Ravensbruck

by Sarah Helm

  Precisely how many prisoners left that night, or who they were, has never been established. The prisoner secretaries were best placed to find out, because they had to deal with the paperwork. Maria Adamska said that as soon as the lorries left she was told to retrieve the records of certain prisoners and that the largest number were Jews, along with the old and sick. Their files were taken to the new camp registration office and left there for some days, before being returned to the political department and locked in a steel case. Rosa’s impression that the Jewish block was emptied out was mistaken, as dozens, including Olga, had stayed put.

  Nor did anyone know where the women had gone or what had become of them. Koegel’s orders to the prisoner secretaries that night were simply to write Sondertransport (special transport) or Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) on the files of those who had left; or, in some cases, just ‘transferred to another camp’.

  The following day none of the prisoners were any the wiser, as Koegel was able to tell Himmler when he met him three days later.

  —

  Unlike Himmler’s January visit to the camp, the Reichsführer’s next meeting with Koegel is recorded in his diary. A note for 7 February 1942 states: ‘Visit of RFSS Himmler to SS-Ostubaf [Obersturmbannführer] Koegel and Professor de Crinis.’ Professor Max de Crinis was a leading T4 psychiatrist.

  The diary entry is intriguing on two counts. First, unusually, it doesn’t give the meeting place. As Ravensbrück is not specified, it may have happened on Himmler’s private train, which he used to move around at this time. More likely, however, is Hohenlychen, the SS medical clinic. Karl Gebhardt had agreed to deliver Hedwig Potthast’s baby, and we know that ‘Häschen’ was due to go into labour at any time. It is possible therefore that Himmler once again combined his killing business with a trip to see her. Hohenlychen was a quiet place to talk and Gebhardt was certain to be discreet.

  The subject for discussion, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’, is also curious. No doubt Koegel had complaints about the religious women—he always did—but it seems surprising that three days after the 4 February gassing transport, the Jehovah’s Witnesses should be a priority for Himmler or even for Koegel, and if they were, why involve Max de Crinis?

  De Crinis, an Austrian, was the éminence grise of Nazi euthanasia, and probably the major medical intellect behind the T4 gassings. Friedrich Mennecke said at his trial that de Crinis was present when T4 doctors met in February 1940 to agree the outline of the euthanasia plan. De Crinis also moved in the highest Nazi circles, and was particularly close to Reinhard Heydrich.

  What Himmler discussed with de Crinis is impossible to say. However, given de Crinis’s detailed knowledge of the ‘euthanasia’ gassings, it makes sense to assume that killing Jews came up. The linkage between the programme to murder the handicapped (T4), the murder of unwanted mouths in concentration camps (14f13), and now the decision, taken just three weeks earlier at Wannsee, to gas all Europe’s Jews is sharply symbolised by de Crinis’s presence at this meeting. All three killing programmes constituted a stage in the evolving Nazi genocide, and the methods involved in all three—particularly the use of gas—were similar. Even now de Crinis’s T4 colleagues were out in Poland advising on how their experience could be adapted to killing the Jews in the proposed new death camps. And no doubt de Crinis was able to offer advice about more gassings closer to home, including the next gassings of Ravensbrück women.

  One key priority for the local gassing was the continued need for secrecy. An advantage of carrying out the Jewish killings thousand of miles to the east was its distance from the German public’s view, but the gassing of the Ravensbrück women had taken place at one of the T4 gassing centres inside Germany itself. In view of past protests near these centres, it was of paramount importance that no one must know.

  That no news had leaked of the Ravensbrück operation must therefore have gladdened Himmler and de Crinis. Church leaders had looked away, the people of Fürstenberg had taken no notice of the trucks that left the camp, and, as Koegel was able to report, nobody—certainly not the prisoners—knew where the trucks went. The secret of the Nazis’ first mass gassing of women had been well kept—except that even as the three men were meeting, in Ravensbrück itself, the secret was, literally, spilling out.

  —

  A day or two after the women left, the same trucks that took them reappeared and pulled up outside the Effektenkammer. The backs were thrown open and out tumbled a pile of clothes, jumbled up with other items—crutches, slings, dentures, spectacles, walking sticks. Prisoners who sorted through this tangled pile found the clothes and personal belongings of the departed women. Once again, the Effektenkammer was first with the news, and the news was that the women must be dead.

  It was not the clothes that proved it. As part of the cover operation, before they left the camp the women had been told to remove their usual prison clothes, with the numbers that might identify them, and to put on random, unidentifiable, civilian clothes. But along with this jumble of returns were items that had belonged to the women and were familiar to their friends in the camp: slings, crutches, spectacles—items their owners could not do without.

  Maria Apfelkammer was appalled when she pulled from the pile the walking stick that had belonged to her friend Mina Valeske, the same stick Mina had used when Maria watched her hobble to the departing truck. It even had Mina’s name and camp number inscribed on it. Her distinctive spectacles came too. Luise Mauer recalled: ‘Our friend Frau Türner from Block One hadn’t been able to walk without her crutches. Now her crutches were here, so it was impossible that Frau Türner was somewhere in a nursing home. And why should the dentures have returned when their owners were still alive?’

  Luise said that a Jehovah’s Witness who unloaded the truck told her that a list of those removed was returned with a cross against each name. In the Revier the prisoner-midwife Gerda Quernheim recalled receiving back artificial legs and trusses. ‘We all recognised them and knew at once that the owners could no longer be alive.’

  Even the guards appear to have been taken aback. Emma Zimmer asked the commandant why the clothes had been returned. They were camp property, he told her. ‘I believed him but had my doubts too,’ she said later. ‘I felt by 1942 that everything was not quite in order.’

  The guard Jane Bernigau said that the purpose of the transports was unknown to the guards at the time, but that after the lorries had left they ‘continued to think about it’. A few days later, when the clothes returned, the camp staff could see that it was ‘a transport of “candidates for death” [Todeskandidaten]’, said Bernigau, adding: ‘From the SS chiefs came utter silence.’

  Rosa Jochmann said there was no doubt what had happened:

  Within half an hour of the lorry returning all the people in the camp knew about it and everyone knew the women were all dead. There was a cruel silence. The women didn’t talk to each other—even the prostitutes. Usually on Sundays there was a singing hour when the women sang together, but that Sunday everyone was silent. At roll call everyone was obedient. The Blockovas didn’t need to shout.

  About four weeks later, the rumour spread that the trucks were coming to take people away again. Now everyone saw that the Sondertransport of 4 February was only the start. At this point speculation spread about the women’s destination. Some rumours said that it really was a new concentration camp. But Eugenia von Skene overheard an SS man saying the new camp was in heaven.

  The most persistent rumour was that they had been taken to a place called Buch, a suburb of Berlin, and a centre of medical research. Luise Mauer heard that the women had been taken to Buch to be used in medical experiments. Others said they’d been taken to be electrocuted. Hanna Sturm asked the camp doctor about the destination of the transports. ‘He said the prisoners would be distributed to sanatoria in Buch.’ Maria Adamska said: ‘We heard from SS men that the women had been taken to a hospital in Buch and they had been killed there by electric shock. One of the SS
men had seen this with his own eyes.’

  At some point one of the women, possibly several at once, had the idea that the prisoners next chosen to go should hide messages in their clothes to say where it was they had gone. Assuming the same routine, they could scribble notes on scraps of paper saying where they went and what they saw. Concealed in their clothing, tucked into a hem perhaps, when the clothes were returned their comrades would know what to look for.

  For the next departure the secrecy was twice as intense. The SS had learned from earlier blunders. This time they stripped the women of all personal items such as wedding rings and artificial legs beforehand, ‘so we knew who would be going’, as Eugenia von Skene said. Yet the secret message plan still went into effect, with several volunteers. As the prisoners were searched head to toe before they left the camp, inmates who worked in the bathhouse concealed tiny scraps of paper and pencils in places the women could find before they left.

  The second transport took more Jewish women, as well as a large number of green and black triangles. Nanda Herbermann said: ‘Many of my prostitutes from Block Two were among them—usually they were infirm, or weak and couldn’t do a full day’s work.’ Luise Mauer said that this time the green and black triangles were taken away—‘minus the floggers’, by which she meant the criminals and prostitutes who had agreed to carry out the beatings on the Bock.

  One woman who refused to beat was Grete’s friend, the Düsseldorf prostitute Else Krug. Else had been imprisoned in the Strafblock ever since refusing to beat Jehovah’s Witnesses back in the summer. Now she was listed for the second Sondertransport. She volunteered to conceal a message. Rosa Jochmann recalled that a beautiful and clever Jewish girl called Bugi was selected this time, and she too volunteered. Careful note was taken of what they were wearing when they left.

  Sure enough, a few days later the truck came back, and a quick search found Else and Bugi’s clothes. According to Maria Apfelkammer, Else’s message was the first to be found. Maria doesn’t tell us what her letter said, but she evidently wrote the name Buch. Maria recalled: ‘We all felt that the women had been murdered, but there was no concrete proof until a letter from the prisoner Else Krug was found sewn into her jacket when her belongings came back from Buch.’

  When they found Bugi’s message it did not mention Buch. On a tiny piece of paper, hidden in her skirt hem, Bugi wrote: ‘Driving through Bernau. Now we are in Dessau. Everywhere the houses look nice’—and there the writing stopped. Bernau was another suburb of Berlin and Dessau a town to the southwest of the capital. Another message came back from an Austrian woman. Luise Mauer recalled that it was hidden in a sleeve and read: ‘Arrived in Dessau. Told we now to bathe and will be given new clothes and assigned jobs.’

  These messages were inconclusive about the destination. Else’s had confirmed the suspicion about Buch, but some of them also mentioned Dessau, which was some way past Buch. Whatever the messages meant, they were seen as confirmation of death, and as news of them spread, the camp was enveloped in ‘the same cruel silence as before’, said Rosa Jochmann.

  Meanwhile prisoners working in the offices had seen concrete evidence. Maria Adamska recalled that when letters from relatives began to arrive for those sent away on the trucks, the staff, under SS supervision, had to take the files out from the steel box again in order to reply. Inside each file they found a death certificate, with cause of death given as one of a number of illnesses.

  The place of death provided was always Ravensbrück. The date would vary but was always in the future—in other words, several weeks after the women had been taken away. Emmy Handke said it was Schreibstube prisoners themselves who filled in the bogus cause of death. She recalled that staff had been busy for weeks filling in the actual certificates. ‘There were four different reasons for possible death: heart weakness; infected lungs; heart circulation problem, or it could be written: “all medical efforts to save the person were in vain”. Prisoners who had to fill in the certificates were allowed to choose which illness they wanted the woman to die of.’

  The prisoner secretaries also prepared letters to be sent to next of kin, notifying them of the death and giving the false reasons, the false date and the false place of death. They also told the next of kin they could receive their loved one’s ashes back in an urn in return for a small payment; it had not been possible to see the body for fear of infection.

  The following weeks brought several more Sondertransporte. Maria Adamska said they left every fourth day until the end of March, but some said they went on till May. The best estimate is that there were ten in all, each taking around 160 women—a total of some 1600 killed. After the first ones, it grew harder to predict who might come next—there seemed to be little pattern. Nanda Herbermann says ‘all sorts’ were taken in the end. Nearly all had been doing forced labour until the day they left. Most would have lived for another twenty years:

  The people taken were not only sick with tuberculosis or prostitutes infected with syphilis. No, there were also healthy people amongst them, people who, perhaps due to the unbearable existence in the camp, had suffered an attack of nerves or a heart attack brought on by all the torment. There were others who had worked alongside the rest of us for years but were just not particularly robust.

  At two or three in the morning the command went out to report for transport, and the screaming began. ‘People who had previously suspected nothing now suddenly learned with horrifying certainty what awaited them—this screaming will ring in my ears today. And the way they were loaded up! Insults like “you rotten pigs” or “infected rabble” were shouted at them as their last farewell.’

  It was probably some time in March that Olga’s turn came: her close comrade Maria Wiedmaier was sure that Olga left on the third transport. In any event we know it wasn’t before 19 February, because on this day—five days after her birthday—she wrote a letter to Ligia and Leocadia, and enclosed one for Carlos as well.

  The letter to Leocadia, her mother-in-law, and to Carlos’s sister Ligia began by thanking them for a birthday greetings telegram that arrived on 14 February. Then Olga reveals her desperation as she raises the question of her emigration again. She must have known that all emigration was now halted, but she pleads: ‘Regarding my emigration leave no stone unturned, for I know from other examples that despite the general situation it is still possible.’ She asks them to pass an enclosed letter on to Carlos; it was to be her last.

  My darling Karli,

  I just received your letter of October 12th. I admire how you are progressing in German and am really touched by your efforts. Recently our correspondence has suffered again, and also it was not possible for me to write. But we both know that our closeness cannot be weakened by external difficulties.

  At the moment I take pleasure in the days getting longer, hoping that the winter will be over soon. You can take my word for it, never before have January and February been as long as this time. It must now be scorching hot where you are. Are you very thin? What about grey hair? What are you reading? Letters are the one bright spot for me, only they have been coming less and less in recent months. I have read the description of Anita’s third birthday [on 27 November] over and over again. How strange, though, that in my dreams she keeps appearing as the baby that I knew, not as the big girl that is growing up there in Mexico. We would have had so much to discuss about how to raise her…As always, embracing you with all my love, with all my heart,

  Your Olga.

  It was Maria Wiedmaier who learned from Bertha Teege that Olga was on the list and went to tell her, but Olga had already guessed.

  When I met Olga ten minutes later she instantly knew what was going on. She was composed, and tried to calm me down. She spoke of Carlos, of the party, of Anita. I tried to convince her that she was not going to die, that she would see Carlos and Anita again. At last I understood that it was best if I just listened to what she had to say. I had to promise her I would take care of Anita. She had a little
photo of Anita that she took with her.

  Maria said it was on a Monday that Olga left, at two in the morning as always. Bertha Teege and ‘some of the comrades’ went with the group from the Jewish block to the bathhouse. ‘Olga promised: “If it comes to the point where they’re going to kill us, I’ll fight back.” ’

  Olga too had promised to hide a note in her clothes. A few days later the truck came back, and Olga’s last letter was found. It said: ‘The last town was Dessau. They make us undress. Not badly treated. Goodbye.’ Four weeks later a list appeared in the Schreibstube of those ‘Transferred to another camp’, and Olga’s name was on it. ‘This was the last thing I ever heard of her.’

  By April there was already more concrete proof of death. Several of the women’s families had by now received the notices from the camp with the lies about place and cause of death, and several had taken delivery of what they were told were their loved ones’ ashes. Some of these relatives wrote to other family members, also in the camp—a sister perhaps, or a cousin—who had not been selected, stating that they’d received the ashes of the deceased and asking for more information.

  Urns were even sent as far as Vienna. In late March, Käthe Leichter’s ‘Aunt Lenzi’—who had always acted as go-between for letters between Käthe in the camp and her husband and two boys in New York—had received a letter from the camp authorities with news of Käthe’s death. The short note informed Lenzi that Käthe had died on 17 March, and with the note came an urn that held her ashes. Aunt Lenzi wrote to a family friend, also in New York, asking them to break the news to Otto and the boys, as the news was better given in person. Aunt Lenzi herself was shattered. She wrote to her cousin:

  All our hopes, and all the happiness of our lives sink into the grave with our beloved Käthe. Now I have to perform the last task of burying the urn with her remains. How different this end is from the one I had imagined—of being reunited with good Katherl. Her last letters were always full of unselfish love and worries for our well-being. Now this voice has been silenced for ever.