If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (78 page)

General de Gaulle’s niece, Geneviève, had disappeared, and now his brother, Geneviève’s father Xavier, French consul-general in Geneva, joined thousands of French who were appealing for information to the ICRC in Geneva. Inquiries from further afield were mounting too. In Brixton, south London, Violette Szabo’s father, a cab-driver, had requested news of Violette from the War Office, who told him nothing, so he wrote to the British Red Cross, who passed his inquiry on to Geneva.

Virginia Lake’s mother, Eleanor Roush, wrote to the US secretary of state, Cordell Hull, saying that Virginia had disappeared in France while doing
‘valuable work for the Allies’, and she hoped her case would get ‘priority attention’. She added: ‘Virginia is a gentile which might be in her favour in view of German standards.’ Mrs Roush’s inquiry was also referred to the ICRC. But to all these questions Geneva gave the same stock answer: the Committee had no access to the camps and couldn’t intervene.

The Swedes, however, were taking a different view.
When they met in Paris
in October 1944, Folke Bernadotte and Raoul Nordling discussed not only how Sweden might be able to intervene, but also how it might send a task force into Germany to rescue prisoners from the camps.

Sweden’s role in any last-minute humanitarian intervention was to some degree self-serving. Neutral from the start of the war, Sweden had found by 1944 that neutrality was not a comfortable cloak to wear. Allied victory was by then a virtual certainty, and the extent of German war crimes were increasingly being laid bare. Acting fast to help prisoners was one way in which Stockholm could begin to answer charges of having failed to play its part in ridding the world of Hitler and his Nazi machine. It might also build bridges with its neighbours. Both Norway and Denmark had been invaded and occupied by Nazi forces, suffering terrible losses, and many in those countries saw their larger neighbour’s neutrality as betrayal. Norway in particular had lost thousands to the concentration camps, and Norwegian diplomats were now placing heavy pressure on Stockholm to find a way of getting those prisoners out before even worse atrocities came.

There were other reasons
for intervention. Swedish leaders were only too glad to step in where Geneva had failed, and Stockholm was plainly in an excellent position to lead any new initiative. Not only was the Swedish capital a good place for discreet diplomatic contacts, but the Swedes had unique access to information about the concentration camps, provided in large part by the Norwegian intelligence cell started by Wanda Hjort.

By the summer of 1944 the Hjort family, based at Gross Kreutz, near Potsdam, had extended and refined their intelligence-gathering about Hitler’s camps. Their group had been strengthened by the arrival of a young Norwegian doctor, Bjørn Heger, and by Professor Arup Seip, rector of Oslo University, both of them held in Germany on the same basis of house arrest as Wanda’s father, Johan Hjort. The group had also made contact with the Swedish delegation in Berlin and were sending detailed weekly reports on the camps to Stockholm via the Swedish diplomatic bag.

Since the Allied landings in the summer of 1944 the Norwegian cell had been picking up reports that Hitler planned to liquidate the camps. Arup Seip, who had contacts with the German underground, learned of preparations for blowing up certain camps before the Allied armies reached Berlin.
By early autumn such reports were multiplying and had spurred the Swedes to consider some form of rescue.

If any form of general rescue was to be achieved, however, Heinrich Himmler, without whose knowledge nothing in the concentration camps could happen, would have to agree. Here Sweden again had good intelligence, this time not about what was going on in Himmler’s camps, but about what was going on in Himmler’s mind.

Felix Kersten, Himmler’s masseur and confidant, had for some time been living in Stockholm, returning regularly to Germany to treat his master’s ongoing stomach pains. Kersten’s purpose in moving to Stockholm had been in part to put out feelers to the West – via Swedish intermediaries – on Himmler’s behalf. By the second half of 1944 Kersten’s message to the Swedes was clear: Himmler knew the war was lost and was looking for ways to build bridges with Washington and London. Such bridges could only be built, of course, behind the Führer’s back.

In his memoirs Kersten later claimed that during a treatment session in September 1944 Himmler declared quite suddenly: ‘There has been too much bloodshed.’ Himmler believed, said Kersten, that Churchill and Roosevelt would prefer to reach a deal with Germany, rather than let Stalin into Berlin and open the way for Bolshevism to take over in Europe. Obviously the Führer himself would not tolerate any discussion of defeat, but in these secret overtures Himmler wished to let it be known that in future – should the Führer no longer be in power – he, Himmler, would be in a position to discuss a deal.

Kersten’s overtures on his master’s behalf were rejected out of hand in Washington and London, which continued to insist on total surrender. Churchill said flatly: ‘
No truck with Himmler
.’ And yet it was clear to his Swedish interlocutors that Kersten believed his master was serious about getting his message heard, and that in order to show good will Himmler might offer to release some prisoners. The Swedes saw no reason not to exploit such an offer and secure as many releases as they could, even though Himmler’s aim of securing a separate peace was going nowhere. The first sign that Himmler might mean business came in the autumn of 1944 when, via Kersten, he agreed to negotiate the release of Norwegian policemen and students.

Other more high-profile prisoner releases were also on Himmler’s mind in the autumn of 1944, but these releases were outside the ambit of the Swedish talks. Among these VIPs were three hostages held in Ravensbrück; each woman had a very powerful relative (or so Himmler believed) in either Paris, London or New York.

Since arriving in the camp with the
vingt-sept mille
in February 1944, Geneviève de Gaulle had been treated just like every other French prisoner.
She lived in the overcrowded slum block, Block 27, and shared a mattress with the British woman Pat Cheramy. Pat said later that for a long time the SS didn’t even know who Geneviève was – or, if they did, they didn’t appear to care. While Germany still occupied France, there was no call to take special notice of the niece of the exiled general, but by the autumn Charles de Gaulle was president in waiting of France, and now his niece was a useful pawn.

Himmler had almost certainly been alerted to Geneviève’s presence as a result of the inquiry made to the ICRC by her father soon after Paris was liberated. Within days the Reichsführer had ordered Suhren to improve her treatment and smarten her appearance in the event of her release.

After nine months in the camp, Geneviève had lost half her body weight, and the sight of her standing before him in his office took even Suhren aback. ‘
He seemed put out
to see me in such a feeble state,’ she remembered later. ‘He asked if I had any complaints about the regime, and the way I had been treated.’ Not wishing to single herself out, Geneviève took the chance to protest on behalf of the whole camp against ‘the abominable manner’ in which the prisoners were treated, and the French in particular.

‘My protestations were received with discomfort by the commandant, who gave the following immediate orders by telephone to
Aufseherin
Binz: to have me transferred to one of the privileged blocks; to give me a job in the office of the
Revier
; to arrange a medical examination by Dr Treite.’ Despite protesting about being treated with favouritism, Geneviève now found Suhren’s entire staff rushing around after her as if there was no time to lose in improving her health. Better soup was offered straight away, while Treite admitted her to the best hospital block. ‘This was the first time in the camp that I saw sick people treated well.’

Not until later did Geneviève learn the reason for the hurry. On the day she had been called before Suhren, 3 October 1944, Himmler had offered Geneviève to her uncle, in exchange for a German held in France.

Just two days after Geneviève was called to see Suhren, Odette Sansom – the SS knew her as Churchill – was also offered better treatment. Odette had been kept in a privileged cell since her arrival in July 1944, but the cell, in the basement of the bunker, was damp and dark. She suffered from painful glands and her hair was falling out in clumps.

On 5 October a nurse visited Odette in her cell. As in Geneviève’s case there was a sudden urgency to improve her health. She was taken to the
Revier
, where X-rays showed that she had TB. A few days later Suhren came and told her she was to move into a cell on the ground floor. A specialist doctor would examine her inside the commandant’s headquarters, where she would also receive weekly ultraviolet treatment to stop her hair falling out and infrared rays for her lungs.

While Geneviève and Odette were being pampered ahead of a possible release, Himmler’s third high-value hostage, Gemma La Guardia Gluck, went on receiving favoured treatment in Block 2. Unlike the other two, however, she did not receive any new attention from the SS in October 1944. Perhaps she was not to be part of any deal. More likely, living in the privileged block, her health had suffered less. In any case, whatever deal Himmler had in mind, nothing materialised and none of the three were released. The women themselves had not expected it. Nor were they under any illusion that their own better treatment might herald any early end to the Ravensbrück nightmare; they could see as well as anyone how conditions were worsening every day.

While Geneviève was recuperating in the
Revier
, in October six French comrades were taken from their blocks and shot. A few days before Odette was moved to a better bunker cell, she saw twelve women herded into a cell close by, where they were left with nothing to eat for a week. ‘
I saw a Russian girl
being carried away from the cell by her comrades; she was nothing but skin and bone.’ Through her new cell window on the ground floor of the bunker, Odette could see the crematorium flame blaze ten feet high from the chimney every night; she could even hear the roar of the fire. ‘There was a considerable amount of black smoke and an unbearable smell. When I had my window open my room filled with black ash.’

Rumours of hostage releases and possible exchanges certainly gave no new hope to ordinary prisoners, who saw no evidence at all that anyone outside was interested in them or was trying to help. On the contrary, by October 1944 the women in Ravensbrück had never felt more alone. For most, parcels had dwindled, all rations had been cut, and mail had stopped. Winter was approaching and the liberating armies were not even close. The summer’s hopes that the Germans might give up now seemed absurd. Instead, prisoners from Hungary were flooding in, the tent was fuller than ever, the mortuary was being extended, and a new extension to the Siemens plant was under construction, with fresh workers hired for the plant each day and rejects sent back to the main camp in growing numbers.

In October, Betsie and Corrie ten Boom, the elderly Dutch sisters, had been struck off the Siemens lists and sent back to level ground inside the camp wall. Betsie had started coughing up blood and could only shovel tiny amounts; the guards mocked her by snatching her spade and taunting her as ‘
Madame Baroness
’, and prisoners laughed at her too.

To Corrie’s astonishment Betsie too was laughing. ‘But you’d better let me totter along with my little spoonful or I’ll have to stop altogether,’ she said, at which the guard lashed out with a whip, leaving raw marks across Betsie’s neck. ‘Don’t look at it, Corrie,’ said Betsie. ‘Look at Jesus instead.’

Chapter 29

Doctor Loulou

B
y mid-November 1944 the women who arrived on the last Paris convoy were laying slabs of sod in the snow at a desolate subcamp called Königsberg, 150 miles east of Ravensbrück. The sheltered potato cellar at Torgau, the gifts of Jack Frost sugar, seemed like a dream. Most had given up hoping for the end of the war. ‘
Instead we hoped
for the end of winter, because we could count on it,’ said Virginia Lake, who was now keeping a diary.

At Königsberg they were building an airfield, but the sods of earth would not lie flat on the snow; once it iced up the squares became impossible to shift. Some days there’d be a thaw and the sods had to be laid in the water. They floundered in the mud to lay it right. Then it would all freeze over again and they’d be hacking at the ice. In fact, it was an impossible job. Everyone knew that the ground would never be level.

They were famished by now, as well as cold. Just three months after leaving Paris, the women still had a little fat in reserve, though it was fast disappearing. When they marched onto the aviation field, blasts of icy wind pierced their thin clothes. The women robbed mattresses of straw and stuffed handfuls down each other’s sweaters.

At Neubrandenburg subcamp, fifty miles north of Ravensbrück, Micheline Maurel had not an ounce of fat left on her, having been here nearly two years. She too was keeping a diary. Her entry of 29 October reads: ‘
Sunday
: My bread ration stolen in washroom.’ 13 November: ‘First snow, ate nothing.’ 14 November: ‘Very cold. It’s freezing. So sad.’ Then her diary stops for good and she started praying to God to let her die. Micheline had constant dysentery and yet was eating nothing. ‘I wished I could let myself go and
disappear completely. On the spot. I called for my mother. By this time I had no flesh, the skin hung in dry folds over my bones.’

All the subcamps were killing, but Königsberg was new, a ‘punishment camp’; it killed fast. In the autumn of 1944 prisoners became aware that Königsberg, along with the new subcamps of Rechlin and Malchow, were particularly abominable places. Women sent here did not work in wellequipped arms factories like those at the subcamp of Torgau. The work was hard labour of the worst kind and the prisoners were clearly expected to work to their last breath and then die.