If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (122 page)
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Authors: Sarah Helm
BOOK: If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
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Oberschwester
Elisabeth Marschall, Vera Salvequart, the prisoner-nurse at the Uckermark Youth Camp, and Dr Percival Treite being sentenced at the Hamburg trial
Carmen Mory, the Swiss prisoner and Blockova of Block 10, with her lawyer Dr Zippel
Tragende
by Will Lammert
This sign – ‘You are not forgotten’ – was put up by a German survivors’ group near the overgrown site of the Uckermark Youth Camp
A view of
Tragende
from outside the camp walls, looking across the lake towards Fürstenberg
| 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 | Geschichstarchiv 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
| 3 | ‘The year is …’ : Buber-Neumann, Die erloschene Flamme . |
| 4 | ‘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. |
| 5 | 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 . |
| 6 | ‘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, Kavč ič and Warmbold (eds), Tatort KZ ; Heike, Johanna Langefeld ; and Müller, Die Oberaufseherinnen . Several survivors described Langefeld to me, including Edith Sparmann, Wojciecha Zeiske (née Buraczyń ska), Maria Bielicka, Fritzi Fruh (née Jaroslavsky), Irma Trksak and Barbara Reimann. Rudolf Höss gives a view in Commandant . |
| 7 | 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. |
| 8 | ‘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. |
| 8 | 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 . |
| 8 | ‘Hitler rode into …’ : Shirer, Berlin Diary . |
| 9 | ‘What’s up?’ : Haag, How Long the Night . |
| 11 | ‘I’m a wretched prattler ,’ : Himmler’s diaries, quoted in Padfield, Himmler . |
| 11 | ‘show their teeth …’ : Höss, Commandant . |
| 12 | wrote to her sister : Cited in Herz, The Women’s Camp in Moringen . |
| 13 | ‘I always know …’ : Cited in Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland . |
| 14 | ‘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. |
| 14 | defuse the row : Protests against Olga’s capture did nevertheless continue, including a march in London’s Hyde Park attended by communists and sympathisers, including the Labour peer Lord Listowel. |
| 14 | ‘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). |
| 16 | ‘Asoziale’ : Kriminalpolizei and Gestapo personal files, NRW. See also Schikorra, ‘“… ist als Asoziale anzusehen”’. |
| 17 | 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. |
| 18 | Doris Maase : Police file, LAV NRW. She was arrested in Düsseldorf when trying to get in touch with the illegal communist resistance. |
| 18 | fulfil her vocation : Langefeld interrogation, 26 and 31 December 1945, NARA, NAW RG 338-000-50-11. Several other guards claimed they came believeing their job would be to ‘re-educate’ women: see Pietsch, BAL B162/981, and Zimmer, WO 309/1153. |
| 18 | ‘incapable of improvement’ : Police file, LAV NRW 2034/177. |
| 19 | ‘no sense’ : Haag, How Long the Night and author interview. |
| 19 | ‘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. |
| 19 | 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’. |
| 21 | 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 . |
| 22 | ‘a sparsely populated …’ : Ullrich, ‘Für Dich’, ARa. |
| 23 | 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 . |
| 23 | colza rape seed : Maria Zeh, interview in Walz, ‘Und dann kommst Du dahin an einem schönen Sommertag’ . |
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