Read If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women Online
Authors: Sarah Helm
Chapter 19: Breaking the Circle.
| 307 | own style of terror : Ramdohr’s own trial statement WO 309/416. Unusually for an SS man, he was condemned in court testimony by his own SS colleagues and he condemned them too. Treite spoke of Ramdohr’s brutal methods and Suhren said he ‘heard Ramdohr was very cruel’. Rastatt testimony, Archives diplomatiques du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Colmar. |
| 307 | Binz looked shocked : Falkowska, ‘Report to the History Commission’, Institute for National Memory, Poland. Also multiple reports of atrocity, for example: Anna Hand, WO 235/318, and Vermehren, Reise durch den letzten Akt . |
| 308 | ‘When he buried …’ : WO 235/312. In Nazi war crimes trials several SS men produced evidence of kindness to animals to support pleas in mitigation of their cruelty to humans. |
| 308 | network of camp spies : WO 309/416. |
| 309 | ‘It is not easy to control women …’ : Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück . |
| 309 | ‘They were very young …’ : Dictators . |
| 309 | These recruits arrived : Silbermann, ‘SS-Kantine Ravensbrück’. |
| 309 | ‘The original female supervisors …’ : Höss, Commandant . |
| 310 | women’s prisoner orchestra at Auschwitz : When Mandl arrived at Auschwitz in 1943 a men’s orchestra already existed, and she wanted a women’s orchestra ‘as a matter of prestige’. The two orchestras were kept entirely separate; the men’s was of far higher quality. Author interview with Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the only cellist in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra. |
| 311 | ‘Girls, look, it’s an airport,’ : The main narrative of Barth is drawn from my interview in Kiev with Valentina Samoilova from which her comments in the text are drawn, unless otherwise stated below. |
| 314 | thick with maggots : Sabrodskaja, ARa. |
| 314 | more locals : See Elga Kaletta in Radau, Nichts ist vergessen und niemand . |
| 314 | ‘She was the first …’ : Maurel, Ravensbrück ; see also Les Françaises à Ravensbrück . |
| 315 | the Hangman, Baba Yaga, Squinty Eye : Homeriki, BStU. |
| 315 | glass eye : Evdokia Domina, author interview on Genthin subcamp. |
| 315 | Blondine : For the story of Ilse Hermann (later Göritz; aka Blondine) and Ramdohr’s methods see testimony of the 1965 trial in the DDR of three guards, Göritz (née Hermann), Frida Wötzel and Ulla Jürss, in BStU. |
| 315 | ‘We were never out of touch …’ : Author interview. Also her testimony in Buchmann coll. and Tschjalo, report to the Military Medicine Museum, St Petersburg. Contact between Klemm and Red Army women in other subcamps was mentioned in several author interviews. |
| 316 | Vera Vanchenko : Nikif papers, particularly letters of Antonina Kholina, in prison with her and later in Ravensbrück. Also author interview with Stella Kugelman-Nikiforova. |
| 317 | ‘Psychology, this is the secret’ : Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück . |
| 317 | Julie Wolk : See anon, ‘Report on Julie Wolk’, Prague 1945, Buchmann coll. |
| 318 | ran into the wire : Nikif papers and Pikula, Buchmann coll. |
| 319 | strung two nooses up : What happened next is pieced together from several accounts which vary in detail but survivors are in broad agreement that as a result of the protests both Samoilova and Malygina were subjected to water torture and threatened with the gallows, at which one, or possibly both, gave up their resistance. |
| 320 | Stasi inquisitors : The responses of Ilse Göritz (née Hermann; aka Blondine) to Stasi questioning throws light not only on what happened at Barth but on the Stasi interrogators determination to find out about Ramdohr’s spy ring. Göritz was interrogated eighteen times between 6 March 1964 and 25 May 1965, in Rostock Prison, DDR, and each time a little more detail was eked out of her (see BStU, ZUV 1). Göritz’s statements must be read against the backdrop of the Cold War and in the knowledge that her interrogators wanted her to embellish Nazi war crimes; see Angelika von Meyer, ‘“Ich wollte eine Uniform tragen”: der “Rostocker Prozess” in den Unterlagen des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit’, in Erpel (ed.) Im Gefolge der SS . However, the details she gives of her banal daily routine, carrying out Ramdohr’s orders to crush Soviet prisoners, combined with matching testimony from the prisoners, gives a compelling picture of extermination of subcamp slave labour, and of the Red Army’s desperate resistance at Barth. |
| 321 | Belsen fodder : Göritz interrogation, 16 April 1964, BStU ZUV 1. |
| 321 | ‘agreed that she herself …’ : Göritz interrogation, 18 December 1964, BStU ZUV 1. |
| 321–2 | ‘I believe a Soviet woman …’ : Samoilova statement to Stasi, 17 July 1964, BStU ZUV 1. When I interviewed Samoilova I hadn’t seen her ‘confession’ to the Stasi apparently owning up to becoming a ‘ Spitzel ’. I contacted Valentina again and asked for her response. Valentina repeated that she recalled the Stasi interrogation but had never said anything against Malygina; as she did not understand German she had not been able to check what had been written down at the time. |
| 324 | ‘at the operating table …’ : 1956 letter, Nikif papers. Tatyana Pignatti herself was suspected by several comrades, including Antonina Nikiforova, of working after the war ‘for the organs’ (i.e. SMERSh). Antonina told Stella Kugelman-Nikoforova that Pignatti was one of those who denounced people. ‘You had to be careful with Pignatti,’ said Stella when we met in St Petersburg. ‘She behaved all right in the camp but afterwards she was transformed. Maybe she had been persecuted and became sick. Who knows.’ See note for p. 643, below, on Stella’s post-war family ties to Antonina. |
Chapter 20: Black Transport
| 325 | ‘the potato-cake girl’ : Author interviews with Wanda Heger (née Hjort), Nelly Langholm and Norwegian survivors. Also see Heger, Tous les Vendredis , and Persson, Escape from the Third Reich . |
| 326 | Sippenhaft : See Padfield, Himmler . |
| 328 | ‘Die Salvesen …’ : Salvesen, Forgive . |
| 330 | I rang the bell : Author interview. |
| 330 | ‘magnificent hospitality’ : Cited in Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream . |
| 330 | ingratiating letters : Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust . |
| 331 | hitherto sceptical : The Allied Joint Declaration, issued on 17 December 1942, was supported not only by Britain, the US and the Soviet Union, but eight governments in exile and General de Gaulle’s French National Committee. For debate see Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies . |
| 331 | crisis meeting : For a vivid account of this meeting, see Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream . |
| 332 | the designation NN : Wanda was one of the first, if not the first, to get news of the Nacht und Nebel order out to the West. Author interview. |
| 333 | ‘In the concentration camp …’ : Polish Study Trust collection 3.16, note of 30 July 1943 relating to signal reveived on 29 July 1943. |
| 333 | Regarding experiments : Polish Study Trust collection 3.16, note of 8 May 1943. Also see the note of 22 May 1943 in the same collection, which shows that an appeal was also sent by the Polish Embassy in the Vatican to the Pope on 20 March, asking His Holiness to intervene on behalf of the several hundred Polish women imprisoned in Ravensbrück. |
| 334 | ‘We could hear motorbikes …’ : Sokulska, Lund. Also see Wiń ska, Zwyciężyły Wartości , Kiedrzyń ska, Ravensbrück , and Dą brówska, BAL B162/9813. |
| 334 | Judas soup : Młodkowska, Beyond . |
| 335 | shinbone snapped : Sokulska, Lund. |
| 335 | ‘crumpled up in the bed …’ : Salvesen, Forgive . |
| 336 | death rates were rising : Death rates were also high among women given late and botched abortions who were susceptible to TB. And new arrivals were in a far worse condition than before. A Polish woman arriving in 1943 was handcuffed en route but her hands were so thin ‘my handcuffs fell off’ and the clogs issued at the camp were ‘so heavy I could not lift them off the ground’. Cieplak, Lund 143. |
| 336 | five stretchers : Sprengel, ‘Wie Siemens an Häftlingen verdiente’. |
| 336 | ‘pitiable’ : Cited in Strebel, Ravensbrück . |
| 336 | ‘Many women had to be …’ : Sprengel, ARa; also in Strebel, Ravensbrück . |
| 337 | ‘capitalist toes’ : Maurel, Ravensbrück . |
| 337 | According to Carmen Mory : WO 309/419. |
| 337 | ‘I asked him if …’ : Some of Mory’s most credible evidence, particularly her description of black transports, emerged during a detailed interrogation carried out by the Belgian War Crimes Commission in 1946; a copy is filed in WO 309/419. |
| 338 | ‘showed affection …’ : Tillion, Ravensbrück . |
| 338 | ‘Transports of the sick …’ : Czyż letters. |
| 338 | I went to Triete : Salvesen, Forgive . For details on selections, Treite’s role and selections also see statements and trial transcripts in WO 235/317 and 318 and Mant report, WO 309/416. |
| 339 | ‘Difficult decisions …’ : Boy-Brandt, ‘Überlick über die Reviertätigeit vom März 1942–Ende 1945’, Buchmann coll. |
| 339 | ‘One day a woman …’ : Tillion, Ravensbrück . |
| 339 | ‘Then we hid her …’ : Author interview. |
| 340 | ‘They beat us …’ : Quoted in Mednikov, Dolya Bessmertiya . |
| 340 | ‘I give you my word …’ : Mory, WO 309/419. |
| 341 | Yvonne Le Tac : Testimony in Fonds (collection) Tillion, Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, Besançon. |
| 341 | ‘sent to Lublin …’ : Sprengel, ARa. |
| 341 | On 3rd Feb 44 : Czyż letters. |
| 342 | Later came more news : Zofija Daniejel-Osojnik, report in ARa. Anna Hand, one of the Polish prisoners secretaries, said that such was the chaos of the Majdanek transport that nobody knew ‘of the 800’ who had finally gone so a woman guard called Laurenzen went to Majdanek to find out. ‘With gruesome cold-bloodedness she reports back that out of 800 prisoners, sixteen died during the transport in the cattle waggons. The waggons had been left unopened on a siding for several days. The women had no blankets, very little straw, and had not been given any food or water. They had had nowhere to relieve themselves.’ WO 235/318. |
| 343 | ‘Vivisection in Ravensbrück’ : FO 371/39396. |