If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (7 page)

When Zimmer had completed the morning count, the women returned to their blocks, where a black liquid that passed for coffee was doled out with a piece of bread, which was the daily allocation and could either be eaten now or put on the shelf for later. The siren screamed once more and selections for work gangs began. Prisoners were called into line again, then sent to collect tools and marched away to work shovelling sand or building a road, singing German marching songs. On return that evening they were all counted again.

Within a few days most of the Lichtenburg prisoners had been transferred to Ravensbrück. Langefeld’s rules had been learned and order established. The brown paper bags containing prisoners’ clothes and belongings had been taken for washing in the
Wäscherei
then ironed with a giant steam iron. Each item was then replaced in its numbered brown bag and sent to the
Effektenkammer
next door.

The
Effektenkammer
was divided into four rooms. In one was a long trestle table where all the prisoners’ clothes and possessions were tipped out, to be
carefully sorted. In an adjoining room was an office with two desks and two typewriters and a big steel cupboard containing hundreds of file index cards, on which was typed every prisoner’s name and number, and details of every piece of clothing and every possession, with copies sent to Langefeld’s office.
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Valuables were locked in the steel cupboards for safe keeping and carefully noted. The clothes were folded and placed in brand-new brown paper bags, which were attached to hangers; the hangers were taken to be hung on rails in the large roof space above Langefeld’s office. When anyone was released she was sent to the
Effektenkammer
, where she gave her number to a worker who then went to the storage loft and retrieved her bag of clothes using a hook on a stick.

When prisoners arrived later from Poland, Russia and France, some brought whole suitcases full of belongings, all of which were put in bags and itemised just the same, said Edith Sparmann, a German-Czech prisoner who worked in the
Effektenkammer
. The bags were enormous strong brown paper sacks, stitched at the sides. One of the rooms held nothing but these brown paper bags, ready for the big transports. ‘There was a lot of
fancy stuff later,
’ said Edith, who also recalled how Langefeld would often come to the
Effektenkammer
to check on things. ‘She wasn’t as bad as some of them. She allowed my mother to keep her wedding ring on.’

During the first days prisoners were also assigned to tasks in the kitchen, and rations carefully calculated for each block, depending on a head count from the night before. In the
Revier
, the sickbay, each prisoner underwent a vaginal examination and if any woman had
syphilis
, as Agnes Petry did, it was noted on her file. Any woman found to be pregnant was taken away to have her baby at a nearby hospital in Templin. The baby would be sent for adoption, and the woman brought back.

The count after the first seven days – including a few new arrivals in addition to those from Lichtenburg – gave a total figure of
974 prisoners
in the camp. Of these, 114 women wore red triangles (political prisoners); 388 Jehovah’s Witnesses wore lilac; 119 wore green (habitual criminals); 240 wore black (asocials); 137 wore yellow (Jews) and some of the categories overlapped. From now on each arrival was given a number in sequence, so it would always be clear to guards and other prisoners alike, simply from a prisoner’s number, who had been longest in the camp and who had just arrived. The first prisoner to be given a ‘pure’ Ravensbrück number (i.e. she was not transferred from Lichtenburg) was a thirty-seven-year-old German teacher arrested for communist resistance, called Clara Rupp. She arrived on 25 May and had the number 1415.

By the end of the first week the cards of all the first arrivals had been copied and filed, and their clothes packed in brown paper bags hanging above Langefeld’s head. Langefeld’s work, however, had only just begun.

Johanna Langefeld’s office, inside an ordinary block near the gate, was not as grand as the commandant’s extensive stone-built headquarters, but her block was ideally placed. From her desk she had a view out over the Appellplatz, allowing her to observe much of what went on.

Her office was also well staffed. Lines of clerks and secretaries sat at desks, as prisoners queued to give details of their arrest, their medical history and next of kin, all of which was noted on several different files. Langefeld’s messenger then took copies of the prisoner information to relevant departments around the camp.

There had been a variety of administrative matters to see to in the first days. Inquiries came from police departments. ‘Would the KZ [
Konzentrationslager
: concentration camp] pay the price of a prisoner’s train fare?’ Hamburg police wanted to know. ‘Should Düsseldorf send on a hat?’ Letters came from the German Red Cross, passing on inquiries about prisoners received from the International Red Cross in Geneva. A daughter, Tanja Benesch, wanted news of her mother, Susi. And Langefeld was obliged to tell Max Koegel that the camp washing machines were for prisoners’ clothes and linen only; he would have to wash his clothes elsewhere.

More prisoner jobs were given out. Hanna Sturm, an Austrian communist and a carpenter, was assigned to put up fences and bang in nails. Many disciplinary problems arose. Another Austrian called Marianne Wachstein arrived in nothing but a nightgown and didn’t know who she was.

Hedwig Apfel, who said she was an opera singer and came from Vienna, threw her mattress on the ground on her first day and had barely stopped screaming since. A few days after the camp opened a nationwide hunt was launched for Katharina Waitz, the Gypsy trapeze artist, who escaped again, though nobody knew how.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses caused more trouble for Max Koegel, this time by refusing his offer to set them free. In return for their release the women were told they simply had to sign a piece of paper renouncing their faith, but each one refused, repeating that the Führer was the Antichrist. It was largely because of their riot at Lichtenburg that Koegel had first requested the cell block for Ravensbrück. He told his SS superior Theodor Eicke a few weeks before the camp opened: ‘
It will be impossible
to keep order if these hysterical hags can’t be broken. Just depriving them of food will not subdue them without a form of rigorous imprisonment.’

Although this first request was refused, Koegel did secure permission to
convert an ordinary living block into a ‘punishment block’ or ‘
Strafblock
’ and several ‘hysterical hags’ were soon thrown in. The
Strafblock
was set some way apart from the other blocks, behind barbed wire. Prisoners might be sent there for such crimes as repeated lateness for
Appell
, failing to make their bed by the rules, or refusing an order. The
Strafblock
prisoners were forced to work longer hours, on the worst gangs, with no days off. Punishments such as straitjackets and water dousing were used.

Attached to one end of the
Strafblock
, a few makeshift isolation cells were constructed out of wood. The Berlin Gestapo had requested such cells be built for holding prisoners who were still under interrogation, though other women were soon locked in solitary confinement too, among them Marianne Wachstein, the Austrian who had arrived in her nightgown. She was locked up after refusing to sign a document relating to her arrest and protesting that her human rights were being violated.

As Marianne later explained, she refused to sign because she had no idea why she was here; twenty-four hours earlier she had been snatched unconscious from a prison cell in Vienna where she’d been locked up for ‘insulting’ the Führer. ‘
Next I remember
waking up in a train wagon in my nightclothes. I pinched myself because I thought I was dreaming; it was no dream it was the truth.’

A guard on the train first told her she was being taken to a mental asylum. ‘That made me happy.’ Then the train passed Salzburg ‘and I realised I had been abducted to Germany. I was very upset, and couldn’t stand or walk.’ A guard screamed at her and began hitting her over the head. ‘I started to vomit. He grabbed me, pulled me up and threw me on a bench and slammed the door.’ Before she knew it, Marianne was being marched into Ravensbrück and forced to sign a document that they wouldn’t let her read. ‘So I said God will avenge me and the communists will have their revenge against what the Nazis have done.’

It was at this point that Marianne was taken to the commandant and given forty-two days of ‘aggravated arrest’, the maximum term under the
Strafblock
rules, which ran to several pages. For those sentenced to solitary confinement, ‘plain arrest’ permitted a prisoner to have a mattress and a blanket in her cell, and a small amount of light; coffee and bread was given once a day and a hot meal once every four days. Prisoners sentenced to ‘aggravated arrest’ received the same rations, but were locked in a dark cell with no mattress and no blanket, just a bucket and nothing more.

Koegel decided on all
Strafblock
cases without consulting Langefeld, though her deputy, Emma Zimmer, who ran the block, kept the
Oberaufseherin
closely informed. According to Ilse Gostynski, some guards were so obviously unhappy about conditions in the early days that they were
dismissed. Among those who came from Lichtenburg was one, ‘a lesbian, very decent towards the prisoners but often drunk’, who was dismissed for being ‘too kind’. Three more left ‘because they couldn’t stand it any more’.

Langefeld herself would claim later that when she first arrived at Ravensbrück she still believed her role was to ‘re-educate prostitutes’. The truth was that she couldn’t refuse such a promotion, especially when it came from the Reichsführer SS himself. She was now the most important woman in Himmler’s camp empire. And the living conditions alone were so attractive that it was very hard to walk away.

On viewing their living quarters, Langefeld and all her guards must have been pleasantly surprised. Several of these women were widows or divorcees and, like Langefeld, had transferred here from Lichtenburg, after working for years in prisons and workhouses. A middle-aged woman called Ella Pietsch, trained as a workhouse guard, had nowhere else to go, and nor had Jane Bernigau, who had previously worked in orphanages. Both applied for the job at Ravensbrück because of the salary and security.

Others were factory workers thrown out of work. Ottilie Lotz got the job by chance. After her husband died, Lotz had moved to Lichtenburg to be close to her daughter; she had found work as a clerk in the fortress and was promoted to guard.

These women staff were quartered in smart pitched-roof villas amidst the pine trees looking over the lake. Just a hundred yards or so outside the camp walls, they were convenient for the camp, but far enough away to allow a sense of separation after work. Many of these villas were still being constructed, and prisoners were labouring all around – heaving bricks up from barges moored on the lake – but some of the buildings were complete. The interiors were fitted out in style. Rooms led off a central staircase, and each had pretty curtains and new upholstery. Two women shared a room, and each had her own wardrobe and chest of drawers.

The chief guard’s apartment was larger than others, and she was allowed to bring Herbert, now aged eleven, to live with her; he would attend the local school. Mothers were promised free places at the staff kindergarten, which would open soon – several single mothers were bringing their children with them.

Further up the slope, amidst the trees, stood the grander SS officers’ villas, surrounded by large gardens. Koegel’s villa, where he lived with his wife, Marga, was fitted with parquet floors, and an elegant carved staircase. Around the house hung antlers and other hunting trophies; antlers also hung above the porch outside.

The siting of SS accommodation, away from the camp itself, in a pleasant natural setting, was a common feature of all camps. The intention was to
encourage the SS staff to feel content in their home environment. At Ravensbrück the men had their own SS sports field, while the women could go boating on the lake in summer, or picnicking in the woods.

For the younger women it was not only the pay and conditions that drew them: the prospect of meeting a handsome SS officer was another lure; while for those who were lesbians – a significant minority – Ravensbrück offered special opportunities to meet other women, particularly at a time when lesbianism, like all homosexuality, was reviled. The new recruits were also pleased to find a well-stocked staff canteen, and the pretty town of Fürstenberg had a cinema, several bars, and a hair salon, offering the latest permanent wave. Within a short time of arriving the women sent postcards to their families and friends writing about their new jobs with pride. Several former women guards kept photograph albums and diaries of their time at Ravensbrück containing pictures of their ‘luxurious’ apartment furnishings.

The dog-handlers, who had a special status, took pictures of themselves standing with their dogs. Gertrud Rabenstein, the woman known at Lichtenburg as
‘Iron Gustav’
, took pictures of herself with Britta, her German Shepherd, standing just outside the walls. Rabenstein was divorced and had lost custody of her son. She put an album together to show him something of her life at the camp. The dogs had been trained to attack people with prisoner clothes, she said. Next to the pictures of Gertrud with Britta are happy scenes of mother and son on holiday.

At Rabenstein’s post-war trial, her son was called to give evidence about his mother and said her motto was: ‘
Be hard
. Be hard. To be hard is good. Do not be sentimental.’ He said she used to tell him a story about how she once saw a blacksmith beating metal and watched it grow hard. ‘This was good.’

The guards soon settled in and Langefeld assigned their tasks. Several were put in charge of a block while others were to guard outside work parties. Langefeld briefed them all on their behaviour; for example, folding arms or sitting down in front of prisoners was forbidden, and gossiping a sackable offence. Guards could only visit male quarters with Langefeld’s permission.