If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (28 page)

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 fear 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.

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 south-west 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.