Ravensbruck

by Sarah Helm

  Bertha Teege, the Lagerälteste, had eagerly awaited Himmler’s January visit, hoping to be released. ‘The political women were nervous, wondering who would be lucky this time,’ she recalled. But the ‘Reichsheini’, as Bertha called Himmler, ‘was in a bad mood’. First he was enraged by an unshaven SS man, then he erupted in a fury about the slow rate of output in the sewing shops. Before he left, Himmler visited Block 1 and engaged in ‘short banter’ with Rosa Jochmann—‘ “Why are you here? You’d better reform”—and that was it, he was gone without releasing anyone.’

  There is no mention in Himmler’s diary of the January visit, though a diary note mentions a phone call from Max Koegel: ‘Tuesday 13 Jan 1942, at 12 noon, SS-Stubaf [Sturmbannführer] Kögel telephoned Himmler to say the Jehovah’s Witnesses had mutinied again. The women refused to do war work, so given 25 and 50 lashes. Sleep by open windows without mattresses or bedclothes, punished by withdrawal of food.’ This protest marked a new phase of protest by a breakaway group of ‘extreme Jehovahs’, as they became known because they interpreted any task at all as war work. In this case they refused to unload straw: the straw was for the horses, the horses served the Wehrmacht, and the Wehrmacht was fighting the war.

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  However, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ protest alone would certainly not have brought Himmler back to Ravensbrück. During the first week of January 1942 he was in Russia again, and on his return to Germany he had much to do. He was involved in the issue of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish question’, which was to be discussed at an urgent meeting, to be chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, at Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, on 20 January. Heydrich was by then the chief of the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) and Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.

  It was probably the Soviet counterattack just outside Moscow in the autumn of 1941 that finally prompted Hitler to formalise his ideas on how to murder Europe’s Jews. In the first days of the war, it had been thought possible that the Jews could be removed to Madagascar or elsewhere in Africa, but this had long since been ruled out, and now that the Soviets were fighting back, Hitler’s hopes of herding the Jews east into seized Russian lands had also fallen away.

  Nobody knows when Hitler formally decided on mass murder. The Führer had always pledged to exterminate the Jews, but until now no solution had emerged. The mass shooting used to kill Soviet Jews had proved inefficient and bad for army morale. On the other hand, gas had worked well in the ‘euthanasia’ programme, which proved that mass murder of innocent civilians was technically feasible and that German officials and German bureaucracy were ready to adapt to get it done.

  By the summer of 1941 the T4 gas chambers had killed at least 80,000 Germans. Although Hitler had announced that the programme was curtailed, some of the sanatoria gassing centres in Germany had been adapted to kill unwanted prisoners at Himmler’s concentration camps, under the promising 14f13 programme. And by December 1941—before the Wannsee conference had convened—gas was already in use to kill German Jews deported to a new camp called Chelmno, established at Łódź in Poland, where it was done by pumping carbon monoxide into the back of mobile gassing trucks. Moreover, a number of T4 personnel had been sent out to Poland to explore how the gassing methodology used for the euthanasia programme in German sanatoria might be further adapted to kill Europe’s Jews.

  Such matters would inform the discussions at Wannsee, and though Himmler was not needed at the meeting itself, as the man nominated by Hitler to oversee the mass murder he would have wished to be close by. Developments at the women’s camp had a bearing on the subject tabled at Wannsee. Just as Wannsee was being convened, the first gassing of women prisoners was about to happen, and it made sense to visit Ravensbrück to inspect the preparations.

  Personal reasons probably also brought Himmler to the area at this time. We know that his mistress, Hedwig Potthast (Häschen), was pregnant with the couple’s first child, which was due in mid-February. As was his habit, Himmler therefore probably combined his inspection of Ravensbrück with a visit to Häschen, either at his Brückenthin estate five miles away or perhaps at the nearby Hohenlychen clinic. Arrangements had been made for the baby to be born at Hohenlychen, and the chief doctor there, Karl Gebhardt, had agreed to deliver the baby himself.

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  On 5 January 1942 news that the medical commission was back at Ravensbrück sent a stir through the camp. Fritzi recalls that soon after her arrival people started saying something dreadful was going to happen, ‘but nobody knew what’. Rosa Jochmann in the bunk below was on edge. ‘I could see that many of the older women were worried. There was a lot of discussion.’ On the Lagerstrasse the Austrian group, and particularly the Jewish girls, were talking about it. Fritzi recalled:

  Fini Schneider wasn’t worried. She knew she was going to be transported somewhere but she told me she was going to a better place. She was such a pretty young woman. I can see her now, smiling at me on the Lagerstrasse. She was always happy and optimistic, but perhaps she was trying to hide her fears from me.

  On his return to Ravensbrück Mennecke was suffering from corns, as he told his ‘dearest baby’ in a letter written on 5 January: ‘My day today was as follows. At 9.30 I had breakfast and went to the city to run some errands; at the post office I put a stamp on the newspaper I sent to you, bought some postcards, because postcards and writing paper have become very rare! Then I bought two packs of corn plaster.’ A car now took him to the camp to start work on the ‘new files’. He was ravenous, ‘so now I’ll eat first. Yummy!’

  After a six-week absence, Mennecke found changes. Sonntag had left for the eastern front and a new doctor called Gerhard Schiedlausky greeted Mennecke with the news that his wife had just had a baby.

  Schiedlausky had one of those ‘beautiful houses’ in the SS enclave while Sonntag was ‘surely freezing bitterly in Leningrad’, Mennecke told Eva. With the Russian counterattack near Moscow now under way, there was an ugly anti-Russian mood in the officers’ mess. Mennecke loathed the Russians too: ‘Russian people are born and raised right in the dirt. A single [Russian] human life means as little as in any lower order of animals.’

  Chatting with an SS major called Vogl, who had just lost a leg at the battle of Rostov and was on his way to the nearby Hohenlychen clinic, meant he didn’t start work till 2.20, ‘and so could only finish 30 files’. He reported by phone to Nitsche and Heyde, but they didn’t mind and were ‘very nice, asking how you’ve been’. Mennecke told Eva he was supposed to bring the current files to Berlin on 15 January. ‘I go to Gross-Rosen for mid-January’—referring to his next round of selections at Gross-Rosen men’s camp. The letter ended: ‘I was back at the hotel at 5.15 p.m. I put on my best clothes, bathed my feet and took my time to care for my corns.’

  The next day Mennecke saw 181 ‘pats’—‘All Aryan with numerous criminal convictions. Now there are 70 Aryan and 90–100 Jewish women left’—and he hoped to be through all the files in time to reach Berlin by early Wednesday. ‘It’s painful to hear about the Russian advance in the Crimea. Let’s hope it will be all right.’

  On 8 January Mennecke’s letter to ‘mummy’ started with the usual description of dinner, after which he went for a stroll in the snow. His night was disturbed by noise in the next room, where ‘a group of SS officers with their girlfriends drank one bottle of wine after another’.

  On 9 January at 9.50 he was ‘reporting’ in again: ‘Daddy presents himself before you as a completely clean piglet. What a nice feeling to have rinsed off the dirt of four weeks—but nicer when Mummy does it!’ He went ‘fishing’ for some more ‘sheets’ to document, then the next day he went to the nearby Hohenlychen SS clinic where he met a man who said he’d sent the ‘stuff well packed in a wooden box’—probably meaning black-market liquor.

  By 12 January Mennecke was preparing to leave. ‘My dear Eva-Mutti, My last letter for you from Fürstenberg, I begin at precisely midnight in my pyjamas.’ As for his last day’s work, ‘the sheets are neatl
y put into alphabetical order and packed up. I said goodbye to the commandant and paid the bill for lunch (1.05 marks) and gave away my vouchers for today and yesterday.’ His bags are packed too. ‘Oh yes! Daddy knows how to do this too. I even think I can be proud of it this time, as everything fits in just smoothly, I am keeping the uniform on and all civilian clothes in the suitcases.’ With that, Friedrich Mennecke left Ravensbrück for the last time.

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  On Sunday 1 February rumours intensified. The Effektenkammer staff had received a pile of fresh civilian clothes, no one knew why. There was more talk of who was on ‘the list’. Schreibstube secretaries spoke of a Sondertransport, special transport, a word they’d seen on documents, but nobody knew what it meant. Fini told Fritzi that she knew her name was on the list. ‘That’s what she believed,’ said Fritzi. ‘I was very scared by this, but Fini told me not to worry about her. She believed she was going to a sanatorium.’

  Frau Lange was also on the list, or so it was said, as was Käthe Leichter. But Käthe wasn’t worried either, or if she was, she didn’t show it and was quick to tell others that all would be well. Any who thought they were on the list were terrified, but friends tried to reassure them, repeating new rumours that they were to work in a munitions factory. Everyone was reassuring everyone else, but no one felt reassured.

  In the hospital it was already clear that none of the sick or crippled were to be spared and all black and green triangles expected to be picked, but lists were changing all the time, there was still hope. Some talked of escape or revolt, but Teege and Mauer passed on an order—probably issued by Langefeld—that they should all keep calm. Langefeld herself is rarely mentioned in the testimony about these terrifying days, except as a figure watching from afar, often confused with her deputy, Zimmer.

  Fritzi remembers that Rosa Jochmann was far from calm. Sleeping on the bunk below her she saw Rosa’s growing agitation. She also saw her seek out Käthe Leichter to talk. Rosa herself said later that Käthe talked of making a film about it all. ‘No one will believe us,’ said Käthe, ‘so we need to make a film to show everyone that this really happened. And you’ll see, even when it is all over no one will believe us.’ Rosa commented later: ‘And at this time the gassing hadn’t even started, but Käthe knew the gassing would happen.’

  On the evening of Tuesday 3 February, the prisoners stood for Appell, but there was little doubt that the departure of the Sondertransport was imminent. By lights out, many expected it to leave the very next day. When the prisoners had been counted at Appell, the list of names was returned to the office and given to Zimmer as usual, but instead of giving the list to one of the clerks to read out for typing, she read out the names herself.

  A Polish prisoner, Ojcumiła Falkowska, who worked in the staff canteen, got the first solid news about the list because she saw it. Zimmer had been in the canteen for her evening meal. ‘I was told to give bigger portions to a particular group of guards,’ said Ojcumiła. ‘The guard Zimmer was not very careful and left the list of names on the table, so I seized the opportunity and glimpsed it. I checked that no Polish names were on the list and saw that mostly they were prisoners from the Strafblock.’

  The SS drivers, von Rosenberg, Huber, Karl and Doering, as well as the transport chief, Josef Bertl, were eating in the canteen and talked about the next day’s transport. ‘They won’t need anything where they’re going,’ said one. Ojcumiła was ordered to give the drivers bigger portions too, ‘to reward them for their loathsome task’.

  When the night watch had completed its final rounds, the blocks were quiet but few were sleeping. Meetings were taking place on bunks to discuss what to do, while prisoners moved about from block to block to say farewells. Rosa Jochmann visited Käthe Leichter.

  Inside the Jewish block, Rosa found terror. The Viennese group—Marianne Wachstein, Modesta Finkelstein and Leontine Kestenbaum—were all expecting to be taken, along with Herta Cohen and other German-Jewish asocials accused of infecting German blood. Only a small group of Jewish political prisoners, including Rosa’s friend Käthe Leichter, were apparently still in doubt. ‘About ninety per cent of Block Eleven were convinced they would die,’ said Rosa later. ‘But Käthe said: “Look at them all, they’re really crazy. We’re too strong to be killed off. We’ll be taken to the mines to work or something.” ’ Rosa never knew whether Käthe said this to make it easier for those left behind, or because she really believed it. ‘I will never know what Käthe really meant. It was the most awful farewell ever.’

  That evening Bertha Teege briefed the communist leaders about what was to happen—she had probably learned from Langefeld. Those selected would be sent in the early hours of the morning to the bathhouse for a further medical examination. The Jewish block would definitely be called up along with others.

  With this firm information, Bertha and Maria Wiedmaier decided that Olga should be told, and they went to the Jewish block to find their comrade. When they told Olga of the plan to assemble the prisoners in the bathhouse in the small hours, she answered at once: ‘This means the end.’ Bertha and Maria tried to reassure her. Maria recalled: ‘Every one of us insisted that it still could be just a work assignment, but Olga said: “No, this is an extermination transport [Vernichtungstransport].” ’ Maria Wiedmaier recalled: ‘Olga said that if it “looked like certain death” she would try to escape.’

  At 2 a.m. the only light shone from the guardroom where Jane Bernigau, a night guard, awaited instructions. Then came the order from Langefeld, or possibly Zimmer, telling Bernigau to go to the bathhouse. Bernigau was carefully chosen for the task that night: aged thirty-three, she was just back from training at Mauthausen, and was in line for promotion. Once inside the bathhouse Langefeld—or again, possibly Zimmer—told her: ‘Prepare the women for transport.’

  The prisoners were woken by shouts, and many were ordered to move. The alert came earlier than expected and caught them unawares. The first to be marched out of their block were the Jewish women, but not all of them were called. Among those left behind was Olga Benario. Neither was this particular group taken to the bathhouse at first, but to the Strafblock. Eugenia von Skene, a Strafblock inmate, said the dog-handler Edith Fraede brought the women into the block on Zimmer’s orders. A large group of Strafblock prisoners were themselves called up and all of them together—Jews and Strafblock women—were marched across the camp to the bathhouse, near the gate. Here Jehovah’s Witnesses and asocials joined them.

  Inside the Revier mayhem erupted. Those who were able to move—asthmatics, women with TB, delirium or venereal disease—were herded outside, clutching crutches and spectacles. Those who couldn’t were left in bed or slumped on the floor to await collection. At the bathhouse Langefeld (or Zimmer) checked a long list of names. Bernigau and colleagues were told to strip and body-search the prisoners, who were given civilian clothes to put on. ‘This consisted of dress, jacket and underclothes. Their old clothing was taken to the laundry for cleaning and handed out to newly arriving prisoners,’ said Bernigau. Within ten minutes lorries drew up to the gates.

  All this time the other prisoners had orders to stay in their blocks and not look out, but Revier staff saw drivers waiting by trucks. Milena Jesenska peered out of a window in the Revier as the signal was given to load the sick women. Grete said later: ‘Milena told me how she saw the patients brutally dragged from their beds and dumped into the straw in the bottom of the trucks. From that moment on she knew where those trucks were headed.’ The only prisoner left in the Revier was Lotte Henschel, the friend of Milena and Grete, whose name had been scratched from the list at the last minute. ‘All in the isolation room of the hospital were sent to the transport except me and one dying Polish woman,’ said Lotte.

  Emmy Handke also watched from the Revier and noticed that young girls ‘in perfect health’ were taken as well as the old and the invalids. ‘I even had to help some of the women onto the truck. They were taken off by the SS and we were left stiff with f
ear that something sinister was about to happen as we watched them—paralysed women, like cattle, thrown into the lorry with all the rest.’

  Luise Mauer and Bertha Teege, the prisoner Kapos, helped load victims too. ‘Bertha and I carried a lame prisoner from Block One on a stretcher to the camp gates where a truck was waiting,’ said Luise. The deputy commandant, a man called Meier, hit Bertha on the side of her face for helping the stricken prisoner.

  Even now other prisoners found the chance to catch a last word with departing friends, and the victims tried to pass scribbled messages, mementoes, or just words to be delivered to their families. Fritzi remembers seeing Fini, sitting in the back of the truck, waving to her and smiling. ‘Even then she thought she was going somewhere better—I’m sure of that.’

  Maria Apfelkammer, the Effektenkammer worker, watched her German communist friends Tilde Klose and Lina Bertram—the other two TB sufferers who, with Lotte Henschel, were to have been freed—taken to the trucks. She also watched another communist friend leave: Mina Valeske could barely walk, but managed to hobble to the truck, using her stick.

  Rosa Jochmann came out to wave off comrades. ‘There I saw Käthe walk along the Lagerstrasse in the cold under the stars. “Rosa,” said Käthe, “if it really is that I never come home again please look after my three boys.” ’ Rosa knew that by ‘three boys’ she meant her husband and two sons. ‘And I saw my dear friend Käthe Leichter loaded on. I still don’t know if she thought she was going to die.’

  The entire camp—guards and prisoners alike—stood in silence as the backs of the trucks were slammed down, fastened with chains and driven off.

  The next day camp life continued, but prisoners noticed women who had simply disappeared. Rosa Jochmann peered inside the Jewish block and ‘the whole block was gone’. Many bunks in the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ block were empty. ‘The Jehovah’s Witnesses could all have saved themselves. All they had to do was sign a paper saying they gave up their faith. But from 1000 only five did this.’ The Revier was empty too—apart from Lotte. Half the Strafblock had gone.