dirty cow, get on your feet. Lazy bitch.’ Another rule was that prisoners always lined up in fives. ‘Achtung, Achtung. Ranks of five. Hands by your sides.’
Commands echoed through the trees as stragglers were kicked by jackboots. Stiff with terror, all eyes fixed on the sandy ground, the women did their utmost not to be noticed. They avoided each other’s gaze. Some were whimpering. Another crack of a whip and there was total silence.
The well-rehearsed SS routine had served its purpose—causing maximum terror at the moment of arrival. Anyone who had thought of resisting was from now on subdued. The ritual had been performed hundreds of times at male concentration camps, and now it was being enacted for the first time on the banks of the Schwedtsee. It would be worse for those who arrived later, in the dead of night, or in the snow, understanding nothing of the language. But all Ravensbrück survivors would remember the trauma of their arrival; all would recall their own silence.
—
This first group stands silent in the heat for perhaps two hours. As the count begins, Maria Zeh, from Stuttgart, looks up and sees the colza rapeseed is in blossom. She is slapped across the face. ‘Die Nase nach vorne!’ shouts a guard—Nose to the front.
The women are counted again and then again—another lesson to learn: if anyone moves out of line, collapses, or if the counting goes wrong, it starts all over. ‘And before we march a paper is handed to the head guard with the tally,’ recalls Lisa Ullrich. The head guard is Johanna Langefeld. She has been standing apart, and now checks the figures. She signals for the women to march on. The stout figure of Max Koegel is there too.
Heaving forward, the prisoners pass half-built villas to their left, but they are only dimly aware of their surroundings. They come into a vast clearing where every tree and blade of grass has been razed, leaving sand and swamp. In this wasteland stands a massive grey wall. The women pass through a gateway and realise they have entered the new camp.
‘Achtung, Achtung, ranks of five.’ They are standing on a desolate square of sand, marked out as a parade ground. They smell new wood and fresh paint. Stark wooden barracks are positioned all around. Some notice beds of red flowers. The sun beats down. The gate closes behind them.
* * *
*1 Nazis pointed to scientific studies showing that women had smaller brains than men and were therefore obviously inferior.
*2 British intelligence also foiled an attempt by communist protesters to get Olga off the steamer when it docked at Southampton en route to Hamburg. Moscow had signalled in advance to the British Communist Party in London, calling for protests to be organised at the port, but the signal was intercepted by MI6 and the steamer went straight to Germany without docking anywhere.
*3 For example, all Gypsies in Berlin had been rounded up before the Olympics began. In order to remove them from public view they were herded into a vast camp built on a swamp in the Berlin suburb of Marzahn.
*4 Tens of thousands of German-Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps after Kristallnacht, but Jewish women had not been rounded up, probably for fear of creating a backlash and because there was not enough room for them behind bars at this time.
Chapter 2
Sandgrube
‘Hands by your sides. Ranks of five. Eyes ahead.’ In groups, the women prisoners are marched forward towards a new building to the right of the gate where the next ritual starts: the bath. The first group enters and sees tables with guards behind them and piles of striped clothes. Everything must come off. Women start to strip. ‘Schnell, schnell.’ Some stand there, sanitary straps and towels around their middles, and they look at the guards who shout back: ‘Everything off.’
And everything comes off, to be thrown into large brown paper bags, along with all clothes and all possessions. The prisoners give everything up: last letters, photographs of children, embroidered handkerchiefs, knitted hats, little baskets, poems, combs. ‘Until there is nothing left.’ Wedding rings too.
Stark naked, the women are staring at their feet again, but some look up and shriek to see that male SS officers have been present all along, standing and staring. They laugh and shout insults when they see the women’s humiliation.
Then the shavers come, and some of the women are pushed aside. ‘Beeilt euch, beeilt euch!’—Get a move on—and the selected women’s hair is shaved off close to the scalp. Then another woman comes through. She makes the same women stand with their legs apart and shaves their pubic hair.
—
Within hours of their arrival, on 15 May 1939, the first of the 867 prisoners to be transferred from Lichtenburg to Ravensbrück had been stripped, washed, checked for lice, and in many cases shaved, as the Oberaufseherin would allow no vermin here. The prisoners were then issued new camp clothes: blue and white striped cotton dresses and jackets, a white headscarf, socks and rough wooden shoes, like clogs.
Each was given a number, printed on a small white piece of cloth. It matched the number they were given on arrival at Lichtenburg—from 1 to 867. The women were also given a coloured triangle made of felt. They were handed a needle and thread and told to sew these on to the left shoulder of their jackets. The triangle indicated which category the prisoner had been placed in: black for ‘asocials’—prostitute, beggar, petty criminal, lesbian; green for habitual criminals; red for political prisoners; lilac for Jehovah’s Witnesses; yellow for Jews. The Jewish women were subdivided, depending on the reason for arrest. All Jews wore a yellow triangle, but those noted as ‘Pol. Jude’—arrested for political crimes—wore their yellow triangle on a red background. The political Jews included the largest category, those arrested for Rassenschande, relations with a non-Jew; of these there were ninety-seven. Those Jews arrested as asocials wore their yellow triangle on a black background.
When numbers and triangles had been sewn on, the tannoy system screamed a siren as the women lined up again in the Appellplatz, before being marched, by category, to separate blocks, led by their Blockführer, block guard. The Jews were taken to the ‘Judenblock’, except for Olga Benario, who was taken the other way.
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bsp; Inside the blocks everyone was allocated a bunk bed, a bowl, a plate, an aluminium cup, a knife, fork and spoon, as well as a small cloth for drying and polishing the utensils. Any fuzz on the implements would mean a report to Langefeld, who had given instructions on exactly how the polishing should be done. As agreed under the camp Lagerordnung, Langefeld had secured control over ‘feminine matters’, which included sole authority over the living blocks; Koegel and his men were not allowed inside them unless accompanied by a female guard.
For washing, everyone was given a toothbrush, tooth mug, nugget of soap and small towel. Any item lost would incur ‘a report’ to the Oberaufseherin. Each woman was allocated a tiny shelf to keep her items on; anything misplaced meant ‘a report’.
A mass of rules governed making the bed. It had to be done ‘Prussian style’, as required in all the camps, but on this Langefeld had her own particular instructions too: pillows to be puffed out so that corners pointed at right angles with the bed; the mattress to lie absolutely flat, which was impossible, as it was made of wood chips.
All the women recalled that particular precision was required when folding the blue and white checked blanket on the top. ‘The blanket had to be laid just over the pillow and arranged so it ran along the edge of the bed, with its line of checks absolutely straight,’ recalled Fritzi Jaroslavsky, an Austrian prisoner, nervously folding the edge of a tablecloth as she spoke. ‘Even an inch overlapping the mattress meant the guard would come in shouting “Lazy cow, stupid bitch” and kicking or hitting you and shouting “Report!” ’
Worst of all were the rules of the Appell, the roll call. At 5 a.m. a siren woke the camp, and prisoners were marched outside their blocks to line up in ranks of five, hands by their sides, standing erect in military fashion while the count took place. Even in these early days it took as long as half an hour to get the numbers right, and at 5 a.m. a cold wind blew off the Schwedtsee, cutting through cotton clothes. ‘Achtung! Achtung! Hands by your sides, ranks of fives.’ Langefeld sometimes took Appell in person, but usually left the job to her deputy, Emma Zimmer, who had also come from Lichtenburg. Fifty-one-year-old Zimmer, who had a ‘loose wrist’—she liked to slap—walked up and down the ranks carrying a large document file, with which she would beat inmates about the head at the slightest movement or sound. Sometimes, usually when drunk, Zimmer—nicknamed ‘Aunt Emma’ by the prisoners—lashed out with her jackboots too.
Langefeld never hit or kicked, though she would sometimes slap a woman sharply across the face, particularly while hearing ‘the report’. The offending prisoner would be brought to Langefeld’s office to answer the charge—losing a mug, failing to fold a blanket—to which the prisoner could reply. Langefeld then gave her decision, and if the charge was proven she slapped the prisoner’s face and announced the punishment, which might be cleaning lavatories, but Langefeld’s preferred punishment was forced standing for several hours without any food. If the standing woman fainted she’d be left lying for a while before being carried away. For serious cases Langefeld was trained in the use of straitjackets and water dousing.
When Zimmer had completed the morning count, the women returned to their blocks, where a black liquid that passed for coffee was doled out with a piece of bread, which was the daily allocation and could either be eaten now or put on the shelf for later. The siren screamed once more and selections for work gangs began. Prisoners were called into line again, then sent to collect tools and marched away to work shovelling sand or building a road, singing German marching songs. On return that evening they were all counted again.
Within a few days most of the Lichtenburg prisoners had been transferred to Ravensbrück. Langefeld’s rules had been learned and order established. The brown paper bags containing prisoners’ clothes and belongings had been taken for washing in the Wäscherei then ironed with a giant steam iron. Each item was then replaced in its numbered brown bag and sent to the Effektenkammer next door.
The Effektenkammer was divided into four rooms. In one was a long trestle table where all the prisoners’ clothes and possessions were tipped out, to be carefully sorted. In an adjoining room was an office with two desks and two typewriters and a big steel cupboard containing hundreds of file index cards, on which was typed every prisoner’s name and number, and details of every piece of clothing and every possession, with copies sent to Langefeld’s office.*1
Valuables were locked in the steel cupboards for safe keeping and carefully noted. The clothes were folded and placed in brand-new brown paper bags, which were attached to hangers; the hangers were taken to be hung on rails in the large roof space above Langefeld’s office. When anyone was released she was sent to the Effektenkammer, where she gave her number to a worker who then went to the storage loft and retrieved her bag of clothes using a hook on a stick.
When prisoners arrived later from Poland, Russia and France, some brought whole suitcases full of belongings, all of which were put in bags and itemised just the same, said Edith Sparmann, a German-Czech prisoner who worked in the Effektenkammer. The bags were enormous strong brown paper sacks, stitched at the sides. One of the rooms held nothing but these brown paper bags, ready for the big transports. ‘There was a lot of fancy stuff later,’ said Edith, who also recalled how Langefeld would often come to the Effektenkammer to check on things. ‘She wasn’t as bad as some of them. She allowed my mother to keep her wedding ring on.’
During the first days prisoners were also assigned to tasks in the kitchen, and rations carefully calculated for each block, depending on a head count from the night before. In the Revier, the sickbay, each prisoner underwent a vaginal examination and if any woman had syphilis, as Agnes Petry did, it was noted on her file. Any woman found to be pregnant was taken away to have her baby at a nearby hospital in Templin. The baby would be sent for adoption, and the woman brought back.
The count after the first seven days—including a few new arrivals in addition to those from Lichtenburg—gave a total figure of 974 prisoners in the camp. Of these, 114 women wore red triangles (political prisoners); 388 Jehovah’s Witnesses wore lilac; 119 wore green (habitual criminals); 240 wore black (asocials); 137 wore yellow (Jews) and some of the categories overlapped. From now on each arrival was given a number in sequence, so it would always be clear to guards and other prisoners alike, simply from a prisoner’s number, who had been longest in the camp and who had just arrived. The first prisoner to be given a ‘pure’ Ravensbrück number (i.e. she was not transferred from Lichtenburg) was a thirty-seven-year-old German teacher arrested for communist resistance, called Clara Rupp. She arrived on 25 May and had the number 1415.
By the end of the first week the cards of all the first arrivals had been copied and filed, and their clothes packed in brown paper bags hanging above Langefeld’s head. Langefeld’s work, however, had only just begun.
—
Johanna Langefeld’s office, inside an ordinary block near the gate, was not as grand as the commandant’s extensive stone-built headquarters, but her block was ideally placed. From her desk she had a view out over the Appellplatz, allowing her to observe much of what went on.
Her office was also well staffed. Lines of clerks and secretaries sat at desks, as prisoners queued to give details of their arrest, their medical history and next of kin, all of which was noted on several different files. Langefeld’s messenger then took copies of the prisoner information to relevant departments around the camp.
There had been a variety of administrative matters to see to in the first days. Inquiries came from police departments. ‘Would the KZ [Konzentrationslager: concentration camp] pay the price of a prisoner’s train fare?’ Hamburg police wanted to know. ‘Should Düsseldorf send on a hat?’ Letters came from the German Red Cross, passing on inquiries about prisoners received from the International Red Cross in Geneva. A daughter, Tanja Benesch, wanted news of her mother, Susi. And Langefeld was obliged to tell Max Koegel that the camp washing machines were for prisoners’ clothes and
linen only; he would have to wash his clothes elsewhere.
More prisoner jobs were given out. Hanna Sturm, an Austrian communist and a carpenter, was assigned to put up fences and bang in nails. Many disciplinary problems arose. Another Austrian called Marianne Wachstein arrived in nothing but a nightgown and didn’t know who she was.
Hedwig Apfel, who said she was an opera singer and came from Vienna, threw her mattress on the ground on her first day and had barely stopped screaming since. A few days after the camp opened a nationwide hunt was launched for Katharina Waitz, the Gypsy trapeze artist, who escaped again, though nobody knew how.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses caused more trouble for Max Koegel, this time by refusing his offer to set them free. In return for their release the women were told they simply had to sign a piece of paper renouncing their faith, but each one refused, repeating that the Führer was the Antichrist. It was largely because of their riot at Lichtenburg that Koegel had first requested the cell block for Ravensbrück. He told his SS superior Theodor Eicke a few weeks before the camp opened: ‘It will be impossible to keep order if these hysterical hags can’t be broken. Just depriving them of food will not subdue them without a form of rigorous imprisonment.’
Although this first request was refused, Koegel did secure permission to convert an ordinary living block into a ‘punishment block’ or ‘Strafblock’ and several ‘hysterical hags’ were soon thrown in. The Strafblock was set some way apart from the other blocks, behind barbed wire. Prisoners might be sent there for such crimes as repeated lateness for Appell, failing to make their bed by the rules, or refusing an order. The Strafblock prisoners were forced to work longer hours, on the worst gangs, with no days off. Punishments such as straitjackets and water dousing were used.