Ravensbruck
Page 92
I would like to express particular gratitude to Yvonne Baseden, whom I met many times, and whose modesty about her own remarkable courage left a profound impression. Anise Postel-Vinay (née Girard) provided the most incisive analysis of the SS regime and of the French group. The Red Army parachutist Olga Golovina talked with humour but gripped my hand with steel. Loulou Liard-Le Porz was not only an oracle on Ravensbrück but also a friend, and provided confirmation that humanity can surmount the greatest degradation. Jeannie de Clarens (née Rousseau) I will remember for her pure courage. I will not forget the tears in the eyes of Zofia Cisek (née Kawińska) as she recalled the deaths of fellow rabbits, the inability of Stella Nikoforova (née Kugelman) to smile, nor Nelly Langholm’s sheer delight at having come out alive. They all gave me many, many hours of their time.
While grateful for help with my research, support during the writing has been invaluable too. I would like to thank those who advised on early drafts, including Katrina Barnicoat, Tony Rennell and Bernardo Futscher Pereira. I am particularly grateful for the suggestions and support of Richard Tomlinson, who advised on the first draft, made countless excellent suggestions and has always been on hand to help.
I have strived for accuracy, but there are bound to be errors in the text, and I hope where this occurs readers will alert me so corrections can be made.
I would like to thank my agent Natasha Fairweather for her unfailing support, and my editors at Little, Brown, Ursula Mackenzie and Tim Whiting, who have waited patiently, offering guidance along the way. I am also grateful to Ronit Wagman, my editor at Doubleday, and to Zoe Gullen at Little, Brown for suggestions and encouragement. In the last months Zoe Gullen took on the task of editing the final text, which she has done with remarkable skill, judgement and patience.
I owe a very great deal to my own family. I will always be grateful to my father, a doctor on the Normandy battlefields, whose curiosity about the world and love of literature first drew me to writing, and to my mother, who served as a Wren in the Royal Navy. My daughters Jessica and Rosamund have helped in every way they can.
The writing was not easy and the words would not have emerged onto the page at all without the help of my husband Jonathan, who has talked the story through, read every chapter more than once, edited and given advice and encouragement every step of the way. I sincerely doubt that any other author has ever had such support from a partner. I owe him my deepest thanks.
Notes
Abbreviations
AICRC
Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva
ARa
Archiv Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück
Atkins
Vera Atkins papers, held at the Imperial War Museum, London
Beyond
Beyond Human Endurance: The Ravensbrück Women Tell Their Stories, edited by Wanda Symonowicz, a compilation of survivors’ testimonies.
Buchmann coll.
Erika Buchmann collection, Archiv Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück
BA
Bundesarchiv Berlin
BAL
Bundesarchiv Ludwigsberg
BStU
Stasi Archives, Berlin
Czyż letters
Letters and papers of Krystyna Czyż-Wilgat (Krysia Czyż)
Dictators
Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler by Margarete Buber-Neumann
DÖW
Dokumentationsarchiv des österrichischen Widerstandes, Vienna
Dreams
And I Am Afraid of My Dreams by Wanda Półtawska
FO
Foreign Office records held at The National Archives
GZJ
Geschichtsarchiv Zeugen Jehovas, Selters/Taunus
HS
Special Operations Executive files held at The National Archives
IISH
International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam
ITS
International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen
IWM
Imperial War Museum, London
KV
Security Service records held at The National Archives
Lund
Records of the Polish Research Institute, Lund University. These are detailed reports of Polish survivors who arrived in Sweden in 1945.
Nikif papers
Antonina Nikiforova papers, Archiv Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück
NARA
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC
LAV NRW
Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen
SA
Siemens Archives, Munich
TNA
The National Archives, Kew
WL
Wiener Library, London
WO
War Office records held at The National Archives
YV
Yad Vashem, Jerusalem
PART ONE
Chapter 1: Langefeld
‘The year is…’: Buber-Neumann, Die erloschene Flamme.
‘Trespassers Keep Out’: What Langefeld saw on her early visit is reconstructed from testimony of the first arrivals, for example: Hanna Sturm (who came with the advance party), Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin; Maase, WO 309/416 and BAL B162-9896/9828; Gostynski, eyewitness account, WL P.III.h. No. 159; Maria Hauswirth, WL P.III.h. No. 948; Clara Rupp memoir, ARa. Early maps and the SS photo album also show the layout, ARa.
fewer guards: By the end of 1939 there were about fifty-five women guards and by the end of the war about 3300 had worked in the camp. See Heike, Johanna Langefeld.
‘feminine matters’: On Langefeld’s role and attitude, see her only known interrogation, dated 26 and 31 December 1945, in the US National Archives (NARA, NAW RG 338-000-50-11). See also: Johannes Schwarz ‘Geschlechtsspezifischer Eigensinn’ and his ‘Das Selbstverständnis Johanna Langefeld als SS-Oberaufseherin’ in Fritz, Kavčič and Warmbold (eds), Tatort KZ; Heike, Johanna Langefeld; and Müller, Die Oberaufseherinnen. Several survivors described Langefeld to me, including Edith Sparmann, Wojciecha Zeiske (née Buraczyńska), Maria Bielicka, Fritzi Fruh (née Jaroslavsky), Irma Trksak and Barbara Reimann. Rudolf Höss gives a view in Commandant.
ran away from home: See Anna-Jutta Pietsch, ‘Jakob-Klar-Straße 1: das Elternhaus von Olga Benario’, in Ilse Macek (ed.), Ausgegrenzt—Entrechtet—Deportiert: Schwabing und Schwabinger Schicksale 1933 bis 1945 (Munich: Volk, 2008). In the 1920s Olga’s father Leo, a social democrat lawyer, fought for striking workers’ rights in Munich courtrooms, encouraging his daughter’s radical streak. The man she snatched to freedom was Otto Braun, a senior figure in the secret service of the German Communist Party.
‘re-educating prostitutes’: Langefeld first worked as a teacher of home economics in Neuss, near Düsseldorf. Her Brauweiler ID card (in Archiv des Landschaftsverbands Rheinland) shows she started at the workhouse in 1935. Detail courtesy of Hermann Daners.
new saviour in Adolf Hitler: For Langefeld, God’s teaching would have seemed compatible with the teaching of Hitler. By the early 1930s the Lutheran church in her home town of Kupferdreh was a stronghold of Deutsche Christen, the fanatical Nazi Christians. See Busch, Kupferdreh und seine Geschichte.
‘Hitler rode into…’: Shirer, Berlin Diary.
‘What’s up?’: Haag, How Long the Night.
‘I’m a wretched prattler’: Himmler’s diaries, quoted in Padfield, Himmler.
‘show their teeth…’: Höss, Commandant.
wrote to her sister: Cited in Herz, The Women’s Camp in Moringen.
‘I always know…’: Cited in Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland.
‘as a gift’: Details in a British Security Service file on Arthur Ernest Ewert, another of the Comintern cell. He was married to Elise Saborowski Ewert (alias Sabo), who came back on the steamer with Olga; KV 2/2336.
defuse the row: Protests against Olga’s capture did nevertheless continue, including a march in London’s Hyde Park attended by comm
unists and sympathisers, including the Labour peer Lord Listowel.
‘So you have to excuse…’: Prestes and Prestes (eds), Anos Tormentosos. The extracts from Olga’s letters are from this book, and also the collection in the papers of Ruth Werner, Olga’s friend and biographer (BA NY 4502).
‘Asoziale’: Kriminalpolizei and Gestapo personal files, NRW. See also Schikorra, ‘ “…ist als Asoziale anzusehen” ’.
site was too small: In Commandant, Höss decribes a site meeting at Ravensbrück in 1938, which he attended with Pohl and Eicke to discuss construction. Many survivors were convinced that the land on which the camp was built was the personal property of Heinrich Himmler. No proof of this has emerged, but during a recent legal dispute over plans to build a supermarket on the site, papers were found showing the land was owned by the Munich branch of the SS, where Himmler cut his teeth well before the coming of the camp. Site plans, ARa.
Doris Maase: Police file, LAV NRW. She was arrested in Düsseldorf when trying to get in touch with the illegal communist resistance.
fulfil her vocation: Langefeld interrogation, 26 and 31 December 1945, NARA, NAW RG 338-000-50-11. Several other guards claimed they came believing their job would be to ‘re-educate’ women: see Pietsch, BAL B162/981, and Zimmer, WO 309/1153.
‘incapable of improvement’: Police file, LAV NRW 2034/177.
‘no sense’: Haag, How Long the Night and author interview.
‘like dripping mice’: See reports in GZJ. The spraying of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was recalled with horror by most Lichtenburg survivors; see also Haag, How Long the Night, and Maase, WO 309/416.
Himmler visited: Gostynski, eyewitness account, WL P.III.h. No. 159, says he visited every year. She once saw him close up and remembered his ‘terrifying eyes…evil, cold and grey’.
On 15 May: Some say 15 May was the date when the camp officially opened, but that the first big transfer—of 867 from Lichtenburg—happened on 18 May. Others say that the transfers happened gradually over the course of the first week or so. There is no certainty on the point. See Heike, Johanna Langefeld.
‘a sparsely populated…’: Ullrich, ‘Für Dich’, ARa.
This first group: For descriptions of arrivals, first days in the camp and rules and procedures see multiple testimonies, including: Gostynski, eyewitness account, WL P.III.h. No. 159; Wachstein, Vienna report, ARa; Ullrich, ‘Für Dich’, ARa; Sturm Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin, and Schwarz and Szepansky (eds),…und dennoch blühten Blumen.
colza rape seed: Maria Zeh, interview in Walz, ‘Und dann kommst Du dahin an einem schönen Sommertag’.
Chapter 2: Sandgrube
men were not allowed: See Wicklein, BAL B162/9808, and Maase, BAL B162-9896/9828.
‘The blanket…’: Author interview.
‘…fancy stuff later,’: Author interview.
syphilis: Agnes Petry’s camp health card, ITS Bad Arolsen. A batch of Ravensbrück prisoner health cards came into the possession of the ITS after the war. These cards, complete with prisoner numbers, names and dates of birth as well as health details, have been a means of confirming some identities.
974 prisoners: Figures cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück.
‘It will be impossible…’: Koegel to Eicke, ARa.
‘Next I remember…’: Wachstein, Vienna report, ARa.
‘Iron Gustav’: von Luenink, WO 309/416.
‘Be hard…’: Insa Eschebach, ‘Das Fotoalbum von Gertrud Rabestein’, in Erpel (ed.), Im Gefolge der SS.
often on heat: Schiedlausky trial testimony (WO 235/309). Testimony in general contains multiple accounts of serious injury caused by dog bites.
‘…give up their God’: Berta Hartmann and Klara Schwedler, ‘Bei der Sandarbeit’, in Hesse and Harder (eds), ‘…und wenn ich…’. Testimony of Anna Kanne and others in reports provided by GZJ.
‘Abdecken’: von Luenink, WO 309/416.
I looked out: Wachstein, Vienna report, ARa.
‘I wish I could be…’: Maase letters, Studienkreis Deutscher Widerstand 1933–1945.
finding Tolstoy: Sturm, Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin.
‘a young woman…’: Gostynski, eyewitness account, WL P.III.h. No. 159.
On arrival at the camp Jozka: Werner, Olga Benario.
lived in Burgenland: I have drawn from accounts, published under pseudonyms, in Amesberger and Halbmayr, Vom Leben und Überleben. I also spoke to Rudolf Sarkozi about his mother Paula, and with the Burgenland Gypsy Ceija Stojka, who was sent first to Auschwitz then Ravensbrück. See also Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide and Thurner, National Socialism and Gypsies in Austria.
‘A multicoloured dress…’: Gestapo transport order, 20 July 1939, in VVN, Olga Benario. The story of the attempt to secure Olga’s release is told in the family correspondence and was also explained to me by Anita Leocadia Prestes. See also Apel, ‘Olga Benario—Kommunistin, Jüdin, Heldin?’, in Eschebach, Jacobeit and Lanwerd (eds), Die Sprache des Gedenkens.
She’s lying here dead…’: Doris Maase also saw the killing of the unnamed Gypsy. WO 309/416.
‘suicide by stab wounds…’: Copy of death notice, ITS/ANF/KL Ravensbrück Indiv-Unterlagen.
‘…lunatic asylum must be like’: Sturm, Die Lebensgeschichte einer Arbeiterin.
Zimmer screamed: The prisoner Berta Maurer (and many others) said Zimmer was usually ‘ill-tempered and drunk’, BAL B162/9809.
The work that we have: Wachstein, Vienna report, ARa.
Chapter 3: Blockovas
‘I saw Binz…’: Maase, BAL B162/9828.
The daughter of: See Duesterberg, ‘Von der “Umkehr aller Weiblichkeit” ’ and Johannes Schwartz, ‘Handlungsräume einer KZ-Aufseherin. Also Dorothea Binz—Leiterin des Zellenbaus und Oberaufseherin’, in Erpel (ed.), Im Gefolge der SS. Early signs of sadism were noted by many survivors: Erika Buchmann said Binz beat ‘until she saw blood coming from the nose and the mouth’. She also used ‘the heels of her boots’ to kick women on the ground. WO 235/318.
‘treat orders as…’: Höss, Commandant. For regime change on the outbreak of war in other camps see Sofsky, The Order of Terror and Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell.
‘September prisoners’: Luise Maurer left two important statements; one is in Ludwigsberg (BAL B162/9809) and the other is in Elling, Frauen im deutschen Widerstand.
‘until hands were…’: Moldenhawer, Lund 420. On early Polish arrivals see also Kiedrzyńksa, Ravensbrück.
Kapos: For a study of the Ravensbrück Kapo system, see Annette Neumann, ‘Funktionshäftlinge im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück’, in Röhr and Bergkamp (eds), Tod oder Überleben?
‘Zimmer surrounded herself…’: Wiedmaier statement, ARa
‘A Jewish woman…’: Wachstein, Vienna report, ARa.
It was 5 p.m.: LAV NRW R RW-58/54910.
‘Not married. 138 cm…’: LAV NRW R RW 58/63779.
Dear Mutti: Eckler, Die Vormundschaftsakte.
‘bourgeois Jews…’: Werner, Olga Benario. Olga’s comarade Ruth Werner (née Ursula Ruth Kuczynski) became one of the Soviet Union’s most famous secret agents. Codenamed Sonya, she worked after the war with the German atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, sending British and American nuclear secrets to Moscow.
Brother, have you: Leichter family papers.
‘My release must have been’: Hirschkron, WO 309/694.
‘The child was ill…’: Samulon (née Bernstein), BAL B162 9818.
Chapter 4: Himmler Visits
On 4 January 1940: Phillip and Schnell, Kalendarium.
‘the cold-blooded murder…’: Kersten, Memoirs.
‘with such a narrow pedantry…’: Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler.
‘He let the guards…’: Erna Ludolph, ‘ “Das war der Weg, den ich gehen wollte”—Hafterfahrungen in den Frauen-KZ Moringen, Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück und andere Erinnerungen von Erna Ludolph’ in Hesse and Harder (eds), ‘…und wenn ich…’ and many accounts of the Jehovah’
s Witnesses’ protest in trial testimony and memoirs.
cover of war: Hitler said in 1935 that he would deal with the problem of the mentally ill once war broke out. He ‘took the view that in wartime measures for a solution to the problem would be put through more easily and with least friction, since the open opposition which must be expected from the Church could not then, in all the circumstances of war, exert so much influence as it would in the time of peace,’ said Karl Brandt, his personal physician, at the Nuremberg doctors’ trial. The trigger to start was, according to Brandt, a petition in 1939 direct to Hitler from the father of a deformed child requesting a ‘mercy killing’. Brandt went to see the child in Leipzig. ‘It was a child who was born blind, an idiot—at least it seemed to me an idiot—and it lacked one leg and part of an arm’. Cited in Mitscherlich and Mielke, Death Doctors.
In one of the rooms: Buber-Neumann, Die erloschene Flamme.
Mariechen Öl and Hilde Schulleit: Phillip and Schnell, Kalendarium.
Himmler had personally approved: Binz, along with several other accused, testified that each beating—including the number of lashes—had to be approved by Himmler in person. This was proved to be true by Himmler’s ‘flogging order’, uncovered after the war (WO 309/217). In the early days the staff followed Himmler’s ‘verbal orders’ on procedures, which were later written down (see p. 303).
Chapter 5: Stalin’s Gift
In February 1940: Dictators.