Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbruck

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The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück: Who Were They?

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The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück Who Were They?

JUDITH BUBER AGASSI

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THE JEWISH WOMEN PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK A Oneworld Book Published by Oneworld Publications 2007 Copyright © Judith Buber Agassi 2007 All rights reserved Copyright under Berne Convention ACIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978–1–85168–470–0 ISBN-10: 1–85168–470–0 Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Cover design by Liz Powell Printed and bound in India for Imprint Digital Oneworld Publications 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com NL08

Learn more about Oneworld. Join our mailing list to find out about our latest titles and special offers at: www.oneworld-publications.com/newsletter.htm

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Once again, we are being turned into nameless, faceless, dehumanized theories and statistics. I wish I could protect the memory of us all, young and old: not one of us thought of ourselves as hero or victim – and yet we were both. Halina Nelken, And Yet I Am Here!, p. 135

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Appel! (Edith Kiss) La Nuit (Edith Kiss) 1. The origin of the project: my personal interest in Ravensbrück Notes 2. Is true historical reconstruction possible? Heterogeneity Obstacles to historical reconstruction Special obstacles to Jewish commemoration Memoirs and historical research Notes

xiii xv xvii xviii

1 7 8 8 9 12 15 16

3. The Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück: who were they?

19

Six years of Ravensbrück Who was a Ravensbrück prisoner? Who should be considered Jewish? Gender questions The percentage of Jewish prisoners The sources Periodization Notes

19 20 20 24 25 27 32 40

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viii Contents 4. The first period No Jewish Alte Ravensbrückerinnen Official reasons for arrest: police documents and the reality The documentary basis for statistical estimates: filling the gaps Nationality, age groups, marital status, and occupations of the first-period prisoners Notes 5. The second period – from Bernburg to Auschwitz

46 47 54 58 61 63 67

Countries of origin Official reasons for arrest Age groups Marital status Conditions of life The big deportation to Auschwitz Notes

69 69 69 70 70 70 72

6. The third period – the special groups

73

Prisoners with hidden Jewish identities The French transports The special categories Statistical summing-up of the third period Notes 7. The fourth period – August 1944 to end of 1944: the floodgates open August 1944: the arrival of Hungarian and Polish Jewish women and girls from Auschwitz Three ghetto transports A huge transport from Auschwitz Direct deportations from Budapest: November 1944 The direct transports from Slovakia The Frankfurt/Walldorf transport The arrivals of December 1944 Summing-up the fourth period: national groups, age groups, and fates Notes

73 75 75 83 85

88 88 94 97 99 107 108 111 117 126

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Contents ix 8. The fifth period – the last stage Who was in Ravensbrück at the beginning of 1945? Major changes in 1945 The documentary evidence concerning new arrivals in 1945 Direct transports from Slovakia, France, and Italy The arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch and their fates Neustadt-Glewe Krupp-Neukölln: an exceptional labor camp The transport to Burgau: a death train of the last period The role of the Bernadotte-Aktion in the rescue of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners Evacuation marches from Ravensbrück and its external camps Evacuation marches from, or abandonment in, external camps Liberation policies Statistical summing-up of all fifth-period arrivals A late large transport of Jewish men to the women’s camp Notes 9. Summing-up: the place of Ravensbrück in the Holocaust of Jewish women Statistical summing-up of all five periods Ravensbrück and Auschwitz Women and girls of part-Jewish descent (Mischlinge) in Ravensbrück Non-Jewish prisoners married to Jews “Righteous of the Nations” in Ravensbrück Notes 10. Social ties and moral survival Why was there so little group-wide social organization among the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück? The crucial role of small-group or “camp-family” ties Individual and group contacts between Jewish and other prisoners Remembering the jailers What is heroism – everyday moral behavior Gender-specific issues Conclusions Notes

135 135 136 138 139 142 150 157 168 178 187 189 193 196 198 200

211 211 215 220 221 222 226 228 228 237 243 246 248 250 257 258

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x Contents 11. Diagrams Diagram 1 The First Period – Countries of Origin Diagram 2 The First Period – Age Groups Diagram 3 The Second Period – Countries of Origin Diagram 4 The Second Period – Age groups Diagram 5 The Third Period – Age Groups Diagram 6 The Third Period – Formal Citizenship Diagram 7 The Third Period – Fate Diagram 8 The Fourth Period – Countries of Origin Diagram 9 Fourth Period – Age Groups Diagram 10 The Fourth Period – Fate Diagram 11 The Fifth Period – Countries of Origin Diagram 12 The Fifth Period – Age Groups Diagram 13 The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück – Countries of Origin Diagram 14 The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück – The Five Periods, Countries of Origin Diagram 15 The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück – Age Diagram 16 The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück – The Five Periods, Age Diagram 17 The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück – The Five Periods, Fate 12. Literature concerning the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück Full-length published autobiographical memoirs Short memoirs, edited by others Autobiographical and biographical documents Unpublished memoirs Books on Ravensbrück by non-Jewish prisoners who describe the situation of Jewish prisoners Research concerning the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück

263 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 269 270 274 275 275 275

13. Lists of interviews

288

14. Appendix

306

List of major camps and ghettos from which Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück came List of major camps to which Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück were sent

306 307

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Contents xi Maps Nazi Camps Ravensbrück Photo of Ravensbrück Indices Archives and Documents Concentration Camps Names other than Victims and Survivors Victims and Survivors Places Subjects CD-ROM with a list of names of all known Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück

309 310 311

313 315 318 321 326 330 back cover

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ACKNOWLED GEMENTS

I thank the German Israeli foundation for research and development (GIF) for their financial support for over six years of part of the cost of this research. I also thank Dr. Rena M. Shadmi for a generous gift in 1999, and Mr. William L. Frost, the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, and Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, the Remember the Women Institute, for their help in the last stage of the preparation of the text. I thank my assistants: Adi Schilling, who enthusiastically assisted and supported me in the early stages of this research; Tamara Kalechmann-Khatav and Nili Alon, who loyally assisted me during the middle years; Sefi Rom, Tomer Rajwan, and Dr. Chen Yehezkeli, who rendered technical service in the final stages; and particularly Dr. Nurit Shmilovitz-Vardi, for her years of dedicated, expert contribution up to the final stages, including her construction of the databank, diagrams, and statistical tables. I thank the directors and staff members of three major archives who were of particular help. Special thanks go to Monika Herzog, Cordula Hoffmann, Britta Pawelke, and Sabine Röver of the library, archive, and Fotothek of the Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, as well as to Judith Klaimann of the archive of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and to Megan Lewis of the US Holocaust Survivors Registry in Washington, DC. I also thank the staff of the Italian archive Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea in Milan, Cornelia Rühlig of the archive of the Museum der Stadt MörfeldenWalldorf, and the staff of the Buchenwald and Dachau archives. I thank my colleagues Dr. Irith Dublon-Knebel and Dr. Adriana Kemp in Israel, Dr. Sabine Kittel and Dr. Linde Apel, and Professor Dr. Sigrid Jacobeit and Ms. Petra Fank, the then director and secretary, respectively, of the Ravensbrück Memorial in Germany, for generously sharing with me much valuable interview and documentary material they had collected. Professor Jacobiet had faith in my project from its very beginning and supported it all the way. I also thank Frau Johanna Kootz of the Institut für Frauenforschung, Freie Universität Berlin, for her constant help and support.

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xiv Acknowledgements I thank especially other Ravensbrück researchers, who were more than generous in this respect, for sharing with me their then unpublished material. They are Mme. Anise Postel-Vinay, the Ravensbrück survivor and historian, for her identification of Jewish names on the reconstituted French transport lists; Dr. Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, the author of the Ravensbrück Gedenkbuch, who shared with me over the years the knowledge she had gained about the fate of hundreds of Jewish victims, as well as the documentary material that she had discovered and that proved useful to me, particularly the databank concerning the deceased Jewish prisoners; Monika Schnell, the scientific assistant of Dr. Schindler-Saefkow; Dr. Irmgard Seidel, researcher and past head of the Buchenwald archive, who shared with me valuable information on the fate of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners sent to the external labor camps of Buchenwald; Ravensbrück researcher Dr. Simone Erpel, who gave me the texts of interviews with Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners made soon after the war by the Polish Institute of Sources in Lund; Ms. Wanda Wassermann, who volunteered to translate these interviews from the original Polish; and Herr Karl Heinz Schütt, who shared with me the results of his dedicated research into the history of the prisoners of the Ravensbrück external camp Neustadt-Glewe. Thanks also to Dr. Brigitte Halbmayr and to Dr. Helga Amesberger for sharing with me the results of their ongoing research concerning Ravensbrück prisoners originating from Austria. Special thanks to the many survivors of Ravensbrück and to their families, who shared with me their valuable written memoirs, published or unpublished, who gave hours of their time for interviews, recorded on tape or on paper, who answered questionnaires, who verified names and dates in correspondence and in telephone interviews, and who generously sent precious photos and memorabilia. Without all this generous help, this work could not have been done. My special thanks to Joseph Agassi for his extensive help and for his compiling the indices, and to my family and many friends, old and young, for their unflagging interest, encouragement, and technical assistance. I also thank Ms. Kate Kirkpatrick, Editor, and Ms. Kate Smith, Production Manager, of Oneworld Publications, for their friendly and dedicated work in preparing the typescript for the printer. My sincere apologies to the victims, survivors, and their relatives, for any factual errors and omissions that occur in this work, all efforts notwithstanding. May their heroism be remembered with their suffering.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Dans le Wagon (Edith Kiss) Jolan Lebovics (Aat Breur)

front cover back cover

Appel! (Edith Kiss) La Nuit (Edith Kiss) Olga Benario–Prestes Marianne-Katharina (Käthe) Leichter b. Pick Rosa (Reise Hienda) Menzer Emma Murr b. Engel Irma Eckler Rosette Susanna (Rosa) Manus Jewgenia Lasarewna Klemm Sylvia Grohs-Martin Menachem Kallus Stella Nikiforova b. Kugelmann Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein Edith Kiss b. Rott, plus her relief, Deportation Kato Gyulai Halina Birenbaum b. Hala Grinstein-Balin Bat-Sheva Dagan b. Isabella Rubinstein Halina Nelken Esther Kemeny Eva Danos Langley Gloria Hollander Lyon b. Hajnal Hollender Dr. Gertrud Luckner Professor Dr. Hildegard Schaeder Marie Pleißner Erna Lugebiel b. Voley Corrie ten Boom Jelisaweta Kusmina-Karawajewa “Mat Maria” Erika Myriam Kounio Amariglio

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xvi Illustrations Lidia Rosenfeld-Vago Judith H. Sherman b. Stern Niza Ganor b. Anna Fränkel

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Map of concentration camps Map of Ravensbrück Photograph of Ravenbrück

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Note: The three color paintings by Edith Kiss are reprinted with the permission of Dr. Helmuth Bauer and of the Metropol Verlag, Berlin. They are part of the Album Deportation, a cycle of 30 Gouaches depicting the deportation of Jewish Hungarian women in 1944 to the Concentration Camp Ravensbrück and to forced labor in the external camp Daimler-Benz Genshagen. Edith Kiss painted them immediately after her return, in July and August 1945, and exhibited them in the same year in September in Budapest. They are published for the first time in book form in Dr. Helmuth Bauer, Das Album Deportation von Edith Kiss und die Frauen im KZAussenlager Daimler-Benz-Genshagen, Metropol Verlag, Berlin, Winter 2006/07. The color plate sections in this book were made possible by sponsorship from the Remember the Women Institute, New York, USA.

Appel! (Edith Kiss)

La Nuit (Edith Kiss)

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1 THE ORIGIN OF THE PROJECT: MY PERSONAL INTEREST IN RAVENSBRÜCK

This book is the result of my part in the group effort of a team of women sociologists and historians that I initiated, to rescue from oblivion the memory of thousands of Jewish women, girls, and children imprisoned in the only Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women. The group effort resulted in a book with contributions by most of the members of the initial two teams, the Israeli and the German.1 The present book is the record of my own effort – my answer to the question: The Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück: who were they? Let me report how I, a sociologist of gender and of work, got involved in this project that, although pertaining to women and thus to gender, lies on the borderline between history and sociology. I had not previously worked in the field of Holocaust or antisemitism studies, and I was not engaged with their specific gender aspects, nor with the problems issuing from the combination of the evidence of the memoirs of individual survivors, published and unpublished, with that of documentary evidence, nor with the problems involved with the combination of the information contained in open-ended interviews, specific testimonies, and questionnaires, with police documents, documents of the Ravensbrück camp administration and that of other concentration camps and their outlying labor camps, their work details (AKDOs), the SS correspondence, and documents concerning the names of victims and perpetrators recorded after the War. It was a personal connection that in the first place brought me to Ravensbrück, and to the realization that its Jewish prisoners, the dead and the surviving, and the story of their fate, had not yet been

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2 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück recorded systematically, and that were in danger of being irretrievably forgotten. The irony is that I was brought to this study of the Holocaust through my German, non-Jewish mother, who had been for five years a Ravensbrück prisoner. My mother was Margarete Buber-Neumann. Her daughters, my sister and I, had known nothing about her whereabouts and fate from 1938 until the end of the War. By then, she had survived two years in Soviet prisons and concentration camps and another five years in a Nazi concentration camp. Although I had known these facts since 1945, the name of the Nazi camp registered in my memory for the first time two years later, when she related to me her memories of Ravensbrück when we first met in Sweden in the spring of 1947 after all those years.At this time, she was busy writing the second half of her book Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, which was soon translated into 12 languages (published in English as Under Two Dictators) and brought her international fame. Much later, five years after her death, due to that book of hers I was invited to take part in the preparation of the planned commemoration reunion on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of Ravensbrück, its “liberation”. This is how I came to see, towards the end of 1994, for the first time, the site of this camp, which is situated north of Berlin in an idyllic countryside of lakes and forests. The fact that, due to the Cold War, my mother had never returned to the site of Ravensbrück before her death in November 1989 is symptomatic of the political situation in Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall: it was inaccessible to her – as an anti-Communist, she was naturally persona non grata in the German Democratic Republic. She left Germany in 1933 as a Communist. I am one of her two daughters from her first marriage, raised as Jews. We emigrated to Palestine with our paternal grandparents. Her second husband was Heinz Neumann – also a Jew – who had been a member of the Central Committee of the German Communist Party, and a member of the German Reichstag. He formed a left-wing faction whose slogan was “Hit the Fascists wherever you meet them” and opposed Stalin’s directives to declare not the Nazis, but the Social Democrats, the main enemy of the German Communists.In 1931 he was removed by the Comintern from his post and thus from all German politics. In 1932, the Comintern sent him and my mother to Spain and one year later abandoned them in Switzerland. In 1935, the Nazis demanded his extradition on a trumped-up charge.They had no choice but to go to the Soviet

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The Origin of the Project 3 Union where, in 1937, he was arrested and secretly executed; she was arrested and sent to Siberia in 1938. Later, in 1940, she was forcibly handed over – together with about one thousand other German and Austrian refugees, mainly Communists and many of them Jews – to the Nazi authorities at the border that then separated Nazi and Soviet occupied Poland.2 Thus my mother,after learning firsthand the realities of the Soviet Communist regime and its prisons and concentration camps, was incarcerated for five more years in the Nazi “Hell for women”, Ravensbrück, this time as a suspected Soviet agent. Ostracized by the leadership of the German Communist Ravensbrück prisoners, she survived due to the support and friendship of many fellow prisoners, a few Communists who did not accept the dictate of their own leaders, and others, mainly Czech, French, and Norwegian non-Communist prisoners. Those who survived remained her friends for life. During these five years, she had learnt about many events in the camp and about the behavior of many of the SS guards, supervisors, and commanders. She knew hundreds of fellow prisoners from different national groups, categories, and workplaces. Through her Czech close friend Milena Jesenska,3 she knew about the horrors of the camp Revier (hospital). She knew about the deportation of nearly all the Jewish women there to Bernburg in 1942, and to Auschwitz until October 1944; but even she had no firsthand contact with Jewish prisoners, since all contact between non-Jewish and Jewish prisoners was strictly forbidden. Jews and non-Jews worked most of the time in different work details and work sites. Therefore, her account can serve only partially as evidence for the construction of the present historical account of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. It supplies much background material for this study. When I visited the campsite at the end of 1994 to take part in the preparations for the commemoration of 50 years since the liberation of the camp, considerable efforts had already been made by the governments of the Land Brandenburg and the Federal Republic of Germany to reform the memorial site and to open it to visitors and researchers from all over the world. Yet, when I learned that the governments of the Land Brandenburg and the Federal Government of Germany had decided to share the cost of travel and accommodation for all the survivors of Ravensbrück so that they could attend the commemoration, and asked the members of the inviting committee how many survivors they were inviting from Israel, I was astonished to

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4 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück learn that there was only one. It turned out that only the name of this one woman, who had been the editor of the Mapai (Social Democrat) daily newspaper Davar, had been registered on the list of the International Ravensbrück Committee as an Israeli survivor. The Committee also did not possess any separate list of Jewish Ravensbrück survivors living in any country whatsoever.4 On returning to Israel, I went to the archive of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes Remembrance Authority) and asked for a list of Ravensbrück survivors. Yad Vashem had then no separate list of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. A cursory search produced a short list of women who had mentioned the name of this camp in their testimonies or in interviews about their Holocaust experiences. Many of the addresses and phone numbers of the women on that list were no longer valid. (Later on, Yad Vashem was very helpful to our research teams. Many more names of Ravensbrück survivors were located in its archives. Previously unexamined microfilms of arrival lists of prisoners to Ravensbrück soon proved most significant for the beginning of my study. Much later we found many more Ravensbrück documents in its archives.) As I had taken upon myself the task of organizing the travel of Israeli Ravensbrück survivors to the commemoration event, I approached a young woman journalist writing for the daily Yediot with a request to interview me about this issue. I offered my phone number to all who were interested. As a result, the phone did not stop ringing for the next two weeks. More than 200 women declared themselves willing to travel to Ravensbrück, and about a hundred additional ones also told about their being Ravensbrück survivors, but were unable to travel – usually because of their own ill health or that of a family member. The upshot was that the German government had to rent a special plane from EL-AL so the survivors could reach Berlin in time. In Germany, the arriving survivors were received well and a group of young students who had all previously visited Israel were very helpful guides. Yet, in Ravensbrück itself, it took a special effort to enable them to appear as Israelis and for a representative to deliver their special message to the thousands of other survivors arriving from all over the world. Many of the Israeli survivors had not spoken before about their Holocaust experiences, even to their own children, and many had set out to visit Germany with great trepidation. Surprisingly, all experienced the visit to the place of their immense suffering as positive, and the opening of the floodgates of their memories as liberating.

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The Origin of the Project 5 On returning to Israel, I realized that by this informal process, a considerable amount of evidence through oral history had come my way. Colleagues persuaded me then to use this unique opportunity for systematic research and to apply for funding to the GIF (German Israel Foundation for Research and Development). I approached with this suggestion a sociologist, Professor Hanna Herzog, and historians Professor Dina Porat and Dr. Irith DublonKnebel, all of Tel Aviv University, and they accepted the idea and agreed to cooperate. The regulations of the GIF demand the cooperation of teams of Israeli and German researchers. Eventually, a group of women sociologists and historians of Tel Aviv University and of Free University Berlin, also including Professor Dr. Sigrid Jacobeit, the director of the Ravensbrück Memorial (Mahn- und Gedenkstätte), started out on a three-year research project, which was later extended. We first sent out a questionnaire to survivors living in Israel that hundreds answered. For many more who had lived in Israel but had died, relatives filled in the data to the best of their knowledge. We also used the data eventually found in 200 Yad Vashem survivor testimonies. All this resulted in a database for over 700 survivors of Ravensbrück who had ever reached Israel. Using the data first gained in 1995, we organized a moving meeting of Israeli Ravensbrück survivors at Tel Aviv University. Though both teams participated in this initial effort, soon our ways parted as each showed interest in different aspects of the story. It became increasingly clear to me that, in addition to my contribution to the collective volume of both teams, A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück, which Dr. Irith Dublon-Knebel has edited and which is due to appear soon, my task was to concentrate on a thorough study – both historical and sociological – in an attempt to answer as best I can the question, The Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück: who were they? I wanted to illustrate my view that social studies do not preclude the individual human aspect of the story. Meanwhile, two welcome publications appeared on the same topic but from different viewpoints. One is by a member of our German team, Dr. Linde Apel, Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939–1945, Metropol, Berlin, 2003; the other is by Rochelle G. Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Wisconsin University Press, Madison, WI, 2004, who pursued this topic independently. (The terms of our contract with GIF

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6 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück regrettably prevented us from including her in our team.) Let me add one brief paragraph on these books. Neither book aims at as complete an answer as possible to the question of my choice, The Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück: who were they? And neither book pays as much attention to the differences in the Jewish prisoner populations and their different situations in different periods as this study does. Apel made a valiant effort to be objective. She describes and analyzes the specific conditions of work, life, and death of the Jewish women prisoners on the basis of a wealth of documents, records, and testimonies of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors. Her effort at objectivity towards the Jewish prisoners may be the reason for her not having touched upon moral issues, attitudes, and sentiments.By contrast,Saidel is very sensitive to the attitudes and sentiments of the interviewed survivors, including also the problems that the survivors experienced after the War. She includes in her book many pages of interview texts, and it is indeed the fruit of a labor of love. Returning to the question of my choice, ‘The Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück: who were they?’, in the following chapters I present the fruits of my efforts to answer this question. I also enclose on a CD-ROM a list of well over 16,000 names of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück, with much detailed information about them. In addition, I have also attempted to include in this volume an analysis of the social relations of the Jewish women prisoners and of the specific social ties among them. What I did not do is study the problems related to the physical and psychological damage to survivors of the Holocaust and the degree of success of efforts to overcome them and integrate in the societies, most of whose populations were spared this horrendous experience. I also did not deal with the difficult question of whether it was advisable or inadvisable for survivors to share their horrid experiences with their closest relatives. How heavy was the post-Holocaust traumatic burden and was its transmission to the next generation inevitable? On these questions, there is a wealth of literature that I was not sufficiently qualified to examine on the basis of the data available to me. As a sociologist, I always found very relevant the differences in conditions between the USA, Israel, and other countries. I also found relevant the differences in the degree of education and the social status of the survivors, as well as their ability to integrate in their societies of settlement. I did not have sufficient data to examine these. I used the expression of Halina Nelken as a motto for this study: “Once again,” she says,“we are being

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The Origin of the Project 7 turned into nameless, faceless, dehumanized theories and statistics. I wish I could protect the memory of us all, young and old: not one of us thought of ourselves as hero or victim – and yet we were both.” I sincerely hope that this study, dealing with theories and statistics as it does, nevertheless does justice to the memory of the victims: I honor as many names as I could find, describing them and their diverse personalities and fate, and above all, their having been both victims and heroines. Herzlia J. B. A. January 2006 NOTES 1. Irith Dublon-Knebel (ed.), A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück, forthcoming. 2. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Under two Dictators, New York, 1950, pp. 162–166 (first published in German as Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949); Hans Schafranek, Zwischen NKWD und Gestapo: Die Auslieferung deutscher und österreichischer Antifaschisten aus der Sowjetunion nach Nazideutschland 1937–1941, Frankfurt am Main, 1990, pp. 110f. 3. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Milena, London, 1989 (first published in German in 1963). 4. Later we found that lists of Ravensbrück survivors existed in several countries; although the overwhelming majority of these women had been arrested and deported to Ravensbrück either directly or via Auschwitz as Jews, they usually were listed as “anti-fascists”, without mention of their being Jewish. In the US about 1200 Jewish women (and some men) who had registered with the Washington Holocaust Registry had mentioned Ravensbrück as one of their camps.

NB. Dates of documents are recorded here as in the originals: day, month, year.

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2 IS TRUE HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION POSSIBLE?

HETEROGENEITY

Before dealing with the problem of the reconstruction of the memory of the Jewish prisoners, let me discuss the problem of the reconstruction of historical memory in general – written or oral. Any memory of what happened to a large number of human beings in any location or institution that existed over several years of necessity must be heterogeneous, multifaceted, and contain even conflicting items of information – even in cases where there had been no organized efforts to suppress or falsify this memory, or reluctance to treat it with respect and consider it significant to a collective or a national memory. In the case of Ravensbrück, there had been extreme heterogeneity – women from at least 20 countries were incarcerated for different formal reasons – with considerable changes of conditions and policies over six years and different treatment of different groups even at the same time. Let me discuss first what was common to the experience of all prisoners during the entire period. Ravensbrück was, from its beginning to its end, a Nazi concentration camp, a special place for women whom the regime considered enemies, not ordinary prisoners, but rather non-persons incarcerated for an unspecified period, abandoned to the absolute rule of the SS and its policy of regimentation, terrorization, brutality, and humiliation. Many survivors who had experienced both Ravensbrück and other camps have recorded that, in Ravensbrück, regimentation was particularly severe, especially in the form of

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Is True Historical Reconstruction Possible? 9 standing in lines twice a day for hours in all weather for endless rollcalls, with prisoners collapsing and dying during the roll-calls. At Ravensbrück, new female SS guards were trained for duty in all camps with women prisoners. They were trained in treating the prisoners to a constant barrage of foul language and threats, to blows to face, head, and body by using fists or truncheons, to kicking them with their booted feet, or to setting their dogs at the prisoners to bite their legs. Ravensbrück also had from the very start a formal system of punishment. Its prison included a punishment block and rows of cells where prisoners were incarcerated in solitary confinement, total darkness, and near-starvation. Already by the beginning of 1940, Himmler had introduced for female camp prisoners punishment by flogging (25 lashes, once, twice, or three times), causing extreme suffering and many deaths. Yet there also existed extreme heterogeneity in the experiences, conditions, and fate of different groups of prisoners among the more than 110,000 women, girls, and children whose arrival was registered.1 There was a separate, much smaller men’s camp in the middle of Ravensbrück, but completely isolated from it, which for most of its existence contained concentration-camp prisoners brought there to perform construction work. Through it passed 20,000 men and boys, 2000 of them Jews, some of them boys over 13, some of them transferred there at the age of 13 from the women’s camp. Though the two camps were adjacent, severe penalties were imposed for any attempt at contact.2

OBSTACLES TO HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION

Any effort to get as near to the truth as possible when engaging in historical reconstruction (of Ravensbrück or of anything else) must run into serious obstacles of different kinds. As in all Nazi concentration camps, the Ravensbrück camp authorities – both SS and Gestapo – systematically tried to limit the number of survivors by causing, or not preventing, the deaths of as many prisoners as possible, especially during the last half-year. Prisoners were subjected to selection for the gas chamber and other forms of organized killing, chronic near-starvation, frostbite due to lack of clothing, shoes, blankets, shelter, and heating, extreme overcrowding, filth, and vermin (conditions that caused the spread of

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10 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück tuberculosis, hunger-dysentery, furunculosis, and eventually also typhoid epidemics), and to extremely long and heavy work – moving earth, unloading boats, and work in the weapons, ammunition, and SS-uniforms industry – not to mention the outright starvation of those for whom there was no more work in Ravensbrück’s outlying labor camps. Between the end of January and March 1945, many hundreds of prisoners were transferred from Ravensbrück to BergenBelsen, a camp that had been designated as a death camp without a gas chamber.3 In the last two or three months of the War, the SS also sent off veritable death trains, trains that traveled not just for days, but sometimes weeks; the women were squeezed into cattle-wagons without food, water, or the most primitive sanitation. On these trains, women died of starvation, dehydration, suffocation, exhaustion, and even of mental derangement. Many of these trains were meant to become targets for the Allies’ bombardments. In the very last stage, the SS organized death marches north-westwards, both from Ravensbrück and from its outlying labor camps, as well as from those of Buchenwald, to which thousands of Ravensbrück prisoners had previously been sent. The likelihood of survival became ever smaller. The SS camp authorities also then tried to destroy as many camp documents as possible, including arrival lists, gas-chamber death lists, and the central card index of the camp. Of these documents, there existed thousands of pages – many in several copies. In late April 1945, the crematorium burned paper while huge heaps of corpses lay unburied. The SS also destroyed the physical evidence of its crimes by blowing up the gas chamber on 22 or 23 April 1945. Throughout its entire existence, the camp authorities had prevented the recording by prisoners of their experiences by not permitting the use of paper or writing utensils and by restricting contact with the outside world (by those who were permitted it at all and had any relative to write to) to a short, heavily censored monthly letter. These two purposes – the elimination of survivors and the evidence about their sufferings – were somewhat counteracted by the last-minute rescue operation of the Swedish Red Cross that included the evacuation of thousands to Sweden. This evacuation and the following thorough medical treatment and generous recuperation not only ensured the survival of thousands of Ravensbrück prisoners who otherwise would certainly have perished, but also permitted the

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Is True Historical Reconstruction Possible? 11 organized smuggling out of large quantities of camp documents, especially of arrival lists (Zugangslisten).4 Consequently, about half the arrival lists were preserved; some of the lost ones were later found or reconstructed. To the best of my knowledge, before liberation, the rescue operation of the Swedish Red Cross saved a larger percentage of Ravensbrück prisoners than occurred from any other single concentration camp. So much for the difficulties to the preservation of memory caused by actions of the SS. The political situation and conflicts in the postwar period gave rise to many additional serious obstacles to the faithful historical reconstruction of the names of the prisoners of Ravensbrück. The fact that the camp was located in the part of German territory controlled by the Soviet Union until the beginning of 1990 proved to be a serious hurdle for the production of a comprehensive and fair memory of the victims of Ravensbrück. The grounds of Ravensbrück served as a military camp for a Soviet tank regiment, and all but two of the buildings of the previous camp, the Kommandantur (camp headquarters) and the Zellenbau, were destroyed. When the authorities of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) decided to erect a memorial, they dried out a portion of the neighboring lake to create an artificial area on which they erected a statue of one woman carrying another. A rose garden was planted on the site of a mass grave and a wall with sections with names of all the countries from which prisoners had come was erected. An international Ravensbrück committee was established, dominated by loyal Stalinists from the GDR. Yearly meetings of survivors took place and floral offerings were laid at the memorial wall. During all this activity, there were no sites for the commemoration of the Jewish and of the Sinti and Roma victims. Most of the Jewish and of the Sinti and Roma survivors obviously did not identify with any of the countries represented on the wall, and small memorial stones to commemorate these victims were set up only years later. A copy of my mother’s book was locked up in the small Ravensbrück Archive, a forbidden text to be read by special permission only. Memoirs and testimonies, even those assembled by Communists, were suspect and not used for research purposes. The large collection – more than 1000 items – by Erika Buchmann was neither ordered nor used for research; it remained in the East German Ministry of the Interior and reached the Ravensbrück Archive only after the fall of the Wall.5

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12 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück The authorities singled out some Ravensbrück women as proletarian heroines and celebrated them even in GDR school textbooks, ignoring the fact that four of these were killed as Jews in Bernburg. Nobody in the East mentioned the fact that the Western Resistance prisoners had come not only from Communist organizations but also from socialist and nationalist ones, including the Gaullist resistance in France, and that most of the Polish resistance prisoners, who had been by far the largest single national group, had come not from the Communist or Socialist underground, but from the Catholic resistance. The groups of so-called “asocial” and “criminal” German prisoners were completely ignored; only recently has awareness developed of the fact that these groups also included those accused of the “crimes” of lesbianism or abortion. Only years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet regime did research begin on the fate of several groups of prisoners, including the Sinti and Roma, the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Ernste Bibelforscher), who were the major religious anti-Nazi group in Germany, and even the Russian and Ukrainian prisoners as well. The lists of Hungarian Jewish victims, for example, were compiled only recently, and the list of survivors among them is even now being completed. The organization in charge of this was initially called “The Victims of Fascism Committee”.

SPECIAL OBSTACLES TO JEWISH COMMEMORATION

When initiating this research project I noted that, although researches on Jewish prisoners in specific concentration camps all began rather late, none of them concerned those of Ravensbrück. So I asked myself why this chapter of the history of the Holocaust had been particularly neglected. The first answer is obvious: the gender of the Ravensbrück prisoners had made them less important to the mainly male commemorators of the Holocaust. Significantly, the women themselves had not organized as survivors of Ravensbrück, 6 in contrast to the Israeli survivors of most of the larger ghettos and concentration camps, who had all formed their national associations, and even international ones. The emphasis on the gradually-evolving national memory of the Holocaust was based on two points. The first of these is that the commemorations centered on the uniqueness of the Jewish experience. The second is that this uniqueness was expressed in the

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Is True Historical Reconstruction Possible? 13 incarceration of Jews in ghettos and their mass murder, especially in extermination camps. On both counts, Ravensbrück raised questions – as it had been a place of suffering to women from all over Europe, the Jewish women among them constituting a minority. Also, a false assumption was uncritically endorsed that Ravensbrück had been “just a labor camp”. It was a way station for Jewish women (and for all the non-Jewish prisoners who were older and chronically sick, and thus considered not suited for work), first to the “Euthanasia” gas chamber of Bernburg near Dessau, and then over three years to those of Auschwitz. Also, in Ravensbrück itself, between 1 January and 23 April 1945, about 6000 women were murdered in the local gas chamber, and uncounted others were murdered by poison and lethal injections. Ravensbrück and its so-called external labor camps were death camps where somewhat different methods of extermination were used on different groups.7 Two additional elements of the national image of the Holocaust may have contributed to the neglect of this large group of women – the demand for heroism and a common slur on survivors. As to the demand for heroism, in Israel great emphasis had been put on the commemoration of heroism, meaning all instances of active resistance, especially armed resistance, by Jews during the Holocaust. No such instances of heroism were expected of this allfemale group. (Of course, the very concept of heroism is questionable. Courage, such as that involved in efforts to rescue children, was naturally more characteristic of women than of men. Under those terrible circumstances, it was already heroic even to make the simplest effort to maintain one’s humanity, or, as many interviewees have put it, to save one’s human face, to avoid sinking to the level of beasts.) In the course of this research, I learned about another form of heroism from both survivors and written memoirs: in innumerable small groups or “camp families”, Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners developed forms of mutual help, support, and responsibility that should be considered heroic.8 Slurs on survivors also may well have been another cause for the neglect and relatively late start of the research on the history of this large group of female Holocaust survivors. In the early years after the War, all survivors of the Holocaust who came to Israel were regarded with suspicion as possible collaborators. In the case of female survivors, a most unfortunate myth had developed: it was additionally

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14 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück claimed that some Jewish women – especially young and pretty ones – had survived because they had been prostitutes in the brothels of the German forces, and that they had even been tattooed as such. I have never seen any documentary evidence for this claim, which nevertheless entered Israeli consciousness through its literature.9 As Nazi law had criminalized any sexual contact between “Aryans” and Jews, any organized and documented sexual exploitation of Jewish women by Nazi soldiers is most unlikely.10 There certainly existed sexual liaisons between some German SS guards and some Jewish female prisoners in Auschwitz, and also in some labor camps. Such liaisons could improve the position of prisoners, at least temporarily. Some of these prisoners may have survived over two years in Auschwitz, and some were appointed as Stubenälteste (room leader), Blockälteste (block leader), or even Lagerälteste (camp leader) in some small labor camps. Although the other Jewish women prisoners judged such behavior negatively, in none of the testimonies and interviews did Auschwitz and Ravensbrück survivors describe any behavior by which these young women had caused serious damage to other Jewish prisoners.11 In the course of the research, I started to suspect an additional cause for the Israeli neglect of Ravensbrück. It became clear to me that a relatively large group of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners, about 2000 women, girls, and children, were rescued during the last days of the War by the Swedish Red Cross, in the so-called Bernadotte-Aktion. At least six groups of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück reached Sweden – two large groups left the camp itself, the first in the so-called “white buses”, the second in a special train, together with thousands of Polish non-Jewish prisoners; a third came from the Ravensbrück labor camp Malchow (450 women), while a fourth group reached Sweden after survivors of a death train from Beendorf and Ravensbrück had been diverted to Hamburg. A fifth, smaller group, composed of about 30 Belgian Jewish women and children with Turkish papers, had been brought to Sweden after having already been “released”from Ravensbrück on 28 February 1945.A sixth group of Jewish Ravensbrück mothers and children, survivors of a transport to Bergen-Belsen of 30 January 1945, and of a large transport to Bergen-Belsen some time in March 1945, were evacuated from there to Sweden by the Swedish Red Cross for medical treatment, after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the Western Allies on 15 April 1945.

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Is True Historical Reconstruction Possible? 15 Research into the fate of Jewish Ravensbrück victims and survivors, I conjecture, was complicated by the fact that Count Folke Bernadotte, the head of the Swedish Red Cross, was the main initiator of this major rescue operation.12 His evacuation activities started with Scandinavian – Danish and Norwegian – concentration camp prisoners; he then obtained Himmler’s permission to evacuate Western camp prisoners – French, Belgian, and Dutch – before at last obtaining his agreement to the evacuation of “prisoners of all nations”.13 Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem on 17 September 1948, by a member of the Stern group, while he was serving as representative of the United Nations to Israel and advocating the internationalization of Jerusalem. All the Ravensbrück survivors in Israel who had been evacuated to Sweden and were later interviewed by us reported that they considered Bernadotte their savior and a hero. Some of them related that they had met him in person. Israel, however, did not officially recognize Bernadotte until recently as a “righteous of the nations”. The survivors received a memoir written by Norbert Masur, a representative of the Jewish Congress in Sweden, who courageously flew to Germany to plead with Himmler for the release of Jewish prisoners.14 As late as 1998, the Israeli Ministry of Defense published the biography of Joshua Cohen,15 the assassin of Bernadotte who, in later years, had become the bodyguard and a close friend of ex-prime minister Ben Gurion. In it, Bernadotte’s major contribution to the saving of Jewish lives was denied outright. Only recently has Yad Vashem in Jerusalem included one of the “white buses” of the Bernadotte-Aktion among its exhibits. To conclude, the official authorities during GDR times had both anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist reasons for their especially long drawnout neglect of the commemoration and study of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. There were male-supremacist and apparently also narrow-minded nationalistic elements responsible for the Jewish/ Israeli neglect.

MEMOIRS AND HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Notwithstanding all the obstacles, much spontaneous, unauthorized activity took place in the 50 years between 1945 and 1995 that commemorates the fate of the women, girls, and children who had lived and suffered in this camp, and of whom it had been estimated that at

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16 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück least half had perished during the War or immediately after. In the first five years alone, there had been about 50 publications by past prisoners of Ravensbrück, mainly memoirs, but also poems and drawings. Among them, the most comprehensive description was that by my mother. Although autobiographical, it depicted the fate of a great many fellow prisoners belonging to a variety of national groups and categories. Two studies, aimed at a systematic, accurate, and comprehensive account of the history of the camp, were published by ex-prisoners – one by the Polish historian Wanda Kiedrzyńska16 and the other by the French ethnographer Germaine Tillion.17 Both were completed later and translated much later. Later on, the Polish survivor Ursula Wińska published a survey of the answers to a questionnaire, directed mainly at her Catholic fellow resistance comrades, on their experiences in Ravensbrück.18 So much for the systematic studies by survivors. In the decades to come, many more individual memoirs were written, and testimonies and interviews recorded. The exception to all these efforts by survivors was the first study, in 1970, by a historian who was not a survivor, Ino Arndt.19 In spite of this remarkable literary, artistic, and research activity of individual Ravensbrück women, no comprehensive image of Ravensbrück evolved, as most of the memoirs published appeared only in the national language of the survivor. The images of several categories and national groups were either missing or left out intentionally. The memory of the Jewish prisoners as a group had been completely neglected. The one remarkable exception was the unpublished Diplomarbeit by Kristina Schlaefer and Frank Schröder about the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück until the end of 1942.20 Sigrid Jacobeit and Grit Philipp have since written the early historiography of Ravensbrück.21 Since 1995,an intensive research activity has developed.

NOTES 1. The highest prisoner number remembered by a Jewish survivor who arrived in the third week of April 1945 was 109, 954. There may have been more arrivals as sometimes the prisoner numbers of the dead were reassigned. 2. See Bernhard Strebel, “Das Männerlager im KZ Ravensbrück 1941–1945”, in Dachauer Hefte 14, 1998, pp. 141–174, and his Das KZ: Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes. Mit einem Geleitwort von Germaine Tillon, Paderborn, 2005.

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Is True Historical Reconstruction Possible? 17 3. Handwritten remarks on the arrival lists of Jewish women and children who had come from the Netherlands and Belgium indicate that many were “released” on 30 January 1945. Testimonies of survivors report that they were then transferred to Bergen-Belsen. The Kalendarium (Grit Philipp, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 1939–1945, Berlin, 1999) lists transports to Bergen-Belsen on 3 February 1945, 27 February 1945, and 26 March 1945. In addition, there was a large transport to Mauthausen on 26 February 1945. 4. Wanda Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, kobiecy obóz koncentracyjny, Warsaw, 1961 (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive), pp. 7–9. 5. Loretta Walz, Erinnern an Ravensbrück, Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, 1998, Vorwort: Dr. Sigrid Jacobeit, p. 6. 6. Some Ravensbrück survivors had joined organizations of survivors of a ghetto or of another camp or of a camp-workplace (e.g. the Union ammunition works in Auschwitz). 7. The fate of Italian and French Ravensbrück prisoners has been meticulously researched. The fate of many Hungarian and Polish groups remains unknown. I compared the death rates of Jewish and non-Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners of Italian origin and found that the death rate of the Jewish ones was 60% and that of the non-Jewish ones 17%. I surmise that in all national groups, the death rate of the Jews was likewise considerably higher. 8. See chapter 10, sections on “camp families” and “heroism”. 9. See, for example, Y. Noded, “My Sister on the Shore”, in Sefer Hapalmach, ed. Z. Gil’ad and M. Meged, Vol. 1, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1956, p. 725; Yoram Kanyuk, Exodus: Commander’s Odyssey, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999, p. 136. Both books are in Hebrew. 10. In Ravensbrück, a large number of prisoners were recruited for the brothels of other concentration camps in Germany; the women who were recruited with false promises of subsequent release from the camp were all non-Jewish “asocials”, former prostitutes. (Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949, p. 228.) 11. In an oral communication, non-documented and with no names mentioned, an Israeli survivor related the following incident: a young Jewish woman who had arrived in Auschwitz from Slovakia as early as 1942 and had become the companion of an SS man, succeeded with his help in saving her sister, who arrived in 1944, from the gas chamber, but found him too late to save her sister’s children. 12. Folke Bernadotte, The Curtain Falls: The Last Days of the Third Reich, New York, 1945; Folke Bernadotte, Instead of Arms: Autobiographical Notes, Stockholm and New York, 1948. 13. See next note; see also chapter 8, notes 154–157 for the part played by the representatives of the Jewish World Congress in Sweden; for the role of the Danish Red Cross see the chapter on the Bernadotte-Aktion by Sabine Kittel in A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück, ed. Irith Dublon-Knebel, forthcoming. 14. Norbert Masur, En Jude talar med Himmler, Stockholm, 1945 (published in Hebrew, 1985). 15. Yaïr Sheleg, Desert Wind (biography of Joshua Cohen), Ministry of Defense (in Hebrew), 1998, pp. 87–98. 16. See Kiedrzyn´ska, Ravensbrück.

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18 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 17. Germaine Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, mit einem Anhang “Die Massentötungen durch Gas in Ravensbrück” by Anise Postel-Vinay. Lüneburg, 1998 (published in French, 1973). 18. Ursula Wińska, Zwiciężyły wartosci: Wspomneinea z Ravensbrück. Wyd 1. Gdansk, 1985. A German translation exists in the Ravensbrück Archive as “Die Werte siegten”. 19. Ino Arndt, “Das Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück”. Studien zur Geschichte der Konzentrationslager, Schriftenreihe der Viertelsjahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Nr. 21, Stuttgart, 1970, pp. 93–120. 20. Jüdische Häftlinge im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück (1937/39–1942), Humboldt-Universität, 1987. 21. Sigrid Jacobeit and Grit Philipp (eds.), Forschungsschwerpunkt Ravensbrück: Beiträge zur Geschichte des Frauenkonzentrationslagers, Berlin, 1997. For the development of research since then, see Judith Buber Agassi, “Der Beitrag von Sigrid Jacobeit zur Erforschung der Geschichte des Frauen-Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrück”, in Der Nationalsozialismus im Spiegel des öffentlichen Gedächtnisses, ed. Petra Fank and Stefan Hördler, Berlin, 2005.

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3 JEWISH PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK: WHO WERE THEY?

SIX YEARS OF RAVENSBRÜCK

Ravensbrück existed from the spring of 1939 to the end of April 1945. In it were incarcerated very heterogeneous prisoner populations. In its early stages, German prisoners labeled “criminal” or “asocial” were as numerous as those arrested as political or religious opponents of the Nazi regime, or for racial reasons. Of those persecuted because of their race, nearly all were Jewish women or Sinti and Roma (“gypsies”). In the early days, many of the Jewish women were accused of the crime of Rassenschande (racial disgrace); the Sinti and Roma were usually classified as “asocial” or “work-shy”. Whereas before September 1939 all the prisoners had come from Germany, Austria, and the annexed part of Czechoslovakia, with the outbreak of the War and the conquest and subjugation of much of Europe, Ravensbrück held as prisoners women from all the occupied countries of Europe who had been active in the various resistance movements, as well as thousands of Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian civilians, and even Soviet prisoners of war, most of them classified as “political”. Soon, nearly all the Jewish prisoners were automatically classified as political.1 German, Austrian, and volksdeutsche prisoners continued to be classified as political, Jehovah’s Witnesses, asocial, or criminal. A new cause of arrest category then appeared: “contact or relations with foreigners” for Germans, and “contact with Aryans” for others.

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20 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück WHO WAS A RAVENSBRÜCK PRISONER?

How many Jewish prisoners were incarcerated in the camp? I soon realized that even the definition “Jewish prisoner of Ravensbrück” is problematic. There was hardly a Jewish woman or girl for whom Ravensbrück was the only place of imprisonment. Many spent much more time in internment camps, closed ghettos, or other concentration or labor camps than in the SS Women’s Concentration Camp Ravensbrück. Whereas among early Jewish prisoners many were incarcerated in Ravensbrück for one to two, and some for even three years, before dying or being killed, most of those arriving in 1942 spent only a few months in Ravensbrück and some as little as a few weeks or even a few days before being sent to Auschwitz to their deaths. Most of those arriving in 1943 and in the first seven months of 1944 spent between a year and eighteen months in Ravensbrück. Most of the thousands of prisoners arriving in the period starting in August 1944 were sent, after a relatively short period, to an external labor camp of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, or Ravensbrück. Most of the thousands who arrived in 1945, especially with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, spent less than one month in Ravensbrück before being sent to one of the two larger external camps of Ravensbrück itself – Malchow and Neustadt-Glewe. Nevertheless, all the survivors we questioned had some memory of Ravensbrück, usually an extremely negative one. Several times we met the surprising statement “Ravensbrück was the worst camp I ever was in – it was worse than Auschwitz.” I decided to include in this study all those who were ever incarcerated in Ravensbrück, even if only for a short period.

WHO SHOULD BE CONSIDERED JEWISH?

The Nazi definition of Jews was purely “racial”,2 disregarding the person’s own definition of identity, whether religious, cultural, social, or national.3 Formally, the laws dealing with the Jewish population of Nazi Germany and the areas under its control defined Jews as “full Jews” (Volljuden), “half Jews” (Halbjuden or Juden ersten Grades), “quarter Jews” (Juden zweiten Grades), or Judenmischlinge, that is, mixed Jews, or simply as Mischlinge. Whereas the Gestapo sending the Jews of Germany and Austria to concentration camps still kept account of

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 21 this differentiation, it became less and less prevalent among the thousands of Jewish women, girls, and children from Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland sent to Ravensbrück during the last year of the camp. Obviously, in those countries, the Nazi authorities did not have the same detailed bureaucratic information that they made use of in Germany, Austria, and even the Netherlands.4 I decided to include in our study of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück all those declared in the arrival lists – to repeat,unfortunately,about half the original arrival lists of Ravensbrück are lost – to be Jewish or part Jewish.I assume that wherever the classification “Jewish”or any form of“part Jewish”appears on any SS or Gestapo document,this classification played a role in the likelihood of the person being arrested and incarcerated in Ravensbrück, and most likely also in her conditions of imprisonment,selection for a labor camp,or for being gassed – and thus in her ultimate fate. I shall later describe in some detail other kinds of camp documents. Several – the transfer lists from Ravensbrück to an external labor camp, the medical examination cards, and parts of the four different death lists that were preserved – all list the “racial category”. They thus help us identify hundreds of Jewish prisoners named on lost arrival lists. Another important source for the identification of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück is the Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, where, to the best of my knowledge, only people declaring themselves to be Jewish registered. Very few non-Jews are registered there, and quite a number of Jewish Holocaust survivors living in the USA did not register. Through friends and relations, I have received information about many of these. The Registry administrators graciously supplied us with the names of about 1200 persons in the United States and Canada who reported that they had been incarcerated in Ravensbrück. As already mentioned, in our efforts to locate Ravensbrück survivors in Israel, we found about 700 persons who had been in Israel at some point and obviously declared themselves Jewish. A smaller number of Ravensbrück survivors have also been located in Europe, Australia, and South Africa. In the case of survivors, most of whom do not remember their Ravensbrück prisoner number or the exact date of their arrival in Ravensbrück, I first tried to locate their war names on existing documents and, when found, registered their survival and their location after liberation. If not found, I tried to place their names, with all relevant data, in the general list of names at the most likely date of arrival in Ravensbrück.

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22 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Several national groups of Ravensbrück survivors have made efforts to reconstruct the lists of women deported from their countries to Ravensbrück, or at least to draw up a list of all those who perished and did not return to their country of origin after the War. Most of the French arrival lists from April 1943 to January 1945 had been lost. Recently, the French Ravensbrück Committee completed a meticulous effort to reconstruct these missing lists, adding much information about the prisoners’ fate. These transports were mainly of political prisoners, members of the resistance movements. The French researchers decided not to include any of the Nazi classifications, neither the official reason for arrest, nor any racial classification. They retained the nationality – French, other, or unknown – as well as the, for them positive, even honorific label of “NN”, meaning belonging to the special kind of deportees: Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) resistance fighters, who were sent by the Nazi authorities to German concentration camps,without any information being given to their families about their whereabouts. Most of the Jews of France were deported as Jews, straight to a Polish concentration camp, mainly to Auschwitz. On most of these lists of the 53 French transports to Ravensbrück between 29 April 1943 and 24 January 1945, there appear some names that are obviously Jewish. Due to the generous personal help of Anise PostelVinay, I was able to add 145 names to my list of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners from France. An added, partly burnt document that Serge Klarsfeld found accidentally in New York testifies to a large transport of French Jewish families from Toulouse.5 They reached Ravensbrück, as Anise Postel-Vinay reports, on 6 August 1944. Recently, the committee of survivors living in Hungary made an attempt to compile a complete list of all Hungarian Ravensbrück prisoners who perished, without any indication of whether the person was Jewish or not. Among all the extant arrival lists from Hungary, only one includes non-Jewish women. Out of the 1035 prisoners arriving from Gomarom (Komarom) and Budapest on 18–20 November 1944, 28.1% were “Hungarian gypsies”, 6.38% were “Hungarians”, and all the rest, 65.41%, were classified as “Hungarian Jewesses”. We know that at least the list of one large transport from Budapest that arrived on or about 1 December and another, very large one that arrived on 11 December 1944, are lost.6 We can assume that the overwhelming majority of all the women and girls arriving in Ravensbrück from Hungary, either directly or via Auschwitz, were Jewish. During the 40 years of the Communist regime in Hungary, the

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 23 victims and survivors of all Nazi German concentration camps had been labeled “anti-Fascist” or “Victims of Nazism”, their having been persecuted as Jews not being mentioned. Apparently, this mindset persisted even later. Only recently has it been possible to obtain a list of Hungarian victims of Ravensbrück, as well as partial lists of Jewish survivors of Ravensbrück who returned to Hungary after the War.7 During 1944 and January 1945, several family transports of Jewish women and children from the Slovak camps of Sered and Prešov arrived in Ravensbrück. The lists of at least four of them were lost and had to be reconstructed from death lists and testimonies of survivors. Apparently they were all (or almost all) Jewish. (An exception was a “Christian” woman, married to a Jew, who was sent with her children to Ravensbrück.) In Italy, the deportation of Jews started in December 1943. Many of the Ravensbrück arrival lists containing prisoners from Italy are lost. Giovanna Massariello Merzagora, the president of the Italian Ravensbrück Committee, has recently prepared a list of all persons known to her as having been deported from Italy to Ravensbrück.8 As in the case of the French and Hungarians, the Italian committee did not specify the national/racial group. Comparing this list of all Italian deportees to Ravensbrück with the excellent, detailed list by Liliana Picciotto of all Jewish-Italian deportees between 1943 and 1945 to Nazi concentration camps permitted the addition of well over a hundred names of Italian Jewish women and children (and a few Jewish men apparently not sent to the small men’s camp) to the small group previously known to us from existing camp documents, some of them only recently found.9 About half of the Jewish arrivals to Ravensbrück came via Auschwitz. Some of the arrival lists from Auschwitz are lost, and so we cannot be sure how many of these arrivals were Jewish and from where they had originally come.Although since September 1943, most Jewish arrivals – including those from Auschwitz – had arrived in all-Jewish transports, in mid-December 1944 a large multinational transport arrived, and although its arrival list was lost,it was apparently mixed Jewish and nonJewish. The same is true of the many thousands of arrivals with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. About 60% of the women listed on the only arrival list of this Todesmarsch that is preserved were Jewish. We therefore cannot report accurately on the number of Jewish women, girls, and children who arrived with this Todesmarsch, much less of all who ever arrived in Ravensbrück. Even our estimates of their numbers are

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24 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück questionable: we have a list of 16,331 names, but since there are so many gaps in our information, there may well have been 20,000.

GENDER QUESTIONS

As a historian and a sociologist of gender, I have a special interest in the research of the social aspects of women’s life during the Holocaust, of the social structure and networks among the Jewish women prisoners – kinship, friendship, and “camp-family” relations, and relations among Jewish groups from different countries of origin – as well as with different groups of non-Jewish women prisoners. Although I am aware of the fact that I cannot possibly compare exactly the conditions and the reactions of Jewish male and female Holocaust victims and survivors, I shall try to answer the following questions. Did women prisoners, especially Jewish women prisoners, and particularly in Ravensbrück, have problems different from those of male prisoners? Are there special forms of women’s resistance to concentration-camp oppression, humiliation, starvation, and constant threat of death? How did the Jewish women prisoners compare to the other women prisoners? Were there significant differences in the treatment of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück from that of the others, and how did it change over the six years? Is it correct to speak here of a hierarchy, with Jewish women at the bottom?10 Did many of these women resist the danger of “losing their human face”? Were they conscious of this danger? What determined survivors’ resettlement decisions, and how successful were their absorption and reintegration into normal society? All this should help find significant differences and similarities between the conditions of Jewish women and men, their chances of survival, their strategies of survival and resistance, the impact of the trauma of the Holocaust experience on the survivors, and their strategies for the reconstruction of their lives. A precondition to answering these questions is to discover as much as we can about the identities of as many of the perhaps twenty thousand Jewish women, girls, and children who ever entered Ravensbrück as possible. What were their names, age, and marital status? Where did they come from? When did they arrive in Ravensbrück and with whom? What happened to them in Ravensbrück? Were they sent to another camp or AKDO (external

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 25 labor camp) and what happened to them there? Did they survive or perish? When, where, and how did the victims die? Where and how were the survivors liberated, where did they go at liberation, and where did they settle afterwards?

THE PERCENTAGE OF JEWISH PRISONERS

From the beginning of our research, we were aware of the fact that Jewish women, girls, and children constituted a minority of the general Ravensbrück prisoner population. During the first period, until spring 1942, the SS kept daily registrations (Stärkemeldungen or Stärkelisten) of all prisoners present, divided into different categories, five of them of Jewish women. For the period 17 April 1939 to 8 January 1942, some 78 Stärkemeldungen have been preserved.11 The few records of spring 1942 are unclear and contradictory, presumably because the SS recorders did not know how to register the mass murders at Bernburg. On the basis of these Stärkemeldungen, it is possible to estimate the percentage of Jewish women among the prisoner population on different dates of the first period. These documents, however, do not indicate how many prisoners were released, how many were transferred to police prisons for interrogation, how many of those were brought back, and how many died during this period. According to these records, the percentage of Jewish prisoners was 14.21% on 17 April 1939 and declined to 9.50% on 8 January 1942, although their absolute number quadrupled. From then on, it is impossible to calculate with any degree of accuracy the Jewish prisoners as a percentage of the population of all prisoners present in the camp at significant intervals during the remaining three years and four months of the camp’s existence. The only meaningful calculation of the percentage of the Jewish prisoners is that of known Jewish arrivals identified, out of the population of all arrivals assigned a prisoner number during a certain period. This calculation obviously undervalues the number of Jewish arrivals, as many of their names appeared on arrival lists that are lost, and could not be identified from other documents or from the registration of survivors. Recent and ongoing research has increased the number of identified Ravensbrück prisoners in many different groups. Yet we do not have overall numbers of all identified non-Jewish prisoners.12

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26 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Table 3.1 shows the numbers and percentages of identified Jewish arrivals out of the population of all prisoner numbers assigned during the five periods. Table 3.1 Arrival period

Prisoner numbers assigned

I 9,000 II 7,519 III 30,398 IV 48,644 V 14,000 Arrival period unknown All 110,000

Identified Jewish arrivals

Jewish arrivals as approximate % of prisoner numbers assigned

711 554 660 10,583 3,311 512

7.9 7.37 2.17 21.76 23.65

16,331

14.8

Thus large differences were found between the five periods in the number of arriving Jews as a percentage of all arriving prisoners. In the second and third periods, between March 1943 and the end of July 1944, after all remaining Jewish prisoners had been sent to Auschwitz, hardly any new ones arrived during the first six months from March to September 1943. The exceptions were several Jewish women who arrived with the transport of prisoners of the Red Army, hiding their Jewish identity, and about three Jewish women who arrived with transports of French prisoners of the Résistance.13 Thus, during the third period, there were only 660 Jewish arrivals that we know about – nearly all belonging to special groups. Those who arrived between September 1943 and the end of July 1944 made up only 2.17% of the 30,398 prisoner numbers that were assigned during this period. By contrast, at the beginning of the fourth period, the percentage of arriving Jewish prisoners rose steeply. For the month of August 1944, the first month of the fourth period, at a time when arrival lists with hundreds of Jewish names were lost, I nevertheless found the names of as many as 1644 Jewish arrivals; they were 12.9% of all

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 27 numbers assigned that month. During September and October 1944, the proportion of Jewish arrivals was smaller. Yet for November 1944, I found the names of 6009 Jewish arrivals, which constituted 65.3% of the numbers assigned during this month! From the beginning of December 1944, the gaps between extant arrival lists begin to grow and we have to rely mainly on transfer lists and other documentary and survivor evidence. From about midJanuary to March 1945, about 9000 survivors of the Todesmarsch of Auschwitz arrived in Ravensbrück. Only the list of one transport is preserved.14 From this list, from a large transfer list,15 and from the evidence of hundreds of survivors, it appears that Jewish women and girls constituted about 60% or more of the survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch who reached Ravensbrück. The 3311 identified Jewish arrivals of the fifth period constitute 23.65% of the approximately 14,000 numbers assigned. It becomes obvious that one of the most significant characteristics of the history of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück is the enormous variance between different periods.

THE SOURCES

Let me describe the major documentary and other sources of information used to answer the basic questions concerning identity and date of arrival. I will divide them into wartime documentary, postwar documentary, and non-documentary sources. For this purpose, the most important wartime documents are the official camp arrival lists (usually called Zugangslisten, yet some of them were called Überstellungslisten or Transportlisten). Although in April 1945, the SS tried to burn all the camp registration documents, a group of Polish political prisoners succeeded in stealing copies of many of the arrival lists from the Massar sewing workshop,16 dividing them into 70 small parcels, and assigning 70 reliable women to hide them under their dresses and to take them out of the camp on the evacuation train to Sweden. The majority succeeded, and on arrival in Sweden, deposited their documents with the Polish Institute for Sources in the southern Swedish university town of Lund. Some of the assigned women were not evacuated on the train, but became part of the cruel evacuation march from Ravensbrück two days later. Several of those who survived later deposited their parcels with the National

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28 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Archive in Warsaw. As a result, about half the arrival lists were preserved then.17 A smaller number of lists and partial arrival lists were found later – some among the remains of the camp – including that of 759 additional Jewish arrivals from Auschwitz on 3 November and a Jewish transport from Slovakia six days later. Nearly all of these are now listed in the Ravensbrück Kalendarium and available in the Ravensbrück Archive.18 Of the 1486 arrival lists in the Ravensbrück Kalendarium, 306 include at least one Jewish name. However, several arrival lists containing Jewish names are not listed in the Kalendarium at all, or the fact that a list includes any Jewish names is not indicated. Twenty-six arrival lists containing only – or primarily – Jewish names are known. One incomplete wartime transport list dated 7 August 1944 from Toulouse to Ravensbrück, and containing the names of 78 Jewish women and children was accidentally discovered in the USA.19 All arrival lists contain the date of arrival of a transport in Ravensbrück, the family names of the arriving prisoners, the “maiden”names of married women, their first name or names, date of birth, Ravensbrück prisoner number, formal cause for arrest, citizenship/nationality, and racial category, that is, Jew or gypsy (today Sinti and Roma); from 1943 onwards, they usually also contain place of origin. A second important documentary source is the transfer lists (Überstellungslisten). Most of these, documenting transfers from Ravensbrück to external labor camps of Buchenwald and Flossenbürg (but not those of Sachsenhausen), were found there after the War. Apparently for each such transfer, two or three lists were made – the first included both the Ravensbrück prisoner numbers and the numbers assigned at the new camp. Thus, both the names of women whose arrival lists had been lost, and their approximate dates of arrival, could be discovered. Yet, on transfer lists from Ravensbrück compiled some time after arrival in the labor camp by the central Buchenwald or Flossenbürg authorities, the Ravensbrück number was usually no longer registered. Thus, if the names also appeared on an existing arrival list, we could add the fact of the transfer to a labor camp to the approximate date of transfer; yet if the name was new, this kind of transfer list would give us neither the accurate date of arrival to Ravensbrück nor the length of the stay there. Ten transfer lists (two of them small) from Ravensbrück to an external labor camp containing new names have been found. We also

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 29 know of two sizable transfer lists from a labor camp to Ravensbrück. The first important list, from Frankfurt/Walldorf, permits the inclusion of the second largest number of Jewish prisoner names on a single transport list.20 The second list – of 66 Polish Jewish women from Gundelsdorf – is dated 6 February 1945.21 Another important document, which yields the names of 82 Jewish arrivals in the first months of the camp not on any extant arrival list, is the Kennkartenliste. On 13 July 1939, any Jewish prisoner present with no special Jewish Kennkarte (identity card) had to buy one. Less than one-third of the pages of the official Ravensbrück arrival list of the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport were found, containing 552 names. Since they are hand-marked “Auschwitz”, this large group, which had been sent from Auschwitz to Frankfurt/Walldorf in August 1944, had not been identified at all as listing some of the 1660 Jewish arrivals from a small, harsh, forgotten labor camp hidden in the Frankfurt/Main city forest, next to a military airport. Another kind of camp document was the Revierkarten (medical examination cards).22 A large number of these registration cards of Jewish arrivals in the summer of 1944 are preserved. Although hardly anything can be learned from them about the medical condition of the prisoners, they are important for the listing of arriving prisoners as they register not only names but also dates of medical exams and – most important – Ravensbrück prisoner numbers assigned. Thus, we have the exact dates of the arrival of prisoners whose names appear only on transfer lists, as well as names of arrivals that do not appear on any other document. Other extremely informative wartime sources are the death registrations in the civil registries of Ravensbrück and of the nearby small town of Fürstenberg, where the deaths of Ravensbrück prisoners were registered until mid-1942.23 They yielded hundreds of names of Jewish women prisoners whose arrival lists in 1940, 1941, and January 1942 are lost. Another very informative wartime source that became available only 50 years after the end of the War are the two Auschwitz Sterbebücher (Auschwitz Death Books) that include the names of 338 Jewish prisoners from Ravensbrück who died in Auschwitz before the end of June 1943.24 Of these, 18 are new names of arrivals before February 1942; for the other 320 women, the Sterbebücher supplied the information that they were sent to Auschwitz and the dates of their deaths there.

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30 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück There are four Ravensbrück death lists that serve as very informative sources.25 Three of them, the Uckermark lists A and B and the Mittwerda list, are very partial registrations of Ravensbrück prisoners killed in the camp’s own gas chamber during the last months of the camp’s existence. The fourth, the Czechoslovakian death list, was started by prisoners during the War and completed afterwards. These four lists contain 440 Jewish names, 251 of which do not appear on any extant arrival list. Twenty-two names of Jewish mothers – five of them new names – and of the babies born to them in Ravensbrück, were found in the Book of Births (Geburtenbuch). The deaths of 11 of the babies are also registered there. Other wartime documents are important, although they do not yield new names; they contain much information about the arrest and persecution of Jewish women who were sent to Ravensbrück during the first years of its existence. These are German police documents concerning five prisoners,26 and two collections of documents published by relatives after the War.27 An important wartime SS document is the so-called “Korherr Report” of 23 March 1943.28 Although the British Secret Service had intercepted this statistical report of the partial realization of the “Final Solution” at the time of its submission to Himmler, and it had been deposited as one of the documents in the Nuremberg Trial, discussions about it by researchers started only decades later. In it, the Nazi statistician Richard Korherr listed the numbers of all the Jewish arrivals to 16 concentration camps, among them Ravensbrück, as well as those “released”, those who died, and those still there on 31 December 1942. Important postwar documents include 29 reconstituted transport lists from France,29 six from Italy, and five from Slovakia, all to Ravensbrück. They were reconstituted by Ravensbrück survivors in the three countries, and yielded 366 new Jewish names, their approximate dates of arrival, and, for most, their fate. Other postwar sources include the results of the search for relatives organized by the International Red Cross at Arolsen; results of the search by several Jewish communities for the fate of their members; the search for the fate of local citizens by archives such as the Staatsarchiv of Berlin and that of Nürnberg and the Archiv Jüdisches Museum Prag, as well as lists compiled by the Jewish Agency and by Yad Vashem.30

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 31 An important contribution to the search for the names and fate of Jewish prisoners was made by local researcher Karl Heinz Schütt in respect to the hundreds of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück’s external camp Neustadt-Glewe.31 Similarly, Ravensbrück survivors were found and their memories recorded by local researchers of the labor camp Wittenberg,32 and Frankfurt/Walldorf (an external camp of Natzweiler).33 Now to information supplied by survivors after the War. There are the testimonies provided by survivors (Jewish and non-Jewish) in the course of the legal actions against Ravensbrück SS commandants, guards, and physicians. Although the major trials of Ravensbrück SS personnel took place in Hamburg in 1946–48 and in Rastatt in 1946, there were police inquiries concerning camp personnel as late as the 1970s. In the Yad Vashem archives of police documents, there are nearly 100 testimonies by Jewish Ravensbrück survivors; the names of about half of these do not appear on any wartime documents. As regards the registration of entire groups of survivors, an important list was that of the Jewish camp survivors who reached Sweden in 1945 that was compiled and published by the Jewish community of Stockholm.34 This important registration, which listed date and place of birth, unfortunately did not list the camp from which the survivors were evacuated. Yet in the voluminous correspondence by many of the survivors with offices of the Jewish community of Stockholm during the first postwar years,35 their camp or camps were mentioned; thus a considerable number of new names and their data could be added. The most important systematic registry of Holocaust survivors was started in the United States as late as the 1980s. Due to the fact that these survivors were requested to register all the camps they had been imprisoned in, the Registry of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Washington, DC supplies the important information of survival and place of settlement, and names of hundreds of Ravensbrück prisoners not known from any other document. Now to questionnaires and interviews. Two important groups of early interviews with former Ravensbrück prisoners were those done by the Polish Institute of Sources in Lund36 in 1945 and early 1946,37 and those done in Belgium in 1956.38 In the last years of the twentieth century a systematic distribution of questionnaires and of the interviewing of Jewish Ravensbrück survivors was started by the Israeli research team.39 The largest number of interviews took place with

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32 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Israeli survivors, but interviews carried out mainly by members of the German research team took place also in Germany, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, and the United States. Due to the distribution of questionnaires to a large number of US survivors, facilitated by the Washington Registry, and in the subsequent correspondence with many of them, 30 survivors (or their relatives) graciously answered my questions concerning their own period of imprisonment in Ravensbrück and in labor camps after it, as well as about the fate of fellow prisoners. For the purpose of the clarification of dates and circumstances of certain events, I undertook dozens of telephone interviews, and other forms of correspondence, especially with Israeli survivors who previously had answered our questionnaire, but also with additional US, Canadian, Australian, and Hungarian survivors. The 28 full-length memoirs and 101 published short memoirs by Jewish Ravensbrück survivors are extremely valuable sources of information. There are also six full-length and several short memoirs by non-Jewish Ravensbrück survivors that I found to contain valuable information concerning the names, numbers, and fate of Jewish prisoners. Finally, there are nine significant studies pertaining to the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. With the help of all these sources, the names of 16,331 Jewish women, girls, and children (and a few men), who at any time were prisoners of the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück,could be listed, and for most, also citizenship/nationality, date of birth, and official reason for arrest. For a considerable number of them, marital status, occupations, and itinerary before and after Ravensbrück were also listed. For 42.8%, it could be ascertained whether they survived or died during the War, or soon after liberation. Where death was ascertained, I tried also to register information concerning the date, place, and circumstances.Where survival was ascertained,I tried to register information about circumstances of liberation and country of settlement.40

PERIODIZATION

We have just seen that Jewish prisoners as a percentage of all new arrivals varied enormously over the six years of the existence of the camp. There was also hardly any continuity between the Jewish prisoner population of 1939 to February 1942 and that of the remainder of the year 1942. Neither was there any continuity between

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 33 the Jewish prisoners of the year 1942 and those of the following year. After a gap of five months, late in September 1943, a new Jewish prisoner population started. I decided to divide the entire six years into five main periods on the basis of this extreme discontinuity. The periods are: period I – from the beginning of the camp to the end of January 1942; period II – from February 1942 until the end of March 1943; period III – from the end of March 1943 to the end of July 1944; period IV – from August 1944 until the end of 1944; period V – the four first months of 1945. I chose August 1944 as the beginning of the fourth period since at that time Ravensbrück started to become a central concentration camp for Jewish women. In 1945, the last stage of the camp, thousands of Jewish women arrived from Auschwitz and other disbanded camps. It may well be that, for the purpose of writing the history of other groups of prisoners, division into different kinds of periods is useful.41 Let me then describe briefly the division into periods that I consider most appropriate and useful for writing the history of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück: Period I During this period, most of the Jewish prisoners lived together in one large block. Some of them spent nearly three years in Ravensbrück. We can reconstruct the identity of 304 of the missing names of Jewish women who arrived during those over 12 months (of 1940, 1941, and January 1942) for which hardly any arrival lists have been preserved. This reconstruction is possible due to the registration of their deaths in the Ravensbrück or Fürstenberg registries, in Jewish cemeteries in Germany and Austria, in the Auschwitz death books for 1942 and 1943,42 and in several archives.43 We do not know the exact dates of the arrival in Ravensbrück of those known only through the registrations of their deaths. From all these sources, the names of 711 Jewish women prisoners of the first period are now known to us, although there is evidence that there were considerably more.44 Period II From February 1942 to March 1943 all (or nearly all) the arrival lists, with 554 Jewish names, are preserved.

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34 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück During this period there still was a Judenblock. The period is characterized by mass murder of mainly, but not only, Jews. The purpose of the killing of chronically sick concentration camp prisoners was to relieve the serious overcrowding in the camps. At the same time, the killing of the Jewish concentration camp prisoners served as a kind of pilot test for the mass killing by poison gas of the Jews of Europe. First, in February and March 1942, nearly the entire Jewish population of the first period was killed in the “Euthanasia” gas chamber at the hospital for the mentally ill (Heil- und Pflegeanstalt) of Bernburg, near Dessau in East Germany.45 Later, on 5 October 1942, 522 Jewish prisoners were sent to the then-new extermination camp of Auschwitz. On 30 January 1943, 12 of the 16 Jewish women who had arrived since October 1942 were also deported to Auschwitz. The names of 10 of these appear in the Auschwitz Sterbebuch for 1943. Only nine women who were in Ravensbrück during the first period are known to have survived the War, and only four of the second period.46 Death notices for between 392 and 437 Jewish women (and many Jewish men) prisoners of Ravensbrück point to their having been killed in Bernburg.47 There are 22 death notices in the Auschwitz Sterbebuch for arrivals of the first period. There are 365 such death notices of arrivals of the second period. Together they make 387 Auschwitz death notices for Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners between October 1942 and June 1943. There are 43 death notices in Ravensbrück itself before February 1943. There exist unofficial death notices of 56 Ravensbrück Jewish women with no mention of place of death. Thus, we have altogether 997 death notices for the 1225 names known to us for the first two periods. As we know about only 13 women that survived, and about 2 that may have survived, information about the fate of 255 Jewish prisoners of the first and the second periods is missing. As we have evidence that 522 women were sent to Auschwitz on 5 October 1942,48 and 12 more in February 1943, with only 4 of these known to have survived Auschwitz, we may assume that the 143 other Ravensbrück Jewish women known to have been sent to Auschwitz during this period, for whom neither death notice nor evidence of survival exist, also perished – most likely in Auschwitz itself. Thus, there are only 112 Jewish women or girls, of those who are known to have arrived in Ravensbrück between the opening of the camp and March 1943, whose fate is still completely unaccounted for.

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 35 There, are, however, strong arguments for the assumption that, during the first period, there must have been several hundred additional Jewish prisoners about whom we know nothing.As mentioned above, for the period of 12 months for which hardly any arrival lists are preserved,49 only 304 names could be reconstructed from death notices, cemeteries, and archives; it is therefore quite likely that a considerable number of additional Jewish prisoners did arrive during those 12 months. Here are the arguments: according to the testimony of the German non-Jewish political prisoner Maria Storch,50 who in August 1942 was Stubenälteste in Judenblock 7, on 18 August 1942, the 465 Jewish women of Block 7 were sent to Majdanek (Lublin). In addition, according to the supplement of Anise Postel-Vinay to Germaine Tillion’s book on Ravensbrück, several smaller transports of Jewish women prisoners were sent to Auschwitz as early as the summer of 1942, several months before the transport of 522 Jewish prisoners on 5 October of that year.51 In supplement #2 to Tillion’s book, a chronology of the camp, a transport of mainly Jewish prisoners to Majdanek (Lublin) that left Ravensbrück at the end of March 1942 is also mentioned.52 Assuming that Maria Storch’s and Anise Postel-Vinay’s reports are accurate, it follows that during the first two periods, there were considerably more than the 1264 Jewish prisoners in Ravensbrück that I have identified, as my list includes no report of deportation to Majdanek or Auschwitz prior to 5 October 1942. According to the evidence of the Korherr Report of 23 March 1943, by the end of 1942, 1321 Jewish women had arrived in Ravensbrück.53 If this number is correct, and it can be assumed that Korherr knew how many Jews had arrived, then only 57 Jewish women are missing among those known to us for the first two periods. Thus, a transport to Majdanek of 465 Jewish women seems unlikely, whereas smaller transports to Majdanek or to Auschwitz – all before 5 October 1942 – may have taken place. We know that Heinrich Himmler inspected the camp on 19 March 1943;54 it can be assumed that he intended to verify compliance with his previous instructions of 29 September and 2 October 1942 to make all concentration camps in the German Reich judenfrei, including Ravensbrück, and to send all remaining Jewish prisoners to Auschwitz or Majdanek.55 According to Rolf Kralovitz, the same order applied to Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück.56

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36 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Yet in Buchenwald, about 300 Jewish prisoners remained as “skilled” construction workers. Period III It should be remembered that most arrival lists between 25 February and 30 August 1943 are lost. There is no evidence from official arrival lists of any Jewish women arriving between 17 February and 3 September 1943. On reconstructed French transport lists, three French Jewish women who arrived during this period were found. In February or March 1943, several women from Poland and the Soviet Union also arrived, whose hidden Jewish identity has only recently been documented; we could identify nine of them. Except for them, and for small numbers of women from Germany and France, our evidence for period III starts in September 1943 and ranges to the end of July 1944. It can be characterized by the arrival of Jews belonging to special categories that, at that time, were consigned to concentration camps within the territory of the German Reich, but not to Auschwitz. The largest groups on extant arrival lists were Jewish women and children with Romanian, Hungarian,57 Turkish, or Spanish citizenship, arrested in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, or Czechoslovakia. Another special group included 92 Jewish women who arrived from France within the transports of French members of the Résistance (these French transports continued until January 1945). Also, starting from 16 September 1943, another special group arrived – women and girls of part-Jewish descent – so called Mischlinge or Jüdin(nen) ersten Grades. Whereas in the preceding months part Jews had been sent from Germany to Auschwitz, this order was apparently changed in mid-1943. From the evidence of several of these women, we know that in September 1943 in Auschwitz, women and girls of mixed Jewish descent were collected,58 two of them even out of the building where they – after having been “selected”– awaited to be gassed the next morning.59 A large transport of 84 Mischlinge from Auschwitz arrived in Ravensbrück on 16 September 1943; 48 additional ones arrived in Ravensbrück between September 1943 and the end of July 1944. In all, we know about 657 Jewish names for period III. With the exception of the three young women who had been in Ravensbrück during period II – two of them for only a few days – and were returned

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 37 from Auschwitz in the Mischling transport, there was no continuity between the Jewish prisoner population of periods II and III. Some of the arrivals of period III remained in Ravensbrück for a year or even a year and a half, well into period IV and even into period V. Especially among the Jews from the Netherlands and Belgium with Romanian, Hungarian, or Turkish citizenship, well over half of the 64 children survived and more than 10 told the story of their lives in the camp until the beginning of 1945. On 30 January 1945, most of the mothers and children with Hungarian or Romanian citizenship were sent to Bergen-Belsen. A month later, on 28 February 1945,on the demand of the Turkish government,the mothers and children with Turkish papers were sent to Sweden, and from there by boat to Turkey. The Turkish immigration authorities did not recognize them as Turkish citizens, and most chose to be repatriated to Belgium. Among these groups with temporarily protected citizenship, 95 were women over age 55. From the several arrival lists for period III, with handwritten pencil remarks found in the Ravensbrück Archive, we learn that many of them either died “naturally” or – until October 1944 – were sent to Auschwitz. The names of six Jewish prisoners of the third period appear on the Mittwerda or on the Uckermark death lists. Yet from testimonies of survivors, we know that others were also killed in January 1945.60 In spite of the importance of the testimonies of survivors from the third period, they are limited mainly to what happened to their own groups. Apparently, there were very limited contacts between the different groups of the Ravensbrück Jewish women and children of the third period, and even less with the thousands of Jewish prisoners of the fourth period. Period IV On 2 August 1944, the first direct transport from Italy arrived61 with 18 Jewish women, and on 7 August 1944, a large transport of Jewish families arrived from Toulouse,62 together – but in separate carriages – with political prisoners of the French Résistance.63 Before the end of 1944, and even in January and February 1945, Jewish women and girls, and also some men, continued to arrive from Italy and in the transports of French political prisoners. Yet, the main characteristic of the fourth period, from August 1944 until the end of 1944, is the flood of Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak

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38 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Jewish women, girls, and some children arriving either via Auschwitz or from a labor camp after Auschwitz, or directly from Budapest, from Sered and Prešow in Slovakia, or from three Polish ghettoes, or the Polish labor camp Czestochowa. During this period, conditions in Ravensbrück declined rapidly due to catastrophic overcrowding. The majority of the Jewish arrivals of period IV were soon transferred to external labor camps of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, or Ravensbrück itself. During that period, Ravensbrück became a veritable slave market. Orders for several hundred women prisoners were received and filled in Ravensbrück almost daily. A considerable number of such orders, of transfer lists from Ravensbrück, and of lists acknowledging arrival to external labor camps, are preserved.64 From these lists, we know about the subsequent fate of hundreds of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners of this period. From the transfer lists with 1944 dates, we also learn the names of hundreds of Jewish prisoners of the fourth period whose Ravensbrück arrival lists are lost. From transfer lists with 1945 dates, from existing death lists, and from the evidence of survivors, it is evident that the arrival lists of several large Jewish transports from Auschwitz, Budapest, Sered, Prešow, and Czestochowa, which arrived between August 1944 and the end of December 1944, are lost. For the five months of the fourth period we could, from all sources, identify the names of 10,585 Jewish arrivals – nearly two-thirds of the entire Jewish prisoner population identified for the six years. Period V The date 1 January 1945 may serve as the start of the last stage, when Ravensbrück’s own gas chamber started to function. Before the end of 1944, the mass murder by gas came to an end in Auschwitz, and a team from there arrived in Ravensbrück and established a gas chamber. It functioned between 1 January and 22 or 23 April 1945, killing up to 6000 prisoners. From the very partial extant death lists, we may conclude that at least 21.6% of the victims were Jewish.65 From arrival lists recently discovered in the Warsaw National Archive, from reconstructed French transport lists, and from the registration of survivors in various archives,66 we know that during January 1945, Jewish women arrived daily from other camps, but also from Slovakia, Italy, Hungary, and even with a French transport that had been en route for a long time. Yet the major event in January was

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 39 the beginning of the arrival of at least 6000 of the survivors of the evacuation of Auschwitz, the so-called Auschwitz Todesmarsch, at least 60% of which were Jewish. Although a train of open wagons had already arrived from Auschwitz on 15 January, those who participated in the horrendous foot march could not have reached Ravensbrück before 21 January, and continued to arrive during much of February. Most of those were transferred to the two large external labor camps of Ravensbrück, Malchow,67 and Neustadt-Glewe.68 As late as 2 April, 751 Jewish prisoners of Malchow were sent to Buchenwald camps near Leipzig.69 As to the fate of many of the Jewish prisoners who had arrived during the fourth period and had not been sent to any labor camp, we know that during January 1945 some were sent to Meuselwitz, 700 to Penig, and in February about 500 to Burgau.70 In March, large numbers of survivors of the fourth period and new arrivals were sent to Bergen-Belsen and Mauthausen. We know about these transports only from testimonies of survivors. As already mentioned, we do not know if, and if yes, when, exactly, registration of newly arriving prisoners stopped. Not a single arrival document for March or April is preserved. From survivors we know that during the entire month of April, large numbers of Jewish prisoners were transferred to Ravensbrück, especially from labor camps that were evacuated due to the advance of the Soviet troops or the destruction of their industrial installations by Allied bombing.71 During the last 10 days of April, the last days of the camp’s existence, there were over 1300 Jewish Ravensbrück women prisoners whose names have been identified, and who were evacuated to Sweden – from Ravensbrück itself, from Malchow, and from a death train (originating in Beendorf and ending up near Hamburg, from where the survivors were evacuated to Denmark) – all within the framework of the Bernadotte-Aktion. On 28 April, the last special evacuation train to Denmark having departed on the 26th, the massive forced evacuation march of Ravensbrück prisoners northwestwards began.72 When a unit of the Soviet army arrived in Ravensbrück on 10 May, only a relatively small number of sick prisoners and prisoner medics and nurses remained in the Revier (prisoner hospital) – among them a few Jewish medics with false non-Jewish identities and several Jewish patients.73 Most of the Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who had participated in the evacuation marches from the main camp, Malchow, Spandau,

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40 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Oranienburg/Sachsenhausen, and Hasag-Leipzig, as well as the locked-in prisoners of Neustadt-Glewe and Wittenberg, met with Soviet troops.74 Some of those surviving the evacuation marches from Ravensbrück or Malchow, or those evacuated from Hasag-Leipzig, somehow reached the River Elbe and crossed it to reach the Western-occupied zone. Those evacuated from the Buchenwald labor camp Altenburg, as well as the survivors of the Burgau transport and those previously transferred to Bergen-Belsen, met with Western Allied troops – mainly North American. This, then, is my periodization of the history of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. It reflects the major changes or the complete discontinuity. In the following chapters, I shall attempt to describe the conditions of life and death, and the major characteristics of the Jewish prisoner population in each of the five periods.

NOTES 1. The exceptions were some Jewish women prisoners from the German Reich, the reasons for whose arrest were still classified as “Rassenschande” even after February 1942. 2. Nevertheless, we found four women who were imprisoned because of their marriage to Jews. The first, Lili de Rothschild, b. Chambur, was classified as “Aryan” French but was especially maltreated because of her husband’s name; the second, Cäcilie Dangaard, was classified as “Aryan” Danish, Ravensbrück prisoner number 97501, who most surprisingly was classified as “jüdisch bei Heirat” (Jewish by marriage). We know of two others, both German women whose Jewish husbands died in concentration camps, from the short memoir of one of them, Lotte Silbermann, about her imprisonment in Ravensbrück, and that of her comrade Margarete Mader, who died there (see chapter 9, section on “Non-Jewish prisoners married to Jews”). 3. Although the Nazi authorities officially disregarded the fact of baptism of people of Jewish descent, during limited periods they did differentiate between baptized and non-baptized persons of mixed parentage or in a mixed marriage. 4. Elisabeth Markovitz, Ravensbrück prisoner number 85784, #216 on the list of the Budapest transport of 21–22 November 1944, appears as “Hungarian Jewess” although we know from the memoir of her friend Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein (The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival, New York, 1999, p. 228) that she was the child of a mixed marriage; see chapter 10, note 8. 5. Serge Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, New York, 1983, pp. 601–602. There are 76 names on the partly burnt list; the names of two girls were added by their uncle, who claimed that they had been on this transport together with their mother. Anise Postel-Vinay supplied the names of 28 additional Jews who, according to her, arrived from Toulouse at the same time.

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 41 6. Testimonies for the transport of about 1 December are those of Eva Danos (Ravensbrück prisoner number 92944) and of Nora Stark (interviewed by J.B.A., Budapest, 27 July 1999); the testimony concerning a large transport that arrived on 11 December 1944 is that of Katherine S. (Katalin Bein), who was transferred on 15 January 1945 to Venusberg. 7. The list of victims called Multinational Tabelle was compiled by Ravensbrück survivor Kató (Katalin) Gyulai and her associates. A list of survivors who had returned and settled in Hungary was compiled even later by researchers at the Jewish Museum and Archives, Budapest. 8. Giovanna Massariello Merzagora and Paolo Massarriello, “La ‘Lista delle donne di Ravensbrück’: 600 nomi per ricordare”, Bolletino della Società Letteraria, 9bis, Verona, December 1945, pp. 31–54. 9. Liliana Picciotto, Il libro della memoria gli Ebrei deportati dall’Italia (1943–1945), Milan, 2002. 10. Bernard Strebel, “Die ‘Lagergesellschaft’: Aspekte der Häftlingshierarchie und Gruppenbildung in Ravensbrück”, in Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: BergenBelsen/Ravensbrück, ed. Claus Füllberg-Stolberg et al., Bremen, 1994, pp. 81–83. 11. In the Diplomarbeit of Kristine Schlaefer and Frank Schröder of 1987 for the Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, in Anlage V, there is a summary of all the existing Stärkemeldungen between 17April 1939 and 8 January 1942. 12. As only about half of the arrival lists have been preserved, early researchers like Wanda Kiedrzyńska thought that not more than half of all those who arrived in Ravensbrück could be identified. Actually only 25,028 on preserved arrival lists were known to her in 1961. Of these, she counted 15.1% of Jewish names. Wanda Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, kobiecy obóz koncentracyjny, Warsaw, 1961 (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive), part I, p. 67. 13. According to the testimony of Galina Matusova, who was interviewed by Judith Buber Agassi and Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow in Safed, Israel, in 2000, there were nine Jewish physicians or medics among the prisoners of the Red Army who arrived in Ravensbrück in February and/or March 1943. We have ascertained the data for all of them. 14. Arrival on 23 January 1945, Überstellung Nr. 42 von Auschwitz, 356 Jewish names out of 721 names – i.e. 49.3%. 15. The Malchow-Hasag-Leipzig transfer list of 2 April 1945. 16. In this workshop the cloth triangles and prisoner numbers for the newly registered prisoners were prepared. 17. Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, pp. 7–9; Ursula Wińska, Zwiciezyły wartosci: Wspomneinea z Ravensbrück: Wyd 1, Gdansk, 1985; a German translation exists in the Ravensbrück Archive as Die Werte siegten, pp. 526–528. 18. Grit Philipp, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 1939–1945, Berlin, 1999, pp. 237–331. 19. Serge Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, New York, 1983, pp. 601–602. 20. Wiener Library, Tel Aviv University WARC 0510 system number 01552126. 21. United States National Archives, Washington: Record Group 338 Army Commands, stack area 290, row 13, compartment 22, shelf 3, box 536 oversize (volume 126 = book No. 7, volume 127 = book No. 8) (location 000-50-46). 22. Arolsen archive and Yad Vashem Jerusalem.

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42 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 23. MGR Research project, Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, Totendatenbank Projekt Gedenkbuch Ravensbrück, stage of research December 2000. 24. State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.), Death books from Auschwitz, Munich, 1995. 25. The first list is the so-called Mittwerda list, dated 6 April 1945; it is the only official camp list of prisoners sent to be gassed. This list of prisoners sent to Uckermark between 5 March 1945 to 28 March 1945 was stolen by a prisoner working in the office. The second and third lists are the so-called Uckermark lists, containing two parts: part (A), groups of prisoners sent to the gas chamber in 1945 on 28 January, 29 January, 9 February, 24 February, 25 February, 4 March, 23 March, 31 March, and 23 April; part (B), groups of prisoners sent to the gas chamber on 8 February and 20 February 1945. These lists were apparently compiled by the prisonerphysician Dr. Le Porz. The fourth list is one compiled by Czechoslovakian survivors of the victims of their country, completed after liberation. It starts with 1 January 1945 and ends with 15 February 1945. These four lists are all obviously incomplete. They contain 1415 names of prisoners killed, 306 of them marked as Jewish, and others, obviously Jewish, but without national/racial classification. 26. Police documents concerning the arrest and imprisonment in Ravensbrück of the following five Jewish women are in Arolsen and also in the Yad Vashem Archive: Jochevet (Jechet) Feinkuchen, Lea Rechtschaffen b. Wirth, Herta Cohen, Selma (Nora Sara) Grünewald, Julie Sara Herz. 27. Reinhard Schramm, Ich will leben, Weißenfels, 1990, about his grandmother Emma Murr b. Engel, and his great-aunt Selma Fiedler b. Engel. Irene Eckler, Die Vormundschaftsakte 1935–1958, Schwetzingen, 1996, about Irma Eckler. 28. Nuremberg document NO-5194, in The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, ed. John Mendelson, New York, 1982. 29. As the French Ravensbrück committee did not give any indication of a prisoner being Jewish, I asked the historian and Ravensbrück survivor Anise Postel-Vinay to identify the Jewish arrivals from France to the best of her knowledge and memory. 30. Jewish Agency MAA-HDK and Yad Vashem-Individual documents. 31. Karl Heinz Schütt (ed.), Ein vergessenes Lager?Über das Aussenlager NeustadtGlewe des Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, Schkeuditz, 1997; Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, Schkeuditz, 1998; Ein vergessenes Lager?, III, Schkeuditz, 2001; Gedenkbuch der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus im Außenlager Neustadt-Glewe des Frauen KZRavensbrück, Neustadt-Glewe, 1998. 32. Renate Gruber-Lieblich, “... und morgen war Krieg!” – Arado Flugzeugwerke GmbH Wittenberg 1936–1945 – ein KZ-Lager entsteht, Wittenberg, 1995. 33. Nichts und niemand wird vergessen - zur Geschichte des KZ Aussenlagers Natzweiler-Struthof in Walldorf, herausgegeben vom Magistrat der Stadt Mörfelden-Walldorf, 1996; Das Geheimnis der Erlösung heisst Erinnerung; ein Begleitheft zum historischen Lehrpfad am ehemaligen KZ-Aussenlager Walldorf, 2000. 34. Liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945 (List No. 1), and About Jews Liberated from German Concentration Camps Arrived in Sweden in 1945–46 (List No. 2), Mosaiska Församlingen, Wahrendorffsgatan 3, Stockholm, Malmö, 1946. 35. 1G36:42, Frageformulär; 1G36:44 IRO Claims; 1G38:31, Ansökn.; E12:1–4, 1020, SUP; PCIRO, 1G35:62; Tegen-Befragung; Uro-Bestand, 1G40:53; Utrest 1947–1960, 1G35:12.

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 43 36. Polski Instytut Z´ ródłowy w Lund. 37. Five hundred interviews with Polish survivors, done in Sweden after the War by the Polish Institute of Sources (Lund); 21 of them were Jewish Ravensbrück survivors. The Polish texts were given to J.B.A. by researcher Simone Erpel, and translated into English in 1998–99 by Wiener Library volunteer Ms. Wanda Wasserman. 38. Six interviews with Jewish Ravensbrück survivors translated from the French by J.B.A. 39. See chapter 1. 40. List of names and data on the CD-ROM supplied with this book. 41. Thus Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, p. 18, divides the history of Ravensbrück from the viewpoint of the Polish prisoners into four periods: the first until the outbreak of the War (no Polish prisoners); from September 1939 to August 1944 (considerable numbers of Polish arrivals); from September 1944 to the end (extremely large transports from Poland, the Polish prisoners constituting the largest single national group); the last period, the evacuation and disbanding of the camp. 42. See note 24 above regarding Gedenkbuch. 43. Archiv Jüdisches Museum Prag, ODF Berlin, Ludwigsburg, Museum Schloß Lichtenburg Archiv. 44. According to the report of the German Communist prisoner Maria Wiedmaier (Buchmann-Bestand Bd. 26 Bericht 401, p. 3), in early 1942 there were over 1000 Jewish women and girls in Block 11. Herta Soswinski, war name Mehl, who arrived in January 1942, reported (in Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, ed. Lore Shelley, Lanham, MD, Vol. 1, pp. 128, 131) that at the end of the first period, there were two full Jewish blocks, Blocks 9 and 11, whereas after the deportation to Bernburg, there remained barely one-half block. 45. On 24 August 1941, Hitler had given the order to stop the “Euthanasie”, the mass killing by gas of German mentally ill and of retarded children. There had been considerable opposition to this mass murder. The poison gas left in several hospitals for the mentally ill was then used for killing chronically sick and mentally ill prisoners as well for the Jewish prisoners of concentration camps on German soil. In Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 62, based on Ernst Klee, Euthanasie im NSStaat: Die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens, Frankfurt am Main, 1985, p. 345. 46. Estera Markiewicz (Salajek), Ravensbrück prisoner number 10197, who arrived on 10 April 1942, appears to have been sent to Auschwitz on 5 October 1942, was later on transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and survived there until her evacuation to Sweden. Two Mischlinge, Rudolfine Burghardt and Hermine Hocke, who were transferred on 17 February 1943 to Ravensbrück from the youth camp (Jugendschutzlager) Uckermark, situated 1 km from the main Ravensbrück camp, were deported to Auschwitz shortly after and returned to Ravensbrück with the Mischlingstransport of 16 September 1943. They may have survived the War. In addition there were three Jewish survivors with false non-Jewish identities: Georgia Peet-Taneva (Nadja Smirnowa), Wanda Vatneipka (Maria Schneidmesser), and Elise Hoblik. 47. Dr. Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow considers all Ravensbrück prisoners whose death notices appear in the registry of Standesamt II between February and July 1942 as having been killed at Bernburg (a few Polish political prisoners who were executed by shooting during this period are exceptions). Further evidence for the identification of those gassed at Bernburg is the handwritten addition of

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44 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück

48.

49.

50.

51.

52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61.

Sondertransport on five recently found arrival lists from 1940 and 1941; all the names with the addition Sondertransport are registered at the Standesamt II as having died between February and July 1942. There is, of course, also the eyewitness evidence of surviving non-Jewish prisoners who saw the Jewish women being sent out of the camp. On this day 622 women were sent to Auschwitz and registered there on the next day; 522 were Jewish, 90 were Jehovah’s Witnesses (Bibelforscherinnen); 18 of the women had been trained in poultry raising. Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Reinbek, 1989, p. 315. Recently four additional arrival lists dated during these 15 months – in very bad condition but with handwritten remarks – have been found; they contain eight names marked either Halbjüdin or Volljüdin. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA Bd. 26, Bericht-Nr. 428. Unfortunately the date that in one place was typed incorrectly in Maria Storch’s testimony was incorrectly reported in the Ravensbrück Kalendarium, p. 122, as 18 March 1943, and the notation of the testimony as 628. Germaine Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, mit einem Anhang “Die Massentötungen durch Gas in Ravensbrück” by Anise Postel-Vinay. Lüneburg, 1998 (published in French, 1973), p. 364. Margarete BuberNeumann (Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949, p. 297) also mentioned that by summer 1942, several death transports of Jewish prisoners from Block 9 had been sent to Auschwitz. Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, p. 398. The Korherr Report of March 1943, “Final solution of the Jewish question”, BArch NS 19/1570, p. 24, states that 1321 Jewish women were imprisoned in Ravensbrück up to the end of 1942. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA Bd.21, Bericht-Nr.198 (Kalendarium, p. 122). Letter from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt IV C 2 Allg. Nr. 42415, Berlin, 2.10.1942, Fernschreiben: an alle Stapo(leit)stellen, Kommandeure, Befehlshaber und Beauftragte des Chefs der SichPoludSD. Betrifft: Einweisung von weiblichen jüdischen Häftlingen in das KL Ravensbrück. “Der BFuChdDtPol. hat am 29.9.42 befohlen, dass die im Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück einsitzenden jüdischen Häftlinge in das Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Frauenabteilung, zu überführen sind, damit das FKL Ravensbrück judenfrei wird ...” (signed) RSHA. IV C 2 Allg. Nr.42415, I.A. gez. Dr. Berndorff, i-O’Stubsf. Rolf Kralovitz, “Zehn Null Neunzig” in Buchenwald, Cologne, 1996, p. 36. The partial protection of Hungarian Jews ended at the end of March 1944, when Hungary came under direct German rule. There were even cases of prisoners volunteering the information that they were of mixed descent, and thus succeeding in being included in the transport to Ravensbrück. Interview with Erna Korn, now Erna de Vries, by J.B.A., 18 May 1999. According to the testimony of Rolf Kralovitz, his mother belonged to the Strickkommando, all of whose members were sent to the gas chamber in January 1945. The “relocation” of the Strickkommando is described by Judith H. Sherman in Say the Name, Albuquerque, 2005, p. 96. Rolf Kralowitz’s sister Annemarie also died in January 1945 (Sherman, Say the Name, pp. 62–63). See note 9 above, Convoglio 16, Verona to Ravensbrück, 2 August 1944, in Picciotto, Il libro della memoria, p. 60.

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Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 45 62. See note 5 above, convoy 81 (Toulouse); Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, pp. 601–602; also information by Anise Postel-Vinay. 63. Account of Mme P. Dachs, in Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported from France, p. 601. 64. Examples are transfer lists of 500 Jewish prisoners to Akdo Altenburg on 11 September 1944, of 400 Jewish prisoners to Akdo Neustadt bei Coburg on 26 September 1944, and of 249 Hungarian Jewish prisoners to Akdo Lippstadt on 20 November 1944. All Buchenwald documents: BWA HKW microfilms 1, 10, 13, and 15. For the fates of the Jewish women prisoners in the external labor camps of Buchenwald, see also Renate Ragwitz, “Frauen-Aussenkommandos des KZ Buchenwald”, Buchenwaldheft 15, Buchenwald, 1982; and Irmgard Seidel, “Jüdinnen in den Aussenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald”, unpublished paper for international conference “Genocide and Gender”, Freie Universität, Berlin, October 2003. 65. The Mittwerda list and the Uckermark lists A and B. See note 54 above. 66. Jewish Agency MAA-HDK. 67. See the study of the Malchow camp by Dr. Irith Dublon-Knebel in A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück, ed. Irith Dublon-Knebel, forthcoming. 68. See Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?; Ein vergessenes Lager?, II; Gedenkbuch der Opfer. See also his reconstituted list of 875 Jewish prisoners of Neustadt-Glewe in the Volume of Names (94 names were added by us). 69. KL. Buchenwald Arbeitskommando Hasag-Leipzig; Leipzig, 8 April 1945; Transport-Liste, Malchow, 2 April 1945. Some of these prisoners were sent not to the Hasag factory at Leipzig, but to the Taucha camp. 70. Transfer lists to Meuselwitz (with Ravensbrück prisoner numbers), and to Penig (without such numbers), have been preserved. A list of 480 Jewish women prisoners (without Ravensbrück prisoner numbers) has only recently been identified as that of a death train to the Bavarian camp of Burgau, which later continued to Allach (Dachau). 71. The evidence comes mainly from the women who arrived from the small labor camp of Krupp-Neukölln in Berlin in mid-April, and were evacuated as a group to Sweden. 72. See Simone Erpel, “Ravensbrücker Todesmärsche 1945”, in Bulletin für Faschismus- und Weltkriegsforschung, ed. Werner Röhr and Brigitte Berlekamp, Beiheft 1, Berlin, 2001, pp. 147–165 (phone interview, July 2005). 73. Belgian survivor Berta Landskroner, married name Reig, whose frozen toes had been amputated, is one of only two Jewish prisoners known to us to have remained as patients in the Ravensbrück Revier until the arrival of the Soviet army on 10 May 1945. The second was the Slovak survivor Emma Neuwirth, later Ema Panovova, who was sick with furunculosis. 74. In Neustadt-Glewe, the prisoners were locked in the camp until the arrival of first American, and then Soviet forces, and in Wittenberg until the arrival of the Soviet forces. From the other three camps, the prisoners were evacuated before the arrival of the Soviet forces.

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4 THE FIRST PERIOD

On 9 and 10 November 1938, a nationwide pogrom took place in Germany (the November Pogrom, often still regrettably referred to by its Nazi name, the Kristallnacht), accompanied by mass arrests of Jewish men, many of them teenagers. Some writers have suggested that the opening of a concentration camp for women in Ravensbrück was linked to that event. Yet this camp, officially opened on 15 May 1939, had its construction planned and started well before the pogrom. The high percentage of Jewish women among the first 800 arrivals from the small women’s concentration camp of the Lichtenburg (at least 111) indicates that, even before the violent persecution of German Jews in November 1938, Jewish women were already targeted for incarceration. Before the Lichtenburg camp there already had been the camp of Moringen, which was closed down in March 1938, well before the November Pogrom. In that camp, a sizable number of Jewish women were incarcerated. Although some were rescued by their families obtaining visas in time, we know about at least 22 Jewish women who were transferred from Moringen to the Lichtenburg, and from there to Ravensbrück. It was doubtless unimaginative and even neglectful of the Jewish organizations, especially the Zionist organizations, that so little was done to rescue these women and girls when it was still possible to do so. In Germany until the end of 1938, the Nazi authorities arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps many more Jewish men than women, especially during the wave of persecution of the November Pogrom. Yet during over six years of very difficult Jewish emigration from Germany, the percentage of Jewish women and girls emigrating

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The First Period 47 was much lower than that of Jewish men and boys, so that in the population census of 17 May 1939, twice as many women as men are listed as Jews in the population of the German Reich. Therefore, considerably more German Jewish women and girls than men and boys were affected later on by the systematic deportation to concentration camps, imprisonment, and mass murder.

NO JEWISH ALTE RAVENSBRÜCKERINNEN

The political prisoners of Ravensbrück used an honorific title: Alte Ravensbrückerin. It was accorded especially to those whose prison number was lower than 1000. We know of 125 Jewish prisoners of the first period whose numbers were that low. Only one, Ilse Gostynski, was released and thus survived. The rest were killed. The rationale for my deciding on the end of January 1942 as the end of the first period is that this was the beginning of the deportation and killing of the entire Jewish population of the camp. Whereas during 1939, 1940, and 1941, when the Jewish women prisoners had been at the bottom of the prison population hierarchy, in the winter of 1941–42, after the rapid Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, at the very time of the Nazi leadership’s decision to carry out the “Final Solution”, they were put into an entirely different category: all of them – old and young, sick and healthy – were now condemned to deportation for the express purpose of having them killed. We know that one, Lola Richter, born Seeliger, who had arrived in February 1941, survived the first and second periods and died in Ravensbrück in March 1943. Of all the hundreds of Jewish women who had arrived in Ravensbrück up to the end of the first period, we know only of nine1 who survived the camp and the War, five of whom have left statements about their stay in Ravensbrück. Four of these nine Jewish survivors of the first period were released from the camp for the purpose of emigration, as their families had procured visas for them. Three of those released had spent a very short time in Ravensbrück. Therefore, the only pieces of evidence that carry some weight are those of Ida Hirschkron and Herta S., who spent nearly two years and nearly nine months in Ravensbrück, respectively.2 Else Sinasohn was the only survivor who spent a considerable period of time in Ravensbrück during both the first and the second

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48 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück periods; after surviving for nearly a year in Auschwitz, she returned to Ravensbrück on 16 September 1943 with the Mischling transport. According to the testimony of Erna Korn (Ravensbrück prisoner number 23176), now Erna de Vries,3 they worked together at the Siemens factory, and survived the War. Thus, Else Sinasohn also experienced the third, fourth, and fifth periods in Ravensbrück. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge she has never told her story. There were two young half-Jewish girls, Hermine Hocke and Rudolfine Burghardt, inmates of the youth camp (Jugendschutzlager) Uckermark, next to Ravensbrück, who had been transferred to Ravensbrück on 17 February 1943, deported to Auschwitz soon after, and also returned to the camp on 16 September 1943 with the Mischlingstransport. Should they have survived the War, they might have told us something about the lot of half-Jewish girls in Uckermark, but hardly anything about Ravensbrück itself during the second period. In short, for reconstructing the story of the Jewish population of the first and second periods, we have only limited personal evidence from testimonies, interviews, and a letter of five Jewish survivors, as well as the “Wachstein letter”. Marianne Wachstein managed to send a letter because, due to her mental breakdown, she was temporarily outside the camp. On 13 April 1940, she wrote a long letter to the physician Dr. Wilhelm at a hospital in Vienna that reached the International Red Cross in Geneva, describing the appalling conditions under which the Jewish prisoners then lived, including the sadistic punishments in the Bunker. Ilse Gostynski, later Rolfe, reported in her statement to the Wiener Library in London in the 1950s that “the sum of seemingly insignificant aspects of harassment was making the living conditions in Ravensbrück unbearable.” Ida Hirschkron, in her testimony of November 1947 at the British Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg, considered the treatment of the Jewish prisoners, especially during the lock-up in November 1939, as motivated by antisemitism and definitely worse than that of any others. From Ida Hirschkron’s testimony we also learn that, as early as November 1939, Olga Benario served as Blockälteste at the Judenblock, and that she was severely punished for her effort to relieve the situation of the Jewish prisoners during the lock-up, described below.4

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The First Period 49

Olga Benario–Prestes, b. Munich, 12 February, 1908–d. Bernburg, 1942. Biography, Olga by Fernando Morais, Translator, Ellen Watson.

Even during this terrible time, in the winter of 1939, we learn about an amazing cultural activity that took place in Block 11, the Judenblock. Two Jewish prisoners, Käthe Leichter, a Viennese political writer and sociologist, and Herta Breuer, a Viennese lawyer, wrote a theatre play by the name of “Schumm-Schumm”, an ironic fantasy that the prisoners performed. A non-Jewish German prisoner, Clara Rupp, has given a detailed account of this play: “once there even was a complete theatre play, with costumes, program, text, but that was faked, written for the camp commander; only the real text was performed.”5

Marianne–Katharina (Käthe) Leichter born Pick, b. Vienna, 20 August, 1895–d. Bernburg, 1942. Käthe Leichter: Leben, Werk und Sterben einer österreichischen Sozialdemokratin, von Käthe Leichter, Herbert Steiner (editor) Ibera Verlag, 1997.

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50 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Yet Emilie Norbert, who was in Ravensbrück during six weeks of that winter, stated in her report given in June 1945 in the US that she remembered vividly the overwhelming atmosphere of terror, fear, and passivity. In her interview with Sabine Kittel, Herta S.,6 who had arrived in January 1942 at the very end of the first period – just before the mass deportation to Bernburg – and was imprisoned in Ravensbrück during the eight months of the second period, stated that Jewish women were selected for especially dirty, strenuous, and dangerous work, such as the cleaning of the sewage trenches. “Despite the abuse she had already suffered (in the Prague Gestapo prison) before being sent to Ravensbrück, Herta S. was still unprepared for the experience awaiting her in the concentration camp [and was] almost broken physically and morally by the camp conditions.” Due to the help and support from non-Jewish Czech political prisoners, “she was [later] able to avoid the exhausting outdoor work in cold weather ... and to be assigned to work in the workshops.” Additional evidence for the particularly severe treatment of Jewish prisoners is contained in the already-mentioned amazing, uncensored letter of Marianne Wachstein of 12 April 1940, and the heavily censored camp postcards and letters sent by several Jewish prisoners of the first period, all of them later killed in Bernburg.7 The Austrian political prisoner Helene Potetz describes the conditions in the summer of 1940, stating that the prisoners of the punishment block and the Jewish prisoners worked at especially heavy tasks, such as breaking stones and unloading building material from the boats.8 The one and only statement claiming that, during the first period, Jewish women were not treated any differently from the non-Jewish prisoners is to be found in Rosa Kliger’s letter of July 1941 to Otto Leichter, the husband of Käthe Leichter, who had succeeded in reaching the United States with their children.9 It appears to me very likely that the letter expressed a desperate effort to reassure the husband who had not managed to rescue his wife. Most Jewish prisoners lived separately from the non-Jewish prisoners in a Judenblock – first it was Block 11, then Block 9, and in summer 1942, hundreds of Jewish women lived in Block 7.10 Apparently most also worked in separate work details. There were then no Jewish prisoners, except for Olga Benario-Prestes, with

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The First Period 51 positions that would have permitted them to move freely about the camp. Thus, the opportunities of non-Jewish prisoners to have contact with them were minimal. Yet there were some exceptions: a few political Jewish prisoners, especially Communist or left-Socialist activists from Germany or Austria, had lived in the “Political Block”, and in close contact with their non-Jewish comrades, a contact which, in the case of Olga Benario-Prestes, continued when she was transferred to the Judenblock, first as Stubenälteste, and then as the Blockälteste. This is the only known case of a Jewish prisoner holding such a position in the main camp of Ravensbrück. Thus, we have some second-hand stories about life in the Judenblock and the cultural–political activities organized there by Olga Benario-Prestes and Austrian Jewish writer and sociologist Käthe (Marianne) Leichter before the end of the first period. We have already heard about the amazing cultural activity of the play that was performed in the Judenblock. In addition, there are several stories about study in the Judenblock, and some of the teaching materials used in a course of geography taught by Olga BenarioPrestes have been preserved.11 According to the report of Maria Wiedmaier, there were lectures on literature, philosophy, and politics. She also reports a special “solidarity” between the inmates of Block 1, the German political prisoners, and the mainly German Jewish inmates of Block 11, which took the form of a Patenschaft (godmother role) and of practical help in the form of gifts of food, clothing, and medication. It is hard to check these stories for accuracy. Yet obviously the German political prisoners were aware of the fact that the Jewish prisoners were treated considerably worse than they themselves, working on Sundays, getting less food, having no diet for the sick, and being given no admission to the Revier. According to the testimony of another German political prisoner, Ilse Dolanski (given in October 1958 in Prague), in the fall of 1940, the entire Jewish block was punished for organizing an evening’s entertainment by the total denial of food for several days. During these days, the German political prisoners gave their Jewish comrades their bread rations every second day.12 On a Sunday in January 1941, which was a day of rest for the other prisoners, the Jewish block worked at outdoor work. The temperature was –20 °C. In the evening, as punishment, they received no food and had to stand for hours in line. The political prisoner Paula Lohagen saw their misery, “organized” (purloined) bread, and asked

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52 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück members of her block to help by bringing the most exhausted women to the Revier.13 Presumably, non-Jewish prisoners were threatened by the SS with severe punishment for associating with Jewish prisoners, but to the best of my knowledge, no specific cases of such punishment have been reported about Ravensbrück. The strongest impression from all extant stories told by nonJewish survivors is one of considerable differences, even in this first period, between the German politicals and the Jews, in degrees of suffering, conditions of life in the camp, nutrition, clothing, housing density, access to medical treatment, relative heaviness of work assigned,14 severity and frequency of abuse and punishment, both individual and collective, and, above all, in access to any camp positions and/or workplaces that facilitated the “organizing” (purloining) of some necessities of life, of items for barter, and of being granted minimal freedom of movement within the camp. In spring 1942, the German political prisoners finally realized that the trucks with non-Jewish older, handicapped, and chronically ill women, and with nearly all the Jewish prisoners that had arrived in the camp before November 1941, were not transported to any Schonlager (light-work camp) as the SS were claiming, but were killed immediately on arrival in Bernburg. It is not clear whether they were then conscious of the fact that there was a vast difference between the severity of this death threat to some of the non-Jews and to all the Jews as a group, and whether they ever thought about the possibility of rescuing any Jews from “selection” for the gas. We know that at a later stage – in 1944 – the Polish prisoner leadership succeeded in hiding their Kaninchen (human guinea-pigs for medical experiments) and that the French prisoner leadership attempted to hide their Nacht und Nebel prisoners (those arrested for resistance activities with no notification to their kin) after they had heard rumors about impending “selections”. It has even been reported that early in April 1945, the French prisoners refused to be evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross without their comrades who were then awaiting death a kilometer away at the Uckermark camp. The life stories of a few Jewish political prisoners of the first period have been told and published: Olga Benario-Prestes,15 Käthe (Marianne) Leichter,16 Rosa (Hiende Reise) Menzer,17 and Ruth Grünspan.18 All four had been active members of left-wing political organizations.

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The First Period 53

Rosa (Reise Hienda) Menzer, b. Plunge, Lithuania, January, 1886–d. Bernburg, 1942. Biography by Sigrid Jacobeit, Kreuzweg Ravensbrück, Leipzig, Verlag für die Frau, 1987, pp. 125–137.

Olga Benario had been a popular Communist heroine before 1933,19 yet had never participated in any post-1933 anti-Nazi resistance in Germany, as she had not been in Germany since 1933. She had been sent to Brazil by the Comintern, and was handed over by the Brazilian authorities to the Nazi authorities after the defeat of a Communist rebellion there. She landed first in German prisons (where she gave birth to a daughter by the Brazilian Communist General Luís Carlos Prestes, whose family successfully claimed the baby), then in the small women’s camp of the Lichtenburg, and then in Ravensbrück with the first of about 800 prisoners. There is evidence that she was sent on 20 July 1939 from Ravensbrück to be interrogated in Berlin, returning on 16 September 1939. The German Communist leadership’s lore is that she had the choice of returning after her period as Blockälteste to Block 1, the German politicals, but that she courageously chose to continue living in the Jewish block. This is doubtful, as she was sent to Bernburg not as a German political prisoner, but as a Jew like all the other Jews. The same lore also makes her the courageous and resourceful person who sent the message about Bernburg on a note hidden in the hem of her prisoner dress. (Margarete Buber-Neumann, who was impressed with Olga’s composure and dignity, also reports the story of the message, but according to her version it was another woman – a Jewish physician – who hid the note in her dress.) There were two Jewish physicians among those sent to Bernburg: Dr. Med. Irene Langer (Ravensbrück prisoner number 1005), and Dr. Med. Bertel Jacoby (Ravensbrück number c.4200).

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54 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück OFFICIAL REASONS FOR ARREST: POLICE DOCUMENTS AND THE REALITY

Up to February 1942, a variety of official reasons were given for the arrest and imprisonment of Jewish women (here repeated in order of frequency; no one knows what all of them mean exactly – perhaps the Gestapo and the SS invented these terms arbitrarily): “politisch”, Rassenschande, asozial, B.V. (Befristete Vorbeugungshaft),20 Ausweisung, Abschiebung, Emigrant, or Schulung (political, racial disgrace, antisocial, protective custody, expulsion, deportation, illegal border crossing or training). During the course of the first period, the distribution of official reasons for arrest changed considerably. Whereas up to the end 1939, 54 were classified as “political”, 65 Rassenschande, 19 as asozial, 10 as Abschiebung, etc.21 and 3 as Schulung, from 1940 to the end of January 1942, the “political” surpassed the Rassenschande and the asozial nearly disappeared: 81 “political”, 70 Rassenschande, 16 asozial, 8 Abschiebung, and 5 B.V.22 During the first period, there were among the Jewish prisoners classified as “political” several women who had been active in Communist (e.g. Olga Benario-Prestes, Rosa Menzer, and Herta Mehl) or left-socialist organizations (Dr. Käthe Leichter). Even during the first period,apparently quite a few of the German or Austrian Jewish women whose official arrest category was “political” had no history of political activity or membership in any anti-Nazi political organization. This becomes obvious from the revolting letters that the Nazi Dr. Friedrich Mennecke wrote to his wife.23 He was in charge of the selection of over 1000 victims – women and men – for gassing in Bernburg. Thus, he reports that one Jewish woman who had been baptized and had worn a cross on a chain had been charged with trying to deceive the authorities, and therefore was classified as “political”. From extant police documents we learn that Margot H., who had been arrested in 1940 on the charge of prostitution and hotel fraud, for which no evidence was found, was classified as “political” and sent to Ravensbrück.24 Later on, the label “political” became the near-universal official reason for the imprisonment of Jews in Nazi concentration camps. The classification of Rassenschande, which during the first period was nearly as common as that of “political”, was also frequently made without the slightest evidence – even according to the Nazi race

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The First Period 55 laws. Police documents show that Selma G.,25 a Jewish woman, was arrested on suspicion of Rassenschande after a meal with an elderly Jewish friend of her parents in a restaurant not forbidden to Jews. Some evidence about the lives and deaths of some non-political Jewish prisoners of the early period has been collected, mainly through the efforts of surviving relatives. There is the publication of Prof. Reinhard Schramm: Ich will leben,26 about his grandmother Emma (Sara) Murr, born Engel, and his great-aunt Selma (Sara) Fiedler, born Engel, both from the small town of Weißenfels, and both sent to Ravensbrück for Rassenschande (racial disgrace) or Beihilfe zur Rassenschande (assistance to racial disgrace). He tells the following story. The sisters Emma Murr and Selma Fiedler had first been accused of the “crimes” of not paying a special Jewish tax and of not handing over their silver cutlery. Only after no evidence for these “crimes” was found did the accusation of Rassenschande appear. His evidence shows that the real motive for the persecution of these two women (as well as that of Emma Murr’s son), and for their subsequent murder, was the intention to rob the family of its small shoe factory. Both sisters were gassed in Bernburg.

Emma Murr born Engel, b. Ïeska Lipa, 3 August, 1885–d. Bernburg, 1942. Biography in Reinhard Schramm, Ich Will Leben, Bölau, Weimar, 2001.

We learn of a genuine liaison between a Jewish woman and a German “Aryan” man after the enactment of the Nürnberg race laws, from the story reconstructed by the daughter of a prisoner of the first period.27 Her parents were engaged and had intended to get married

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56 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück just before these laws were enacted, yet the father was nevertheless arrested and imprisoned for ten months. A daughter was born, and, despite prohibition, the father returned to the mother, who subsequently gave birth to a second daughter. The father was again imprisoned in July 1938, this time for two years. Shortly afterwards, the mother, Irma Eckler, was arrested and reached Ravensbrück in the spring of 1939 with the prisoner number 928/574. After two years in Ravensbrück, she was killed in Bernburg (according to the notification by Ravensbrück, she had died in Ravensbrück on 28 April 1942.) The two little girls, who were soon separated and raised apart – one by the grandmother, and the other in foster care – for many years knew nothing about each other’s existence, about their origin, or about the fate of their mother.28

Irma Eckler, b. Hamburg, 12 June, 1913–d. Bernburg, 1942. Biography Irene Eckler, Die Vormundschaftsakte, 1935–1958, Horneburg Verlag, Schwetzingen, 1996.

Another occasion for arrest during the first period was “illegal border crossing”. Rosa Kliger from Vienna had been pushed over the German border by the Dutch police and landed in Ravensbrück. The Red Cross Archives at Arolsen contain the police documents of Lea Rechtschaffen, born Wirth.29 She had lived since 1919 in Germany, where she had married a man from her Polish home-town. They had two sons aged 12 and 13 whom they had succeeded in placing in a Jewish institution in the Netherlands. In October 1939, having lost all possibilities of earning a living, they tried to cross the border to the Netherlands together with two other Jews, lost their way, and were

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The First Period 57 caught by the German police. The husband was sent to Sachsenhausen, the wife to Ravensbrück, where she received the prisoner number 2541 on 21 December 1939. On 15 February 1940 she was informed that her husband, Schulim Rechtschaffen, had died of “weakness” in Sachsenhausen. From a police document of 20 August 1940 mentioning the Palästinaamt (Palestine Office) in Berlin, we learn that somebody had tried to help her to emigrate, but the central office of the Gestapo refused to grant permission. Lea Rechtschaffen was killed in Bernburg. Margarete Buber-Neumann tells the story of another woman, Frau Kroch from Leipzig. They both arrived in Ravensbrück from the Gestapo prison in Berlin in August 1940. Frau Kroch’s husband and four children had successfully crossed the border to the Netherlands. She had attempted to conceal their departure by staying behind in their apartment for some time before attempting to cross the border herself, when she was caught. Margarete Buber-Neumann saw her in Ravensbrück with her head shaved, marching barefoot. She died in Bernburg.30 Upon reading Margarete Buber-Neumann’s book, Frau Kroch’s relatives sent her a small photo of her. Because we do not know the formal reasons for their arrest for 304 arrivals of the first period, the weight of the data (see Table 4.1) for the whole of the first period is limited.

Table 4.1 Reason for arrest

Number

%

“Politisch” Rassenschande Asozial Schutzhaft B.V. Ausweisung Abschiebung Schulung Emigrant Not known Total

142 142 37 35 27 10 9 3 2 304 711

20 20 5 5 3.7 1.5 1.3 0.5 0.3 42.7 100

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58 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück THE DOCUMENTARY BASIS FOR STATISTICAL ESTIMATES: FILLING THE GAPS

The most important documents are the Zugangslisten (arrival lists), as they contain prisoners’ dates of arrival, and sometimes also the origins of their transport, family names, birth names, and first names, dates of birth, official reasons for arrest, the Ravensbrück prisoner numbers allocated to them, their countries of origin, and “racial” categories. Such arrival lists are preserved for about half the prisoners arriving in Ravensbrück.31 The Zugangslisten are near complete up to March 1940, yet those for the next five months are missing, and those for nine and a half months of 1941 are also missing.32 Since Ravensbrück prisoner numbers were allocated consecutively, we know the number of all arrivals during these gaps but nothing else about them. Although the camp was officially opened in May 1939, the first arrival list is dated 11 November 1938, and starts with prisoner number 1101. There are no arrival lists containing prisoner numbers lower than this, yet there were quite a number of prisoners with lower numbers – it is not clear how many. Some German politicals and some Jehovah’s Witnesses – IBV (Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung), alte Ravensbrückerinnen, with lower numbers (most if not all of them having arrived from the Lichtenburg camp), survived the six years of imprisonment in the camp. Only one Jewish prisoner with such a low number, Ilse Gostynski, is known to have survived because she was released shortly after her arrival in Ravensbrück. Only three Jewish prisoners who were in the camp at the end of the first period have survived.33 It is estimated that, at the opening of the camp, only 600–800 of the 1101 women arrived in Ravensbrück, although they were registered as having arrived at the Lichtenburg camp between November 1938 and May 1939. Another extant document, the Kennkartenliste of 13 July 1939, listing all 114 Jewish prisoners who had not yet complied with the order of the Nazi authorities to pay for a Kennkarte, has preserved the names of 82 Jewish prisoners with numbers below 1101. These women each paid three Marks to receive a special Jewish identity card. We do not know why they have Ravensbrück numbers lower than the first registered on an arrival list. The Kennkartenliste also mentions that eight women could not pay. From the first arrival list of 11 November 1938 until that of 28 April 1939, we know that 62 new Jewish prisoners arrived. The

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The First Period 59 names of six additional women (no prisoner numbers given) appear in the notes at the bottom of some of the arrival lists. Additionally, there may well have been Jewish women with prisoner numbers below 1101 who do not appear on the Kennkartenliste because they may have been already in possession of the obligatory Kennkarte. The Stärkemeldungen (counts of presence) should serve as an important basis for our estimate of the percentage of Jewish women in the entire prisoner population, but only for a limited time. Although they were apparently filled out daily – at least until April 1942 – only six are extant, three from 1939 – still on the Lichtenburg stationery – and three from 1942. The Stärkemeldungen listed seven categories of non-Jewish women separately, and five categories of Jewish women. On the first extant Stärkeliste (list of prisoners present), of 23 April 1939, there appear 153 Jews out of 832; on that of 24 May – 134 Jews out of 970; on that of 24 June – 127 out of 1048; and on that of 5 July – 124 out of 1485. Thus, in only two and a half months, the general population grew by 653, while the number of Jewish prisoners fell by 29; thus the percentage of Jews fell from 18.5 to 8.7%. Let us check the numbers of Jewish women against the Zugangslisten of this period: as 11 new women had arrived, 2 had returned, and only 1 had gone auf Transport (been sent for interrogation) during these ten weeks, there should have been 12 more and not 29 less. It seems that even by July 1939, the daily registration of Jewish prisoners was inaccurate. What had caused the non-Jewish population to grow so much during this period? On the Zugangsliste of 29 June 1939, we find the answer: 440 arbeitsscheue Zigeuner (“work-shy gypsies”) had arrived; a new category of prisoners had been added by hand to the blank form of the Stärkemeldung (on the Ravensbrück stationery this was already printed as arbeitsscheu/DR, “work-shy gypsies from the German Reich”). The deportation to Ravensbrück of members of a second despised racial group, the gypsies (Sinti and Roma), had begun. Seventy-nine Jews arrived between 6 July and the end of 1939. During the next two years, for about three months of 1940 and nine and a half months of 1941, no arrival lists are preserved.34 This serious gap in the information about Jewish prisoners who arrived during 1940, 1941, and January 1942 can be filled to a large extent by information gained from the research of Bärbel

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60 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Schindler-Saefkow for the Ravensbrück Gedenkbuch (Ravensbrück Memorial Book).35 Due to her efforts as well as to information from several archives, we now know the names of 304 additional Jewish prisoners who apparently arrived during the gaps of over 12 months of 1940, 1941, up to February 1942, for which no arrival lists are preserved. Most of these additional names, dates, and places of death were found in the registry offices of Ravensbrück and Fürstenberg, in the death registration files (Sterbebücher) of Auschwitz, and in the memorial books and cemeteries of several German and Austrian Jewish communities. Of these 304, 177 are known to have been gassed in Bernburg, while 35 died in Ravensbrück and 17 in Auschwitz. The deaths of all the others have not been linked with any date or place. I surmise that none of these 304 women arrived in Ravensbrück after January 1942, since from the beginning of February to the beginning of October 1942 arrival lists are complete. As to the accuracy of the information about the numbers and dates of death of the hundreds of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who died in Bernburg, we know that the official information was fabricated: it says that they all died in Ravensbrück. According to a considerable number of testimonies, all of them were deported and gassed in Bernburg during February and March 1942, yet in the registry office of Fürstenberg the dates of death were listed as between February and July 1942. These completely imaginary place and dates of death, together with imaginary causes of death, were registered there, and included in notifications to relatives.A number of relatives and Jewish cemeteries in the hometowns of the dead even received urns of ashes. The difficulty in procuring correct information, then, is due to the fact that the SS authorities tried to hide their mass murders, especially on German soil. They killed almost all the Jewish prisoners of the first period in Bernburg near Dessau (Bernburg/Saale), in the gas chamber of the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt (mental hospital) that had previously served for the killing of German mentally ill patients and retarded children – the so-called “Euthanasia” operation.36 The SS also hid the fact that it killed there a similar number of mentally sick and physically infirm non-Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners, as well as some Sinti and Roma, 13 Jehovah’s Witnesses, and several women arrested as asozial or criminal. One in this last category was a non-Jewish “sadistic”prostitute – Else Krug – who heroically refused to flog prisoners and as punishment was sent to Bernburg to be killed.37

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The First Period 61 To the best of our knowledge, starting on 3 February 1942, about 1600 women prisoners were sent in about 10 transports (these were lorries or buses loaded with 160 persons each) from Ravensbrück to Bernburg. In the recent extensive study, Das KZ Ravensbrück, Bernhard Strebel concludes that half of these 1600 women (700–800) were Jewish. Of course, Jewish men were there, too; he estimates their number as about 139 out of 298.38 Among the Jewish prisoners of the first period, and among those on the added list of those who apparently arrived during the gaps before the end of February 1942, only 20 are known to have died later in Auschwitz. Some of them succeeded in surviving the near-total annihilation of the Jewish prisoner population during February and March 1942, perhaps because they had arrived after the first visit of Dr. Mennecke on 19 November 1941, when he was given the prisoner lists, or because they were then temporarily absent from Ravensbrück, or because they were working at a workplace considered essential, or because they lived outside the Judenblock.39 NATIONALITY, AGE GROUPS, MARITAL STATUS, AND OCCUPATIONS OF THE FIRST-PERIOD PRISONERS

Nationality The Nazi authorities had robbed German Jews of their German citizenship. Consequently they often did not register the fact that Jewish prisoners came from Germany. So the space reserved for national origin/citizenship remained empty. This included also Jewish women originating from annexed Austria and from the annexed part of Czechoslovakia. Although most of the German Jewish arrivals were registered with the additional middle name “Sara”, this was not always the case. I assume that most of those with unmarked nationality came from the German Reich. That some of the prisoners came from Czechia, Czechoslovakia or Slovakia could be learned from other documents, especially from death notices as these register the hometown of the deceased. Recent Austrian research identified 24 additional Austrians. Of the 711 prisoners of the first period (see Table 4.2), the overwhelming majority – 550 – came from the German Reich, 56 specified that they originated from Czechoslovakia or Czechia, 63 were found to have come from Austria. (See also diagram 1, p. 263.)

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62 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Table 4.2 Country of origin

Number

%

German Reich Austria Czechia, Czechoslovakia, or Slovakia Poland Hungary Lithuania Netherlands Great Britain Romania Stateless Total

550 63 56

77.4 8.9 7.9

32 3 2 2 1 1 1 711

4.5 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.1 0.1 100.0

Age groups The age groups of the prisoners from 1939 to February 1942 are shown in Table 4.3 (also see diagram 2, p. 264 Table 4.3 Age group

Number of women

%

Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

5 71 135 155 138 79 16 112 711

0.7 9.9 19 21.8 19.4 11.1 2.3 15.8 100.0

Although limited by the fact that the date of birth of 16% of the women is unknown, we nevertheless gain some insight into the age structure of the Jewish women prisoners of the first period: over 60% were between the ages of 26 and 55, with no children, there were only five teenagers,41 and only a small group of women were over 65.

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The First Period 63 Marital status 42 Despite the absence of children and teenagers, there were more single women – 417 – compared to 274 married, 6 divorced, and 1 widowed. This may well point to the more vulnerable position of unmarried, especially older, women during Nazi times in Germany. Their chances for emigration were much more limited than the chances of those married to men with professional or occupational skills, as men’s chances of obtaining visas on the basis of a job offer from abroad were – although poor – much better than women’s. Emigration to Palestine was especially difficult for single, divorced, or widowed women, as it was based on either the possession of a sizable sum of money, or of being classified as a “worker”. Our data provide inadequate information about the number of widowed or deserted women among these prisoners. Occupations In order to learn about the social composition of this group of Jewish women prisoners, it is useful to examine their occupations, even though for only a very small portion was this item registered: for only 45 of the 711 do we have these data. These comprised 11 professionals (three physicians, two lawyers, an architect, an engineer, a journalist, a businesswoman, an academic (Dr. Phil.), and even a cantor (although among Jews, this occupation is usually reserved for men); 11 qualified artisans and craftswomen; and 23 workers, most of them domestic and office employees. Even this limited information shows that the group included unusually well-educated individuals as well as some of the most defenseless ones. NOTES 1. There was a survivor, Dr. Doris Maase, b. Franck, whose mother was Jewish, who had been apparently sent to Ravensbrück, not as a Mischling, but because of political activities. She was for a short time in the Judenblock 11 (see Erika Runge, “Statt eines Nachworts: Gespräch mit Doris Maase”, in Hanna Elling, Frauen im deutschen Widerstand 1933–45, Cologne, 1981, pp. 212–216), worked in the Revier, and was released in May 1941 (Ravensbrückerinnen, Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, Nr. 4, Berlin, 1995, pp. 46–49). 2. Ilse Gostynski, arrived May 1939, Ravensbrück prisoner number 471, released 26 May 1939; Ida Hirschkron, arrived 5 October 1939, Ravensbrück prisoner number 2223, released 22 September 1941; Emilie Norbert, arrived November

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64 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

1939, Ravensbrück prisoner number 2392, released after six weeks; Rosa Kliger, arrived 6 April 1940, Ravensbrück prisoner number 3035, released after four months; Herta S., arrived 14 January 1942, in Ravensbrück until 5 October 1942, survived two years and three months in Auschwitz; Else Sinasohn, arrived around June 1941, Ravensbrück prisoner number 6927, in Ravensbrück until 5 October 1942, returned to Ravensbrück from Auschwitz on 16 September 1943. Interview with Erna Korn, now Erna de Vries, by J.B.A., 18 May 1999. PRO, WO 309/1153, deposition of Ida Hirschkron (3 November 1947), p. 74. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA vol. 25, report 361. Interview of Herta Soswinski, war name Herta Mehl, by Sabine Kittel, on 15 April 1997 in Vienna. For example, the letters by Emma Murr in Reinhard Schramm, Ich will leben, Weißenfels, 1990. Helene Potetz, “Die Haft von Stefanie Kunke”, in Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück – ... und dennoch blühten Blumen – Dokumente, Berichte, Gedichte und Zeichnungen vom Lageralltag 1939–1945, ed. Helga Schwarz and Gerda Szepansky, Potsdam, 2000, p. 59. This letter is quoted and discussed in the chapter by Linde Apel, “Missing Voices: Jewish Prisoners in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, 1939–1942”, in A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück, ed. Irith Dublon-Knebel, forthcoming. See the evidence of Maria Storch, Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA Bd. 26, Bericht Nr. 428. Buchmann-Bestand Bd. 26 Bericht 401, p. 3. Buchmann-Bestand Bd. 29 Bericht 501, p. 2. Helga Kohne, “In Herford geboren – in Auschwitz ermordet: Eine Frau im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus”, in Der Minden-Ravensberger, 2005. Das Jahrbuch in Ostwestfalen. Bielefeld, 2004, pp. 66–69. Helene Potetz writes, about 1940, that the ordinary Jewish prisoners had to perform work duties just as heavy as those performed by the prisoners in the punishment block, such as breaking stones and unloading boats (“Die Haft von Stefanie Kunke”, in Schwarz and Szepansky, Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, p. 99). Frauen aus Ravensbrück, January 1995, Edition Hentrich, 1994. Ruth Werner, Olga Benario; English translation, Fernando Mores, Olga, Grove Press, 1990. Herbert Steiner (ed.), Käthe Leichter: Leben und Werk, Vienna, 1973. Sigrid Jacobeit, “Die rote Rosa von Striesen”, in Sigrid Jacobeit and Lieselotte Thoms-Heirich, Kreuzweg Ravensbrück, Leipzig, 1987, pp. 125–137. Ibid., pp. 126 and 136. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Von Potsdam nach Moskau, 1957, Munich; 1981 edn, pp. 226–228 and 401–402. Early researchers conjectured that B.V. stands for Berufsverbrecher, professional criminals. Yet, Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow has found sufficient evidence for the reading proposed here that denotes protective custody, preposterous though this label surely is. The reason for arrest is unknown for nearly all the names on the Kennkartenliste of July 1939. For the women on the “added list”, whom we assume – on the basis of the dates on their death notices or their Ravensbrück numbers – arrived during the

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The First Period 65

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

months of 1940, 1941, and January 1942, for which no arrival lists have been preserved, we have no information about formal reasons for arrest. Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen Ludwigsburg, Ordner 549(I); also Friedrich Mennecke, Innenansichten eines medizinischen Täters im Nationalsozialismus: Eine Edition seiner Briefe 1935–1947, bearbeitet von Peter Chroust, 2 Bde, Hamburg 1987, Bd. 1. Arolsen document AL–12–102, pp. 4–7. Arolsen, document AL 12–102, pp. 147–154. Schramm, Ich will leben, note 77. Irene Eckler, Die Vormundschaftsakte 1935–1958: Verfolgung einer Familie wegen “Rassenschande”: Dokumente und Berichte aus Hamburg, Schwetzingen, 1996. Ibid. Arolsen document AL–7–66, pp. 254–310. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949, p. 210. As mentioned before, this amazing preservation of documents that the SS had tried to destroy is due to the dedicated efforts of Polish (non-Jewish) women who were evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross to Sweden on 26–28 April 1945; see Wanda Kiedrzyn´ska, Ravensbrück Frauenkonzentrationslager, Warsaw, 1961, German translation, pp. 7 and 8. See chapter 3, note 42. One was Herta Mehl, Czech/Austrian survivor Herta Soswinski, who had arrived in Ravensbrück on 14 January 1942; the second, Else Sinasohn (Ravensbrück prisoner number 6927) who had arrived earlier, appears to have been “on transport” at the time of the “selections” for Bernburg; the third, Irmgard Glimt (Glint), Ravensbrück prisoner number 5695, may have somehow survived in Ravensbrück to the end. Eight Jewish names appear on the two lists for June 1940. Until 3 May 1941, the last date in 1941 for which we have an arrival list, we have 403 Jewish names; yet according to the Stärkemeldung of 12 July 1941 there were 440 Jewish prisoners in the camp. Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, Gedenkbuch für die Opfer des Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrück 1939–1945. Vorläufiger Zwischenbericht, Berlin-Fürstenberg/Havel, December 2000, Berlin, 2005. The author kindly let me use her databank, which includes her information about all Jewish prisoners known to have died before the end of 1945. To my regret the Gedenkbuch does not record whether the victims were Jewish or not, only their countries of origins. Ravensbrück thus plays a significant role in the history of the Holocaust, as the first camp whose commanders initiated mass murder experiments of Jews by gas. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, p. 237. Bernhard Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes. Paderborn, 2005, pp. 329–336. Strebel uses the following sources: Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow’s notes for her Gedenkbuch; the Diplomarbeit of Schlaefer and Schröder (see chapter 3, note 12); Anise Postel-Vinay, Massentötungen (see chapter 2, note 17), pp. 363ff.; Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, p. 238; and the testimony of Rosa Jochmannn of the 18 June 1946 in DOW, Ravensbrück, Akt 111. Herta Mehl (Austrian survivor Soswinski) reports that the transport to Bernburg included prisoners from the two Jewish blocks, who had arrived in

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66 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Ravensbrück before December 1941, in Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 1, ed. Lore Shelley, Lanham, MD, pp. 125–144. 40. Age is calculated at the time of arrival in Ravensbrück. 41. Up to the outbreak of the War many thousands of Jewish teenagers and children had been evacuated from Germany and Austria through the efforts of Jewish and Zionist organizations. 42. On most of the arrival lists, married women appear with the family name of their husband, followed by their maiden name. On some of the later transfer lists to labor camps of the fourth and fifth periods, the marital status is listed explicitly – single, married, divorced, or widowed.

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5 THE SECOND PERIOD – FROM BERNBURG TO AUSCHWITZ

Between February 1942 and 17 February 1943, 553 new Jewish prisoners arrived in Ravensbrück. This one year period started with the deportation and killing of the great majority of the Jewish prisoners of the first period in the Bernburg “Euthanasia” gas chamber. We have no way of finding out exactly how many of the Jewish prisoners of the first period were still alive after the end of the mass murder of Ravensbrück prisoners there. The new Jewish arrivals must have been aware of this disaster that, within the two months of February and March 1942, had nearly emptied the Judenblock. Only eight months after the start of the deportation to Bernburg – on 5 October – 522 Jewish prisoners were deported to Auschwitz,1 and the few later arrivals were deported either on 30 January 1943 or before the end of February.2 During the year from the end of January 1942 to the end of February 1943,3 the new Nazi policy of the “final solution” had been fully enacted in Ravensbrück. As we know of only one survivor of Auschwitz, Estera Markiewicz (Salajek), among those who had arrived in Ravensbrück between February 1942 and February 1943, we know very little about the Jewish prisoners of this second period. There were three, with fake non-Jewish identities, two Polish, and one Czech. They did not live in the Jewish block, survived in Ravensbrück, and were identified as Jewish only after liberation. Rosa (Rosette Susanna) Manus, a well-known, long-time leader of the Dutch women’s movement, was arrested as a political prisoner in the German-occupied Netherlands and sent to Ravensbrück after three months in prison in

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68 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück October 1941, still in the first period. She was 60 years old and survived in Ravensbrück until her death on 28 April 1943. She was spared the fate of Bernburg and Auschwitz, presumably because she was protected by living with the Dutch non-Jewish prisoners, rather than in the Judenblock.

Rosette Susanna (Rosa) Manus, b. Amsterdam, 20 August, 1881–d. Ravensbrück, 28 April, 1943. Dutch feminist and co-founder of the International Archive for the women movement. C. M. Meijers, Een moderne vrouw van formaat. Leven en werken van Rosa Manus (Leiden 1946).

Table 5.1 presents data concerning countries of origin. Table 5.1 Country of origin

Number

%

German Reich Poland Czechia/Slovakia/Czechoslovakia Netherlands Austria Stateless Soviet Union/Ukraine France Belgium Serbia/Slovenia Hungary Unknown Total

190 110 101 84 29 15 6 5 4 4 3 2 553

34.4 19.8 18.2 15.1 5.2 2.7 1.1 0.9 0.7 0.7 0.5 0.4 100

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The Second Period – from Bernburg to Auschwitz 69 COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN (SEE DIAGRAM 3, P. 265).

The effects of the War and the German conquest are visible in the national origins of the Jewish prisoners. Of the 553 arrivals, less than half (190) arrived from the German Reich, 15 were declared stateless, and we know of 29 that had arrived from Austria. The first three large groups from occupied countries also arrived during this year: 110 from Poland, 101 from Czechoslovakia/Czechia/Slovakia, and 84 from the Netherlands; 6 arrived from the Soviet Union and Ukraine, 5 from France, 4 from Belgium, 4 from Slovenia and Serbia, and 3 from Hungary. The countries of origin of 2 are unknown. OFFICIAL REASONS FOR ARREST

Here, too, the effects of the War are visible. For the overwhelming majority (485, 87.5%) the official reason for arrest is now political,4 the entire Jewish people now having been declared enemies of Germany. Of those who remained, having been arrested under the previous categories, 31 were Rassenschande, 20 asozial, 3 B.V., 1 Abschiebung, and 14 unknown. AGE GROUPS

In this period, the age group 36–45 is the largest, but there was already a sizable group of teenagers, and an even larger one of women over 66. During this period, the indiscriminate arrest and imprisonment of Jewish women of all age groups becomes apparent (see Table 5.2, and diagram 4, p. 266). Table 5.2 Age group

Number

%

Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

12 95 97 135 103 78 32 1 553

2.2 17.1 17.5 24.4 18.6 14.1 5.8 0.4 100

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70 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück MARITAL STATUS

In the second period there were fewer single (231) than married (294) women. During this second period, it has to be remembered, sizable groups of women arrived from Poland, the Netherlands, and Czechoslovakia, where the Jewish populations had had barely any chance to escape by emigration before the Nazi invasion. CONDITIONS OF LIFE

It is shocking how little we know about the lives of these 553 Jewish women and girls and their lives in Ravensbrück during the eight months up to 5 October. There is one description of their conditions of work and of the terrible neglect of their medical needs. Margarete BuberNeumann describes the fate of about 30 older Jewish women in midsummer 1942.5 They had arrived in the camp only a short time earlier, and had been forced to unload bricks from a boat and throw the bricks from one to the other without using gloves. Their hands, arms, and bare feet were burned red and swollen from the sun, and their hands were bleeding from the sharp bricks. Their Blockälteste had brought them to the Revier for treatment, but the SS physician Schiedlausky shouted “Judenweiber raus!” and they were promptly chased out. The next day, their sunburn was covered with blisters. This time they were lucky, and the prisoner medics put paper bandages on them. Two days later, the Blockälteste tried to have the bandages changed, but again met Schiedlausky. When the women had developed high fever and could hardly stand anymore, the Blockälteste led her patients to the Revier again,and this time they were let in and their paper bandages cut off.The floor of the clinic was covered with maggots.Several women were kept in the Revier, and died from the consequences of the sunburn.6 Herta S. also described the outdoor work assigned to the Jewish prisoners as life-threatening; she claimed that she herself survived only due to the help of Czech comrades who got her indoor work. Unlike the first period, we have no reports of any social or cultural life of the Jewish prisoners of the second period. THE BIG DEPORTATION TO AUSCHWITZ

Not all the transports of Ravensbrück prisoners to Auschwitz were meant for the gas chamber.A number of non-Jewish political prisoners

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The Second Period – from Bernburg to Auschwitz 71 were sent to serve in Auschwitz’ new women’s section as Stubenälteste, Blockälteste, or Lagerläuferin. We also know about a group of radical Jehovah’s Witnesses who were sent there as punishment, but not to be gassed. Some non-Jewish prisoners were sent to Auschwitz for special work purposes. Transports to Auschwitz that included Jewish prisoners took place on 2, 5, and 6 October 1942, 24 and 28 November, and 30 January 1943. On 2 October 1942, a few Jewish women prisoners were sent to Auschwitz. From extant Auschwitz documents, we also know that on 5 October 1942, as many as 522 Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück arrived there.7 Additional transports were on 6 October, and 24 and 28 November 1942. A Ravensbrück document details that on 30 January 1943, another 12 Jewish women prisoners who had arrived since the October transport were sent to Auschwitz.8 The remaining four, who had arrived on 17 February 1943 from the Jugerndschutzlager Uckermark, must have been sent there soon after. These deportations to Auschwitz took place at the express order of Himmler, chief of the SS, issued on 2 October 1942, that all concentration camps on the territory of the German Reich should be made judenfrei (without Jews).9 We do not know all the identities of these over 550 deported Jewish women prisoners. We have the names of 20 Jewish women prisoners who had arrived during the first period and are known to have died in Auschwitz; we also know the names of 391 Jewish women prisoners of the second period, known to have died in Auschwitz, as well as the dates of death of 385 of them, all between October 1942 and the end of May 1943. The sources for the information about the dates of death are the Auschwitz death registry files (Sterbebücher) for 1942 and 1943. After 1943, no individual registration of those killed in Auschwitz has been preserved. It is generally assumed that the dates of death registered in these two Auschwitz death registry files are accurate, or nearly accurate. According to these files, the largest group – 310 – of those deported from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz were already dead before the end of October; 39 died in November, 14 in December, 9 in January 1943, 9 in February, 1 in March, 1 in April, and 1 in May. In the Auschwitz death registry files for 1943, no names of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners are listed as having died after June. These data point to the intention of the SS to kill these prisoners, not to use them as a work force. Nevertheless, some of them, perhaps

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72 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück the youngest and healthiest or those possessing some special work skills or special connections, managed to survive for some time. Thus, two of the young women from the youth Jugendschutzlager Uckermark, as well as Else Sinasohn, succeeded in surviving at least eight months in Auschwitz and in returning to Ravensbrück with the Mischling transport of September 1943. The only Ravensbrück deportee to Auschwitz in the transport of 5 October 1942 known to have survived there until the evacuation of Auschwitz on 18 January 1945, and also to have escaped during the death march, was the already-mentioned Herta S. from Prague, who had arrived in Ravensbrück at the very end of the first period.10 NOTES 1. See chapter 3, note 45. 2. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA-Nr. XXXIII; see also Grit Philipp, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 1939–1945, Berlin, 1999, p. 119. 3. Herta S., who survived Auschwitz, had already arrived there by January 1942. Rudolfine Burghardt and Hermine Hocke arrived from Uckermark as late as 17 February 1943, were sent to Auschwitz immediately after, and returned on 16 September 1943. 4. The overwhelming majority of non-Jewish prisoners arriving from outside the German Reich were also classified automatically as “political”. 5. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949, pp. 287–288. 6. Five Jewish prisoners of the second period were registered as having died in Ravensbrück between 7 September and 9 October 1942. 7. See chapter 3, note 45. 8. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA-Nr. XXXIII; see also Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 119. 9. See chapter 3, note 56 for the document ordering the deportation of all Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück to Auschwitz and forbidding the sending of new Jewish prisoners to Ravensbrück. 10. In an interview with Sabine Kittel, Herta S. reports the decisive help she had received from non-Jewish communist Czech prisoners in Auschwitz in obtaining a better workplace.

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6 THE THIRD PERIOD – THE SPECIAL GROUPS

At the time of Himmler’s inspection on 19 March 1943, no legitimate Jewish women prisoners were supposed to be in the camp. There was no longer a Judenblock. Rosa (Rosette Susanna) Manus, the wellknown, long-time leader of the Dutch women’s movement, who had arrived in the first period, died there on 28 April 1943. Between March and August, 14 Jewish women arrived. One of them was sent soon after to Auschwitz and died there. One Austrian, Irene Rumler (Ravensbrück prisoner number 19542) from Klagenfurt, and one German, Ilse Heinemann (Ravensbrück prisoner number 21816) from Braunschweig, had arrived (according to their prisoner numbers) in April or May 1943 and lived in Block 1, the German “political” prisoners block. Both worked in the camp in office jobs, which was unusual for Jewish prisoners. Sixteen more Jewish women arrived before 16 September, nearly all from the German Reich. We do not know why they were sent to Ravensbrück in contravention of the orders from Himmler. PRISONERS WITH HIDDEN JEWISH IDENTITIES

In March 1943, a group of women with hidden Jewish identities arrived in the camp with a transport of Red Army prisoners. This group included at least 10 Russian or Ukrainian physicians, medical students, medics, or office workers. They all lived in Block 32 and performed the work of doctors, nurses, and medics in the Revier. All 10 survived and have been identified.1

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74 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Recently two of them told their detailed stories, including their Jewish origins and the circumstances of their adopting nonJewish identities: Galina Matusova (not a physician herself, but a Red Army office worker), who immigrated to Israel in 1992, and Dr. Musja Klugmann, who lives in Moscow. Dr. Klugmann worked in the Ravensbrück Revier until March 1944, when, as punishment, she and other Soviet prisoner doctors were sent to work as cleaning women in the ammunition factory of the Ravensbrück external labor camp, Barth. A third, Lidia Leschinska, who knew them all and who now lives in Bremen, Germany, recently reported the Jewish origins and some of the histories of the seven others. Some of these had testified in the 1960s or the 1970s about their camp experiences, but without mentioning their Jewish origins. As late as 1995, the Kalender of the Ravensbrück Memorial published a short biography and photo of Jewgenia Lazarewna Klemm, still without mentioning that she was Jewish. She was a professor in the faculty of education in the University of Odessa, who had volunteered as a medic to the Red Army. She served as spokesperson for the prisoners of the Red Army and was well liked and respected. She committed suicide in 1947.2

Jewgenia Lasarewna Klemm, 1898– b. Odessa, 1947. Spokesperson of the Red Army prisoners in Ravensbrück. Professor of literature in the University of Odessa; committed suicide, 1947.

Apparently, several of these Jewish physicians and medics who had survived Ravensbrück spent several years in gulags after the War – Musja Klugmann from 1948 to 1956. After the liberation by the Soviet forces in May 1945, her non-Jewish friend Dr. Nikifora spent several

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 75 months in the Ravensbrück camp prison as a result of trumped-up accusations.3 The tragic history of the concentration camp prisoners who had come from the Soviet Union and survived, only to be sent directly to the gulags, has recently been confirmed by Prof. Jakow Samoilowitsch Drabkin, the much-decorated Soviet officer who was sent in April 1945 to liberate Ravensbrück.4 We also know about a Polish political prisoner with hidden Jewish identity, Kasimira Pawovska, now Kazimira Bergman, born Kagan, who arrived in Ravensbrück in July 1943 and lived with the Polish political prisoners; she later emigrated to Israel.5

THE FRENCH TRANSPORTS

Another group of arrivals during the third period were women who came with the transports of the French political Resistance prisoners. Three French Jewish women had already arrived in Ravensbrück in April 1943, and 94 others arrived in the 24 French transports before the end of the third period. (These transports continued in the fourth and even in the beginning of the fifth periods.) As most of the French arrival lists were lost, we do not know who was classified as Jewish by the Nazi authorities. We have to rely on the reconstruction of the transport lists by members of the French Ravensbrück Committee (Amicale). These French survivors of Ravensbrück considered it incorrect to use the term “Jewish”, since it was misused by the Nazis. After explaining the concerns of our research to them, the historian and Ravensbrück survivor Anise Postel-Vinay kindly identified from memory those known to her as Jewish. Due to the research of the French Ravensbrück Committee, the fate of the majority of this group are known: 47, nearly half, survived and returned to France; 12 are known to have died. The fate of the remaining 38 are unknown.

THE SPECIAL CATEGORIES

Nearly all the other Jewish prisoners of the third period belonged to special categories which, at that time, were consigned by the SS to concentration camps within the territory of the German Reich, not to Auschwitz or to other Polish extermination camps.

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76 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Mischlinge The first such category was that of Mischlinge, women and girls of part-Jewish descent. Whereas women of this category had been sent during the preceding months from Germany to Auschwitz, this order apparently was changed in the second half of 1943. A large transport of 84 Mischlinge from Auschwitz arrived in Ravensbrück on 3 September 1943 and 56 additional Mischlinge arrived in Ravensbrück between September 1943 and the end of July 1944. In her memoir, Israeli survivor Shoshana Heymann (war name Susanna Rosenthal), reports that, as late as 29 February 1944, when Adolf Eichmann visited Auschwitz, he noticed her at the Kommandantur (camp headquarters). Since she did not look Jewish, Eichmann tried to convince Rosenthal that somebody in her family must be Aryan and asked her to let him know, promising her that he personally would take care of her transfer to Ravensbrück.6 The great majority of this Mischlingstransport from Auschwitz were young women who had survived several months in Auschwitz at a time of constant selections. Most were from Germany (53) or stateless (13), and spoke German. The survivors remember that there was an announcement in Auschwitz that Jews of mixed descent should report to the authorities; one survivor reported that she did present herself, having had a non-Jewish grandmother.7 Another survivor reports that she and another girl were collected from the block where they awaited death by gas on the following morning.8 In spite of being young and healthy, she had acquired an infection on her legs while working at collecting reeds on a lake shore. Most of this group of 84 stayed in Ravensbrück until the closure of the camp and the evacuation march on 28 April 1945. Three are known to have died, 24 are known to have survived, and the fate of 57 is unknown. Of the known 24 survivors, only five have told their stories. These women may have been in a slightly better position in Ravensbrück than the rest of the Jewish prisoners of that period. Although they were classified as Jüdin/Mischling, apparently some succeeded in removing the yellow triangle from their sleeves. According to the testimony of Erna de Vries, then Erna Korn, they were forced to remove the yellow triangle. When in September 1998 she sent her prisoner dress to the Museum of Ravensbrück, she wrote that “It nearly looks as if I did not want to appear as a Jewess ... I insist that the proper triangle, meaning the red-yellow triangle, be

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 77 attached.”9 We know that most of them passed the manual dexterity test for the Siemens factory and worked there in conditions that were slightly less terrible than in most other workplaces assigned to Jewish prisoners. From the stories of at least two survivors of Siemens,10 we gain the impression that, because the Siemens workers were allowed to live together in barracks near their workplace outside the main camp after an initial period, they developed wider friendship ties and were able to practice mutual help. Later on, some had the chance to be evacuated to Sweden, when a group of Siemens workers were marched to the main gate of the camp, where the trucks of the Swedish Red Cross waited.11 That only five survivors of this Mischlingstransport have ever told their stories is surprising, as I assume that most of the members of this group whose fate is unknown also survived. It is also surprising that they did not register as Holocaust survivors. Perhaps the reason for this is the more acute difficulty of integration into postwar society that many Mischlinge faced due to the severity of their identity problem. The fate of the five exceptions corroborates this. Of the five who have told their stories, three spent years in Israel, so that they clearly identified as Jewish, at least for some time. The fourth became active in the GDR Ravensbrück Committee as a Communist.12 The fifth, a US survivor, actress and singer Silvia Grohs-Martin, wrote and published her autobiography only after 55 years of silence.13

Sylvia Grohs–Martin, b. Vienna, 1918. Autobiography: Silvie, New York, Welcome Rain Publishers, 2000.

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78 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Protected citizenship The largest special category of the third period is that of 312 Jewish prisoners with a citizenship that granted them limited protection, at least temporarily. Of these, 139 held Hungarian citizenship, 87 Romanian,14 69 Turkish, 9 Italian, and 8 Spanish. All had been living outside the country of their documented citizenship and had been arrested by the Nazi authorities in Germany, especially in Berlin and Leipzig, the Netherlands or Belgium, or were transferred there from Theresienstadt (Terezin). Most of the adults with Hungarian or Romanian papers were arrested in the Netherlands or Belgium, had lived there for quite some time, and their children had been born there. As Dutch and Belgian Jews were at this time automatically deported to Auschwitz, possibly some of those claiming Hungarian, Romanian, or Turkish nationality had already been naturalized in the Netherlands or in Belgium, but had reverted to the citizenship of the country from which one or more members of the family had come, in order to gain partial or temporary protection. These prisoner groups differed in some ways from the rest of the Jewish prisoner population of Ravensbrück. They were arrested as family groups; most of those arrested in the Netherlands spent several months in the internment camp of Westerbork and those arrested in Belgium in the internment camp of Malines (Mechelen). Then the men were deported to Buchenwald, and the women and children to Ravensbrück. For the first time in the history of the camp, Jewish children and also a sizable number of teenagers arrived as prisoners – 64 children up to 12 years of age, and 24 teenagers up to age 18, comprising 88 in all: 32 coming from Westerbork, 19 from Belgium, 3 from Denmark, 7 from Berlin or Leipzig, and the rest from elsewhere. In the course of their stay in Ravensbrück, at least two of the boys, among them Menachem (then Otto) Kallus, reached the age of 13 and were transferred to the men’s camp. It is most surprising that apparently only four of these children and two teenagers died in Ravensbrück or Bergen-Belsen, despite the by-then rapidly deteriorating conditions of housing, sanitation, and nutrition. As we have the testimonies of so many persons who experienced the camp at the impressionable age of about 8–14, and as so many of them live in Israel, we have learned more than usual about the life of this group during the year 1944 in Ravensbrück, and of a large group that was transferred to Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 79

Menachem Kallus, b. Den Haag, 11 June, 1932. Autobiography, Als Junge im KZ Ravensbrück. Berlin, Metropol, 2005.

The important information is that this group of families, especially those coming from the Netherlands, lived somewhat separately: mothers were permitted to sleep with their children on adjacent bunk beds. Apparently, mothers of babies and of the youngest children were not sent to work. In the case of one family whose tiny baby cried incessantly, the Polish prisoners organized the housing of the family in the block of the Kaninchen (Polish prisoners who had been used for experimental bone operations), where conditions were less adverse.15 Lilli Gottfried, then seven-year-old “Turkish” Rebecca Misrahi from Belgium, reports that she and her brother were completely abandoned, running wild among the sewage ditches. She also reports that their mother performed heavy road work, and that on one occasion an SS woman was hitting her and that she was kissing the woman’s feet, beseeching her to stop.16 Some of the family groups, at least those coming from Westerbork, succeeded in establishing some kind of social organization, perhaps due to their having had formed stable social relations during several months of life at Westerbork. The survivors remember that a school class existed at least for a period, with a woman teaching in German.17 Those coming from Belgium apparently did not succeed in organizing any schooling for their children. There may have been a nursery group for preschool children. Martha Kralovitz, a “Hungarian” from Leipzig, reported in her letter to her son in Buchenwald that her daughter Annemarie worked in Ravensbrück in her occupation of kindergarten teacher.18 The only surviving member of this transport, Eveline

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80 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Schwartz, then three years old, reports that Annemarie had already been her nursery school teacher in the Leipzig Judenhaus.19 One older boy, Arthur (Abraham) Stahl from Westerbork, remembered that he had notebooks and pencils – he wrote down quite a number of stories and was very proud of this activity. One of his saddest memories was the loss of these notebooks on the forced march – the last lap of the transport of mothers and children to Bergen-Belsen on 30 January 1945.20 The boys also report some outdoor playing.21 Two girls who were “best friends” tell an amazing story of having been protected over quite some time by an older SS man, who each day ordered the women prisoners working in the SS laundry to wash the girls, and supplied them with some food for themselves and for their families.22 The survivors tell of continuously deteriorating food supplies, of hunger, and of one enterprising mother climbing at night through the window of the barrack in order to find food scraps in the garbage cans of the SS kitchen, while her son watched out for any approaching guard. Certainly, the mutual responsibility of mothers and children contributed much to their chances of survival. For some time, at least, the families communicated with husbands and grown-up sons in Buchenwald by heavily censored camp letters. Some of these moving documents are preserved.23 As these were family groups, they also included many older women. Fifty-seven women were 56–65, and 43 were 66 or older. At the end of March 1944, the Jews with Hungarian citizenship lost their protection against being sent to Auschwitz. From handwritten notes on some recently found arrival lists,24 we learn that seven women, most with Hungarian citizenship, were sent to Auschwitz between August and October 1944. Later, several were “selected” for death at Uckermark, the Jugendschutzlager (youth camp) next to Ravensbrück that had been turned into a death camp. The third large group, the 69 women and children with Turkish citizenship, arrived mainly from Belgium – but also from Berlin – on 5 November and 16 December 1943, respectively. The Turkish group included 8 children and an especially large group of 25 older women, many of whom died in the camp or were sent to the Ravensbrück death camp of Uckermark.25 The majority of the prisoners with Turkish citizenship (real or assumed) were of Sephardic extraction. Among those with Spanish or Italian citizenship, there were also some with Sephardic names. It is often assumed that Sephardic Jewry was not affected by the

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 81 Holocaust. This group of families, mainly with Turkish citizenship and having lived in Belgium, is an example to the contrary. (Another group of mainly young women of Sephardic extraction who arrived later in Ravensbrück – mainly from Auschwitz – originated in Greece, nearly all from Saloniki.) The “Turkish” prisoners who survived to the end of February 1945 were “released” (entlassen) on 28 February 194526 to travel to Sweden.27 This was a result of the Turkish government having demanded the transfer of any of its citizens back to Turkey.28 With the help of the Swedish Red Cross, they reached Sweden and were taken by boat to Istanbul immediately after the end of the War. The Turkish authorities refused to accept them as citizens, however, and they waited for weeks interned near Istanbul, and could then decide to which country they wanted to be “repatriated”. Apparently most chose Belgium, the country they had come from initially.29 Many of the survivors of the transport of mothers and children from Ravensbrück to the horrors of Bergen-Belsen were liberated there by the Western Allies and sent to Sweden for recuperation. After a relatively short period there, they were repatriated to the Netherlands or Belgium. Many of the children from these special groups had lost their fathers and some their mothers. Especially in the Netherlands they were soon relatively well looked after in Jewish and Zionist schools and youth organizations. Several of them left the Netherlands and Belgium, reaching Eretz Israel even before Israel’s independence in May 1948.

Stella Nikiforova born Kugelmann, b. Antwerp, 29 July, 1939. Short biography: Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück – Kalender 2000, Berlin, 1999.

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82 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück One curious story concerns Stella Kugelmann, a four-year-old girl with Spanish citizenship, who arrived with her mother from Brussels on 16 December 1943. The mother, a pianist, collapsed soon after arrival, and died of tuberculosis in July 1944 in the Tuberculosis Block of the Revier. Apparently, Stella had no other relative among the group from Belgium. According to Charlotte Müller’s memoir, after her mother’s death, Stella was looked after for several months by the Belgian nonJewish prisoner Claire van den Boom in the Tuberculosis Block. Some time later, Claire van den Boom was sent to a salt mine in an external labor camp as punishment.30 Later Stella was “adopted” by a group of Soviet women prisoners,lived in their block,and was eventually taken by them to the Soviet Union. She discovered her identity when 19 years old and later visited her father – he had survived in Buchenwald, married another Ravensbrück survivor, and emigrated to Brazil. Stella, who had spent painful years in a Soviet orphanage, had fond memories of her life with the Soviet women in Ravensbrück, when, as she said, she had many mothers.Only recently did this curious story become more understandable,when we learned that some of the women who “adopted”Stella,the Jewish orphan,were in fact Soviet Red Army physicians or medics,many of them with hidden Jewish identities.31 Unfortunately for Stella, her special “mother” Dr. Musja Klugmann, and Klugmann’s non-Jewish friend Dr. Nikifora (whose adopted son later married Stella), were both arrested after the War by Soviet authorities. Altogether a sizeable number of the prisoners of the third period survived until the end of 1944, all through the fourth period of the camp, although few remained there until liberation. Yet, especially the family groups from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany with temporarily protected citizenship appear to have had little contact with the Jewish arrivals of the fourth and fifth periods, and even among themselves. Of the five periods, the third had the highest percentage of women and girls of part-Jewish descent (Mischlinge, Halbjüdin, Jüdin 1. Grades, or Jüdin 2. Grades): 21%. Whereas only 14 of this group of 140 are known to have died, only 32 are known to have survived. The high percentage – 67% (94 women) – of those about whose fate we have no information is surprising and calls for explanation. The family groups included 85 children and teenagers and at least 100 women age 56 and over. Of these older women, 39.6% died in Ravensbrück, were sent to Auschwitz, or were gassed in Ravensbrück in the spring of 1945. Surprisingly, in spite of the constantly deteriorating conditions and the transfer of many of the children to Bergen-Belsen

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 83 on 30 January 1945, only 4 children and 2 teenagers of the 85 children and teenagers are known to have died in Ravensbrück or in BergenBelsen; 40 are known to have survived. In sum, 233 (35.5%) of the Jewish arrivals of the third period are known to have survived. The Swedish and the Danish Red Cross played a crucial role in the survival of 106 who were evacuated: from Ravensbrück in the last days before liberation by bus, converted truck, or train; within the groups of French or Dutch (non-Jewish) prisoners; in a group from Siemens; evacuated to Sweden after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen on 15 April; or evacuated from Terezin together with the Danish Jewish prisoners there. Most of those who had originally been deported to Ravensbrück from the Netherlands were repatriated there from Sweden. The Swedish Red Cross also contributed to the survival of the “Turkish”/ Belgian women and children, by evacuating them from Ravensbrück to Sweden as early as 28 February 1945, and after a short stay, sending them by boat to Belgium via Istanbul. STATISTICAL SUMMING-UP OF THE THIRD PERIOD

Age groups See Table 6.1, and diagram 5, p. 267. Table 6.1 Age

Number

%

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown

64 24 116 118 119 87 57 43 27

9.7 3.7 17.7 18.0 18.1 13.2 8.8 6.5 4.4

Marital status Of the 517 women of the third period older than 18, 194 (37.6%) were at some time married.

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84 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Formal and actual citizenship See Table 6.2, and diagram 6, p. 268. Table 6.2 Citizenship German Reich Hungary Romania France Turkey Poland Czechoslovakia Austria Denmark Soviet Union Spain Belgium Netherlands Ukraine Portugal China Croatia Latvia Luxembourg Norway Stateless Unknown Total

Formal Number

%

Actual Number

%

119 139 87 84 69 30 19 14 10 9 8 5 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 23 9 655

18.2 21.2 13.2 12.8 10.5 4.6 2.9 2.1 1.5 1.4 1.2 0.8 0.8 0.5 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 3.5 1.7 100

121 49 43 86 20 30 20 14 10 7 1 84 117 4 0 1 1 1 1 1 21 9 655

18.5 7.5 6.5 13.1 3.0 4.6 2.9 2.1 1.5 1.1 0.1 12.8 17.8 0.6 0 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 3.2 1.7 100

Fate See Table 6.3, and diagram 7, p. 269. Table 6.3 Fate

Number

%

Known to have died before or soon after the end of the War Known to have survived No information Total

141

21.5

233 281 655

35.5 43 100

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 85 Thus, those who arrived in the third period (between March 1943 and the end of July 1944, as only a few arrived before September 1943) had a much higher rate of survival than those of the first and second periods, who were nearly all killed. Nevertheless, even this somewhat at least temporarily and partially protected group did not reach the rate of survival estimated for the total camp population – 50% – as the known survival rate of this group was no more than 35.5%. The Swedish Red Cross played a significant role in the survival of 106 of the 233 who survived. Relatively, a great deal is known about the fates of members of this group who were in the camp in the spring of 1945 and soon after liberation, especially the Dutch and Belgians, although too little is known about the fate of the Mischlinge. Up to 83 of the survivors registered. As many as 72 of them answered questionnaires, supplied information, or were formally interviewed. Six short biographies or memoirs about them appeared, edited by others. Two of them published full-length memoirs of their terrible experiences.

NOTES 1. The first of these arrived on 17 February 1943. She was Galina Matusova, b. Bazuk, Ravensbrück prisoner number 17537 (false non-Jewish Ukrainian identity), Israeli survivor, interviewed by J.B.A. and Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow; see also her testimony in Kiev, 16 July 1976, in Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, “Dokumentation”, Bulletin, für Faschismus- und Weltkriegforschung, Beiheft 1, Berlin, 2001, pp. 211–215, Quelle: BStU, RHE-West 701/4. (2) Musja Nisowna Klugmann (false non-Jewish Ukrainian identity), survivor; testimony, 4–5 August 1964 in Moscow, in ibid., pp. 206–209. Quelle: BStU, ZUV 1, Akte 13, U-Vorgang Göritz, Band V. (3) Maria Artemowna Balaska (false non-Jewish Soviet identity, real name Skotland); testimony, 27 July 1976, Kiev, in ibid., pp. 225–227. Quelle: BStU, RHE-West 701/4. (4) Eleonora Idsikowskaja. (5) Jewgenia Lazarewna Klemm, Professor of History in University of Odessa Faculty of Education; Red Army medic; died 1947 (suicide); source: Ravensbrück calendar 1997and phone interview with Lidia Leschinska by Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, 2004. (6) Lidia Leschinska, current name Olympiada Wassiliewa; lives in Bremen, Germany; phone interview by Bärbel SchindlerSaefkow, 2004. (7) Ljuba Konnikova was a medical student, worked as a physician; source: Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow. (8) Ludmila Maximowa, current name Woloschina; transferred from Ravensbrück to Neubrandenburg; phone interview with Lidia Leschinska by Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, 2004. (9) Maria Kaplan, physician, who worked in the Revier in that role; after the War she lived in Kiev and continued to work as a physician; phone interview with Lidia Leschinska by Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, 2004. (10) Klara Schidlowskaja; after

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86 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück

2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

the War she lived in Nikolaew, emigrated to Israel, and died recently; phone interview with Lidia Leschinska by Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, 2004. According to Charlotte Müller, Jewgenia Klemm was the political leader of the block of Red Army prisoners and was esteemed by all; Charlotte Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne in Ravensbrück: Erinnerungen des Häftlings Nr. 1078, Berlin, 1987, p. 103. This was reported by Dr. Nikifora to Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow. Prof. Jakow Samojlowitsch Drabkin (unpublished) speech in Ravensbrück on 17 April 2005, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück. Kazimira Bergman, in two interviews with Adriana Kemp (8 December 1997 and 19 February 1998), reported experiences as a political activist and later prisoner in Ravensbrück with hidden Jewish identity. She had no contacts with the Jewish prisoners. In Lore Shelley (ed.), Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 1, Lanham, MD, 1992, p. 9. Esther Bejarano, b. Loewy, in Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, Kalender 2000, January, biographische Angaben nach Loretta Walz. Interview with Erna Korn, now Erna de Vries, by J.B.A., 18 May 1999. Geschenk an die MGR, 1998, Sign. V2105 B2. Judith Taube, war name Jolanta Arato (Aufrichtig); interview by J.B.A. on 10 July 1997; also testimony by Edith Per, b. Gombus, now in Australia. The names of seven are registered on the list of Liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945, yet two of these, Sylvia Grohs-Martin (b. Grohs) and her friend Eva, who had spent weeks in the “Bunker”, managed to join a group of Dutch non-Jewish prisoners; in Silvia Grohs-Martin, Silvie, New York, 2000, pp. 298, 332–333. Irmgard Konrad, b. Adam, interview, in Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, Kalender 2000, February. Silvia Grohs-Martin, published autobiography Silvie. Israeli survivor Zehava Ge’alel, war name Charlotte Stahl, mentioned a list of Dutch Jews with these fictitious citizenships – the “Weinreb list”. Zali (Sara) Kallus, b. Eliovits, interview by A.K. (Adriana Kemp) on 17 July 1997. Repeat interview with Lilli Gottfried and Joseph Misrahi by J.B.A., 2005. Irene Kraus from Czechoslovakia, according to the testimony of Israeli survivor Judith Harris, war name Judith Hirsch; interview 26 August 1997 by A.K., and according to Israeli survivor Zehava Ge’alel, war name Charlotte Stahl, phone interview with J.B.A, 20 July 2005. This was the interpretation of Rolf Kralovitz, “Zehn Null Neunzig” in Buchenwald, Cologne, 1996 p.52. Australian survivor Evelyn Thassim, b. Eveline Schwartz, reports that this information was given to her by Rolf Kralovitz; phone interview with J.B.A, 17 July 2005. The late Professor Abraham Stahl; interview by J.B.A. on 16 March 1998. For example, in the memoir written by Menachem (then Otto) Kallus, Als Junge im KZ Ravensbrück, Berlin, 2005, p. 65. Noemi Moscowits, now Friedman, interview by I.D.K. (Irith Dublon-Knebel) and A.K. on 23 June 1997. Rebecca Misrahi, now Lilly Gottfried (Ravensbrück prisoner number 25584), interview by J.B.A. and A.K. on 21 September 1997; second interview with J.B.A in March 2005.

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The Third Period – the Special Groups 87 24. The arrival lists from 16 December 1943 until 7 February 1944 were preserved with handwritten remarks. Due to these remarks we have much information about the fate of these Jewish arrivals from Berlin, Brussels, and Westerbork. 25. Eight Turkish women died in Ravensbrück, 3 are presumed to have died, 2 were sent to Uckermark, and 2 to Auschwitz (1 of whom died, 1 survived) – altogether 14 Turkish women are known to have died. 26. From the handwritten notes we know that 25 were “released”, but there may have been considerably more. 27. Erna de Vries, war name Erna Korn, testified that she saw the group of Turkish women and children being collected by Red Cross vehicles. 28. In March 1945, over 100 Jewish prisoners with Turkish citizenship in the Aufenthaltslager Bergen-Belsen were also released to Sweden. Claus FüllbergStolberg et al. (eds), Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen Ravensbrück, Bremen, 1994, p. 150. 29. See note 23 above. 30. Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne in Ravensbrück, pp. 111–113. 31. See Stella Nikiforova, b. Kugelmann, in Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, Kalender 2000, August/September.

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7 THE FOURTH PERIOD – AUGUST 1944 TO END OF 1944: THE FLO OD GATES OPEN

Before discussing the radical change that took place on 16 August 1944, let me mention that between 2 and 14 August, 18 Jewish women prisoners arrived with a transport from Verona, Italy. As there were three direct transports from Italy in the fourth period, and two more in the fifth, they will all be discussed later. Between 6 and 14 August, 110 Jewish prisoners, women, girls, and children arrived directly from France, most of them in the only large Jewish family transport from France (Toulouse). The arrival of smaller numbers of Jewish women prisoners, within at least seven transports of political French prisoners from the resistance movements that had started in April 1943, continued during the entire fourth period, and one more arrived in the fifth, on 24 January 1945.1 The special characteristics of these prisoners will also be discussed later. AUGUST 1944: THE ARRIVAL OF HUNGARIAN AND POLISH JEWISH WOMEN AND GIRLS FROM AUSCHWITZ

In mid-August 1944, a radical change occurred in the significance of the Ravensbrück concentration camp for Jewish prisoners, women and girls. Whereas the bulk of the Jewish population of Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France had been deported since 1942 mainly to Auschwitz and to Theresienstadt, and the Jewish population of Poland had been held for years in ghettos and labor camps and then transferred to extermination camps within Poland, the deportation of the Jews of Hungary to Auschwitz started only at the end of April 1944.2 By August, many thousands had

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 89 arrived, and most of the children, mothers with young children, and the elderly, had been murdered on arrival. At the same time, the decline in the supply of workers from Western Europe for the German war industry became acute. With the landing of the Allies in Normandy in June 1944, fewer workers from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands could be brought to Germany. Consequently, great masses of slave laborers were brought in from Poland, Ukraine, and White Russia. The war industry and the military airfields demanded able-bodied concentration camp prisoners to be brought from Auschwitz to fill the gap, and this included Jewish prisoners, both men and women. In August 1944, large transports of Hungarian Jewish, as well as Polish Jewish, prisoners – women and girls – were selected in Auschwitz and transported to Germany. We know about one transport of 1700 – all classified by the SS as Hungarian Jewish, although it turned out that quite a few of them originated in Czechoslovakia or Romania – who were transported from Auschwitz to work at a military airfield at Frankfurt/Walldorf.3 This group (about 30 of them had died in Frankfurt/Walldorf during their stay of less than three months there) was then transferred to Ravensbrück between 23 and 25 November 1944. At about the same time, a transport of 500 mostly Jewish prisoners, young women and girls, all of whom had been deported to Auschwitz from Ghetto ·ódz´, were sent from Auschwitz to the Krupp factory at Neukölln in Berlin, and reached Ravensbrück as late as mid-April 1945. Starting on about 11 August 1944, several large transports, bringing over 1000 persons in total, arrived in Ravensbrück from Auschwitz, all of them Hungarian Jewish women and girls. The arrival lists of these transports are lost, but we can reconstruct much of their data from records of their medical examinations (Revierkarten), from survivors of a transport to the Sachsenhausen external labor camp Schönholz, and from two transfer lists to external labor camps of Buchenwald, Altenburg (Thüringen) and Neustadt (near Coburg). Some lists of the subsequent selection of those no longer able to work in the war industry and their final deportation back to Auschwitz, are preserved in the Buchenwald Archive. Most of these over 1000 arrivals from Auschwitz stayed in Ravensbrück for only about two weeks to a month and were then sent

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90 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück by the hundreds to the external labor camps: Schönholz (100–200 persons4),Altenburg (503 persons5), and Neustadt (400 persons,6 plus at least 12 others not on the preserved transfer lists). Apparently, when the first transport of 100–200 (it may have been as many as 800) Hungarian and Czechoslovakian young Jewish women prisoners arrived from Auschwitz in the heat of August, there was no room for them and they slept for a whole week on the coaldust covered ground between two barracks.7 They suffered at the hands of aggressive anti-Semitic Ukrainian prisoners, who stole their food. A week passed before they were permitted to use the showers.8 Below are short accounts by survivors about what happened to them in the three external labor camps to which they were sent from Ravensbrück. Schönholz Some of the transports of Jewish women prisoners that arrived in August 1944 were transferred to Schönholz, a small external labor camp of the concentration camp Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, about a month after their arrival. They worked in the Argus factory until mid-April 1945, producing airplane parts. The SS watched them each day until they entered the factory, but once inside they met with the less hostile attitudes of the civilian workers, who were mainly older Germans. Yet, as in other labor camps, on 25 January 1945 three of them, apparently considered unfit for work, were returned to Ravensbrück via Sachsenhausen, assigned new Ravensbrück numbers, and killed there in the gas chamber.9 In April 1945, as the Soviet forces drew near, the Jewish women prisoners had to dig trenches. Then they were marched out of the camp to Sachsenhausen, and continued from there in the direction of Freistein. They finally met the Soviet forces on 8 May. It took them until October to reach Hungary by train. Altenburg The age of the second group of Hungarian Jewish women and girls who were sent to Altenburg was overwhelmingly low: most of them were between the age of 19 and 35, and the rest between 36 and 45. Among 500 women on the transfer list, plus the 3 additional persons

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 91 known also to have been sent to Altenburg, there were 41 teenagers, no children, and only 2 women over 45. They had obviously been selected – first in Auschwitz and then again in Ravensbrück – for heavy work in industry. Nevertheless, the death of 127 before the end of the War has been confirmed – 26% of the 503 that were originally sent to Altenburg; 123 of these were sent from Altenburg to Auschwitz to be gassed.10 The names of only 27 survivors were found: 13 in the USA, 5 in Israel, 3 in Sweden, 1 in Hungary, and 5 in unknown countries of settlement, in all, less than 6%. About the fate of 348 (69%) of this group we have no information at all. From the survivors we have learnt that in Altenburg they worked in a factory galvanizing metal plates for tanks, and that only those assigned to the heaviest work received one proper meal a day and warm water for washing. None of the survivors interviewed appears to have been aware of the fate of the large group sent to Auschwitz. At the end of the War, the Altenburg survivors were marched out of the camp. Fortunately, on the third day, when they neared the American forces at Waldenburg, their guards fled.11 Neustadt near Coburg We have little information about the Neustadt transport – 400 classified as Hungarian Jewesses (plus 11 not on this Neustadt transfer list)12 – as we found the names of only 13 survivors on the transfer list and of 12 survivors not on it, 25 survivors in all (20 in the USA, 1 in Canada, and 4 unknown). Four are known to have died during the War, and about the fate of as many as 383 (96%) we have no information. Yet, according to the testimony of Adele T., all those who were sent to Neustadt were alive at the end of the War.13 She reports that they had stayed for only a short time in Ravensbrück.14 Nevertheless, Adele T. considered Ravensbrück worse than Auschwitz-Birkenau, especially because of the heaps of corpses that she saw lying around. In comparison, Neustadt was “the most humane” of her three camps. It was a relatively small labor camp where they worked long days at a Siemens telephone cable factory. The place was clean, with just enough food to survive. As far as she remembers, nobody died there and nobody was sent back to Ravensbrück, to Auschwitz, or to Bergen-Belsen. They had been abandoned in the camp when the American troops approached, and walked together as a group in the direction of Czechoslovakia, where people were very kind and

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92 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück helpful.According to Canadian survivor Clara Rosenbaum, war name Klara Szabo, they were not abandoned in the camp, but led out by the SS troops, who had by then changed their attitude. At this point, six of the women prisoners escaped and succeeded in reaching the Americans.15 A second survivor, Eva V., who was sent to Neustadt together with her mother and sister, also gave a detailed description.16 She agrees that nobody died there, but considered camp conditions harsh: they suffered extremely long workdays, lived in unheated barracks, had no showers, were forced to use open latrines, and had no underwear under the striped prisoner dresses and no socks in the wooden clogs, while the food was a soup made of vegetables usually fed to animals: “We were cold, scared and miserable.” Mühlhausen (Thüringen) On 24 August 1944, 500 women, nearly all classified as Polish and Jewish, also arrived from Auschwitz. They had been brought there from Ghetto ·ódz´ not long before. Among them were 53 teenagers, and there were no women over 45. Most of their Revierkarten (medical registration cards) are preserved.17 The cards of the majority were marked O.B. (Ohne Befund, meaning that no indication of illness had been found). We know that these so-called medical examinations were a complete sham, each such examination taking between one and two minutes. Interestingly, among the eight who were either given cards verifying their being sick (Krankenkarten) or diagnosed as having suspected tuberculosis, three are known to have survived. Of the women in this transport from Auschwitz on 24 August, 7 (4.5%) are known to have died and 123 (26%) to have survived, while the fate of 345 (72.5%) remains unknown. A large transfer to the Buchenwald external labor camp Mühlhausen in Thüringen took place as early as 3 September 1944. From a partial transfer list of 300 names with their Ravensbrück numbers,18 and from a complete one found later of 500 arrivals in Mühlhausen,19 we learn that 477 of the 500 of this transport from Auschwitz had been transferred to the Mühlhausen labor camp, and later from there to Bergen-Belsen. From that complete transfer list to Mühlhausen (without Ravensbrück numbers), we learn that this transfer also included 10 additional Jewish women prisoners who had

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 93 not arrived with that transport from Auschwitz. Ten of the 503 women were Hungarian and 493 Polish. For the added ones we have no Ravensbrück numbers; we surmise that they must have arrived at about the same time. As to their fate we have the information from the two lists of “Liberated Jews arrived in Sweden in 1945” (JS lists 1&2).20 Eventually, the following picture emerges. Of the 500 who had arrived with the transport from Auschwitz on 24 August 1944, as many as 482 were sent to Mühlhausen on 3 September, after only 10 days in Ravensbrück. In Mühlhausen, they worked for six months in the camp’s weapons industry (Gerätebau GmbH). Sally Lifschitz describes life in Ravensbrück between September 1944 and April 1945 as “terrible housing and sanitary conditions and very little food”. She first worked at building roads, which she describes as dangerous and killing many, then at Siemens. The Jewish prisoners were afraid to seek medical help in the Revier, as it was known that none of them ever returned from there. To make up the round number of 500 ordered by Mühlhausen, several Jewish women prisoners who had not arrived with the 24 August transport were added, and their names were found on the list of the 500 registered in Mühlhausen. The names of three additional survivors who also claim to have been sent to Mühlhausen appear on other documents. What do we know of the fate of these c.500 at Mühlhausen? From Buchenwald documents we know that on 30 October 1944 four were sent to Auschwitz to their deaths;21 we can identify only two of them,22 from the handwritten note “Ausch.” that appears next to their names on the first page of the partial transfer list. Two died in Mühlhausen.23 All the prisoners were Polish Jewish (except for the 10 Hungarian Jewish women) and worked long hours in Gerätebau GmbH. It was a small labor camp and these 503 Jewish women were the only prisoners there. They worked with German civilian workers, either elderly or war-wounded, who had been told that the Jewish women were mentally ill. The factory was eventually closed down due to the heavy bombing. On 7 March 1945, all the surviving prisoner-workers were transferred to Bergen-Belsen.24 On the way there, their locked train stopped in a Berlin railway-station during a bombardment. Conditions in Bergen-Belsen were described as “terrible … most people were sick ... sleeping on the floor ... very dirty ... many died”.25 These Ravensbrück prisoners arriving from Mühlhausen spent about

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94 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück six weeks in Bergen-Belsen under the worst conditions, before the early liberation of this camp by the Western Allies on 15 April 1945. Since there was no registration of deaths in Bergen-Belsen, we cannot be sure of the exact number who died there before or even immediately after liberation. From the two lists of Jewish prisoners who arrived in Sweden (JS lists 1 and 2), we know that 113 women of this group were evacuated to Sweden; 2 of them died in Malmö before the end of 1945.26 In all, we know of 129 survivors of Mühlhausen and Bergen-Belsen, of whom only 18 had not been evacuated to Sweden. As we found only 26 survivors who reached the US and 3 who reached Israel, we do not know the country of settlement of 100 survivors; presumably many of them remained in Sweden. Of the 10 who were not sent to Mühlhausen, 2 survived in Ravensbrück and were evacuated to Sweden from there.27 A third, a friend of US survivor Sally Lifschitz, was sent later from Ravensbrück to Bergen-Belsen and died there;28 a fourth was sent to the Buchenwald external camp of Taucha;29 we know that three died in Ravensbrück,30 and about three we have no information.31 THREE GHETTO TRANSPORTS

Ghetto Częstochowa The first of the three transports that arrived directly from a Polish ghetto – not from Auschwitz – was a small one, 29 (or 30) persons from Częstochowa on 3 September 1944. This transport included 4 children and 2 teenagers; 1 of this transport is known to have died in Ravensbrück; 13 are known to have survived, all of whom were evacuated to Sweden. This makes it likely that this was a somewhat protected group of families that had managed to avoid being sent to Auschwitz before being sent to Ravensbrück, and later managed to avoid being sent to an external labor camp. Ghetto ·ódz´ On 22 October 1944, a large transport arrived directly from Ghetto ·ódz´ with 297 Jewish women, girls, and children. It included 35 children and 21 teenagers, and all but 3 were Polish. This transport has been called “the second Schindler list”.32 The German industrialist Seifert, who had a factory in Ghetto ·ódz´,

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 95 apparently attempted to save not only the lives of a number of his workers,33 but also of a considerable number of surviving members of the élite of the ghetto, those near to the Jewish “self government”, as well as a number of professionals, such as eight physicians (two of them women), a chemist, an apothecary, an engineer, and a lawyer, most of them with their families, by preventing their being sent to Auschwitz. Seifert intended that they should be sent straight to KönigsWusterhausen, an external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, where they were supposed to produce wooden pre-fabricated houses. It is likely that Seifert bribed the SS authorities, but his success was only partial. Apparently he succeeded in bringing 128 men and only 23 women straight to KönigsWusterhausen,34 but 297 women and children got stuck in Ravensbrück with the promise that later they would join the men. Many of the women were nevertheless soon transferred to the Sachsenhausen external labor camp Wittenberg to work at the Arado airplane factory.35 Among them were two ·ódz´ physicians. At least 15 children were sent at the end of December 1944, or at the beginning of January 1945, to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, before being united with their fathers. When Seifert demanded the transfer of the wives to join their husbands in KönigsWusterhausen, the Ravensbrück SS authorities sent a group of at least 16 women on 27 February 1945,36 5 of them from the Ghetto ·ódz´ list, but at least 11 completely unrelated Hungarian Jewish women. We know that at least one of the ·ódz´, and four of the Hungarian women, died in KönigsWusterhausen.37 On their arrival in Ravensbrück, all had been housed in Block 22, together with a group of gipsy (Sinti and Roma) women whose children had been taken away from them. Natan Borowiecki has reported on bad housing and sanitary conditions, and on a Blockälteste and Stubenälteste who had maltreated prisoners.38 The ·ódz´ physician Dr. Mina (Maria) Litwin has also reported on their arrival in Ravensbrück and on the appalling conditions there.39 At first she was reluctant to admit being a physician, but after being sent to perform heavy earthwork, she and her friend Dr. Elisabeth (Estera) Frenkel decided that they had no chance of survival doing this kind of work and volunteered to work as physicians for the transport to Wittenberg, for which 200–250 Jewish women prisoners had been selected. Although many more must have been selected from this Ghetto ·ódz´ transport, only the 2 physicians and 32 others

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96 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück from the ·ódz´ transport could be identified; 30 of them are known to have survived and 2 to have died, while the fate of the other 2 is unknown. In Wittenberg, Dr. Litwin served as physician and Dr. Frenkel as nurse. The two were located in a room that served as a clinic, but could only perform rudimentary medical services for the women workers whom they saw marching by each day. Dr. Litwin and several other witnesses testified that the Jewish women prisoners were frequently beaten, and at least one was beaten to death.40 The prisoners were punished by frequent and long roll-calls in all weathers.41 One of the surviving workers described a scene at Wittenberg in which SS men amused themselves by pouring rotten carrots on the ground in order to watch the starving women fighting over the garbage. Twenty-eight sick Jewish women prisoners no longer capable of working were returned to Ravensbrück, and are known to have been killed.42 The two doctors succeeded in escaping from Wittenberg a few days before the end. The Soviet army found the remaining women prisoners locked in the Wittenberg camp, without water and electricity.43 The surviving children and teenagers of the ·ódz´ transport who had been transferred to KönigsWusterhausen tell a story of less cruel conditions there. Thus, when a death train from Auschwitz later arrived there with many dead and dying prisoners, the men from the ·ódz´ transport were permitted to bring help to the survivors. Yet there, too, the food was insufficient for the heavy work that most of the men had to perform. In KönigsWusterhausen, there were several other camps, and all were liberated on 29 April 1945 by the Red Army. At least one of the ·ódz´ Jews attempted to testify in favor of Seifert, who was, nonetheless, executed by a Soviet court in Poland. We know of 76 survivors out of the 297 of the ·ódz´ transport who had originally arrived in Ravensbrück (25.6%),44 20 of them children and 9 teenagers. The deaths of 20 have been documented. Thirty-four survivors settled in Israel (24 of them answered questionnaires),45 and 25 settled in the USA. Fifteen were evacuated to Sweden and seven of them settled there. Ghetto Piotrków The third Polish ghetto-transport with children arrived as late as 2 December 1944, from Ghetto Piotrków, with 278 Polish Jewish prisoners, of whom 57 were children and 22 teenage girls. This entire

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 97 transport was a major effort by mothers and aunts to save their children by avoiding Auschwitz.46 How successful were they? We know about 110 survivors (39.6%), 31 of them children (54.3% of all children), and 13 teenagers (59%); 16 of the survivors registered in the USA, 22 in Israel, 8 settled in Sweden, and the countries of settlement of the rest are unknown. Ten adults, 2 children, and 1 teenager are known to have died (13 or 4.3%): 5 in Bergen-Belsen, 6 in Ravensbrück (4 of these in the gas chamber), 1 was apparently shot on the evacuation march from Ravensbrück, and the place of death of 1 is unknown. We know that at least 30 members of this transport from Piotrków were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and that 25 of these survived. On 1 April 1945, five women were transferred to Graslitz, an external labor camp of Flossenbürg.47 Yet, many remained in Ravensbrück until its final days. One of the surprising aspects of this transport is that as many as 80 of the 110 survivors are known to have been evacuated to Sweden; their names appear on the lists of Jews arriving in Sweden in the spring of 1945. Some of these were evacuated from Bergen-Belsen, but most must have been evacuated on the last transport of the Bernadotte-Aktion, a train with hundreds of Jewish prisoners that left Ravensbrück on 26 or 27 April. During September and October 1944, the Nazi war industry had found an additional source of slave labor – the civilian non-Jewish Polish women of Warsaw. At the time of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, thousands of civilian Polish women were offered “protection” by the German authorities and were then sent to German concentration and labor camps. In the six weeks between 24 August and 8 October 1944, over 4500 Polish women from Warsaw arrived in Ravensbrück and were soon sent to external labor camps. In November, transports of Jewish slave laborers resumed.

A HUGE TRANSPORT FROM AUSCHWITZ

On 3 November 1944, the largest single all-Jewish transport of 1957 women arrived from Auschwitz: 1235 (63%) were classified as Hungarian, 502 (25.5%) as Polish, 57 (3%) as Slovak and Czech, 54 (3%) as French, 38 (2%) as German, 29 (1.5%) as Greek, 13 as Italian, 9 as Belgian, 9 as Dutch, 3 as from the Soviet Union, 2 from Turkey, 2 from Yugoslavia, 2 stateless, 1 from Croatia, and 1 from Romania.48 They obviously had been selected for work. There were

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98 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück only 3 children and 28 women over 45; all the rest – 98% – were 14–45; 74% were in the prime age group of 19–35. As to the fate of those in this very large transport: 459 are known to have survived (23%) and only 20 to have died (1%), while the fate of 1491 (76%) is unknown. The fate of the large group of Hungarians (1235) was strikingly different from those of the Polish group (502): only 93 (8%) Hungarians are known to have survived, as compared to 335 (66.5%) Poles. Seventeen days after arrival in Ravensbrück, on 20 November 1944, 249 women, all but one classified as Hungarians, were sent to the Buchenwald external labor camp Lippstadt.49 Of the 987 Hungarian Jewish women who were not sent to Lippstadt, some of them were sent to the external labor camps of Barth (19), Beendorf (9), Malchow (6), and Reinickendorf (1); in January 1945, one was sent to Penig, and in March two were sent to Bergen-Belsen, and finally – also in March – 12 Hungarian Jewish women prisoners of this transport were sent to Leitmeritz, and from there to Theresienstadt.50 Of the entire Hungarian group of 1235 women, we know of only 93 survivors, that is, 8%; of these, 25 were evacuated to Sweden.51 Of the 249 Hungarian Jewish women prisoners sent to Lippstadt, we know of only 23 survivors, and nothing about the fate of the rest (226, 90.7%). Interestingly, due to the transfer list that mentions the occupations of some of these women, we know that this group included several professionals and semi-professionals: three civil servants, a teacher, a physician, a pharmacist, and a photographer. In Lippstadt they worked in a factory producing altimeters. They worked with sharp instruments and suffered from cuts on their hands.52 Living in the factory provided them with relatively clean and warm housing, and hot water for washing. Food was regular but very poor. Israeli survivor Ahuva Litmanowic, then 14-year-old Ibolya Berkowics,53 remembers volunteering every Sunday to work in an ammunition factory in the camp in order to receive a plate of soup. She also remembers having searched through the garbage for potato peels and once finding a piece of apple. The same factory employed many Germans, as well as Russians and Ukrainians, whose singing she loved. The foreman was very strict, and the SS woman guard watched them constantly, but they had a kind Stubenälteste belonging to their own group. Ahuva Litmanowic remembers one pregnant woman taking leave of her sister before being sent away under guard – presumably back to Ravensbrück.

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 99 In March, the Reichswehr guards told them that they would soon have to leave the camp. They were marched out in rows of five, and then walked for two weeks, receiving only one potato a day. Any woman bending down to pick a weed or sitting down due to exhaustion was liable to be shot. The way was littered with corpses. In the neighborhood of the village of Wurzen she managed to escape into the forest together with several other women.54 The next morning they came out of the forest and soon met Russian soldiers. She entered the house of an elderly German couple, saying that she was a prisoner, and the woman brought her some of the food that she used to feed to her pigs. The known fate of the 502 Polish Jewish women and girls who came with the same large transport from Auschwitz was strikingly different. As many as 335, the majority (67%), are known to have survived. All but two of these survivors reached Sweden, and apparently many of them settled there.55 The evacuation, and hence rescue, of such a large group to Sweden was possible due to the fact that 110 of this group were transferred before the end of 1944 to Malchow, the largest external camp of Ravensbrück. Although conditions in Malchow deteriorated sharply with the arrival of the survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch in February 1945,56 those who survived there until 25 April 1945 had the chance to be among the 450 women who were evacuated from Malchow by the “white busses”of the Swedish Red Cross (most of them converted trucks with benches),57 thus to be spared the dangers and the sufferings of the last week in Malchow and the evacuation march from it, and to receive immediate, thorough medical care. Their Polish citizenship may have given them an advantage.58

DIRECT DEPORTATIONS FROM BUDAPEST: NOVEMBER 1944

The deportations of the Jews of Budapest started somewhat later than those from the Hungarian provinces. Raoul Wallenberg succeeded in preventing the deportation of thousands of Budapest Jews by providing them with Swedish papers and by housing them in at least temporarily protected houses.59 Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian cattle merchant who pretended to be the Spanish Consul in Budapest, distributed Spanish papers to more than 5000 Jews.60 Nevertheless, thousands of younger Jewish men had been inducted into the Hungarian army, where they had to work for the German

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100 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück forces, especially in locating landmines. The massive deportation of girls and women aged 16–50 from Budapest started when the advance of the Red Army caused the beginning of the dismantling of Auschwitz. In November 1944, the deportations to Auschwitz stopped. Many young Jewish women had been arrested in July, however, and were forced for several months to dig trenches around Budapest against the approaching Red Army, spending the cold nights in open fields.61 They, and most of the thousands of women and girls arrested in October or November, were marched on foot for 2–3 weeks from a Budapest brick-factory to the Austrian border.A part of these marches passed through the town of Gomarom. From the Austrian border, thousands were sent by train to Ravensbrück. (Others were sent to Austria to be imprisoned in two camps near Vienna. On 7 December about 2800 of these Hungarian Jewish women and children arrived in terrible condition in Bergen-Belsen.62) The Holocaust story of Hungarian Jewry began formally with the German occupation of Hungary on 1 April 1944 and lasted one dreadful year: memoirs of several Hungarian Jewish women Ravensbrück prisoners paint a cruel picture of their extreme sufferings.63 Below are data concerning the four direct transports from Budapest to Ravensbrück in November 1944. Survivors report about at least three subsequent transports from Budapest, whose arrival lists are lost. The first arrived on 1 December 1944,64 and another several days later. A last large direct transport of Jewish women prisoners from Budapest arrived on 12 December.65 The First Direct Transport From Hungary The first 13 Hungarian Jewish women arrived directly on 17 November 1944. The death of one of them is listed on the Uckermark death list and a second is listed as not having returned on the Multinational Tabelle.66 The second direct transport from Hungary This transport arrived on 19 November 1944 with 353 Jewish women and girls coming from Budapest. From this second November transport we know of only 9 (2.5%) survivors: 3 of them settled in the USA, 3 in Sweden, and 1 in Israel; 8 are known to have died; the fate of as many as 336 (95%) is unknown, an extremely high percentage for a

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 101 transport whose arrival list is preserved. An extant transfer list67 records that 260 women of this transport were sent on 3 December 1944 to the Buchenwald external labor camp Hasag-Leipzig.68 Thus, they spent only two weeks in Ravensbrück. Of the rest, eight were sent to KönigsWusterhausen, two to Hamburg, and one to Mauthausen. An Israeli survivor described the horrors of these two weeks in Ravensbrück before Hasag-Leipzig: first they underwent “disinfection” and the shaving of all their hair.69 Then they were assigned to moving railway tracks, digging in the already-frozen earth. During the same two weeks, she and others of their group were taken for “medical experiments” that were humiliating and painful, causing their legs to swell up, and causing her to be never able to bear children. (A Swedish survivor of this transport70 testified that she was one of 100 Jewish women who were sterilized in Ravensbrück before the end of 1944.71) Tova R. reported that in the Hasag-Leipzig camp they worked in alternating 10-hour day and night shifts, producing rifle bullets. They were hit by the overseers for the slightest mistake and humiliated by not being allowed to use the toilet. In April 1945, they were marched out of the camp through forests in heavy rain, receiving no food except uncooked rice.72 Passing a vegetable garden, some of them managed to fetch some cabbage and kohlrabi; a friend with whom Tova R. had shared a bunk bed was shot for this. They were liberated by the Russians and set out to return to Hungary via Prague by train and on foot.As Tova R. suffered from badly swollen legs, this was a difficult journey for her. She eventually emigrated to Israel in 1948, arriving there on 15 May, the Day of Israel’s Independence. The second Israeli survivor, Martha C.,73 whose family originally came from Slovakia and had moved to a village in Hungary in 1934, also reports working in Ravensbrück at putting down rail tracks and digging in the frozen earth, as well as unloading boats. She was fortunate in that her head was not shaved and that she was not chosen for the “medical experiments”. However, she remembers that they were given bromide in the so-called coffee, and assumed that this prevented them from menstruating. Martha C. reported that the conditions of housing and sanitation in the Hasag-Leipzig labor camp were better than those of Ravensbrück. All the Jewish women lived in one block; there were bunk beds on two levels, also blankets and cold water. In a neighboring block, where 600 Polish non-Jewish women prisoners were housed, hot water was available, and they were permitted to use it. As

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102 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück they worked in 12-hour shifts after standing for hours in roll-calls, they had very little free time. The work itself at a conveyor belt was not hard. The German foremen were relatively friendly and secretly gave them coal so they could heat their block. As far as Martha C. remembers, none of their group died in Hasag-Leipzig, but she saw coffins with other prisoners. The evacuation march started on Friday, 13 April, and lasted until 21 April. It was very hard. During the nights they marched through the forests in the rain; some fell and were hurt. When the SS fled, they entered an abandoned labor camp, but had to leave because of the danger of being raped by the first Soviet soldiers who arrived there. After some time they were sent to a six-week-long quarantine. Then a Czech officer accompanied them to Prague. Martha C. proceeded to Bratislava but gave up the plan to continue to Budapest; she fled from the train after Russian soldiers had raped several of the liberated women prisoners. She found a friend from Budapest in Slovakia and joined a group of young survivors organized by the Gordonia Zionist youth movement. They were planning to join Aliya B (illegal immigration to Palestine), but this did not materialize. Three years passed, and Martha C got married and emigrated legally to Israel in 1948 after independence. On this transfer list to Hasag-Leipzig, as on other Hungarian transfer lists, the occupations and the marital status of the prisoners are noted. Their occupational distribution is surprisingly varied: only 3 women had declared to have no occupation, and for another 16 no occupation was noted. Two girls were students.74 Housewives and household workers were only the second largest group (49). By far the largest group was that of the traditional women’s occupations of dressmaker, milliner, seamstress, furrier, knitter, glove maker, and bag maker (together 120). Other typical women’s occupations were hairdresser, nurse, office worker and typist, laboratory assistant and cashier, assistant, laundress, and employee (together 12). But there were also the more unusual occupations of bookbinder and printer (together 7), butcher, baker and confectioner, shoemaker, bandage maker, brush maker, and dispatcher (together 9). Among the skilled occupations and the so-called semiprofessions, there were nine civil servants, four photographers, a dental technician, an actress, and an accountant. Contrary to stereotypes, as many as 42 of this group of Hungarian Jewish women prisoners described their occupations as “worker” or even as “factory worker”.75 This registration of occupations may, however, have been influenced somewhat by the demands and conditions of the times.76

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 103 Their marital status remains unclear, as it was not noted for as many as 155 of this group of 278; the records show only that 115 were married and 8 were single. The third direct transport from Hungary Soon after, on 22 November 1944, a third transport arrived, the second large one (753 women), also directly from Budapest, starting out from the same brick factory. They also had walked for about three weeks on foot from Budapest to the Austrian border. From there they traveled for up to three weeks, crowded into a train and delirious with thirst, until reaching Ravensbrück. We have a detailed description of the journey of this transport in Seren Tuvel Bernstein’s book The Seamstress.77

Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein, b. Romania, 1918–d. Chicago 1983. Autobiography: Sara Tuvel Bernstein with Louise Loots Thornton and Marlene Bernstein Samuels, The Seamstress, A Memoir of Survival. New York, Putnam, 1997.

Here are the data of this group of 753 women, all labeled as Hungarian Jewish, although after liberation 4 defined themselves as Czechoslovak or Slovak, as some originated from the border regions occupied by Hungary, or as Romanian, as did Seren Tuvel Bernstein and her sister, Esther. The division according to age showed the clear preference for those capable of physical work: the bulk of the arrivals were 654 women in the age group 19–45 (87%); there also was a sizable group of 87 teenagers. There was only one child and only one woman over 45. According to the testimony of Eva Feyer (Feiyer),78 just one week after their arrival, there was a selection of 60 women or girls for Genshagen, a large external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, where they were sent on trucks. Only two survivors of this transport, the Israeli survivor Chava Schiff (war name Hedwig Grossmann), and Edith

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104 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Kiss (war name Edith Ban, born Roth), the famous sculptor of the Hungarian Holocaust, reported having been sent to Genshagen.As we have no information about the fate of more than half of the members of this transport, it is quite likely that all of the 60 Hungarian Jewish women prisoners selected at the end of November to be sent to Genshagen to work there at the Daimler-Benz works had arrived in Ravensbrück on 22 November.79 One survivor of this Budapest transport of 22 November was sent to Barth and one to Malchow.80

Edith Kiss born Edith Rott, b. Budapest, 1905 – d. Paris, 1966. The well known sculptress of the Hungarian Holocaust.

Relief: “Deportation” by Edith Kiss; Budapest Synagogue.

Due to the recent discovery of a transfer list of 500 Hungarian Jewish women prisoners from Ravensbrück to Venusberg (a small external labor camp of the concentration camp Flossenbürg), we now know that after nearly two months, on 15 January 1945, 102 members of this transport were sent to Venusberg. In April, all the unfortunate survivors of Venusberg, many of them by then sick with typhus, were sent to Mauthausen. We know of only 3 survivors out of these 102.81

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 105 In contrast with the earlier Hungarian transport of 19 November, and that of a few days later, a majority of the arrivals of this third direct transport from Budapest stayed in Ravensbrück until the third week of February 1945, or even later. On 16 February 1945, at least 119 members of this transport were sent on a death train to Burgau (Bavaria).82 The fate of the 500 women and girls in this horrifying late transfer will be described in the next chapter. On 23 March 1945, 9 other women of this transport from Budapest were sent as part of a transfer of 57 women to Leitmeritz and from there, in April to Theresienstadt. From survivors who also stayed in Ravensbrück until March, we know that at least five were sent in March to Bergen-Belsen and at least five to Mauthausen. It appears, then, that a majority of the members of this transport remained and worked in Ravensbrück for three or even four months. By the end of November 1944, due to the enormous overcrowding, conditions of housing and sanitation had deteriorated sharply. The members of this transport suffered in the huge military tent that had just been raised in the middle of the camp. Ursula Winska describes the tent: “3,000 prisoners were pressed together [in the tent]. Already from a distance one could hear the crying and moaning. After 6 weeks we felt it in the entire camp. It was as if a black cloud was penetrating into each corner of the camp.”83 From the tent they were later moved to completely dilapidated huts. By then, newcomers slept on three levels of double bunk beds, four women to one bunk bed, without bed linen, without the straw-filled sacks that the old-timers still slept on, and even without blankets. They performed the heaviest work under conditions of near-starvation.84 We have found the records of the deaths of 80: of these, 37 died in Ravensbrück as their names appear on the four extant death lists, 4 died in Venusberg, at least 1 died on the way to Burgau,85 8 died immediately after arrival in Burgau,86 and 17 names appear on the Multinational Tabelle as not having survived the War. Many more must have died among the 626 (83%) members of this transport about whose fate we have no information. Only 47 survivors are known: 16 are registered in the USA, 17 apparently settled in Sweden after having been evacuated there by the Swedish Red Cross, 7 are Israeli survivors, 1 was a Hungarian survivor living in France (Edith Kiss, the well-known sculptor of the Hungarian Holocaust87), and the country of settlement of 1 is unknown.

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106 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück The fourth direct transport from Hungary This transport arrived on 28 November from Budapest and Gomarom with 1035 prisoners,88 among them 678 Jewish women. They had walked on foot from Budapest via Gomarom to the Austrian border, a walk that was especially onerous as the weather was turning cold. Before being transported to Ravensbrück, they stopped for about a week in Dachau. Fortunately, a French prisoner-doctor there treated their dysentery and their damaged feet.89 They had been even more clearly selected for work: 82.1% were under 36 years of age; there were no children and only one woman over 45. On arrival in Ravensbrück, they were located in the infamous tent together with the gypsy (Sinti and Roma) women and children who had arrived in the same transport, and the masses of Hungarian Jewish women prisoners who had arrived a few days earlier in a transport from Frankfurt/Walldorf.90

Kato Gyulai, b. Budapest, 2 April, 1919. Autobiography: Zwei Schwestern – Die Geschichte einer Deportation, Berlin, Metropol, 2000.

On 18 December 1944,91 600 women – apparently most of them from among the Jewish women of this transport – were selected and sent to work in the harsh industrial labor camp of Spandau (a suburb of Berlin). Although housing and nutrition were at the beginning better in Spandau than in Ravensbrück, these soon deteriorated. As Kato Gyulai, who described Spandau in her memoir, quotes a friend saying: “as lice increased, so food decreased”. The women manufactured bombs, and were treated cruelly by overseers.At the approach of

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 107 the Red Army, most were forced to march to Sachsenhausen. Only 14 survivors of those sent to Spandau are known. Kato Gyulai herself was so sick that she stayed in Spandau, and after liberation, had to spend six months in a Russian hospital before returning to Budapest. We do not know about any group of this transport sent from Ravensbrück to any other labor camp. Only 34 survivors of the entire transport are known: 16 in the USA, 9 in Sweden, 4 in Israel, 3 in Hungary, and 1 whose country of settlement is unknown. Ten of the survivors of this transport were evacuated to Sweden. The deaths, apparently all or most in Ravensbrück, of 45 of its members have been documented.92 Thus, the fate of 599 (88%) of the Hungarian Jewish members of this transport remains unknown.

THE DIRECT TRANSPORTS FROM SLOVAKIA

Already in 1942 there had been deportations of young unmarried Slovakian Jewish women to Auschwitz. After an interruption of two years, in November 1944, Slovakian deportations started again – at a time when Auschwitz was near being dismantled. On 9 November, 96 Jews originating from Pre•ov arrived in Ravensbrück. On 20 November, 279 Jews arrived in Ravensbrück from Sered. On 28 November, 50 Jews arrived in Ravensbrück from Pre•ov; survivors report at least one other Sered transport, whose list is lost.93 About 284 additional Slovakian (and Czechoslovakian) Jewish names – not on extant arrival lists – appear on various other documents: from the four death lists, and especially from the Czechoslovakian death list that was completed after the end of the War, we know of a large number of Slovakian Jewish women, girls, and children who died in Ravensbrück in 1945.According to their Ravensbrück numbers,94 they must have arrived there in November and December 1944. A list of Slovakian Jewish survivors has been compiled in Bratislava.95 In all, 710 names of Slovakian Jewish women and children are known from documents and from the reports of survivors,96 who must have arrived in Ravensbrück between the end of October and the end of December 1944 on all-Jewish direct transports from Slovakia. The Slovakian transports were family groups brought all the way by train. Those deported with the Pre•ov transport that arrived in Ravensbrück on 9 November had first traveled to the gate of Auschwitz, where they waited overnight, before being taken on the

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108 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück next day westwards to Ravensbrück, where men and boys were sent to the Ravensbrück men’s camp, and women, girls, and young children to the women’s camp.97 Following are the details of age and fate of the transport arriving from Pre•ov on 9 November 1944. Of the 96 arrivals, 13 were children (13.5%). In addition, two boys – Havas and Tandlich – although less than 13 years of age, were sent with their fathers to the men’s camp and thus do not appear on this arrival list. They were transferred to the women’s camp in March 1945 and survived. There was 1 teenager, at least 34 were over 55 years old, and the rest were 18–45. Of these 96 women and children, 20 are known to have died, 17 survived, and the fate of 59 (61.5%) is unknown. In the case of the Sered transport of 20 November, men and teenage boys were brought to Sachsenhausen, whereas 279 women and children came to Ravensbrück. Among these there were 6 children, 14 teenagers, and as many as 154 (55.2%) women over 45. This age distribution may partly account for the especially high mortality rate: 93 (33.3%) of this transport are known to have died, and only 12 (4.3%) are known to have survived. In the second Pre•ov transport, that of 28 November, 50 women and children arrived. Of these 15 (30%) were children, 1 a teenager, and 17 (34%) over 45. Thirteen (26%) are known to have died; only 4 (8%) are known to have survived. Like the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport described below, and the Hungarian direct transports of late November and early December (and the one small direct transport from Agram/Croatia98), the Slovakian direct transports arrived in Ravensbrück at a time of absolutely terrible overcrowding – when the sanitation had broken down and disease was rampant. Like them, they were herded into the infamous tent, which had no sanitation and in the beginning not even bunk beds. There was not enough room to lie down on the filthy ground. Women slept sitting or standing up, pressed one against the other. Due to this pressure and the absence of cups and spoons, the weaker prisoners did not receive any food at all.

THE FRANKFURT/WALLDORF TRANSPORT 99

In the middle of this flood of Hungarian and Slovakian prisoners coming directly from Budapest or Slovakia, there arrived in Ravensbrück between 23 and 25 November the second largest all-Jewish transport

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 109 ever. They were the 1660 survivors of a transport of 1700, all nominally Hungarian Jewish,100 who had been transported in August from Auschwitz to Frankfurt/Walldorf,101 a small labor camp hidden in the Frankfurt/Main city forest, next to a military airport. Since most pages of its Ravensbrück arrival list are lost,102 this transport was erroneously assumed to have come in November directly from Auschwitz. Most of their data, although not all of their Ravensbrück numbers, could be reconstructed from an extant Frankfurt/Walldorf list.103 After several months in Auschwitz, these prisoners had spent three months of extremely hard labor repairing a military airfield after each bombardment and cutting trees under appalling physical conditions, hunger, lack of clothing, and even torture. The history of this large group of mainly Hungarian Jewish women and girls was reconstructed only in the year 2000,104 years after some Walldorf/Mörfelden schoolchildren demanded research and commemoration of this forgotten camp, which they had discovered in the forest.105 On 15 September 1944, 88 of the 1699 prisoners were registered as sick, of which 30 were in quarantine, apparently with scarlet fever (weekly report of the head of the camp, 15 September 1944, Mörfelden-Walldorf). On 31 October 1944, there were already 270 registered as sick.106 After extensive research and the finding of additional documents by the Walldorf/Mörfelden Museum Director Cornelia Ruehlig, it became clear that as many as 42 of the women had died in Walldorf. Since the transfer list from Walldorf to Ravensbrück contains 1660 names out of the 1700 who had earlier come from Auschwitz to Walldorf, it is clear that the transfer list contains two dead individuals. There is indeed evidence that one, Marta Schönfeld, who had died on 22 October 1944 in Walldorf, appears on the transfer list and was assigned the Ravensbrück number 88450.107 On arrival in Ravensbrück the prisoners – like the members of the direct Hungarian and Slovakian transports of the end of November – were placed in the infamous tent. By then there was not enough space to stretch out on the filthy floor, which was covered with excrement. Dead bodies were left lying among the crowd of the still living. Vera Dotan (war name Gellert), then 13 years old, describes her two weeks in the tent as “the harshest two weeks of my life”.108 Only after some time were bunk beds introduced into the tent, and a number of the newcomers were gradually transferred to completely dilapidated barracks with broken windows, and a washroom and toilets that no longer functioned, sleeping four to a bunk bed on all three

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110 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück levels. The memoirs of Seren Tuvel Bernstein and Eva LangleyDános describe in detail the conditions in the tent and the dilapidated barracks. The mortality rate of the women arriving from Frankfurt/ Walldorf was staggering. Those sleeping on the lower level bunks next to the broken windows froze to death. Each morning heaps of corpses were piled up outside each block.109 A ruthless Blockälteste and a Stubenälteste systematically stole all the solid contents of the watery soup handed out once a day.110 The Jewish newcomers no longer received real bread. Eva Langley-Dános reports that these thieves also appropriated the washroom, which they turned into their private kitchen, depriving the prisoners of the possibility of washing themselves. Seren Tuvel Bernstein, too, reports the theft of food by these Funktionshäftlinge. She also describes the way in which she and the three other members of her small group “organized” vegetables while working in the vegetable sorting cellar, in order to exchange them for some of the real bread that the long-established and better-organized (non-Jewish) Polish prisoners still received regularly. The members of the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport had a very high mortality rate in Ravensbrück due to their already poor physical condition.111 However, the deaths of only 132 (8%) of this transport are documented; the names of most of these appear on the Mittwerda and Uckermark death lists of prisoners “selected” and gassed in Ravensbrück between 1 January and mid-April 1945. No single larger group of this transport was sent from Ravensbrück to an external labor camp; survivors report that more than 75 were sent to different labor camps, including Rechlin-Retzow (27), Malchow (10), Beendorf (8), Bergen-Belsen (8), Graslitz (4), Venusberg (1), Gleiwitz (5), Hasag-Leipzig (1), Leitmeritz (22), Mauthausen (46), and Zillertal (51). All in all, 398 (24%) are known to have survived. The fate of 1058 (63.7%) is unknown. The countries of settlement of 193 (11.6%) survivors are known: 121, the largest group, settled in Israel; 71 in the USA, 50 in Sweden, 40 returned to Hungary, 12 settled in Canada, 8 in Australia, 4 in Belgium, 3 in Germany, and 1 each in Austria, Czechia, France, Romania, Slovakia, and South Africa. The countries of settlement of 83 survivors are unknown. Ninety-seven of the survivors were evacuated by the Bernadotte-Aktion to Sweden; the six Schreiber sisters reported that they were on a terrible death train that originated in Beendorf, remained for a week in Ravensbrück, and then traveled for

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 111 three days with the prisoners locked in without food or water.112 Many of the women prisoners had already died before the train was redirected to Hamburg, where the survivors were transferred to another train that took them to Denmark and then to Sweden. The fate of 1130 members of the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport (68.1%) remains unknown. THE ARRIVALS OF DECEMBER 1944

Many arrival lists for December 1944 are lost; in the registration of arrival documents in the Ravensbrück Kalendarium for the days between 3 and 13 December, over 3700 Ravensbrück prisoner numbers between the 92,000s and the 94,000s are missing. Until recently, only one arrival list with Jewish prisoners, the already-described arrival list of the third ghetto transport from Ghetto Piotrków of 3 December, was preserved. Recently, a small list of 13 December 1944 from Berlin (six Jewish names) was found in the Warsaw Archive. Italian researchers113 have discovered the names of 32 Jewish women and children and 1 man who had been deported from Bolzano to Ravensbrück on 14 December 1944. Direct Hungarian transports in December Survivors report that at the beginning of December, at least two direct transports arrived from Budapest, the first partly on foot, the second by train only, with Ravensbrück numbers in the 92,900s. Their arrival lists are lost. According to the testimony of Nora Stark,114 the members of her transport, which had also marched from Budapest, arrived by train in Ravensbrück on 1 December 1944. Eva Langley-Dános remembers that she and her friends, including Hanna, Lili, and Klara, were deported from Budapest to Germany on the same day; she does not mention any march on foot. Gitta Mallasz, in her famous book Talking with Angels,115 relates that 13 Jewish women had been arrested on 24 November 1944 in Budaliget (a clothing factory where many Jewish women and children had sought refuge) and deported to Ravensbrück; only one survived – Eva Langley-Dános. According to their Ravensbrück numbers, these Hungarian Jewish116 young women must have arrived with a transport several days after 1 December.

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112 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Andreas Baumgartner, in his book on the history of the women prisoners of Mauthausen,117 assumes – on the basis of a 1958 testimony by Katherine S.– that on 11 December 1944,“about 2500 Jewish women who had originated in Budapest” were registered as new arrivals in Ravensbrück; they were located in the large tent, which at this point stood empty.118 An additional testimony about the arrival of 2000 Jewish women and their children who lived in the infamous tent puts the time of their arrival later – a short time before Christmas.119 Strangely,we cannot test this claim about the size of the transport.Yet the existence of the arrival itself is supported by two facts: (a) Katherine S. testified that on 10 January 1945 she and her sister were transferred to Venusberg, a small external labor camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp; (b) a Flossenbürg transfer list listing the names of 500 Hungarian Jewish women – including Katherine S. – who were transferred on 10 January from Ravensbrück to Venusberg. It is most likely that 398 of these had previously arrived on 11 December. Names of 1164 Hungarian Jewish women, who may have arrived in Ravensbrück directly from Hungary during December 1944, appear on three transfer lists of January and February 1945: the justmentioned transfer to Venusberg (398 women on 15 January), to Penig (698 women before 17 February), and to Burgau (68 women on 17 February). Additionally there are 70 Hungarian Jewish names known to us from the testimonies and registrations of survivors, as well as 25 names on the four death lists and on the list of Hungarian prisoners who did not return (Multinational Tabelle), who may also have arrived in December 1944. Below is the evidence from these three transfer lists. The transfer list to Venusberg This is a list of 500 Hungarian Jewish women who were transferred from Ravensbrück to this external labor camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 15 January 1945. It was discovered only recently in the US National Archive in Washington and includes Flossenbürg numbers and places of birth.120 One of the 500 was Katalin Bein, later Katherine S., born 12 October 1916, who in 1958 testified that she and her sister had arrived in Ravensbrück with a very large transport from Budapest on 11 December, had been housed in the tent, and had been transferred on 15 January to Venusberg. Presumably, 398 women on this transfer list to Venusberg had previously arrived in Ravensbrück

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 113 on 11 December with that 11 December transport, and thus spent just over one month there. (One hundred on the Venusberg transfer had arrived with the direct transport of 21–22 November from Budapest, and two others had arrived with the transport from Frankfurt/ Walldorf of 23–25 November, five hundred in all.) Katherine S. testified that during their first month in Venusberg conditions of housing, nutrition, and work (producing parts for airplanes) were tolerable; then about 1500 women, among them many from Budapest, arrived from Bergen-Belsen, causing extreme overcrowding and deterioration of conditions, and bringing with them the typhus epidemic that raged in Bergen-Belsen at the time. In April 1945, the surviving prisoners, many of them sick, were transported in a horrifying criss-cross train journey lasting 16 days to Mauthausen. Apparently only 100 survived to be liberated in Mauthausen and returned to Hungary. In addition to the survivor Katalin Bein, we found the names of 15 more survivors of Ravensbrück and Venusberg, and those of 21 who are known to have died. The transfer list to Penig Penig was an external labor camp of Buchenwald. The names of 700 Hungarian Jewish women appear on a transfer list from Ravensbrück to this camp. Only one list of registrations made in Penig is preserved, that of 17 February 1945. It does not give Ravensbrück prisoners numbers. We know that registration in the external labor camps of Buchenwald took place up to a month after the group of prisoners was selected in Ravensbrück and sent off. According to the testimony of one survivor, Nora Stark, they were selected on 18 January.121 She had arrived in Ravensbrück on 1 December, in a direct transport from Budapest. They traveled to Penig for six days in the extreme cold. What do we know about these 700 women and girls classified as Hungarian Jews? We know that 564 belonged to the age groups 19–35, yet there were also 1 child and 44 teenagers, as well as 88 women between the age of 36 and 55. We also know that 263 were married, 63 single, and 1 divorced, but about the marital status of the rest we have no information. As with other transfer lists of Hungarian prisoners, their occupations are registered. Here, too, the largest groups are those of dressmakers (274) and seamstresses (79), and other traditional women’s occupations such as weaver (15), spinner (1), knitter (3), milliner (9), corset maker (1), cosmetician (5), hairdresser (7),

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114 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück nurse (7), stenographer (3), employee (10), and saleswoman (7). Seventy-two were housewives, 6 home helps, and 12 housekeepers. Surprisingly, a large number held occupations that are not traditional for women, especially not among Jewish women: worker (55), factory worker (8), furrier (7), shoemaker (6), bookbinder (6), photographer (6), artisan (2), and even a car-repair worker. Surprising, too, are the considerable numbers of professionals and semi-professionals: 57 civil servants, 16 teachers, 1 physician, 2 medical assistants, 1 dentist, 4 dental assistants, 4 pharmacists, and even an anthropologist and a chemist. There were also an artist and a singer. Eighteen were classified as students and one as a high-school student. In Penig, they worked at the Max Gerth Werke producing cartridges. The evacuation march from Penig in the direction of Chemnitz started on 13 April 1945. Of this large transfer we know of only 34 survivors (25 settled in the USA, 5 in Israel, and 1 in Hungary; the places of settlement of 3 are unknown); the deaths of only 19 have been documented, 12 of them in Penig.122 Thus, nothing is known about the fate of about 92% of this large group. The transfer list to Burgau Eva Langley-Dános and her three friends were selected for the Bavarian labor camp Burgau on 16–17 February 1945. Her Ravensbrück number was 92944;123 those of her friends: Lili – 92943, Hanna – 92945, and Klara – 92952. All three of her friends died during the 16 days of the train journey to Burgau,124 therefore their names do not appear on the Burgau list and we know of them only from her memoir. On the Burgau transport list there appear 68 Hungarian Jewish names that are not on the 21–22 November arrival list, so these prisoners must therefore have arrived in December. Of these 68, only Eva Langley-Dános and one other woman are known to have survived, while six are known to have died. We do not know how many more of this group – in addition to the three friends of Eva Langley-Dános – died before the arrival of the transport in Burgau. The story of the well-documented horrific Burgau transport will be told in some detail in the next chapter. Thus many, if not most, of the direct arrivals from Hungary during the first half of December stayed in Ravensbrück for one to two and a half months; during this stay their experiences were very similar to

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 115 those of Seren Tuvel Bernstein and her friends of the Budapest transport of 21–22 November, and to those of the Gomarom–Budapest transport of 28 November who had not been sent to Spandau. In her memoir, Eva Langley-Dános calls Ravensbrück “the name that contains all evil”.125 A multinational transport from Auschwitz There must have been a last larger transport from Auschwitz in December 1944, before the beginning of the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945 and the Auschwitz Todesmarsch that started on 18 January. No arrival list for such a transport is preserved, yet between the existing arrival lists of 15 December 1944 and 10 January 1945, there is a gap of 2246 Ravensbrück prisoner numbers. As we have found 78 Jewish survivors of different nationalities who claim to have arrived in Ravensbrück from Auschwitz in December 1944, we must assume that not only at least 6 of the Slovak Jewish survivors who arrived in December, but also at least 16 of the Hungarian survivors for whom we have no Ravensbrück numbers, and certainly the 16 Hungarian Jewish women with matching Ravensbrück numbers, who were transferred to Meuselwitz on 24 January 1945,126 had all arrived from Auschwitz in Ravensbrück in mid-December 1944. From the testimony of US survivor Esther Grün, we learn that this was a large transport by freight train, with women from many nationalities, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Italy.127 Of these, 82 are known to have survived: 38 were sent to Malchow, 16 to Meuselwitz, 6 to Neustadt-Glewe, 5 to Beendorf, 4 to Bergen-Belsen, 3 to Rechlin/Retzow, 2 to Taucha, 2 to Genshagen, 2 to Lippstadt, 2 to Mauthausen, and 1 each to Glöwen and Turgau. Thirty-four of them were eventually evacuated to Sweden. The evidence from the transfer list to Meuselwitz shows that, of the 18 women sent to the labor camp Meuselwitz on 24 January 1945, 16 were Hungarian Jewish and had non-consecutive Ravensbrück numbers from mid-December – between 95454 and 95683 – and must therefore have arrived with this multinational transport from Auschwitz of about 16 or 17 December. Two of these 18 women were non-Jewish. Esther Grün reports that, to the best of her knowledge, all 16 Jewish women survived both the months of work in the war industry (according to her report there were thousands of prisoner workers in Meuselwitz) and the five-day-long exhausting evacuation march.128

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116 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück She confirms that she had arrived in “the hell of Ravensbrück” from Auschwitz and had been selected during a Zählappell (roll-call) together with 15 other Hungarian Jewish young women, none of whom she had known before. Anikó, Pepi (Josephine), Shari (Charlotte), and Eva became her friends, and they escaped together from the evacuation march, hiding first in a haystack and then with farmers until the arrival of the Red Army. Direct Slovak transports in December Whereas we have evidence that over 300 new Jewish Slovakian prisoners arrived in December 1944, it is impossible to arrive at an exact account as to the dates of their arrival, since no arrival lists from Slovakia for December 1944 are preserved. Yet from death lists and from survivors’ information we conclude that there was at least one direct transport from Sered between 3 and 12 December with at least 138 Jewish women, and another from Sered, apparently on 19 December 1944. There are 87 Slovakian names of individuals recorded as having died and one name of a Slovakian survivor, all with Ravensbrück prisoner numbers that place their arrival in the third week of December 1944. An Australian survivor (Olga Wollner, then 14-year-old Olga Löwy) has recently definitely placed this entire group as having arrived from Sered on 19 December, and that it included her grandmother (whose death in February 1945 is on record), her mother, and herself, thus bringing the number to 90.129 Since the range of Ravensbrück prisoner numbers is about 250, this may be the number of women and children who arrived in this transport. Olga Wollner reports that, in this transport from Sered, the men were in separate carriages, and were taken off in Oranienburg. Soon after the arrival of the women and children in Ravensbrück, there was a Zählappell in which those capable of work were separated from those the SS guards considered too old or sick. Her grandmother was thus separated from them. Her mother wanted to join the grandmother, who dissuaded her, saying,“No, you stay with Ollie!” She and her mother were soon sent to Rechlin. Transport from Częstochowa In addition, there is testimony about a large Jewish transport – perhaps the last of 1944 – that arrived at Christmas; it was neither

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 117 Hungarian, nor Slovak, nor from a Polish ghetto, nor from Auschwitz. It was a transport of Polish Jewish young women from the labor camp Częstochowa.130 The list is lost. We know of it from the testimonies of 77 survivors, 46 of them on the Burgau list,131 and 31 others.132 The women from the Częstochowa transport were apparently not in such poor physical condition as the Hungarians or the Slovaks.133 They shared a block with Hungarians who had arrived on 21–22 November or at the beginning of December, 1944. It appears that 271 of them were later transported together with these same Hungarians on the Burgau death train. What was the fate of these Polish Jewish arrivals from Częstochowa in late December? From the testimonies of survivors, we learn that at least 77 have survived. As we have seen, at least 271 remained in Ravensbrück itself, and were transferred to Burgau on 17 February 1945, together with the Hungarian arrivals of 21–22 November 1944, and those of the first week of December 1944. Still others must have been transferred to Bergen-Belsen, either with a large transport of 3 February,134 or, even more likely, with the huge transport of several thousand prisoners on 27 February.135 We know of 20 arrivals in this Częstochowa transport who survived BergenBelsen; 15 of them were evacuated to Sweden, and 16 additional survivors of this group also were evacuated to Sweden. As to the rest of the Slovakian arrivals of December, we do not know how many of them arrived with the multinational transport from Auschwitz. In addition, there appear on death lists 88 Slovakian names with Ravensbrück prisoner numbers that place their arrivals still in December; five Slovakian Jewish survivors registered after the war, claiming that they had arrived in December. Finally, the names of 19 Slovakian women without Ravensbrück prisoner numbers, who probably arrived before the end of December 1944, appear on death lists of those gassed in January 1945.

SUMMING-UP THE FOURTH PERIOD: NATIONAL GROUPS, AGE GROUPS, AND FATE

We know, in all, the names of 10,585 Jewish women and girls (including 216 children) who arrived in Ravensbrück from August to the end of 1944. What were their countries of origin, age, and fate?

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118 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Countries of origin or citizenship See Table 7.1, and diagram 8, p. 270. Table 7.1 Country of origin (or official citizenship)

Number

%

Hungary Poland Slovakia, Czechia, and Czechoslovakia France German Reich Italy Greece Austria Yugoslavia Belgium Romania Netherlands Croatia Soviet Union Stateless Turkey USA Argentina Lithuania Serbia Slovenia Unknown Total

6,993 2,118 898 195 80 75 31 18 18 16 14 13 11 9 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 83 10,585

66 20 8.5 1.8 0.7 0.7 0.3 0.17 0.17 0.15 0.13 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.76 100

Age distribution of the Jewish arrivals Table 7.2 Age group

Number

%

0–13 14–18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 Over 66 Unknown Total

216 1,202 3,623 2,950 1,735 310 164 110 275 10,585

2.0 11.3 34.2 27.8 16.4 2.3 1.5 1.0 2.6 100

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 119 See Table 7.2, and diagram 9, p. 271. This table reflects the fact that the great majority of the 10,585 known Jewish arrivals of the fourth period had been selected to be of working age, to be fit for work in the German war industry. Sizable numbers of children, and women over age 55, arrived only with the direct family transports from Toulouse, Italy, Slovakia, and with the three Polish ghetto transports. Fate See Table 7.3 and diagram 10, p. 272. Table 7.3

Fate

Number

%

Known survivors Known to have died Unknown Total

2,015 1,157 7,413 10,585

19 10.9 70 100

Age and fate Note: The first six columns in Tables 7.4–7.7 represent the number and percentage of the “fate” above them, within the age group in question. The last two columns, in contrast, signify the number and percentage of the entire age group in that row within the total number of persons known to have arrrived during the fourth period. Table 7.4 Age

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

Died Number %

Survived Number %

Fate unknown Number %

Total Number %

24

11.1

106

49

86

39.8

216

2.0

78

6.5

266

22

858

71.4

1,202

11.3

2,615 2,268 1,320 130 50 40 47 7,414

72.2 76.9 76 41.8 30.3 36.4 16.5 70

3,623 2,950 1,735 310 164 110 273 10,585

34.2 27.9 16.4 2.9 1.6 1.0 2.6 100

177 195 256 163 110 70 84 1,157

4.9 6.61 14.8 52.6 67.3 63.6 30.7 10.9

831 487 159 17 4 0 144 2,014

22.9 16.5 9.1 5.5 2.4 0 52.7 19.0

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120 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Obviously, Table 7.4 is very unsatisfactory, as the fate of as many as 70% of the Jewish prisoners who arrived during this period is unknown. The figures for survival and death are thus not reliably indicative of the situation. It may possibly be more indicative if we compare the relationships between age and fate for the three largest “national” groups of arrivals during the fourth period, taking into account their separate histories. The Hungarian group During the fourth period, the five months from August to the end of 1944, new Jewish arrivals classified as “Hungarian” were by far the largest group – 6994, or 66%. Among these officially classified as Hungarian were a considerable number of women and girls who originated from those border areas of Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia annexed by Hungary; when given the opportunity to identify their citizenship/nationality, 121 survivors identified themselves as Czechoslovak, Romanian, Czechian, Slovakian, Yugoslavian, Polish, or Soviet-Russian. Nevertheless, the Hungarian group remains by far the largest of the Jewish groups of the fourth period. The Hungarian group clearly comprised two kinds of women and girls.As described above, the first 2163 were mainly young women who had been deported to Auschwitz from all over Hungary between April and August 1944; they were selected in Auschwitz, from August until 3 November inclusive, and brought to Ravensbrück for the express purpose of “selling” them as quickly as possible to German industrialists who produced weapons and ammunition or serviced military airplanes and airports in a network of so-called external labor camps under the command of one of the major concentration camps. Ravensbrück sent its prisoners mainly to work in the external labor camps of Buchenwald,136 but also to some external camps of Sachsenhausen/ Oranienburg.137 Later, in 1945, prisoners went mainly to its own external camps, especially Malchow and Neustadt-Glewe, but also to those of Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. During the fourth period, the Hungarians from Auschwitz were sent to the following labor camps: Schönholz,Altenburg, Neustadt, Spandau, Lippstadt, and Hasag-Leipzig. Smaller numbers of Jewish prisoners were sent to the following labor camps: Genshagen, Rechlin/Retzow, Beendorf, and Barth. The second-largest Jewish transport ever to arrive in Ravensbrück consisted of 1677 Jewish women, all selected in

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 121 Auschwitz in August and all classified as “Hungarian”, who eventually arrived in Ravensbrück on 23–25 November 1944. (Seventy-nine identified themselves later as Czechoslovakian, Romanian, Slovakian, Soviet-Russian, or Yugoslavian, with most being in the first two categories.) They had spent nearly three disastrous months in the small labor camp Frankfurt/Walldorf. Due to their poor physical condition, most were not sent on to another labor camp. The second kind of Hungarian arrivals came with the direct transports from Hungary that started on 16 November. The four transports in November whose lists are preserved brought 1797 women and girls. From transfer lists to Venusberg (398), Penig (698),138 and Burgau (70) we know that in the first two weeks of December 1944, at least 1166 Hungarian Jewish women must have arrived in at least three direct transports from Budapest. As to Hungarian arrivals in December 1944 that were from Auschwitz rather than directly from Hungary, there are records of at least 32 Hungarian Jewish women who arrived in mid-December with a multinational transport. The Polish group The second largest “national” Jewish group of the fourth period, the Polish group, like the Hungarian one, had a significant portion selected in Auschwitz who were to be sent to Ravensbrück to work in the German war industry. During August and September, 863 were so selected, and another 496 on 3 November. Most of those selected in August were sent to Mühlhausen (Thüringen), and most of those arriving on 3 November were among the early Jewish prisoners sent to Malchow. Another all-Jewish Polish transport still intended for work in the war industry, whose documents are lost, came to Ravensbrück as late as 24–25 December 1944 (nearly all the survivors remember having arrived at Christmas); they did not come from Auschwitz but from an industrial labor camp at Częstochowa, where they had worked at a “Hasag” plant and all or most had previously worked at Skarz.ycko-Kamienna. They were convinced that they were intended to work at a Messerschmitt factory. As mentioned above, we surmise that 271 of the Częstochowa transport were sent together with the Hungarians of the direct transports of 21–22 November, and of the first week of December, on the death train to Burgau. On arrival in Burgau, where there had indeed been a

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122 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Messerschmitt factory, all the survivors were considered to be no longer capable of work. It is not known how many Polish Jewish women came with the last multinational transport from Auschwitz sometime in midDecember. There are 41 known Polish Jewish survivors of this transport: 13 settled in Israel, 3 in Sweden, and 3 in the USA, and there are 22 whose countries of settlement are unknown. Significantly, 19 of them had been transferred to Malchow, and as many as 27 of these 41 known survivors were evacuated to Sweden. As described above, the Polish Jewish contingent of the fourth period also included three transports of a different kind – the over-600 members of the partially protected direct family transports from the ghettoes of Częstochowa, ·ódz´, and Piotrków. None of them were meant to be sent to work in the external labor camps, but at least 34 women of the ·ódz´ iantransport, intended to be sent with the men and children to a special camp at KönigsWusterhausen, were sent instead to the cruel labor camp Arado/Wittenberg. The Slovakian group The third largest “national” Jewish group of arrivals of the fourth period consisted of 821 Slovakian women and children, plus 51 defined as Czech and 26 as Czechoslovakian; 898 altogether. Of these, 384 are known to have arrived in four direct transports from Sered and Pre•ov in November. We know of at least three other direct transports from Slovakia in December: a larger one from Sered (at least 138 persons), a small one from Pre•ov (at least 3 persons), and another larger one from Sered in the third week (90–250 persons). A group of 39 Slovakian women and 19 Czech women came with the large transport from Auschwitz on 3 November, and another group arrived with the multinational transport from Auschwitz in mid-December. For many others with Slovakian citizenship we know only their fate – survival or death – but no exact dates of arrival, except that they arrived before the end of 1944. Probably two more direct Slovakian transports arrived in January 1945; their fate is described in the next chapter. Tables 7.5–7.7 deal with the distributions of age and fate, and their correlations, in the three major “national” groups of the fourth period: the Hungarian (Table 7.5), the Polish (Table 7.6), and the Slovakian (Table 7.7).

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 123 Table 7.5 The Hungarian Group Age

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

Died Number % 2

Survived Number %

8.3

Fate unknown Number %

Total Number %

8

33.3

14

58.3

24

0.3

56

6

150

16.2

718

77.7

924

13.2

135 132 151 11 2 1 20 510

5.3 6.3 11.8 26.1 18.2 25 27.8 7.3

355 183 60 3 0 0 30 789

14 8.7 4.7 7.1 0 0 41.7 11.3

2043 1788 1070 28 9 3 22 5695

80 85 83.5 66.6 81.8 75 30.5 81.5

2533 2103 1281 42 11 4 72 6994

36.2 30.1 18.3 0.6 0.2 0.1 1.0 100

Table 7.6 The Polish Group Age

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

Died Number %

Survived Number %

Fate unknown Number %

Total Number %

5

4.5

62

56.4

43

39

110

5.2

3

1.6

89

47.6

95

50.1

187

8.8

14 5 13 10 2 1 1 54

1.6 0.8 6 21.3 28.6 50 2.8 2.5

392 258 61 9 1 0 34 907

44.6 40.8 28.1 19.1 14.3 0 94.4 42.8

474 369 143 28 4 1 1 1158

53.8 58.3 65.9 59.6 57.1 50 2.8 54.6

880 632 217 47 7 2 36 2119

41.6 29.8 10.2 2.2 0.3 0.1 1.7 100

At first glance, the differences between the fate of these three national groups is striking. Whereas only 2.5% of the Polish group are known to have died and 42.8% are known to have survived, as many as 46.8% – nearly half – of the Slovakian group are known to have died, and only 18.3% are known to have survived. As for the Hungarian group: 7.2% are known to have died, a much smaller percentage than that of the Slovakian group, but only 11.3% are known to have survived, a much smaller percentage than that of

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124 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Table 7.7 The Slovakian Group Age

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

Died Number %

Survived Number %

Fate unknown Number %

Total Number %

13

23.2

24

42.8

19

33.9

56

6.2

13

27.6

17

34

18

38.2

48

5.3

15 31 67 115 93 62 10 421

16.3 26.9 45.6 69.9 74 66.7 17.8 46.7

42 24 15 1 2 0 41 166

34 60 66 49 31 31 5 313

36.9 52.2 44.9 29.5 24.4 33.3 8.9 34.7

91 115 148 165 126 93 56 898

10.2 12.8 16.4 18.4 14.1 10.3 6.2 100

46.7 20.9 9.5 0.6 1.6 0 73.2 18.4

the Polish group. It becomes obvious that we have to take into account the percentages of those whose fate is unknown. This is as high as 81.5% for the Hungarian group, just over half – 54.6% – for the Polish group, and much lower, less than a third – 31.3% – for the Slovakian group. Why these large differences in the registrations of the fate of Jewish prisoners from these three different countries of origin? We know that the Slovakian prisoners – both Jewish and non-Jewish – started registering their dead in the camp, and attempted to complete the list after liberation. After a few decades, they also attempted to construct a list of all Ravensbrück survivors who settled in Slovakia after the War. The Jewish community of Prague also attempted to draw up a list of Jewish victims and survivors of Ravensbrück. By contrast, registration of both victims and survivors among the Hungarian Jewish prisoners started only as late as the 1990s.Another reason for the extremely high rate of Hungarian Jewish prisoners of the fourth period whose fate is unknown is that a much higher percentage of this group than of the other two were sent to external labor camps after a brief stay in Ravensbrück, and thus the tracks of many of them were lost. We have little information about Jewish prisoners who died in external labor camps, and only by sheer accident do we know the names of some of those who were sent from there to their deaths in Auschwitz. There was absolutely no registration of the deaths of those collapsing and

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 125 those shot during the huge evacuation marches from Hasag-Leipzig, Lippstadt, and Sachsenhausen, just as the victims of Ravensbrück’s own evacuation march were not registered. Most survivors who were in Ravensbrück in December 1944 or January 1945 were shocked to find there heaps of unburied, and certainly also unregistered, bodies. We have only extremely partial lists of those killed in Ravensbrück’s own gas chamber. Due to the existence of the Czech/ Slovakian death list this registration is more complete for the Slovakian group. Taking these facts into account, we can surmise that the majority of those whose fate is unknown did indeed die during the War or soon after.Yet there may also have been a considerable number of survivors of the external labor camps, who because of their having spent only a relatively short time in Ravensbrück itself, did not register after liberation the fact of their ever having been prisoners of Ravensbrück. It can be assumed that the rate of deaths registered by the Slovakian group – nearly half – comes much nearer to the truth than that registered by the other two “national” groups. There are at least two major factors responsible for the mortality rates – conditions and age distribution. The Slovakian transports started to arrive in November, whereas some of the members of the Polish and Hungarian groups had already arrived in August, before conditions had reached rock bottom. The second factor responsible for the differences in mortality is the age distribution. Among the Hungarians there were no family transports, and while the Polish ghetto transports were family transports, they were somewhat protected. By contrast, the great majority of Slovak arrivals in the fourth period were members of family transports. Women over 55 were more vulnerable, because it was more difficult for them to withstand the atrocious conditions and the back-breaking labor, they were more liable to be killed in the camp before evacuation, and more likely to collapse and/or be shot during evacuation. In the Slovakian group, 384 (52.5%) were women over 55; 272 of these – 70% – died, constituting over 64% of all who are known to have died. By contrast, of the Hungarian arrivals of the fourth period, only 2.7% of the 510 known to have died were women over 55. The French group Names of 196 Jewish arrivals from France during the fourth period are on record. Thirty-nine (19.9%) are known to have died and 53

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126 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück (27%) to have survived, while the fates of 104 (53%) are unknown. There were 75 Jewish arrivals from Italy; as many as 44 (58.6%) are known to have died and 29 (38.6%) to have survived. The fate of only 2 (0.7%) is unknown. As the direct French and Italian transports continued into the fifth period, they are also discussed in the next chapter. By contrast to the third period, when those registered as of partJewish descent (Mischlinge ) had constituted 22.7% of the Jewish arrivals, during the fourth period only 37 more arrived, constituting only 0.3% of the 10,585 Jewish arrivals. Known Jewish arrivals as a percentage of all the arrivals in the fourth period From the existing Ravensbrück numbers, we know that, at the beginning of August, the registration numbers stood at about 57500, and at the end of December at about 96800. Thus, in all, about 39,300 new arrivals were registered in Ravensbrück during this period of only five months. All documents, testimonies, and registrations of survivors that I could find have produced the names of 10,585 Jewish prisoners who arrived during this period. The known Jewish names thus constitute as much as 27% of all arrivals that received Ravensbrück numbers. Of course, the Jewish names would constitute a considerably higher percentage of the names of all arrivals, if we count only those names of arrivals actually identified on preserved documents of all kinds, or from testimonies and registrations of survivors.

NOTES 1. Most of the French arrival lists were not preserved, but have been reconstituted by the French Ravensbrück Committee (Amicale). They did not register the “racial” category of “Jewess”, therefore we had to register names that are obviously Jewish, and to rely on the memory and assistance of Anise Postel-Vinay in order to identify as many of the Jewish women prisoners arriving from France as possible. See Chapter 3, section “Who should be considered Jewish”. 2. Admiral Horthy of the nominally independent Hungary had opposed the general deportation of Hungarian Jews. On 18 March 1944, German troops occupied Hungary, and by the end of April mass deportations of Jews had begun. 3. These prisoners either came from the Romanian and Slovakian border territories that Nazi Germany had allocated to nominally independent Hungary, or had moved previously to Budapest, then considered safer.

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 127 4. Schönholz was an external labor camp of Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. All the documents concerning this transport are lost. The information is based on the registrations and testimonies of five survivors. 5. Transfer list BWA HKW 15 D to Akdo Altenburg, with 498 Jewish names. 6. Transfer list Politische Abteilung; Weimar-Buchenwald, 22. Oktober 1944; Neuzugänge vom 22 Oktober 1944; 400 weibliche Häftlinge von KL. Ravensbrück nach Akdo Neustadt b. Coburg (eingetroffen am September 26, 1944); Politische Ungarinnen/Jüdinnen. The 13 Hungarian, Romanian, and Czechoslovakian survivors whose names are not on this list, but who registered with the US Holocaust Registry, Washington, DC and who mentioned Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Neustadt as their camps, were sent from Ravensbrück to Neustadt near Coburg presumably at the same time. 7. Israeli survivor #519, Zipora Petrover, war name Frieda Lax, interviewed by J.B.A. on 9 November 1997. 8. Israeli survivor #52 Eva Efrat, war name: Eva Adler, interviewed by J.B.A. in 2003. 9. Mariana Galesz, Klara Blum on Uckermark A list, 16 February 1945, and Gita Berkowicz on Uckermark B list, 23 March 1945. 10. Buchenwald document Waffen-SS K. L. Weimar-Buchenwald Arb.Kdo. Altenburg October 9, 1944. 11. Jacob Weisser, who reached Altenburg in February 1945, testified (P. III. h. (Auschwitz) No. 467, interviewed in Brussels, 16 April 1956) that at this time 3500 women who had been transferred from Ravensbrück worked there. According to his testimony, the prisoners were evacuated from Altenburg on 10 April 1945, and reached Waldenburg on 13 April. He was appointed by the Americans as head of the camp of liberated prisoners (p. 10). 12. See note 6 above. 13. US survivor ctrl. 80526, war name Adél Trödl. 14. US survivor Clara Rosenbaum, war name Klara Szabo, reports that she, her sister, and her brother’s fiancée, who came from Auschwitz, spent only three days in Ravensbrück before being sent to Neustadt b. Coburg; phone interview with J.B.A., 16 July 2005. 15. Phone interview with J.B.A., 16 July 2005. 16. US survivor ctrl. 44390, Eva Vayda, war name Eva Weiss. 17. Although Revierkarten gave only minimal information about the health of the arriving prisoners, they are of importance because many of them contain not only Ravensbrück numbers, but also prisoner numbers of the labor camps they were sent to. 18. Nachweis der 300 am 3.9.1944 beim Arb.-Kdo. Gerätebau GmbH in Mühlhausen/Thür. eingetroffenen weiblichen Häftlinge (Jüdinnen.) 19. Bestand Belgien MF Nr. 3–5 / S.99–107. 20. Liberated Jews arrived in Sweden in 1945, Mosaiska Församlingen, Wahrendorffsgatan 3, Stockholm, Malmö, Sweden 1946 – here called “JSList”. 21. Dr. Irmgard Seidel: “Jüdinnen in den Aussenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald”, unpublished paper for international conference “Genocide and Gender”, Freie Universität, Berlin, October 2003. 22. Milena Basowa, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60629 and Ella Becher, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60633. 23. Hinda Borkowska, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60659, and Zofia Reingewürz, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60960.

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128 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 24. Seidel, “Jüdinnen in den Aussenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald”, note 21. 25. Questionnaire answered by US survivor Dora Bornstein, war name Dwojra Szczukocka. 26. Ruchla Dziewienska, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60695, and Zofia Reingewürz, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60960. 27. The first was US survivor Sally Lifschitz, war name, Sally Kawenoki, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60879; the second was Eva Weintraub, Ravensbrück prisoner number 61072, “JSList”, p. 124. 28. Cesia Hendlish, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60808 (information by US survivor Sally Lifschitz, ctrl. 16185). 29. Taube Ginsberg, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60879. 30. Information from the MGR Research project, Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow, Totendatenbank Projekt Ravensbrück Gedenkbuch: Luba Baumgart, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60625, death date, 28 January 1945; Mira Korzec, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60861, death date, 8 September 1944; and Pesa Weitzmann, Ravensbrück prisoner number 61061, death date, 6 September 1944. 31. Helena Kamisewicz, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60852; Sara Kamisewicz, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60853; and Ciwia Neufeld, Ravensbrück prisoner number 60921. 32. Frank Steir, Als Gefolgschaft verschickt und als Häftlinge behandelt ...., Zur Geschichte des KZ-Aussenlagers Sachsenhausen in KönigsWusterhausen, Brandenburg, 1971, p. 4. Five of the Israeli survivors who were among the children sent to KönigsWusterhausen from Ravensbrück called their story “the second Schindler story”. 33. Some of the men transferred directly to KönigsWusterhausen were carpenters and other artisans. Frank Steir, Kriegsauftrag 160, Berlin, 1999. 34. According to a temporary list prepared by Kulturlandschaft Dahme-Spreewald e. V. for the purpose of paying compensation to the slave laborers of KönigsWusterhausen. 35. Renate Gruber-Lieblich, “... und morgen war Krieg!” – Arado Flugzeugwerke GmbH Wittenberg 1936–1945 – ein KZ-Lager entsteht, Wittenberg, 1995. 36. Steir, Kriegsauftrag 160, p. 100. 37. Israeli survivor #675 Zipora Schulzer, war name, Feige Davidovitz, who had arrived in Ravensbrück from Budapest on foot and by train in October– November 1944, was sent to Sachsenhausen and then to KönigsWusterhausen (interview by I.D.K., 16 December 1997). From Sachsenhausen archive documents we learn that at least 10 other Hungarian women who had arrived directly from Budapest on 19, 22, or 28 November were sent to KönigsWusterhausen. Four of these women are known to have died in KönigsWasterhausen. 38. Interview by J.B.A. with Natan Borowiecki, Ravensbrück prisoner number 79291, 20 January 2005. 39. Dr. Mina (Maria) Litwin, interview with J.B.A. on 27 January 1998. See also in Gruber-Lieblich, “... und morgen war Krieg!”, pp. 48–52, 80–84. 40. Ibid., pp. 69, 77, 81, 82. 41. Ibid., pp. 80, 81. 42. Ibid., p. 86. Unfortunately no list of names has been preserved. 43. Ibid., p. 80.

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 129 44. Hence, at least eight additional survivors of Wittenberg died before they could be registered as survivors. 45. In 1970 in Israel as many as 36 women survivors of Wittenberg were questioned by the public prosecutors of Ludwigsburg (Gruber-Lieblich, “... und morgen war Krieg!”, p. 62). 46. Hela Berlinska, an Israeli survivor, gave detailed information about this transport. 47. Transfer list to Graslitz, 1 April 1945: United States National Archives, Washington: Record Group 338 Army Commands, stack area 290, row 13, compartment 22, shelf 3, box 536 oversize (volume 126 = book No. 7, volume 127 = book No. 8) (location 000–50–46). 48. Überstellung Nr. 33 von Auschwitz. 49. Registration by the Buchenwald Politische Abteilung on 31 December 1944, of 250 female prisoners from Ravensbrück who had arrived in Lippstadt on 28 November 1944 (Kartei 1441; VA.-W:WR). 50. State Archive Prague KT-OVS, inv. c.104, Karto c. 16. 51. Later 34 registered as Czechoslovakians or Czechs, and 6 as Romanians. 52. Information by questionnaire: US survivor 43502 Elizabeth Kroo-Teitelbaum. 53. Phone interview with Ahuva Litmanowic by J.B.A. 54. This escape is confirmed by Elizabeth Kroo-Teitelbaum. 55. Liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945 (List No. 1) and About Jews Liberated from German Concentration Camps Arrived in Sweden in 1945–46 (List No. 2), Mosaiska Församlingen, Wahrendorffsgatan 3, Stockholm, Malmö, 1946. 56. See the study of Malchow by Irith Dublon-Knebel in A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück, ed. Irith Dublon-Knebel, forthcoming. 57. Only one woman from this transport, Gerda Bürgenthal, Ravensbrück prisoner number 82186, was transferred from Malchow to Hasag-Leipzig on 2 April 1945. 58. Information by Israeli survivor Shoshana Gamburg, war name Roza Schlipke; interview 9 June 1998 by J.B.A. “In April 1945 the white buses of the Swedish Red Cross arrived – I heard a call ‘Polish citizens’.” 59. Harvey Rosenfeld, Raoul Wallenberg: Angel of Rescue, Buffalo, NY, 1982. 60. Giorgio Perlasca, Diary of His Memories, 1992; also Hulda Libermanova, The cattle merchant pretended to be the Spanish “Consul”, Ha’aretz, 15 March 2002. 61. See Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, New York, 1997, pp. 173–183; also, Swedish survivor Rosi Forsberg (b. Mauskopf), Ravensbrück prisoner number 85808, worked for nearly one year digging trenches near Budapest; in Ravensbrückerinnen, Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, Nr. 4, Berlin, 1995, p. 152. 62. Füllberg-Stolberg et al. (eds.), Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen Ravensbrück, Bremen, 1994, p. 151. On the basis of the diary of Arieh (Leo) Koretz, Bergen-Belsen Tagebuch eines Jugendlichen 11.7.1944–30.3.1945. 63. Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress; Eva Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels: From Ravensbrück to Burgau, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 2000, translated by her from her Hungarian diary, written in 1945 (first version); Kato Gyulai, Zwei Schwestern, Geschichte einer Deportation, Berlin, 2000 (earlier xerox version Eine einfache Deportiertengeschichte, Budapest, 1947); Gloria Hollander Lyon, “Die Odyssee einer ungarischen Jüdin”, in Füllberg-Stolberg et al., Frauen in Konzentrationslagern, pp. 279–290.

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130 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 64. Interview with Nora Náté, war name Nora Stark, by J.B.A. on 27 July 1998 in Budapest; see also Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels, p. 15. 65. Andreas Baumgartner, Die vergessenen Frauen von Mauthausen, Vienna, 1997 p. 60, quoted in Grit Philipp, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im FrauenKonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 1939-1945, Berlin, 1999, p. 179. 66. Sondertransport Nr. 117; Zugang am 17.11.1944 aus Budapest mit Liste. The dead women were Hedwig Rosenak, Ravensbrück prisoner number 84438, and Lilly Bodor, b. Fenyves, Ravensbrück prisoner number 84431. 67. No. 2324; Neuzugänge vom 03.01.1945; 500 weibl. Häftlinge von KL Ravensbrück nach Akdo Hasag/-Leipzig eingetroffen am 03.12.1944. 68. This external labor camp had belonged to Buchenwald since 1 September 1944 and was, with more than 5000 prisoners from 28 different countries, its largest women’s labor camp. A third of these were Jewish women. Seidel, “Jüdinnen in den Aussenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald”. 69. Telephone interview with Tova R., on 28 March 2003, by J.B.A. 70. Rosi Forsberg, b. Mauskopf (Philipp, Ravensbrückerinnen, p. 153). She married in Sweden and adopted a child. 71. A third report concerning medical experiments on a Jewish woman in Ravensbrück after October 1944 is that by Hela St., a Canadian survivor. Some of those who suffered injections in Ravensbrück report that they nevertheless succeeded in giving birth after the War (testimony of Ketti W., 8 April 1997). Several survivors who arrived with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch had suffered sterilization experiments by Dr. Clauberg in Auschwitz (testimony of Belgian survivor Sara S., April 1956). This same Dr. Clauberg had planned, in July 1942, to undertake the sterilization of 1000 Jewish women in Ravensbrück (Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA-Nr. V/3–4, Nr. 2). 72. These descriptions of the evacuation march from Hasag-Leipzig are strikingly similar to those given by survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, who had arrived at the beginning of April 1945 in Hasag-Leipzig from Malchow, and were evacuated together with the earlier Hungarian Jewish arrivals. 73. Phone interview, 30 March 2003, by J.B.A. Martha C. has two daughters, six grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. 74. Martha C. pointed out that in Hungary, as early as the 1930s, younger Jewish women and girls of her age were prevented from completing secondary schooling and thus of acquiring higher education, and so their choice of occupations was limited. 75. Thus, in prewar Poland very few Jews worked in factories, as factory work meant having to work on the Sabbath. 76. Kato Gyulai reports having left her office job for a position looking after children, as at the time the authorities considered this essential work. Eva LangleyDános reports the establishment of a garment factory for making uniforms near Budapest for the express purpose of shielding Jewish young women by providing them with “essential work”. 77. See note 61 above; Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, pp. 184–194. 78. Testimony in January 1956 of Eva Feyer (Feiyer), Ravensbrück prisoner number 86217, who had arrived with the 21–22 November 1944 transport from Budapest (Wiener Library P. III. h. No 233), quoted by Linde Apel, Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939-1945, Berlin, 2003, pp. 276–278.

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The Fourth Period – August 1944 to End of 1944 131 79. We know of five more Jewish survivors of Genshagen: the French Jewish Lucienne Abraham, who had already arrived on 3 September 1944 and was sent to Genshagen on 11 October 1944; Swedish survivor, Polish Jewish Ryfka Wolf, b. Kottlar, and US survivor, Slovakian Jewish Nelli Hellinger, who had arrived on 3 November from Auschwitz and was later sent to Genshagen. One US survivor of the Hungarian direct transport of 28 November, Edith Fischer, reports having been sent to Genshagen in December, and US survivor Polish Jewish Helena Wislicka (Helena Bornstein), as well as Swedish survivor Polish Jewish Berta Cukierman, and survivor from Germany Ida Jung, b. Schlesinger, all arrived in Ravensbrück in December and were later sent to Genshagen. 80. As to Barth, US survivor ctr. 27442, Irene Löwy, b. Kallus; as to Malchow, Israeli survivor, Regina Mendel, war name, Ilona Laupe (Lenke). 81. Israeli survivor Shoshana Eiren, war name Ibolia Rosner, Ravensbrück prisoner number 86031; US survivor Magdalena R. Berenyi, war name Magda Roth, Ravensbrück prisoner number 86006; US survivor Martha Klein, war name Marta Seiler, Ravensbrück prisoner number 85603. 82. The names of 111 women of the 21–22 November transport appear on the transfer list to Burgau. As this list was compiled after their arrival in Burgau, the names of all those who had died during the 16 days journey in the locked cattlecars do not appear on the list. See notes 84, 85 below. 83. Ursula Winska, Die Werte siegten: Erinnerungen an Ravensbrück, in Polish: Morskie, 1985 (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive), p. 304. 84. See Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, pp. 202–203. 85. We know that 20 of the 500 women sent to Burgau died on the way, but only one member of the Budapest transport is known to us by name: she was a friend of Sara Tuvel Bernstein, described by her in The Seamstress. 86. These 8 names appear on a list of 18 Jewish KZ prisoners who all died in Burgau between 4 and 8 March 1945, signed by the Sonderstandesamt Arolsen, on 21 October 1949: KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau; Archiv 15.013. 87. Edith Ban, b. Rott, Ravensbrück prisoner number 86241. 88. Sondertransport fr. 129 am 28.11.1944 aus Gomarom/Budapest mit Listen. Handwritten Schneiderei (677 Hungarian Jewesses, 66 (non Jewish) Hungarians, and 291 Hungarian gypsies (Sinti and Roma)). 89. See Gyulai’s memoir, Zwei Schwestern, Geschichte einer Deportation, xeroxed version, pp. 26–31. 90. See section “The Frankfurt/Walldorf transport”. 91. See Gyulai’s memoir Zwei Schwestern, Geschichte einer Deportation, xeroxed version, pp. 37–39. 92. Ibid., p. 31, which mentions that her sister Anikó died about two weeks before liberation. 93. According to David Farkacz, the son of Mathilda Farkacz, b. Kahan, this Sered transport contained about 1000 Slovakian Jewish prisoners, including men. 94. There are 180 Slovakian Jewish names on the Czechoslovakian death list alone. 95. Ema Panovova supplied a list of 77 Jewish Slovakian survivors who returned to Slovakia. 96. An additional direct transport from Käsmark (Slovakia) with 22 Jewish names arrived in Ravensbrück on 18 January 1945. 97. Walter Morgenbesser, interviews on 19 and 26 February 1998, by J.B.A. and Nathan Beyrak.

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132 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 98. A transport of 10 Croat Jewish women arrived on 19 September 1944; two of them were sent to Hasag-Leipzig on 3 December. Nothing is known about their fate. 99. For an additional study of this transport by Irith Dublon-Knebel, see reference in note 56 above. 100. Although on the remaining pages of the arrival list all are classified as Hungarian, after liberation 29 identified themselves as Romanian, 36 as Czechoslovakian, Czech, or Slovakian, 1 as Yugoslavian, and 1 as from the Soviet Union. 101. The camp was called “Aussenkommando Walldorf bei Frankfurt/Main”, or “Arbeitslager ‘Flughafen, Ffm”; it was a small external labor camp of the concentration camp Natzweiler. 102. The Ravensbrück arrival list was called “Überstellung von Auschwitz no. 35”, and the few existing pages start with number 1626. 103. The name of one US survivor who claims to have been in Frankfurt/Walldorf could not be identified on this transfer list. 104. Over 20 survivors from Sweden, Israel, the USA, Hungary, and Germany contacted the organizers of the first memorial meeting for the Frankfurt/Walldorf camp in the small town of Mörfelden-Walldorf in 2000, and told their stories. 105. Nichts und niemand wird vergessen – zur Geschichte des KZ Aussenlagers Natzweiler-Struthof in Walldorf, herausgegeben vom Magistrat der Stadt Mörfelden-Walldorf, 1996; Das Geheimnis der Erlösung heisst Erinnerung; ein Begleitheft zum historischen Lehrpfad am ehemaligen KZ-Aussenlager Walldorf, 2000. 106. Ibid., pp. 45, 47. 107. SS document quoted in the Walldorf documentation. 108. Vera (Miriam) Dotan and Moshe Dotan, Rising from Hell, Raanana, 2005, Chapter 5. 109. See Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 206. 110. Ibid., pp. 217–218; and Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels, pp. 24–25. 111. Both Winska, Die Werte siegten, and Wanda Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, kobiecy obóz koncentracyjny, Warsaw, 1961 (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive), mention their having worked at cutting trees, being sick with hungerdysentery, and having an especially high mortality rate. Kato Gyulai, Zwei Schwestern, Geschichte einer Deportation, p. 33, describes them as follows: “they no longer resembled human beings, but were like barefoot phantoms wrapped in rags; they dropped like flies”. 112. Testimony of the six Schreiber sisters who told their story in a Swedish documentary film, also shown on Israeli television: “If One of Us Should Die”, 1999; narrator Miriam Schreiber Mosesson. This death train from Beendorf is also described by Gloria Hollander Lyon, “Die Odyssee einer ungarischen Jüdin”, pp. 286–287, note 52, and by Lida Holcer in Polish/Swedish interview number 113. 113. Liliana Picciotto, Il libro della memoria gli Ebrei deportati dall’Italia (1943–1945), Milan, 2002, pp. 60–61. 114. Hungarian survivor Nora Náté; interview with J.B.A. in Budapest, 27 July 1998. 115. Talking with Angels: A document from Hungary Transcribed by Gitta Mallasz, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 1992, p. 470. 116. Eva Langley-Dános and her friends were baptized Jews, apparently all Roman Catholic; see Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels, p. 15. Her three close friends, all

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117.

118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

123. 124. 125. 126.

127. 128. 129.

130.

131.

132.

133.

Hungarian, died on the way to Burgau and are not registered on the Burgau list, yet we know their names and Ravensbrück numbers from her book, p. 30. Andreas Baumgartner, Die vergessenen Frauen von Mauthausen: die weiblichen Häftlinge von Mauthausen und ihre Geschichte, Vienna, 1997, p. 60; quoted also by Philipp in Kalendarium, p. 179. Katherine S. (born 1916 in Budapest) YV Dok. 03/1040 as quoted in Baumgartner, Die vergessenen Frauen von Mauthausen, pp. 60, 190. Charlotte Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne in Ravensbrück, Berlin, 1987, p. 173. Testimony by Katherine S. in 1958. YV Dok. 03/1040. Interview with Nora Náté, war name Nora Stark, in Budapest, 27 July 1998, by J.B.A. Three women are reported on the Multinational Tabelle as not having returned; the name of Erzebeth Biro, Ravensbrück prisoner number 97020, appears on the Uckermark death list, and one was reported by the Arolsen search for relatives as having died in Ravensbrück on 19 March 1945. See Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels, p. 30. Ibid.; as to Klara, p. 94, as to Hanna, pp. 99–100, and as to Lili, pp. 107–109. Ibid., p. 22. Testimony of US survivor, ctrl. 16270, Esther Grün, war name Elisabeth Elise Weiss(z), Ravensbrück prisoner number 95494; interviewed by Sabine Kittel and corresponded with J.B.A. Testimony of Esther Grün. Esther Grün testified that two of her friends also survived. Olga Wollner, then Löwy, reported in January 2006 to J.B.A. that she, her mother, and her grandmother arrived from Sered on 19 December 1944, in a freight carriage filled with at least 70 people. She and her mother were soon transferred to Rechlin but her grandmother Valeria Löwy remained in Ravensbrück. Bestand Prag records the date of her death as 19 February 1945. From extant documents and from survivors’ testimonies, 302 names of Polish Jewish women who arrived at the end of December 1944, who either testified . that they had come from Częstochowa and before that from SkarzyskoKamienna or can be assumed to have belonged to this transport, could be identified. Among the survivors of the Burgau transport there were 46 who mentioned having come from Częstochowa (or Hasag, or Skarzysko-Kamienna): 33 in the USA, 10 in Israel, 2 in Canada, and 1 whose country of settlement is unknown; all those that could be reached remembered having arrived in Ravensbrück at Christmas 1944; for four additional Polish Jewish survivors there is no counterindication; only two Polish Jewish survivors of the Burgau transport clearly arrived from somewhere other than Częstochowa. Therefore 221 additional Polish Jewish women on the Burgau list, about whose fate we have no information, can also be assumed to have arrived from Częstochowa. Thirty-one Polish Jewish survivors, 15 in Israel, 8 in the USA, 2 in Sweden, 1 in Poland, and 5 whose countries of settlement are unknown, whose names do not appear in any extant document, also testified that they had arrived from Częstochowa in Ravensbrück around Christmas 1944. Among the 272 Polish Jewish prisoners on the Burgau list, about 19% are known to have survived; whereas among the 186 Hungarian Jewish prisoners on this same list, only 7% are known to have survived.

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134 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 134. Germaine Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, mit einem Anhang “Die Massentötungen durch Gas in Ravensbrück” by Anise Postel-Vinay, Lüneburg, 1998 (first published in French, 1973, Paris), p. 344; also Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 193. 135. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA Bd. 19, Bericht-Nr. 165; Bd. 41, Bericht-Nr. 978; also Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 197. 136. Altenburg, Neustadt, Lippstadt, Mühlhausen, Hasag-Leipzig. 137. Schönholz, Wittenberg, Spandau. 138. Two US survivors of the Penig transport, Elizabeth Bauer, war name Erzsebet Balazs, and Helen Itzkovitz, war name Ilona Komorn, had come in December, not directly from Budapest, but from Auschwitz.

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8 THE FIFTH PERIOD – THE LAST STAGE

WHO WAS IN RAVENSBRÜCK AT THE BEGINNING OF 1945?

Who were the Jewish prisoners imprisoned in Ravensbrück at the beginning of 1945 that remained there during the last stage? Let us remember that most of the arrivals from the Netherlands of the third period who had survived until January 1945 were transferred to Bergen-Belsen on 30 January 1945. Most of the arrivals from Belgium with Turkish citizenship who had survived until February 1945 were evacuated to Sweden on 28 February 1945, and soon after, from there by boat to Turkey. Most of the Mischlinge who had arrived during the third period were still working at the Siemens factory near the main camp of Ravensbrück until about 28 March. Most of the Hungarian and Polish arrivals from Auschwitz in August 1944 and on 3 November 1944 had been transferred before the end of 1944 to the labor camps Schönholz, Altenburg, Neustadt, Mühlhausen, Lippstadt, Hasag-Leipzig, and Malchow. Six hundred of the arrivals of the direct transports from Budapest had been transferred to Spandau and 60 to Genshagen. Many of the survivors of the direct Hungarian transports of 21–22 November 1944 and December 1944 were still working in Ravensbrück. Most of the survivors of the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport were in Ravensbrück (at least 7 were working at Siemens), although at least 75 are known to have been transferred to Rechlin, Malchow, Beendorf, and Barth. Of the three Polish ghetto transports, the children and some of the women of the ·ódz´ transport had been transferred to the special camp KönigsWusterhausen, but at least 30 women had been sent to

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136 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück the Arado/Wittenberg labor camp. The survivors of the Częstochowa and Piotrków ghetto transports were still in Ravensbrück. As we have no lists of the arrivals of the multinational transfer from Auschwitz in about mid-December, or of the Polish arrivals from the Hasag labor camp at Częstochowa at Christmas 1944, presumably, while some of this transport from Auschwitz had already been sent to Malchow, most of them were still in Ravensbrück at the end of the year. Most of the survivors of the Slovak, Italian, and French direct transports were still in Ravensbrück.

MAJOR CHANGES IN 1945

What characterizes the first four months of 1945, the last stage of the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück, for its Jewish prisoners? There were at least five major events during this period. The first two were disastrous and affected both Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners. The first disastrous event was on 4 January 1945, when Ravensbrück’s own gas chamber started to function.1 From that date on, there were systematic selections of sick or weak prisoners, who were first segregated in Uckermark, to be gassed after a few days.2 After the war, researchers estimated that 6000 persons were killed in Ravensbrück by gas during these last four months. Of the four extant death lists, three are very partial. They include 1415 names, at least 306 of them Jewish. I conclude that at least 22% of those killed were Jewish. Thus, I surmise that during less than four months, about 1320 Jewish prisoners were killed in Ravensbrück’s gas chamber. The second disastrous event was the typhus epidemic. Although tuberculosis and hunger-dysentery had already reached epidemic proportions by the end of 1944, the typhus epidemic raged especially in January and February of 1945.3 The epidemic also spread to Ravensbrück’s major external labor camps, Malchow and Neustadt-Glewe.4 The third event came with the advance of the Soviet forces, first into Poland and then into Eastern Germany. The result was a massive influx of new prisoners from the East in the form of the near-total evacuation of the major death camp of Auschwitz that started in January, of the concentration camp Gleiwitz, and finally, up to the third week of April, of many concentration camps and labor camps that were near the advancing Eastern and Western front lines, or

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 137 whose industrial installations had been bombed-out, especially in the Berlin area. A clear majority of these arriving prisoners were Jewish. In January, three transfers from Ravensbrück to still-functioning external labor camps took place, the transport of 500 Hungarian Jewish women to Venusberg (a small external labor camp of Flossenbürg) on 15 January, the large transport of 700 Hungarian Jewish women to Penig on 19–20 January, and the small, also Hungarian Jewish, transport of 16 to Meuselwitz on 24 January. As all these women had arrived in Ravensbrück during the fourth period, nearly all in December, they and their fate have been described in the previous chapter. The fourth event started in February. It was the beginning of massive transfers from Ravensbrück, no longer in order to supply labor to the German war industry,5 but simply to relieve the horrendous overcrowding. During February and March, thousands of women who arrived as survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch were transferred to the Ravensbrück external camps of Malchow and Neustadt-Glewe, where soon only a small minority could be employed, even temporarily, in the local industrial and military installations. In both of these camps, Jewish women constituted a majority. Between 26 February and 2 March 1945, thousands were transferred to Bergen-Belsen and to Mauthausen,6 simply to have them die in another place. The conditions of the transfer to Burgau that left on 17 February (described later in this chapter) were so extreme that, on arrival in Burgau, none of the surviving prisoners could work. The 1000 prisoners sent on 2 April 1945 from Malchow to Hasag-Leipzig were no longer meant to work there in the war industry.7 The 45 Jewish women sent on 1 and 2 April to the two external labor camps of Flossenbürg – Graslitz and Neu Rohlau – must have arrived there just before their disbandment.8 Although French non-Jewish prisoners were also affected, especially by the “black transports”to Mauthausen, the majority of those evacuated – no longer for work – were Jewish arrivals, some of late 1944, but mainly from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. The Burgau transport was all-Jewish, and the Malchow–HasagLeipzig transport was three-quarters Jewish. The last event, the release (Entlassung), the rescue evacuations by the International and the Swedish Red Cross, and the final evacuation marches from Ravensbrück and several external labor camps,affected several national groups differently. They are described later in this chapter.

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138 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück THE DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE CONCERNING NEW ARRIVALS IN 1945

Until recently, the first available arrival list of 1945 was of 23 January. During the last few years, eight small lists have been found in the Warsaw Archive – transports from Berlin, Flossenbürg, and Sachsenhausen, with 15 Jewish arrivals. Of these, six women arrived on 5 January 1945 from the Sachsenhausen external labor camp Argus; as the names of three of them appear later in the book of births (Geburtenbuch), it is likely that they were transferred to Ravensbrück because they were found to be pregnant. In addition, the arrival lists of two larger transports were found: one from Trieste on 16 January, discussed below, and one from Käsmark in Slovakia on 18 January, with at least 27 names, of which 24 were Jewish – 6 of them children. The death lists include the names of 106 more women from Slovakia with January 1945 Ravensbrück numbers. I therefore surmise that there was still another family transport from Slovakia in January. In her recent book, Esther Kemeny reports about a direct transport from Czechoslovakia that had just arrived after her own arrival in Ravensbrück as part of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch in the last week of January.9 The first Jewish Ravensbrück number for January known to us is 96737, and the last before the first arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch is 98175. The evidence of Ravensbrück numbers and the testimony of survivors inform us of 207 new Jewish arrivals in January 1945, before the first arrivals of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. Among them were several women who arrived from Auschwitz by train two days before 18 January, the beginning of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. According to Isabell Sprenger, the historian of the concentration camp Gross-Rosen,10 on 12 January a transport of 150 Jewish women left Gross-Rosen for Ravensbrück. No list of these 150 women is available. Only four Ravensbrück survivors mentioned Gross-Rosen at all as one of their other camps, and only one of them, US survivor Zvia Aronson, war name Cesia Silberman, may fit this Gross-Rosen transport of 12 January. Regarding the new arrivals in February, a transfer list was found of 66 Polish Jewish women and girls who were sent on 6 February to Ravensbrück from Gundelsdorf,11 an external labor camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria. These women, most of them from Krakow or Tarnow, had been sent to Gundelsdorf from Auschwitz in September 1944. We know of 10 survivors of this

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 139 transport. From Italian sources we learn that during February, one additional transport that left Trieste as late as 24 February 1945 (convoglio 43T) included nine Jewish women, six of whom were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, apparently only shortly after.12 Three were older women and as many as six of this group of nine perished. DIRECT TRANSPORTS FROM SLOVAKIA, FRANCE, AND ITALY

The summing-up of the fourth period excluded the Slovakian, French, and Italian direct transports, as these continued into the fifth period. The direct transports from Slovakia in January 1945 On 18 January 1945, a direct transport from Käsmark in Slovakia arrived. The known names of 106 women from Slovakia on death lists with January 1945 Ravensbrück numbers, and the testimony of Esther Kemeny about a direct transport from Czechoslovakia that had arrived just after she arrived in Ravensbrück from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch in the last week of January, indicate that there was still another family transport from Slovakia in January. From known and reconstructed data about the Slovak direct transports between November 1944 and February 1945, we learn that 823 women and children arrived before the end of 1944 and 171 in 1945. The direct transports from France It is well known that the great majority of the over 75,000 Jews deported from France were sent to Auschwitz. According to a list compiled in Ravensbrück in September 2001, between January 1942 and February 1945, 240 transports that included women from France arrived in Ravensbrück. No attempt was made to discover the number of Jewish women in those transports. The estimated number of all women arriving from France in these transports varies between 5800 and 7441.13 The same list mentions 36 such transports before 7 April 1943. During this time, that is, in the first and second periods, only three French Jewish women are known to have arrived in Ravensbrück. According to another list of transports originating from France, reconstructed by the Committee of the French Ravensbrück survivors, there were 53 such transports between 7 April 1943 and 24 January 1945, which brought 7273 persons to Ravensbrück. As

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140 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück already mentioned, most of the arrival lists of these 53 transports are lost. According to this reconstruction, 5352 were French citizens, 132 were foreigners and 1789 were of unknown nationalities. To repeat, the compilers of these reconstructed lists, most of whom had been members of various Résistance movements, considered it incorrect to mark the fact that some of their comrades were Jews. With the help of Mme Anise Postel-Vinay, I identified 236 women who definitely were Jewish.As only a few were arrested under false identities, most of them must have been arrested by the Gestapo as Jews. As already mentioned at the beginning of chapter 7, in the fourth period, there was one important exception to the mixed transports from France of politically active women – the Jewish family transport of about 103,among them 15 children,7 teenagers,and 15 women over 55, arrested in Toulouse and all over southwest France – which arrived in Ravensbrück on about 7 August 1944.14 In this transport, the political prisoners were held in separate wagons from the Jewish families (the Jewish men were transported to Buchenwald). An incomplete list of this transport was found accidentally.15 Serge Klarsfeld thought that all Jews deported from France to Ravensbrück were “without doubt privileged”.16 Although Jewish children, women with small children, the old, and the sick, had a better chance of survival on arrival in Ravensbrück than in Auschwitz, this did not last, due to the harsh and constantly deteriorating conditions and the constant selections, first for Auschwitz, and then for its own gas chamber. Of the 103 of the Toulouse transport, we know that 16 died and 35 survived, while the fate of 52 is unknown. What were the characteristics of the Jewish women deported to Ravensbrück from France with non-Jewish political prisoners? Several women stand out: Odette Fabius, the author of Un lever de soleil sur le Mecklembourg, and the singer Marguerite Solal, neither arrested as Jews; Dr. Suzanne Weinstein, who worked as physician in a labor camp; and Annette Weill, later Annette Chalut, called “Warnod” in the Résistance, who testified at the Ravensbrück trial in Rastatt, and in 2002 became president of the French Ravensbrück Committee.17 Among them also was Polish Jewish Thais Baumstein,the only Jewish woman in Ravensbrück to undergo the horrible “experimental” bone transplant surgery on her legs.18 I surmise that most had been active in the Résistance. Yet, not all Jewish women who were active in the Résistance were sent to Ravensbrück; we know that some Jewish women active in the Résistance, and especially in the rescue of Jewish children, were sent

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 141 to Auschwitz. One of them, Yvette Bernard Farnoux, reached Ravensbrück with the Todesmarsch after 10 months in Auschwitz.19 What else do we know about these Jewish women who were sent to Ravensbrück together with French non-Jewish political prisoners, and what was their fate? Seven of them were classified as Mischlinge and seven belonged to the category of Nacht und Nebel prisoners, who had been arrested without any notification to their families and who were most endangered in Ravensbrück. We know that four were sent together with hundreds of other French prisoners on the so-called “black transport”to Mauthausen.20 We also know that at least some of them lived in the same block with the French non-Jewish prisoners. Finally, due to the later registrations of the circumstances of their liberation by their comrades, we also know that several Jewish prisoners were included in the evacuation of the French women by the International Red Cross to the Swiss border, and from Switzerland to France.21 A relatively large number – 66 (52.8%) – are known to have survived and most of them returned to France. Nineteen are known to have died before liberation, and the fate of 40 is unknown. It is difficult to compare the fate of the 100 Jewish survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch who reached Ravensbrück, and who were classified as “French” or as having come from France, to the fate of those who arrived in the direct political transports from France, since the fate of as many as 64 (64%) are unknown. We only know of 4 (4%) who died, and of 32 (32%) who survived. The direct transports from Italy According to the Libro della memoria, 6806 Italian Jews were deported – 6007 to Auschwitz.22 Of all those deported, 5969 died. Ravensbrück played only a minor role in the Holocaust of the Italian Jews. Apparently there was one Italian direct transport from Torino at the end of the third period, on 30 June 1944, but no Jewish arrival is known from this transport. There were three direct Italian transports that included Jewish arrivals in the fourth period, and three more in the fifth period – 108 Jews altogether. As with the French, the Italian direct transports to Ravensbrück were mixed non-Jewish and Jewish, bringing about 600 women in transports originating in Torino, Verona, Bolzano, and Trieste.23 As in France, the non-Jewish women deported from Italy to Ravensbrück had all been arrested for political activities. In contrast to

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142 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück France, the Jewish deportees also included persons not involved in any political activity. All the transports that included Jewish prisoners also included Jewish children and older women.24 Jewish researchers in Italy invested a great deal of effort in trying to discover the fate of all the Jews deported from Italy and were fully successful, so that the number of Italian victims is likely to be more realistic than those recorded for most of the other “national” groups. The number of Italian victims is shockingly high: of the 61 who arrived in the fourth period, 42 are known to have died and only 19 to have survived and of the 47 direct arrivals of 1945, 36 are known to have died and only 11 to have survived. Interestingly, in the first direct transport, dated 2 August 1944 from Verona, the majority survived: 15 of 18. As this group arrived when conditions of housing and sanitation were still not as catastrophic as those that existed from November to the end of the camp, this may have protected them from the epidemic that raged in its last five months. They survived until the evacuation march from Ravensbrück and nine of them were apparently in one group liberated near the village of Lübz. None of the Italian Jews is known to have been sent to a labor camp. Seven were sent to Bergen-Belsen and five of them died there. We know little about the social relations within the Italian group, and between it and other Jewish and non-Jewish groups. The one recurring complaint was the difficulties that Italian Jews suffered because of the inability of most of them to communicate with the majority of Jews from other “national” groups, and their inability to understand the orders of the SS. It is interesting to compare the fate of the 41 Italian Jewish women who arrived in Ravensbrück in 1945 as survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch with the fate of the Italian direct arrivals. Only 3 are known to have died and 34 to have survived.25 The most likely explanation is that these Italian Jewish survivors of Auschwitz in January and February 1945 were among a small minority of the youngest and the strongest that had survived the selections for Auschwitz, its horrors and its evacuation march, and thus stood a better chance of surviving the horrors of three months more in Ravensbrück, Malchow, or Neustadt-Glewe. THE ARRIVALS FROM THE AUSCHWITZ TODESMARSCH AND THEIR FATE

A major change in the significance of Ravensbrück for Jewish women prisoners of the Holocaust occurred on 18 January 1945, when the

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 143 mass of still-surviving Auschwitz prisoners was evacuated by the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. The SS tried to remove all evidence of the existence of the Auschwitz extermination camp before the arrival of the Soviet forces.26 This evacuation march must have been the most deadly of all evacuation marches from Nazi concentration and labor camps. It has been described in at least eight of the published memoirs of Ravensbrück survivors, those of Anna Fränkel (Niza Ganor), Hala Grinstein-Balin (Halina Birenbaum), Nadine Heftler, Esther Kemeny, Erika Kounio (Amariglio), Halina Nelken, Isabella Rubinstein (Bat-Sheva Dagan), and Eva Tichauer.

Halina Birenbaum born Hala Grinstein-Balin, b. Warsaw, 1929. Autobiography: Hope is the Last to Die: A Coming of Age Under Nazi Terror. New York, M. E. Sharpe, (1971) 1996.

Bat-Sheva Dagan b. Isabella Rubinstein, ·ódz´, 1925. Memoir in poetry: Gesegnet sei die Phantasie – verflucht sei sie! (Translation from the Hebrew, 1997) Berlin, Metropol, 2005.

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144 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück The march took place in the middle of winter under conditions of frost and snow; tens of thousands of weak prisoners, first the men and then the women, left the camp on foot within one day, 18 January.27 The SS drove the marching prisoners onwards mercilessly. Survivors describe the macabre scenes: the road was recognizable in the snow because on both sides lay piled-up corpses of male prisoners who had been marched out before the women.28 When one of the women recognized her husband, stopped, and bent down, she was immediately shot by a guard. The same happened to anybody stopping, sitting down, or falling over from exhaustion. The march went on for several days and nights,29 until the survivors were finally loaded on goods trains, several of them with open wagons,30 or even on platforms,31 and driven westwards to German concentration camps. Apparently the majority of surviving women landed in Ravensbrück, half-dead of hunger, thirst, and frostbite. After several days and nights of marching in the snow, a considerable number, we do not know how many, were first transported to other camps such as Gross-Rosen, which rejected them,32 and some as far as Mauthausen,33 to be sent on to Ravensbrück. Arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch continued from about 17 January through February 1945.34 In our attempt to reconstruct the history of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück who originated from this final evacuation of Auschwitz, we can rely on only one arrival list that was preserved. In the Museum Auschwitz, the list of a large transport (356 Jewish women out of 721) coming from Auschwitz on 23 January (called “Überstellung 42”) was found, with Ravensbrück numbers from 101577 to 102299. Between 20 January 1945 and sometime in the second half of April 1945,new numbers between about 9848535 and 10995436 were assigned, that is, 11,469 numbers. With the exception of 1700 non-Jewish Polish women and children “evacuated” by the SS from Warsaw, who arrived in Ravensbrück on 28 January 1945,37 all larger transports that arrived before 1 February originated from Auschwitz. Although only the above-mentioned arrival list of 23 January has been preserved, the Ravensbrück Kalendarium lists the arrival of 7894 women from Auschwitz between 23 January and 1 February – solely on the basis of Danuta Czech’s Auschwitz Kalendarium. Assuming that 60% of these arriving women were Jewish,38 over 4700 Jewish women from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch should have arrived during these 10 days alone. Yet I could identify only about 2838 names of Jewish survivors of the

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 145 Auschwitz Todesmarsch (including also those marched from the neighboring camp Gleiwitz who ever arrived in Ravensbrück; there are another 439 who very likely arrived with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, but our information about their dates of arrival is incomplete). I surmise that a considerable number died soon after arrival without being “selected”. Weakened by the ordeal of the evacuation from Auschwitz, some of them arrived sick with typhus.39 In Ravensbrück itself, as well as in Malchow and Neustadt-Glewe, dysentery and typhus epidemics raged from January to April. The names of 26 Jewish women with Ravensbrück numbers of the arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch who had been “selected” are registered on one of the four death lists. Yet, as three of these death lists are very partial, certainly many more were “selected” in Ravensbrück as well as in Malchow and in Neustadt-Glewe, or died without any registration. An unknown number of patients were “selected” in the Neustadt-Glewe Revier to be gassed in Ravensbrück.40 According to the testimony of Lea Kisch, these selections continued until two weeks before liberation, when her sister Blimi (Ljubim) was among several patients of the Revier who were transported on a truck to Ravensbrück and never seen again.41 Soon after their arrival in Ravensbrück, the survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch were transferred to Malchow42 or NeustadtGlewe. The evacuation transports of these arrivals to Malchow began on 22 February. Halina Nelken tells of the journey to Malchow in a passenger train, and Esther Kemeny describes the extreme conditions of her journey to Neustadt-Glewe: “Two days later, we were put on an open coal train. When we arrived at Neustadt-Glewe, a sub-camp of Ravensbrück, more than half the people on the train had frozen to death.”43 Another large group of arrivals reached Neustadt-Glewe later. Lea Horn, war name Schwalb, testifies that she left Auschwitz by train on 10 January, and arrived on 17 January with about 1000 others and was put in the infamous tent. According to her amazing story, these Jewish arrivals from the very beginning of the evacuation of Auschwitz were among the 2000 Ravensbrück prisoners sent to the Swiss border in exchange for medicine and clothes supplied by the Swiss Red Cross. Only 1000 were allowed to cross the Swiss border.44 The remaining 1000 were sent by train to Neustadt-Glewe.45 Other arrivals from Auschwitz may have been transferred on 27 February 1945 to BergenBelsen, and died there without leaving any traces in other documents concerning Ravensbrück prisoners, and even in the memories of

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146 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück

Halina Nelken, b. Krakow, 20 September, 1923 . Diary and autobiography: And Yet, I Am Here! (1987) Amherst MA, University of Massachusetts Press, 1999.

Esther Kemeny, b. Michalowce, Slovakia, 1912. Autobiography: On the Shores of Darkness: The Memoir of Esther Kemeny, Burlingame CA, The Haller Co., 2003.

survivors. Some may have survived, but perhaps did not, when registering as Holocaust survivors, mention their short stay in Ravensbrück especially if they considered their time there as insignificant. In spite of all these limitations, we located the names of 2839 Jewish women and girls who arrived in Ravensbrück as survivors of the final evacuations of Auschwitz. This number includes those who marched from Gleiwitz and 439 who may also have arrived with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. This count rests on the already-mentioned only extant arrival list, of 23 January 1945, on the Malchow–HasagLeipzig transfer list of 2 April (which contains 747 Jewish names with

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 147 Ravensbrück numbers that point to their having arrived with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch), the four death lists, the Geburtenbuch,46 the registrations of survivors, and a list of hundreds of women transferred from Ravensbrück to its external labor camp Neustadt-Glewe (that has been compiled by the dedicated local researcher Karl Heinz Schütt).47 Among other documents, Schütt has found a list of patients kept by a Polish prisoner-nurse in the Revier of Neustadt-Glewe that also noted if a patient had come from Auschwitz.48 As 450 women were evacuated from Malchow by the Swedish Red Cross on 25–26 April 1945, the names of many Jewish prisoners of Malchow are on Swedish documents,49 especially on the List of liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945, on lists prepared by the Polish Representative in Sweden,50 among the Jewish interviewees of the Polish Institute of Sources at Lund, Sweden, and in the voluminous archival materials of the Jewish Congregation of Stockholm.51 All the documents of Malchow and of Neustadt-Glewe were kept in Ravensbrück and destroyed there. For Malchow, a large camp, one already-mentioned document has been preserved. A transfer list of 1000 women, of which 750 were Jewish, 746 of them with Ravensbrück prisoner numbers matching the period of arrival from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch shows they were transferred on 2 April 1945 to the labor camp Hasag-Leipzig. The names of 251 additional survivors who mentioned Malchow were also found. The most important sources of information on arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch are the testimonies of hundreds of survivors of the Holocaust who registered in the USA or in Israel. As already mentioned,with the help of these registrations and of many interviews,it was possible to reconstruct the data of 2802 names of Jewish survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch (including also the late transport by train just before the beginning of the march) who ever arrived in Ravensbrück. Whereas Jewish and other prisoners of Ravensbrück had already been transferred to Malchow in 1944, and the Jewish prisoners from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch followed in February 1945, NeustadtGlewe started to function as a labor camp for Jewish concentration camp prisoners somewhat later. The first women prisoners arriving from Ravensbrück in the autumn and winter of 1944 were all Polish and not Jewish. Then, starting from the end of January 1945, Jewish women began to arrive, the great majority of them from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. The external camp of Neustadt-Glewe is described in some detail below, and 969 names of Jewish prisoners known to have

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148 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück been in Neustadt-Glewe have been found, 732 of them verified as coming from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. Countries of origin of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch arrivals Table 8.1 presents data about the countries of origin of these Jewish women, girls, and the few children who had survived in Auschwitz until the end of the camp and had also survived the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. Table 8.1 Country of origin

Number

Poland Hungary Slovakia* German Reich Romania France Netherlands Belgium Yugoslavia** Greece Italy Austria Soviet Union*** Lithuania Turkey Norway Bulgaria Luxembourg USA Unknown Total

1205 596 368 137 90 90 55 50 48 46 35 20 14 4 3 1 1 1 1 75 2841

% 42 21 12.96 4.8 3.17 3.17 1.9 1.76 1.69 1.62 1.23 0.7 0.49 0.14 0.1 ■ ■ ■ ■

2.64 100

* Slovakia includes Czechia and Czechoslovakia. ** Yugoslavia includes Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. *** Soviet Union includes Ukraine. ■ = below 0.1%.

Thus, in addition to four larger groups, those from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia (including Czechoslovakia and Czechia), and the

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 149 German Reich, there were also seven medium-sized ones and eight small ones. The ages of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch arrivals Those aged 19–35 made up the majority – 56.6% and there were also sizable groups of children, teenagers, and women aged 36–45, but very few women over 45. However, the relevance of these figures is limited due to the fact that for 623, that is, 21.9%, we have no information about date of birth. The data are presented in Table 8.2. Table 8.2 Age

Number

%

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

44 318 1021 588 180 59 4 4 623 2841

1.5 11.2 35.9 20.7 6.3 2 0.1 0.1 21.9 100

The fate of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch arrivals As so much of our information about the arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch in Ravensbrück is based on the registrations and testimonies of survivors, obviously our statistical analysis is wanting. Our list (see Table 8.3) shows a higher percentage of survivors than there were in reality as the documentation of deaths is incomplete. Only a small number of those who died in Ravensbrück or its external camps were “selected” and registered on one of the existing Ravensbrück death lists. The only exception is the more realistic registration of deaths on the Revier list of Neustadt-Glewe that is discussed below. Survivors tend to remember only some other survivors and the dead who were nearest to them. Taking into account all these limitations, here are the statistics of survival and death: 1411 (49.66%) are known to have survived; 294 (10.34%) are known to have died; the fate of as many as 1136 (39.98%) is unknown.

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150 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Table 8.3 Fate

Number

%

Died Survived Unknown Total

294 1411 1136 2841

10.35 49.67 39.98 100

Where did the survivors settle? The largest group – 575 (40.75%) – migrated to the United States, 326 (23.1%) settled in Israel. Nearly all the Italian survivors appear to have returned to Italy (26, 1.84%) and the same holds for the French survivors: 15 (1.06%) returned to France.52 Other countries of settlement were Czechoslovakia (25, 1.77%), Sweden (16, 1.13%), Hungary (12, 0.85%), Germany (9, 0.63%), Belgium (7, 0.49%), Poland (7, 0.49%),Australia (6, 0.42%), Canada (4, 0.28%), Greece (3, 0.21%), Great Britain (2, 0.14%), Romania (2, 0.14%), and Switzerland (2, 0.14%). One survivor settled in each of the following countries: Brazil, Chile, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union. The countries of settlement of 369 (26.15%) of the survivors are unknown. NEUSTADT-GLEWE

The most important external camp of Ravensbrück – Malchow – is described by Irith Dublon-Knebel in her contribution to the forthcoming book edited by her, A Neglected Chapter in the History of the Holocaust: The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück. During the last three months of the War, a second external camp, Neustadt-Glewe – situated about 100 km northwest of Ravensbrück and 50 km from Malchow – also played a major role in the fate of at least 969 Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners and deserves a special description here. As already mentioned, all the SS documents of arrival, departure, work assignments, “selection”, and deaths concerning the NeustadtGlewe camp were destroyed. But for the dedicated work of the local researcher, Karl Heinz Schütt, the camp itself might have been completely forgotten. He collected much information about its history, found long-lost documents,53 and published four small books. He located and contacted many camp survivors, including over 40 Jewish survivors (as well as a few local citizens who had witnessed the camp),

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 151 and published their short memoirs of the Neustadt-Glewe camp. Over several years he collected the names of Neustadt-Glewe prisoners, starting in 1998 with 369 names,54 and arriving at 1530 by 2003.55 I have added to Schütt’s list 108 names of Jewish survivors settled in the USA and Israel, and those they remembered, as well as 27 names from archival material, thus reaching a list of 969 names of NeustadtGlewe Jewish (or presumed to be Jewish) prisoners. Neustadt-Glewe was established in September 1944 on the local military airport, with 300 female prisoners from Ravensbrück. Ten wooden huts were surrounded by an electrically charged wire fence. The entire administration of the camp, the female SS guards and the other guards,56 were under the command of Ravensbrück. Some of the prisoners worked in 12-hour shifts on the production of planes in the Dornier works. Other groups of women dug trenches at the edge of town, and transported and camouflaged fighter planes. The women also worked at cutting trees and gathering wood. Up to the end of 1944, there were 900 female prisoners in NeustadtGlewe, apparently mainly Polish women who had arrived after the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. From the end of January through March 1945, transports of mainly Polish women – Jewish and others – from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, which had reached Ravensbrück, landed in Neustadt-Glewe. There were about 5000 of them. Among this crowd, the non-Jewish Polish prisoners hid 12 Polish political prisoners, who had undergone experimental infection and bone transplant operations on their legs, (Kaninchen) to save them from execution in Ravensbrück. In Neustadt-Glewe, nearly all the prisoners suffered from extreme lack of space, hunger, and disease. When the mass of women from Ravensbrück arrived, there was no more room in the barracks, so 1000 were crowded into a former cinema that later had to be emptied when a typhus epidemic broke out there. All the survivors describe catastrophic housing conditions: they could not even stretch out on the floor, there were no functioning toilets, the floor around the buckets was covered with excrement, and the few bunk beds were so dilapidated that they often collapsed, wounding their users. The walls crawled with lice. When the first large transport from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch arrived, the new prisoners did not receive any food for up to 10 days.57 After this, those who were employed received one meal of soup and a slice of bread a day. Soon there was no more work for the great

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152 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück majority of the prisoners. Among those who were still selected for work in the factory, many were soon too exhausted to continue.58 Only those who did external work in the Aussenkommando in the fields describe the friendly attitude and surreptitious gifts of food by older German men. The great majority of the prisoners did not work and spent days and nights in a state of stupor and near starvation. They received only a watery soup, unsalted water with mainly uncooked potato peels in it, and a slice of moldy bread. The weakest with no friend to fight for them often went without even this meager daily portion.59 This starvation diet, together with the crowded and unhygienic housing, resulted in the spread of hunger-dysentery, typhus, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, and furunculosis. Several prisoners were shot while attempting to steal a turnip; others collapsed during roll-calls. In the Neustadt-Glewe camp there was a Revier, where a few prisoner physicians worked: two Polish, one Polish Jewish,60 and one Soviet Jewish.61 Four prisoner nurses also worked there. The four women physicians had previously worked in Auschwitz. Many patients died in the Revier, and each day a heap of corpses lay outside.62 To repeat, an unknown number of patients were “selected” to be gassed in Ravensbrück.63 These selections continued until two weeks before liberation. In spite of poor conditions and lack of medicine, some recovered in the Revier and survived.64 When the camp was liberated, 300 seriously sick patients in the Revier were transferred to a temporary military hospital in a school building in Neustadt-Glewe. Most of the women arriving at the hospital weighed no more than 30 kg; 35 died at the hospital, but a considerable number recovered after months of patient and humane care.65 It is not known how many women, girls, and children died in the few months of the existence of this camp. Figures mentioned vary between 500 and 1000. Only many years later was a search for the burial places of these hundreds of victims of Neustadt-Glewe conducted, and rows of graves in the municipal graveyard, and additional graves and a mass grave in the forest, were discovered.66 Among the 969 known names of Jewish prisoners, 119 are known to have died in the camp, in Ravensbrück, or immediately after liberation, 475 are known to have survived, and the fate of 375 remains unknown. Several survivors and bystanders have described the work of a “burial commando” of ten young Jewish women, who each day

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 153 collected the naked bodies that had been thrown next to the wall of the Revier. They drew and pushed a hand-cart with a box, all the way to the municipal graveyard, or later, to the forest.67 A bystander describes seeing the girls with their cart, with the box so full that arms and legs of the dead were visible.68 Rena Kornreich-Gelissen describes burying over 80 bodies in the first week of their work. Apart from the burial commando, we know about a case where several young girls volunteered to carry a girl, “Odessa”, who had been shot by the SS for stealing a turnip, on a wooden board to the cemetery at the edge of town, and to dig a grave for her there. This good deed was organized by Rozalie Grünapfel, whose father had been a member of the ChevraKadisha (Jewish volunteer burial society), and who still feels guilty about her inability to give “Odessa” a proper Jewish burial.69 There had been an evacuation march from Malchow in the direction of Neustadt-Glewe. The women did not reach Neustadt-Glewe, as the march survivors were liberated by the Soviet forces between Lübz and Marnitz. Ravensbrück SS personnel who had escaped Ravensbrück, which was already in Soviet hands, reached Neustadt-Glewe on 2 May 1945 and brought with them quantities of food. A crowd of women stormed the storage room. The commander, who was completely drunk, addressed the prisoners, ordering them to keep order and quiet. As the guards left, they shot into the crowd of women near the storage room, killing one and wounding several others.70 The women of Neustadt-Glewe were not sent on any evacuation march, but were left locked in the barracks when the SS fled. They freed themselves with the help of French prisoners of war, who cut the electrified fence from the outside while the Neustadt-Glewe prisoners cut the fence from the inside. They pried open the doors and windows of the barracks. Left on their own, a crowd of women stormed the food storage room. There were scenes of violence, and unrestrained eating that caused sickness and even death. During the few months of the camp’s existence, the Jewish prisoners had been in such bad physical shape that they succeeded in maintaining only few social relations in small groups, mainly of sisters,71 mothers, and daughters or friends.72 From many memoirs it becomes obvious that the existence of such bonds of friendship, loyalty, and mutual help contributed much to the survival of the starved and sick women. The significance of these small groups or “camp families” for the Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück will be discussed later.

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154 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück At the moment of liberation, larger groups of women and girls organized themselves, usually on the basis of common place of origin and language, as well as of common plans and destinations.73 The Soviet forces came late in the afternoon of 2 May. The Americans, who had been there for just a few hours on the same day, retreated to the River Elde, a tributary of the Elbe. The liberated prisoners described the American soldiers as shocked by what they saw and dispensing chocolates. The Russian soldiers were interested in immediately clearing the camp of the dead and of those still living there. Groups of liberated prisoners had established themselves in the quarters of the SS guards and the airport personnel. Esther Kemeny remembers: “Some of the prisoners did not leave the barracks because they were too ill from hunger to move. Their legs were swollen from starvation-induced edema.”74 The Russians offered the liberated prisoners three days to loot any shops and houses in the small town, whose population had either fled or surrendered.A group of women capable of walking to town lived for days, in some cases even weeks, in houses left by their inhabitants. This stay was of great importance for them, as it gave them a chance to eat clean, properly cooked food that they were able to digest, to wash, to get rid of lice, and to obtain normal clothing. The Russians supplied them generously with bread, rice, and potatoes. The one serious complaint the survivors have against their Russian liberators was their tendency to get drunk and harass the women, even the youngest and most fragile.75 Those originating from Western Europe went to Ludwigslust, and those from Eastern or Southeastern Europe went eastwards – on foot, on horse-driven wagons, and by train. In Prenzlau,76 the Russians organized the return of some of the survivors.A group of the sick were flown from Ludwigslust to their homeland. A bus with physicians arrived from Czechoslovakia and the sick were transported by ambulance or bus to Prague. Some of them stayed in hospital in Teplice Sanor until the end of September.77 Neustadt-Glewe statistics Countries of origin Of the 969 Jewish women, 732 came with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch or from the evacuation of Gleiwitz, and 237 came from elsewhere.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 155 Table 8.4 shows the distribution of Neustadt-Glewe prisoners according to countries of origin, also indicating whether they arrived with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch or not. Table 8.4 Country of origin

Total

(%)

AT

(%)

non-AT

(%)

Poland Hungary Slovakia and Czechoslovakia German Reich Romania France Netherlands Yugoslavia Greece Belgium Soviet Union Austria Turkey Norway Ukraine Unknown Total

300 158 151

31.0 16.3 15.6

252 143 124

34.5 19.5 17.1

48 15 27

20.3 6.3 11.4

68 37 33 26 24 24 8 4 4 2 1 1 128 969

7 3.8 3.4 2.7 2.5 2.5 0.8 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.1 0.1 13.2 100

56 27 19 25 20 12 7 4 4 2 1 1 35 732

7.6 3.7 2.6 3.4 2.7 1.6 1 0.5 0.5 0.3 0.1 0.1 4.8 100

12 10 14 1 4 12 1 93 237

5.1 4.2 5.9 0.4 1.7 5.1 0.4 39.2 100

Age

Total

(%)

AT

(%)

non-AT

(%)

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

11 101 313 159 82 21 282 969

1.1 10.4 32.3 16.4 8.5 2.2 29.1 100

10 87 266 137 67 15 150 732

1.4 11.9 36.3 18.7 9.2 2.0 20.5 100

1 14 47 22 15 6 132 237

0.4 5.9 19.8 9.3 6.3 2.5 55.7 100

Age groups See Table 8.5. Table 8.5

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156 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Fate From the Todesmarsch group, 385 (52.6%) are known to have survived and 81 (11.1%) to have died, while the fate of 266 (36.3%) is unknown. Of the non-Todesmarsch group, 90 (38%) are known survivors, 38 (16%) are known to have died, and the fate of 109 (46%) is unknown. Altogether 475 (49.0%) are known survivors, 119 (12.3%) are known to have died, and the fate of 375 (38.7%) is unknown. Where did the Jewish survivors settle? See Table 8.6. Table 8.6 Country of settlement

AT

non-AT

Total

% of total

Israel US France Czechoslovakia Germany Poland Greece Canada Romania Australia Great Britain Hungary Belgium Sweden Switzerland Soviet Union Brazil Chile Netherlands Unknown Total

135 132 13 9 9 7 2 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 60 385

25 19 10 3 1 5 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 18 90

160 151 23 12 9 8 7 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 78 475

33.8 31.9 4.9 2.5 1.9 1.7 1.5 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 16.4 100

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 157 KRUPP-NEUKÖLLN: AN EXCEPTIONAL LABOR CAMP

At first glance, this small labor camp next to the Krupp factory in the Berlin district of Neukölln had no connection to the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück. Most of the 500 Jewish girls and women who had worked there between September 1944 and midApril 1945 spent only 8–14 days in Ravensbrück.78 Yet the fact that nearly all the survivors were evacuated to Sweden as part of the Bernadotte-Aktion from the main camp of Ravensbrück caused this group of Holocaust survivors to consider themselves survivors of Ravensbrück. Officially the Krupp-Neukölln camp was an external camp of Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. I first noticed the very existence of such a group when Israeli Ravensbrück survivors visiting Ravensbrück in the spring of 1995 mentioned “Krupp”, or “Neukölln”, or Berlin as one of their camps. We soon discovered that no arrival or transfer list for this group of nearly 500 girls and women had been preserved anywhere.79 Yet with the help of a group of Israeli survivors, and by contacting another group of survivors who had mentioned both Ravensbrück and Krupp-Neukölln in the US Registry of Holocaust Survivors,80 we were able to contact other survivors who had registered neither in Israel nor in the USA, survivors living in Sweden, Australia, and Canada, and ask them to register additional names of those they remembered, and thus to draw up a list of 201 names. All the survivors contacted agreed about the names of the dead, and claimed that all of those whose names they did not remember had survived. Recently, the names of 70 additional survivors of the Krupp-Neukölln camp were identified on the data list of Jewish women prisoners compiled in Ravensbrück (DBJR), all of them from archival material of the Jewish congregation of Stockholm. Thus, it was possible to reconstruct much of the history of this group, from their life in Ghetto ·ódz´, their short stay in Auschwitz, and the seven and a half months in Berlin, to their short stay in Ravensbrück, evacuation to Sweden, and subsequent fates. On the two JS lists we have identified 208 of these 271 names.81 After researching the terrible conditions of most external camps (AKDOs) with either a high death rate or a complete absence of information about the fate of the prisoners, it is worthwhile to examine the specific circumstances that permitted the remarkable survival of nearly all of these 500 Jewish women and girls. This group has perhaps

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158 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück the highest rate of known survival of any Jewish group that had been in Auschwitz and were sent to a labor camp officially under the authority of the SS, for as long as seven and a half months. In August 1944, the characteristics of this nearly all-Polish Jewish group were very similar to those of the other groups of Jewish women who were then transported from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück to work in the German war industry. It included only one girl under the age of 13 and only one adult over 55. And by no means had these girls and young women been protected from the sufferings the Polish Jewish population had experienced since the beginning of the Nazi occupation. All came from Ghetto ·ódz´. Most had been born in ·ódz´ or in nearby smaller towns, such as Zdunska-Wola. A small minority came from Czechoslovakia82 or the German Reich,83 and had been previously deported to Ghetto ·ódz´. All the others had spent several years in the closed ghetto of ·ódz´ and had worked in its factories, some starting at as young as nine years old,84 as factory work ensured them one meal a day.85 The school education of most had been interrupted, only a small number had succeeded in attending the expensive secondary school (Gymnasium) in the ghetto, and even fewer had succeeded in matriculating. All had experienced years of malnutrition, constant terror, and the selections carried out by the Nazi authorities. The parents or siblings of several of them had died of illness in the ghetto.86 They were all members of a large transport sent from Ghetto ·ódz´ to Auschwitz on 17 August 1944.87 Although their stay in Auschwitz lasted no more than a week, it was traumatic for all. Most were then separated from their parents and younger siblings, who were classified as obviously not suitable for work and were immediately selected to be killed. The reality of Auschwitz, with its smoking crematoria, came as a shocking surprise to them, as apparently most of the Jews of ·ódz´ – situated in the area of Poland annexed by Germany – did not yet know about the mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.88 As to their fate, apparently the SS authorities had designated them, too, to be killed by gas. According to all the testimonies of the survivors, they had passed the terrifying ritual of arrival in Auschwitz: their clothes and all possessions had been taken away, they had been shaved, and were sitting without shoes, nearly naked, in a large group on the ground near the entrance to a gas chamber and the crematoria. They could see people entering the gas chamber. The fact that they

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 159 had not been tattooed with Auschwitz numbers points to the intention not to send them to work within Auschwitz-Birkenau. At this point, several interviewees report, they noticed the arrival of a person on a bicycle, who gave a message to the SS guard. As a consequence, 500 of those sitting there, who were all from the same Ghetto ·ódz´ transport, were selected to be sent by freight train to an unknown destination. Before leaving, they were given minimal clothing. To their surprise, they reached Berlin on the same day, 24 August 1944.89 Several survivors told us that an error had been made in their being sent to Krupp, as the order had been for 500 French women. As to the origin of this story, Israeli survivor Halina Lis90 told us that the SS Hauptaufseherin had told it to the Jewish Lagerälteste.91 According to some survivors, there had been Ukrainian prisoners at Krupp previously who were not efficient workers. Both workers and Meisters had been informed that the Jewish women were criminals, and were surprised to discover their relatively high levels of school education and manual dexterity. They ranged in age from only 12 to about 50 years old.92 Most were in their late teens or early twenties. Most of the relatively older (above 40) women had succeeded in being selected with their young daughters, nieces, or other relatives. A striking characteristic of the 500 was the large number of groups of sisters (from 2–6), cousins, and sisters-in-law. Thus, many, if not most, had a near relative in the group. This may point to the prevalence of traditional large Jewish families living near each other. There were also German workers in the factory, and all were supervised by German, usually older, foremen and Meisters. In some ways, the camp was similar to other labor camps of the German war industry, in that they worked 10-hour shifts, and in the Stanzerei (pressing) and the Platina (galvanization) departments, they also alternated between day and night shifts. They were guarded by a few female SS guards, at least one of whom they considered vicious. Yet the conditions of life at Krupp were considerably better than in most other labor camps known to us. They lived in three barracks,93 separated into rooms, each holding 4–14 women, with two-tier bunks. Each barrack had functioning showers and toilets. Rosa Katz tells in her recorded interview that, on arrival at Krupp, she showered for a long time in hot water in order to get rid of the horrible Auschwitz smell.94 They received one cooked meal a day in the factory, apparently the same meal the German workers received. They also

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160 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück received work overalls, socks, and wooden shoes. Nevertheless, neither the nutrition nor clothing was sufficient for the heavy physical work, especially in the winter months. The three barracks were surrounded by barbed-wire fences and at night the blocks were locked. There was no report about electrification or armed guards. Therefore, conceivably the women and girls may have had the opportunity to escape. The fact that apparently nobody tried can be explained by the extreme conditions of the nearconstant bombing of Berlin by the Allies, plus the comparatively humane attitudes of both co-workers and local SS personnel. The bombardments, which became progressively heavier, were endured by the prisoners, the civilian workers, and the population of the neighborhood, yet the Jewish women were not usually permitted to use the factory air-raid shelters and had to dig trenches (Splittergräben) to hide in during bombardments, although apparently those working nightshifts were permitted to use the factory airraid shelters. One of the barracks burnt during a bombardment in January 1945, and the other barracks were damaged and all the windows blown out. Only after that were they all moved to the basement of a neighboring old movie theater. None of them was killed or wounded during the constant heavy bombardments of Berlin. Their German co-workers marveled at their unusual luck, called them Glückskinder, and regarded them rather as mascots.95 From the stories of the survivors, the following picture of relations with German co-workers emerged. The ordinary workers were forbidden during work-time to speak with the Jewish prisoners, and followed this rule. Nevertheless, among the workers there were those who used visits to the toilets to meet the Jewish women and, in quite a number of cases also brought them parts of their own sandwiches. There were five departments in this Krupp factory, which produced control mechanisms for bombs. Halina Lis mentions (1) the montage department, considered accurate work; (2) the Stanzerei, considered heavy work (one woman lost a finger there); (3) galvanization with the use of acid, (4) quality control, considered the easiest work. Other survivors also mentioned a fifth department: Platina. The foremen and the Meisters of the five departments spoke to the Jewish workers in the course of directing their work. It may well have been significant that most of these women from ·ódz´ (or from Prague) either spoke German or at least understood it and could communicate in Yiddish.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 161 The behavior of the SS women guards was mixed. While there are stories of one SS guard sharing her sandwiches with the prisoners, another is remembered as “the blond poison”. Sitting at the entrance to the work-hall, she did not permit any of the Jewish prisonerworkers to visit the toilet during working time. Some survivors remember a heated clash between the head Meister and this woman SS guard, when he told her that he was responsible for production, and that he would therefore consider any harassment of the workers as sabotage. While certainly not all the foremen or Meisters behaved in the same friendly manner towards the Jewish women, accounts describing at least two Meisters tell of astonishingly humane behavior. One survivor, who was then 16 and worked in the Platina department, tells that her Meister, Herr Engel, let her and the other even-younger girls sleep under his work table during night shifts.96 The Meister in the montage department, Walter Hahn, who became very friendly with the group of 20 girls he had trained, brought them his newspaper every day and opened it on the page of news from the War. He shared with them his great joy of his wife giving birth to a child after many years of childless marriage, and before Christmas brought them a gift – a book of poems by Heinrich Heine, which they greatly appreciated. This unusually friendly behavior of some civilian workers, foremen and Meisters may be explained by the fact that Neukölln was a quarter of Berlin where – before Hitler – Communist influence had been strong. Several survivors mention rumors of some of the workers having been Communists, and of one of the Meisters even mentioning this fact to one of the girls. The most surprising aspect of this small labor camp was the behavior of the two Germans in direct charge of the 500 Jewish women prisoners. On their arrival from Auschwitz, the Jewish women were met by a man and woman who were both members of the SS. The man was Oberscharführer Bruno Kreitich, and the woman Hauptaufseherin Margarete (Maria) Trampnan.97 Most of the interviewees did not know the names and ranks of this man and woman, but to our surprise all agreed that they had called the woman “Mutti”, and that many of them had called the man “Vati”. This most unusual relationship must have been initiated and encouraged by these two SS officials. The reports of the interviewees include a long list of humane acts by these two, who in fact played a kind of parental role towards their mostly youthful charges.

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162 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück As this small labor camp officially belonged to the large concentration camp Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg, the sick and wounded who were incapable of working were expected to be transferred to that camp, from where it was assumed they would not return. In contravention of this rule, the SS Hauptaufseherin treated and bandaged skin diseases and treated boils and even bad cuts in her room, while Bruno Kreitich took a girl with a bad toothache to be treated in Oranienburg and brought her back, and took the girl who lost a finger to a civilian hospital in Berlin.98 In the case of Hela Miendrzyziecka (the mother of Ala Miendrzyziecka, now Cohen), whose legs were badly swollen due to a heart condition, the Oberscharführer brought a civilian doctor from Berlin to treat her condition; only after the treatment proved ineffective and her condition deteriorated was she transferred to Sachsenhausen and never heard of again. There was one other case in which a pregnant woman and the girl whose fingers had been cut by a machine were transferred to Sachsenhausen and from there to Ravensbrück.99 The pregnant woman was later seen by one of our interviewees alive in Ravensbrück, although there was no baby. We do not know what happened to them later. According to the testimony of three survivors,100 at a late stage, a list of 250 prisoners was made of those who were apparently to be transferred to Sachsenhausen and perhaps to be “selected”. As the name of the aunt of one of them was put on this list,101 she asked “Vati” not to separate her and her aunt and he agreed to take the aunt off the list. Within a few days, the whole plan of the list vanished. The women formally received small productivity bonuses, and “Vati” used this money to buy toilet utensils, underwear, socks, hygienic bandages, and even paper to decorate their cupboards.102 As to social and cultural activities, according to Halina Lis, in the evenings they were locked in the huts and sang Polish songs. Among their number was a singer who recited poems, and there were many who could relate the contents of books that they had read. During the bombings they would go to a storeroom and sing in Yiddish. In Ghetto ·ódz´, Zionist activities continued and Jewish holidays were observed, but in Berlin they only remembered the dates of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. They prepared a play for New Year’s Eve. When in the second week of April 1945 the women were transported to Ravensbrück via Oranienburg, one SS man in Oranienburg ordered all their heads shaved (their hair had been

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 163 growing for over seven months) but “Vati”refused, declaring “my girls are clean”.103 Bruno Kreitich and Margarete Trampnan traveled with the Jewish women to Ravensbrück. Kreitich told his charges not to be afraid of the crematoria in Ravensbrück, as the gas chamber had already been blown up. Apparently he also told them that he expected to be sent to the Eastern Front. Evelina Widell assumed that he did not survive the War,104 yet according to the testimony of Edith (Edita) Kornfeld, Kreitich was arrested by the Allies after the War but released due to the many positive testimonies. She mentions that Kreitich had studied law but not completed his studies. The fact that she herself was a lawyer may have given her some authority in his eyes. As to “Mutti”, according to rumors she had developed a close friendship with the Jewish Lagerälteste (or office manager, according to her own testimony) and escaped with her in the last days of Ravensbrück to Czechoslovakia. “Mutti” was rumored to have been a Sudetendeutsche. In the camp, at least two Jewish women held administrative posts, a Blockälteste, who was described as decent,105 and the above-mentioned Edita Kornfeld, who was described by all interviewees as Lagerälteste, the highest position for a camp prisoner, whose behavior was judged as positive by most but not all interviewees. The critical descriptions mention her as “rough”, and as using bad language and assigning some prisoners to work in the most unpleasant departments, as well as ordering back to work the girl who had lost a finger in a serious work accident.106 Others describe her as acting from a sense of responsibility for the lives of the prisoners, such as when she forced them to seek shelter in the trenches during bombings. One story describes her as helping a girl to acquire warm clothing by cutting the “tails” from a man’s smoking jacket and sewing the pieces together. Edita had originally been arrested in Czechoslovakia, apparently not only for being Jewish but also for resistance activities, and was then sent to Ghetto ·ódz´. It may be that she had an easier relationship with those of the Polish Jewish prisoners with whom she had a common language or who had received secondary education. After the relatively benign experience of the over-seven months in the middle of bombed Berlin, the women were shocked by the atrocious conditions, first during their short stay in Oranienburg, and then in Ravensbrück. The testimonies about the length of their stay in Ravensbrück cannot be confirmed, and they vary between three days and two weeks. None of the survivors contacted remembered if they

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164 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück were registered there, but later, in Sweden, two survivors could still remember their Ravensbrück numbers: 109898 and 109954.107 In Ravensbrück, they first waited in the open and then were locked up by non-Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners, without food, water, or a space to lie down, under conditions of extreme overcrowding, filth, and abuse in the Strafblock (punishment block). Then suddenly, Red Cross parcels were distributed among them. The food in the parcels, especially the conserved meat, proved harmful to many of the bythen very hungry and weakened women, causing vomiting and acute diarrhea. In the second half of April, many Jewish women prisoners arrived in Ravensbrück from other external labor camps, such as RechlinRetzow. Polish accounts describe these women as too weak to stand up and to hold the Red Cross parcels, and refer to them as to Schattenfrauen (shadow women).108 When asked, the KruppNeukölln survivors declared that although they suffered in Ravensbrück, they on no account could be called Schattenfrauen, as their physical condition was not as bad. One survivor told us about seeing a relative of hers arriving with another transport whose members were in very bad shape. This relative remembers, to this day, that she had then given her a piece of the bread they had received in Berlin before leaving. Soon after, they were informed that they would be evacuated by the Red Cross buses. As to the evacuation itself, we have slightly divergent reports. Several survivors report that they saw Kreitich (“Vati”) and Trampnan (“Mutti”) talking to Edita Kornfeld and that a list of all the Krupp-Neukölln prisoners was then read out.109 Another survivor reports hearing a call for Polish Jewish prisoners to come forward,110 and fearing that this was a ruse for their extermination. Amazingly, all or nearly all of those who had arrived from Krupp-Neukölln were evacuated. Some interviewees offered the hypothesis that this evacuation as a complete group was due to the cooperation between the Jewish Lagerälteste, Edita, and Kreitich and Trampnan. Edita herself later testified that she decided not to travel to Sweden, but left together with other Czech women at the last moment. According to the divergent testimony of Evelina Widell, there had been a specific call for Polish prisoners, which included Jewish prisoners from Poland, but excluded those from Czechoslovakia. The evacuation took place on 26 April,111 and all the survivors mentioned the civility of the Swedish drivers, who helped them to

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 165 enter the buses and offered them cigarettes. Several mentioned that the bus they traveled in contained medical equipment, and one claims that a nurse who was Bernadotte’s sister traveled with them.112 They were part of a large transport that included not only the women from Krupp, but also others, Jewish and non-Jewish. A recurring story is that of several women who had claimed to be either Polish or Ukrainian, but who on arrival in Sweden turned out to be Jewish. During the evacuation journey the convoy was shelled and bombed. One witness describes in detail at least two bombings. As to whose planes bombed them and why, the survivors could only guess. Usually, Bernadotte informed the Allies of the time and itinerary of the evacuation convoys, but in this case he may have failed. Possibly the convoy was bombed mistakenly. One explanation given by the survivors was that German military vehicles had pushed their way in between the Swedish buses and thus served as legitimate targets for the Allied planes.113 Another is that the Allies knew that the German army used the Red Cross markings as camouflage for military transports. Yet some of the survivors are convinced that the attacking planes were German. The convoy was first hit a short time after leaving Ravensbrück, on the way to Lübeck. The women ran into the woods, spent a night in a barn, and proceeded the next day to Lübeck. From there on the trucks bore Swedish flags. In the course of that day, a second, even more serious attack took place. One of the buses was hit and went up in flames. Four of the Krupp prisoners were killed: Ruth Katz, Ruth Bilski, and two girls called Hamer and Konskier; two were seriously wounded, Halina Lis and Mrs. Strassberg, whose son was engaged to Hamer. A survivor, Greta Czyzyk (war name Grete Bilski), reports that her sister Ruth was killed while fleeing the burning bus, and that its driver had been killed, too. The wounded were evacuated first to a German field hospital, and then to a Danish hospital. On arrival in Denmark, the evacuees all describe their reception as extraordinary. Young men, apparently students, carried them from the buses to festively set tables. The next day they traveled by ferryboat to Malmö, where another festive reception awaited them. They were impressed by both the friendliness and the forgotten luxuries of civilian life, such as the orchestra playing and waiters wearing white gloves and serving them. In Malmö, they had their first contact with representatives of the Jewish community in Sweden. Like all the other

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166 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück camp evacuees arriving in Sweden in the spring of 1945, they passed through quarantine, with hospitalization for those with infectious diseases, and were given generous periods of recuperation, schooling for the younger, and then employment and assisted housing in various Swedish towns. Israeli survivor Dvora Zilberman,114 one of the six Stern sisters, tells the story of a boarding school for 80 girls who had been rescued from German concentration camps, one organized in Lidingö near Stockholm by Rabbi Jakobson from Frankfurt.115 Several survivors who had been secondary-school students were placed with Swedish families and quickly learned Swedish. Some managed to work and study at the same time. Most worked for some time in Swedish factories. Like other Jewish evacuees in Sweden, they sought information about the fate of the members of their families. Some found surviving relatives in German displaced persons camps and were reunited with them in Sweden. We were told about only one case of a young woman returning to Poland, after marrying a non-Jewish Pole. Apparently they all tried to make contact with relatives abroad, especially in Palestine, the United States, and Australia. Some of these relatives then assisted the legal emigration to these countries. A considerable group of the Krupp-Neukölln evacuees were approached soon after their arrival in Sweden by Zionist emissaries who prepared them for illegal immigration to Eretz Israel. Apparently, several of these young women from ·ódz´ remembered their early affiliations with one of the Zionist youth movements. A contributing factor to the wish to leave Sweden soon was that there were nearly five times more women than men among the Jewish survivors arriving there. Most of these young women had lost precious years of their youth and some of them also husbands or fiancés, and all were keen to find partners. Although quite a few eventually found non-Jewish Swedish men and settled in Sweden, most preferred Jewish partners and the Swedish Jewish community was small. One survivor told us that the members of each Zionist youth organization demanded to be sent an emissary of their specific organization. In Ghetto ·ódz´, some had been members of Beitar and others of Hashomer Hatzair. In summer 1946, some of these emissaries (Shlichim) met in the town of Norrköping with a group of KruppNeukölln survivors. David Ben-Gurion then visited these emissaries. The Israeli survivors treasure to this day the memory of this meeting, especially of Ben-Gurion in tears as they sang Unser shtetl brennt, and

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 167 their snapshot with him sitting in their midst. Others remember meeting Hemda Levi from Kibbutz Degania. Soon after that meeting in Norrköping, 500 women and girls – among them also a group of Neukölln survivors – left Sweden in order to travel on the Aliya B (illegal immigration) boat Arlozorov. Some male camp survivors joined them in Italy. The British Navy intercepted the boat while it was approaching the coast of Eretz Israel and interned its passengers for about a year in Cyprus. Another group traveled on the Aliya B boat Herzl. Quite a number of the young survivors soon married fellow survivors, and some babies were born in Cyprus and some soon after arrival in Israel. Another group of Krupp survivors immigrated legally into Israel soon after independence, while others arrived in the 1950s or the 1960s. A sizable number emigrated to the United States and settled mainly in California or New York, and later also in Florida. The group we contacted last was of those who remained in Sweden and settled there. We heard of a fourth group in Australia through our contacts with Israeli, US, and Swedish survivors, and also made contact with them. The survivors reported the following picture: 32 of them remained in Sweden; 57 emigrated to Israel; 52 to the USA; 13 to Australia; 3 to Canada; 2 each to Belgium and Czechoslovakia; and one each to Poland, Britain, and Uruguay, respectively; another hundred also survived the War, but we do not know where they settled. As mentioned before, one died in Berlin and four were killed on the way to Sweden. We have no information about the fate of the two who were sent to Ravensbrück in 1944 and whose names are also known. Thus, out of a group of 500 without any preserved wartime documentation, the names of 271 are remembered or registered, and of these, 264 are known to have survived the camps and the War. To the best of the knowledge of the survivors of the entire group of 500 at Krupp-Neukölln, only 5 did not survive the camps and their immediate aftermath. The fate of the two sent to Ravensbrück in September 1944 remains unknown. After the war, they all received a small compensation of about 300 DM from Krupp. After over 50 years, many of the survivors living in different countries still maintained frequent contact. What were the peculiarities of this group? Most had had a common history in Ghetto ·ódz´; some had worked in the same factories, or were students in the same gymnasium.116 All of them together

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168 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück experienced the shock of Auschwitz. Probably this common background somewhat improved their chances of survival.Yet the unusual behavior of the SS personnel of the Krupp-Neukölln camp calls for explanation, too. This, after all, was not a last-minute change of behavior. Certainly the small size of the camp and its being separate from a concentration camp proper, and also in the middle of continuously bombed Berlin, made it easier for Bruno Kreitich and Margarete Trampnan to ignore the usual cruel norms that the SS imposed of humiliating and working to death external labor camp prisoners, especially Jewish ones. Nevertheless, it is amazing that they succeeded with impunity. The fact that many of the workers, and especially the Meisters, appear not to have been commited Nazis, may have made it easier for “Vati” and “Mutti”. Another feature of this unusual behavior appears to have been the close cooperation with the Czech Jewish lawyer Edita Kornfeld, especially in achieving the evacuation of the entire group to Sweden.

THE TRANSPORT TO BURGAU: A DEATH TRAIN OF THE LAST PERIOD

After describing the unusually benign fate of nearly 500 mostly young women who arrived and stayed in Ravensbrück during the last two weeks of the camp, let me now describe those of another group of 500 whose members had arrived in Ravensbrück in November or December 1944, and who were sent off from Ravensbrück on a terrible journey lasting nine weeks, from 17 February to 27 April 1945. I decided to describe this transport in some detail, as it is an example of a death train, a horrendous form of maltreatment of Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück, and of concentration camp prisoners in general, during the last months of the War. Starting with the mass evacuation of Auschwitz, locked goods trains, particularly of cattle cars, moved thousands of concentration camp prisoners, especially Jews, especially westward, mostly from the overcrowded or about-to-be-disbanded concentration camps of Poland and the eastern part of Germany. Thousands of Jewish concentration camp prisoners had been moved in locked trains before, from all over Europe and also from Ravensbrück, either to the Polish death camps, especially Auschwitz, or, starting in August 1944, for the purpose of work in weapons and ammunition factories situated in the

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 169 external labor camps of major concentration camps, especially Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück itself. In the case of the late death trains of 1945, the SS authorities usually still pretended that the prisoners were being sent to work at a specific destination.Yet the trains traveled for weeks – often zigzagging in opposite directions, or were stationary for days. Even in the cases where such a train reached a labor camp that had served the German war industry, the surviving prisoners were no longer capable of work and/or the industrial works were already being dismantled. Some of these trains were bombed or strafed by Allied planes. Several death trains taking off from the large camp of Neuengamme near the Danish border have been described by Folke Bernadotte, who explained, “Freight trains packed with non-Scandinavian prisoners whose destination no one knew ... The passengers of these death trains were never heard of afterwards.”117 Several surviving children who had arrived in Ravensbrück with the transport from Ghetto ·ódz´ of 22 October 1944 and were then transferred to KönigsWusterhausen, describe the arrival there of a train, many of whose Jewish passengers were dead or dying. From Ravensbrück itself – or from one of its external camps – we know of two other death trains besides the Burgau transport. The first was the Malchow-Hasag-Leipzig transport,118 whose passengers fared less terribly on their way to Leipzig. The journey in open cattle cars took only two days, yet they were three days without food and water, and while in the train station of Magdeburg, they underwent a heavy bombardment but were not hit.119 The second was a very late death train that was carrying women prisoners from Beendorf and Ravensbrück to an unknown destination, and after many of its passengers had died, the rest were saved by the intervention of the Swedish Red Cross.120 It appears, therefore, that sending off hundreds and even thousands of prisoners on these transports was a way of causing the death of as many as possible, before the advancing Soviet forces could reach the eastern concentration camps. But was this a clear plan, or were many of the deaths caused by the conditions of the approaching German defeat and the breakdown of their rail network? Was the bombing and strafing by Allied planes of the helpless locked-in prisoners accidental, or was it calculated in the plans of the dispatchers of these transports? According to Dr. Zalman Grinberg,121 who witnessed the attack on the train that carried the surviving women of the Burgau transport, their train, as well as wagons containing hundreds of Jewish male prisoners from Kaufering (another external camp of

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170 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Dachau) had been purposely placed by their SS guards to hide the presence of a stationary German military train carrying anti-aircraft guns at the railway station of the village of Schwabhausen, which shortly before had been spotted by Allied pilots. They returned and attacked the prisoner train by mistake. Many more lives were lost as SS guards shot prisoners trying to seek shelter under the nearby trees. Usually the journeys of these late death trains lasted much longer than the equally horrible transports to Auschwitz during the years 1942, 1943, and 1944 from all over Europe. The locking-in, the terrible overcrowding, the absence of sanitation, food, water, or any medical attention, were similar.122 The transports to Auschwitz had clearly been intended to end in the deaths of all or most of those transported. Humiliating and frightening them on the way, and causing the deaths of the oldest and the frailest en route, clearly served this purpose. The transports of concentration camp prisoners to and from Ravensbrück for the purpose of work in the German war industry, which started in August 1944 and continued until the end of the year, were different. These transports lasted one or two days each at most, and some had even used ordinary passenger carriages. They were clearly intended to deliver the mostly young slave laborers fit for work. Although a list containing the names of 480 women without Ravensbrück numbers was found and identified only recently,123 it turns out that this journey is one of the best-documented of all the late death trains. In one of the wagons were two women who later described their experiences in two extraordinary books.124

Eva Dános Langley, b. Budapest, Ph D. 1943. Diary: Prison on Wheels: From Ravensbrück to Burgau. St. Ottilien, Bavaria, Germany, 1945. Einsiedeln, Switzerland, Daimon Verlag, 1989.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 171 On the basis of these two books, one of which contains a detailed description of the first three weeks of their journey and was written in hospital immediately after liberation, it was possible to identify four groups in this transport: first, 116 women who had arrived in Ravensbrück in a direct Hungarian transport from Budapest, on 21–22 November 1944; second, about 68 women, also Hungarian, who arrived in the first week of December from Budapest; third, and largest, about 274 women, a Polish transport that arrived at Christmas 1944 from a labor camp at Częstochowa, Poland;125 fourth, and smallest, a Slovakian group of 23 women that appears to have arrived from Sered at the same time.126 I have found the names of 46 survivors in the USA (3 were no longer alive, among them Sara Tuvel Bernstein), 11 survivors in Israel, and 3 in Canada (1 no longer alive), and also located friends of Eva Langley-Dános, who had recently died after many years in Australia. I also found an account of this transport written in 1946 by a Polish Jewish survivor for Yad Vashem.127 The correspondence with many of the survivors produced the names of three additional survivors, whose addresses could not be found. The Dachau Archive supplied various documentary material and descriptions in local journals.128 They were “selected”,without much attention to their states of health, left Ravensbrück on 17 February in seven locked cattle cars (75 women in the smaller wagons and up to 110 in the larger ones), and reached the small labor camp of Burgau in Bavaria after 15 days, on 4 March 1945. After three weeks in Burgau they were moved to Türkheim,129 another small external camp of Dachau, walked for days and nights in the rain,130 and then traveled again in a goods train that was heavily strafed by Allied planes near the village of Schwabhausen near Dachau. Most of the 274 Polish Jewish survivors belonged to a large group who had worked in the German war industry in Skarz.ysko-Kamienna and at Hasag-Częstochowa, before being sent to Ravensbrück and arriving there just before Christmas 1944. They remember that they were registered in Ravensbrück and received Ravensbrück prisoner numbers. But they do not remember these numbers. These Polish Jewish survivors assumed that they had been brought to work at the Messerschmitt factory in Burgau. The 116 Hungarians had arrived in Ravensbrück on 21 or 22 November after they had marched on foot for 2–3 weeks from Budapest to the Austrian border, and then traveled in a locked train without any water for over a week to Ravensbrück. They had spent

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172 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück about three months in Ravensbrück in conditions of near-starvation, severe cold, and filth, first in Block 21, then in the infamous tent, then in another dilapidated barrack, with some of them performing the heavy physical work of unloading supplies from boats and trains. Apparently, all or most of the large Polish group arrived in Ravensbrück in somewhat less deteriorated physical condition and only sporadically performed some rather senseless work during their shorter stay there. Yet, when they arrived in Burgau after 15 days of starvation, they were also considered incapable of work. We shall see that in all the stages of this terrible journey, the Polish group fared somewhat better than the Hungarian group. We have an accurate day-by-day and night-by-night description of 15 days and nights in seven (and perhaps later eight) locked cattle cars up to their arrival in Burgau. A remarkable diary of this journey was written by Dr. Eva Langley-Dános while a patient at St. Ottilien, only a month after leaving Burgau. This diary was later published, first in French and later in English.131 It describes only one wagon and its occupants, but as it contained women from all three groups, the Polish, the Hungarian, and the Slovak, it may well have been typical for all. The greatest tragedy for Eva Langley-Dános was that she had entered the wagon with her three close friends, Klara, Hanna, and Lili, and all three of them died on the way to Burgau after unspeakable sufferings. Her detailed description is one of starvation, lack of water, filth, terrible overcrowding, lack of oxygen, and typhoid fever. All factors together, but perhaps especially the overcrowding and the confinement in a locked dark space, each night caused the mental derangement of many of the women, who became aggressive and foul-mouthed, inflicting unnecessary injuries on their neighbors. A female SS overseer established order by whipping the women on their shaven heads. On the third day, the Polish Jewish prisoner Franka Mandel was appointed as wagon-overseer, and valiantly attempted to establish peace and order. Most memorable is the description of Franka’s speech on the eighth day of the journey. She appealed to the Polish, Hungarian and Slovak Jewish women and girls in German, a language that many of them at least partially understood, in the following words: The Germans want us to perish ... and we only further their aim by destroying each other. We have to hold out! We are awaited at home ... and even those who are awaited by no one are awaited by their

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 173 future life ... Also, they have their duty: the obligation to use everything in their power to prevent people being locked up in cattle-cars ever again. We must survive!

After the speech, “her quiet voice, instilled calm ... To make that marvelous silence last, Franka now proposes that we sing and starts with a Polish song.” The Polish women sang in Polish, the Hungarians in Hungarian. Even after everybody else fell silent, Franka continued in a surprisingly strong voice, now singing Yiddish songs, among them Yidische Mamme, and a song about prisoners locked in a train. For Eva Langley-Dános, the baptized and assimilated Hungarian Jewish intellectual, it was the first time that she had ever listened to Yiddish songs. The prisoners wept and slowly dozed off. “Franka herself fell asleep towards dawn, without realizing perhaps, that her singing saved human lives.”132 During this journey, the locked train often stood still, for hours and even for days. Once, at Bayreuth, the German Red Cross fed them soup. Eva Langley-Dános recorded harrowing scenes of madness, aggression, and despair, as well as instances of loyalty, support, and tireless care between groups of friends, not only among her group of educated urban Hungarians, but also those of Seren Tuvel, her sister and their two friends, and between relatives, especially daughters and mothers. Once during the journey, a Slovakian Jewish prisoner physician attempted to apply dressings to their many lesions and festering wounds, and advised Eva to hide the fact that her friend Lili was dying of typhoid fever.133 The doctor feared that the SS would seal off the wagon and condemn all its occupants to death. Another detailed description of this journey is contained in the posthumously published book by the late Sara (Seren) Tuvel Bernstein, The Seamstress.134 She describes in detail the fate of four young women who, after having been forced since July 1944 to dig trenches all around Budapest, were in November 1944 marched from Budapest to the Austrian border and then sent by train to Ravensbrück. The author and her sister, Esther, had come from a large traditional Jewish family in a Romanian village in Transylvania, and had moved to Budapest where Seren had become an expert dressmaker. Ellen was Esther’s friend, and Lily was the daughter of their landlady in Budapest. Lily, the youngest and weakest of the four, died of exhaustion on the 12th day of travel in the locked train from Ravensbrück to Burgau.135 Two hours after her death, they received

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174 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück some soup from the German Red Cross. Seren Tuvel Bernstein also describes the curious hostility of the Polish women towards the Hungarians. This hostility had already started in Ravensbrück, when the Hungarians met them in their block and lost their better jobs in the vegetable sorting cellar to them. She describes this group as having come from Auschwitz and having worked there in a special workplace.136 Their physical condition was less deteriorated, as they were extremely tough to begin with, and they looked down on the Hungarians, whose experience of the Holocaust started as late as April 1944. Also, they did not believe the Hungarians who claimed not to understand Yiddish, as they assumed that Yiddish was the language of all Jews.137 She describes frequent cases of Polish women attacking Hungarian ones. A testimony given in Krakow in June 1946 by the Polish survivor Hanna Ritterman describes the journey as lasting well over a week, without food, water, or any sanitation, and being extremely crowded.138 In each of the wagons women died of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and lack of oxygen.139 The living prisoners were forced by the accompanying SS guards to put the corpses into bags and carry them to the first wagon. What happened when they reached Burgau, and during the rest of their journey? How many women died before reaching Burgau? We have no list. It can be assumed that 20 had died, as on the arrival list in Burgau there are 480 names and it is known that 500 had left Ravensbrück. The names of the three friends of Eva Langley-Dános, Klara, Hanna, and Lili, and of Seren Tuvel Bernstein’s friend Lily (Markovitz), who have been described by them as having died during this journey, do not appear on the list of 480. Eva Langley-Dános also describes several women dying soon after arrival in Burgau. This is confirmed by a death list of 13 women and 5 men who died there between 4 and 28 March 1945.140 The names of all 13 women are among the 480 who had arrived in Burgau from Ravensbrück on 4 March. All descriptions agree that the women from Ravensbrück were in such a deplorable state of health that none of them was capable of working in the local industry. Eva Langley-Dános reports that another 500 women prisoners arrived on the same day and were employed in Burgau. The story of a further train with 500 women arriving within 24 hours is mentioned by German witnesses.141 We have no information about the identities or origins of the women on this second train. The fact that the names of five Jewish male prisoners

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 175 are also on the list of dead of Burgau points to the presence of a transport of Jewish men who also were in poor physical shape. There are few reports about Burgau. Most of the prisoners there must have been in a constant state of shock. Eva Langley-Dános reports that she crawled on all four to the infirmary, where she was treated for the lesions and sores that covered her entire body. Her diary ends here, to resume only in St. Ottilien hospital. Seren Tuvel Bernstein even confuses the two camps Burgau and Türkheim, and remembers having been first in Türkheim and then in Burgau. The death list suggests that they remained in Burgau until 28 March, although they may have been moved earlier, leaving a few dying women behind. The Polish survivors tell about traveling by train to Türkheim, where they were placed in an underground bunker. Seren Tuvel Bernstein tells the amazing story of all the fresh grass growing around the bunker having been eaten by the starving prisoners. At least part of the journey beyond Türkheim appears to have been on foot and in heavy rain, after which it was continued in the direction of Dachau, apparently again in a train, in one or more wagons. Not all the survivors remained with the transport to its end – several small groups escaped during the last stages. Here are several of these stories of extraordinary courage and ingenuity. Two groups of Polish survivors succeeded in escaping before the fatal strafing of the remaining women at Schwabhausen. Apparently, one group of women escaped during the march while the guards were taking shelter. The escaping prisoners were in a deplorable physical condition. According to the testimony of Rysia K. from Skarzsysko-Kamienna and Częstochowa, another group of six girls from Poland escaped during a foot march between Türkheim and Dachau. When they noticed that the German soldiers were wearing civilian clothes under their uniforms, ready for flight, the six girls fled and hid for a night in the woods, and then entered different houses in Türkheim posing as Polish workers whose employers had been bombed out. A week later, the American forces arrived. Two Israeli survivors, the sisters Cukierman from Częstochowa,142 report that one prisoner in their wagon succeeded in opening the locked door, and a group of seven friends jumped off the moving train and hid in a forest. They were driven by hunger and heavy rain to leave the forest and look for shelter in the nearby village of Kaltenberg (near Landsberg) on the river Lech. They found refuge in the pigsty of the village Bürgermeister, where his wife gave them food and helped them

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176 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück to wash themselves. One of the seven, Nelli Frey from Poznan´, spoke fluent German and English.143 On arrival,she had told the Bürgermeister that a member of “The Underground”was waiting outside watching to see if he would give them shelter,and if not,“The Underground”would attack the house. It is not clear if the Bürgermeister believed the story, but he on his part made them promise that, should the SS or police come to the house and discover them, he would say that they were hiding without his knowledge and that they should support this statement. On the other hand, should American soldiers arrive, they were to testify that he had given them shelter and fed them. As it happened, the Americans did arrive soon, the Bürgermeister was arrested, and they did testify on his behalf, whereupon he was released. They spent an entire month in his house being well cared for until they had recuperated enough to travel to an American displaced persons camp. Nelli acted as an interpreter for the American army and left earlier with her sister Hilde. We have two different accounts about those who continued traveling in the locked train in the direction of Dachau. One mentions arrival in Allach, a part of the first Nazi concentration camp Dachau, at the time when a battle was raging between the advancing Americans and the SS guards or some retreating German soldiers. The shooting endangered the arriving Ravensbrück prisoners. One Israeli survivor reports that she and some friends were saved by Polish male political prisoners of Allach, who had dug a shelter and pulled the women into it, where they remained until the takeover of the camp was complete.144 Another group, we do not know how many, never reached Allach by train. Near the village of Schwabhausen their train, as well as other wagons carrying male Jewish prisoners coming from another external camp, Kaufering, was heavily strafed. Esther Tuvel had been wounded in the head and back during the bombing and strafing of the train near Schwabhausen, and by the guards shooting at the female and male Jewish prisoners who were trying to escape. Seren Tuvel Bernstein described “winged skeletons with rounded skulls were drifting across the field through the falling rain, wild cries coming from the open holes of their mouths. The men prisoners who were still alive had draped blankets over their heads, and were moving toward the dark forests.”145 Seren used a penknife to remove some of the bullets from Esther’s back, and metal splinters from her head. She and her friend Helen

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 177 moved Esther away from the train, which was by now full of corpses, and refused to get back on it in spite of being threatened with shooting by the SS guards. On 1 May, after they had hidden for two days and nights, first together with the Jewish men in a barn, and then in an abandoned work camp, American medics arrived and took them by car to the convent military hospital of St Ottilien. They stayed there for nearly three months, Esther undergoing several operations, Seren and Helen sick with typhus and then with pneumonia. According to the testimony on 6 September 1960 of the-then Bürgermeister of Schwabhausen, on 27 April 1945, low-flying British planes attacked a train with Jewish prisoners coming from the concentration camp Burgau, apparently assuming this to be a military transport. When the guards stopped the train near some trees, many prisoners tried to find shelter in the forest. As they fled, the German guards shot and killed many of them. Many of the wounded died on the meadows and fields in the neighborhood. Some wounded prisoners were carried to the school and the inn. Two days later, on 29 April, the surviving wounded and the other prisoners were evacuated by an American military ambulance to St. Ottilien. On the same day, the local inhabitants buried the 240 dead in three mass graves, without any identification, being unable to distinguish even between men and women. On 3 May, the last of the wounded was found alive in one of the wagons. Of the survivors of the Burgau transport, 68 (13.6%) have been identified. It is significant that of the Polish group, 51 (18%) survived, while of the Hungarian group only 14 (7%) did. Of the 23 Slovakians, 3 are known to have survived. None of the Polish group died in Burgau, whereas all the 13 women on the Burgau death list were Hungarian. Of the 20 who died on the way to Burgau and are not on the Burgau list, we know the names of only 4 Hungarian women. An important contribution to the survival of the women of this death train was the extremely humane and dedicated nursing care they received at the St. Ottilien military hospital, located in a Benedictine convent near Dachau.146 The Polish survivor Hanna R. testified that, after she was eventually found by American soldiers, she spent six months in hospital. Most of the surviving patients, including Seren Tuvel Bernstein and Eva Langley-Dános, mentioned the extraordinary efforts of the nursing sisters on their behalf. Behind St Ottilien’s having received so many wounded and sick survivors of the Ravensbrück-Burgau transport and of other Jewish transports that had arrived near Dachau at the same time, stood the amazing

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178 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück activities of Dr. Zalman Grinberg. Born on 4 September 1912 in Lithuania, Dr. Grinberg had been director of the Radiological Institute of the University Hospital of Kaunas (Kowno). After the establishment of the ghetto, he worked there as physician until its liquidation on 30 July 1944. He was then sent to Kaufering, an external camp of the concentration camp Dachau, and worked there to prevent typhus. When a large number of sick and wounded Jewish prisoners ended up near the village of Schwabhausen, he succeeded by sheer force of personality in finding out the location of the nearest hospital, St. Ottilien, and convincing its director that he represented the International Red Cross and had been delegated by the American forces to prepare the hospital for the treatment of foreign political prisoners.147 Dr. Grinberg reports that in May 1945, they brought 500 dying patients to St. Ottilien, yet only 35 actually died.148 He remained in St. Ottilien until the end of 1946, became president of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone, emigrated to Palestine, and later became head of the Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva.149 After the surviving members of the Burgau transport had recuperated sufficiently at St. Ottilien, they were sent to Feldafing, a Displaced Persons Center. Apparently not only Hungarian survivors, but also some of the Polish ones who had escaped on the way, spent a considerable time in the Center, most waiting for a chance to emigrate to the USA. Several of them met their future husbands, all of them Holocaust survivors, at Feldafing, and also gave birth to their first children there.

THE ROLE OF THE BERNADOTTE-AKTION IN THE RESCUE OF JEWISH RAVENSBRÜCK PRISONERS

It is extremely difficult to discover the exact dates and extent of this important rescue operation by the Swedish Red Cross, and even its boundaries. As early as 28 February 1945, there had been an evacuation to Sweden of a relatively small group of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück150 before Bernadotte even started his negotiations for the evacuation of any Ravensbrück prisoners. Also, the Swedish Red Cross cooperated with the International Red Cross, which was responsible for the evacuation especially of French Ravensbrück prisoners to the Swiss border at Kreuzlingen. It cooperated with the Danish Red Cross in all the evacuations of Ravensbrück prisoners to

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 179 Sweden via Denmark. One point is clear: the major initiative for the negotiations for the release of concentration camp prisoners, with the exception of the Scandinavian prisoners, before the end of the rule of the SS over the camps, originated with Sweden and the acting head of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte.151 The evacuation of the Danish Jewish prisoners The Danish Red Cross had initiated and organized the evacuation of Scandinavian camp prisoners, mainly from Sachsenhausen but also from Stutthof. The Danes had also prepared vehicles and medical services at a reception station in Denmark. All these entirely voluntary preparations later greatly assisted the Swedish operation. A rescue operation from Sachsenhausen organized by the Danish Red Cross started on 15 March 1945. It has to be remembered, however, that among the over 2000 rescued from Sachsenhausen there were neither Ravensbrück nor Jewish prisoners. There was, however, a group of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who had been transferred on 23 March to Leitmeritz, and from there to Theresienstadt. As at least three survivors of this group are known to have reached Sweden and registered there,152 it is possible that the Danish Red Cross evacuated them on 17 April within the framework of the evacuation from Theresienstadt of several hundred Jewish prisoners who had been deported there from Denmark.153 There were also seven Danish prisoners who had arrived in Ravensbrück from Denmark, one by October 1943 and six in January 1944, about whom we have learnt from the archive of Beit Terezin. As it is known that they all survived and were evacuated to Sweden, presumably they, too, were transferred from Ravensbrück to Theresienstadt in March 1945 and evacuated from there together with all the Danish Jews imprisoned in the Ghetto Theresienstadt. The rescue of the Jewish women of Ravensbrück I will not discuss here the controversial question concerning the parts that either Bernadotte himself, or the two representatives of the World Jewish Congress,Hillel Storch154 and Norbert Masur,155 played in obtaining the release of any Jewish prisoners, and especially of the Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück. The same goes for Felix Kersten.156 What is clear is that on 21 April 1945,Himmler promised both Masur and Bernadotte the release of a larger number of non-Scandinavian

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180 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück prisoners, including 1000 Jewish women from Ravensbrück,157 on condition that this would not be publicized and that the Jewish women would be called “Polish”. In his last encounter with Bernadotte, Himmler even consented to the evacuation from Ravensbrück of women “of all nationalities”. Unfortunately by 22 April, when the Swedish Red Cross began organizing these late evacuations with the cooperation of the Danish Red Cross, the constantly narrowing corridor between the fronts of the advancing Western Allied and Soviet forces had made the safe transportation of the camp prisoners increasingly difficult. By the evening of 27 April passage had become impossible. Timetable of evacuations from the main camp of Ravensbrück In March 1945, all Scandinavian women prisoners of Ravensbrück were evacuated to Sweden. We do not know if any Jewish women were among them. At the beginning of April the evacuation of other “Western prisoners” started.158 On 5 April, the first transport started, of 300 women – 299 French and 1 Polish – to Kreuzlingen at the Swiss border, where they arrived on 10 April.159 By 2 March, 1981 women had already been sent from Ravensbrück to Mauthausen, among them a considerable number of Jewish women. Of these, more than 800 French, Belgian, and Dutch were sent from Mauthausen to the Swiss border on 22 April (although we know that about 1000 did not cross the Swiss border, but were sent instead to Neustadt-Glewe).160 On 9 April and 22 April, in the two groups of French women who passed the Swiss border, several were Jewish. The names of at least three French Jewish survivors who are known to have been liberated through Switzerland have been identified.161 Between 22 April and 26–28 April, 7500 women prisoners are known to have been evacuated from Ravensbrück to Sweden in the following transports: On 22 April, 200 sick French women left in Danish ambulances – among them apparently 12 French Jewish women and 3 especially endangered Austrian Jewish Communists, who had arrived from Auschwitz. The German and Austrian non-Jewish prisoners managed to remove their tattooed Auschwitz numbers and give them prisoner numbers of French prisoners who had died.162

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 181 On 23 April, 800 women from the Benelux countries left in 20 buses of the Swedish Red Cross.At least three Jewish prisoners – the Dutch Jewish Mischling Louise de Montel, and Silvia Grohs-Nelson and her Czech Jewish friend Eva, both from the Mischlingstransport of 23 September 1943 – traveled on this transport as Dutch citizens.163 This transport was strafed and heavily bombed by Allied planes, as German army vehicles had inserted themselves into the convoy. On 24 or 25 April, in the evening, 1000 women left in trucks of the International Red Cross under Swedish management. All the drivers were Swedish volunteers. On 25 April, in the afternoon, 20 buses or trucks supplied by the Danish Red Cross left the camp. In this group there were many Polish Jewish women, pregnant women, and 30 small children. Two groups of Jewish prisoners, the smaller one made up of women who had worked at Siemens,164 and the larger one, with 450–490 nearly all Polish Jewish women and girls from ·ódz´, Auschwitz, and KruppNeukölln, who had arrived in Ravensbrück about 8 or 12 days before,165 must have been among the evacuees of 25 and 26 April.166 Their transport was also strafed, and three of the Jewish women were killed and three wounded. On 26 April, a train consisting of 60 goods wagons, apparently of German origin, which had been obtained by the International Red Cross, traveled from Ravensbrück to the Danish border. According to Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier, 4000 women, most of them Polish, were on this train.167 It is claimed that up to 1000 of them were Jewish. The train took several days to reach Denmark, due to the constant danger of bombardment. We have no documentation about the identities of the Jewish prisoners evacuated by this train. Presumably all those known to have been evacuated from the main camp to Sweden who belonged neither to the groups who worked at Siemens, nor to those who had arrived from Krupp-Neukölln, nor had joined earlier groups of Benelux or French non-Jewish evacuees, must have traveled on this train. The evacuees included 243 Polish Jewish arrivals of 3 November from Auschwitz who had not been transferred to Malchow, and 75 from the Ghetto Piotrków transport of 3 December. As we have no arrival lists for most of the arrivals of December 1944, amongst which the last multinational transport from Auschwitz in the middle of December and the transport from Częstochowa at Christmas are particularly important, we cannot know how many remained in the main camp and may have been evacuated to Sweden on this train. We can,

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182 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück however, state clearly that a sizable group of non-Polish Jewish prisoners must also have been among the “about 1000 Jewish” evacuees on this train.168 There are 371 names of non-Polish Jewish women, mainly Hungarian, Czechoslovakian, or Romanian Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners, on the two lists of Liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945 (JSLists 1 and 2),169 and on other Swedish lists or in testimonies. On 28 April, a Red Cross vehicle collected 26 sick women from Ravensbrück.170 The evacuation from Malchow Another transport that may have consisted mostly or entirely of Jewish women was not mentioned at all, neither in earlier research,171 nor in the Ravensbrück Kalendarium. On 26 April, 450 women prisoners of Malchow, the large external labor camp of Ravensbrück to which many Jewish prisoners had already been transferred during December 1944 and many additional ones from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch in February 1945, were transported in Swedish Red Cross trucks from Malchow to the Danish border. The names of 215 Jewish survivors, whom we know had been in Malchow, are on the Jewish-Swedish lists, and 9 are on other Swedish lists. As the names of many of the arrivals from Malchow appear on Lista 6, a list compiled by the representative of the Polish Government in Exile in Sweden, we know that this group of evacuees arrived in Sweden on 28 April. Several of these survivors mention in their interviews that in Malchow they heard somebody call out “Polish citizens”, and that at first they had been afraid to board the trucks. Nevertheless, apparently the fact that many belonged to three groups of Polish Jewish prisoners who had spent several months together, and thus knew one another, may have facilitated their taking advantage of this opportunity. The first group had arrived from Auschwitz on 3 November 1944,172 and we know that many of them were transferred to Malchow in December. The second group, made up of a considerable number of Jewish women, most of them Polish, who had arrived from Auschwitz in the middle of December in a multinational transport, and a third group that had arrived from the Polish labor camp Częstochowa at Christmas, were also soon transferred to Malchow. Due to the fact that the arrival lists of the second and third groups have been lost, it is more difficult to identify those who reached Sweden through this evacuation from Malchow. A fourth group of candidates for this rescue

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 183 operation from Malchow were those survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch who had reached Ravensbrück in January and February 1945, were soon transferred to Malchow, and remained there to the end.173 Of the 224 Jewish women who are known to have been evacuated to Sweden from Malchow, 188 came from Poland. The Red Cross trucks evacuating the women from Malchow appear to have joined the large convoy of trucks that had left Ravensbrück on 25 April. Several Malchow evacuees reported that their convoy was strafed and bombed and that several Jewish women were killed and several wounded. Some also knew the identities of the victims. A train from Beendorf An additional rescue operation to Sweden that may have included many Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners, and about which very little is known, was achieved by the last-minute redirection of a death train to Hamburg by a messenger of the Red Cross. In Hamburg, the surviving passengers spent a night (or more) in the nearby camp of Wandsbeck,174 and were then sent on a different train to Denmark, and from there to Sweden. The story of this train was told by US survivor Gloria Hollander Lyon, war name Hajnal Hollender,175 for whom the labor camp Beendorf was the last of several German camps where she, a 16-yearold, had worked, after escaping on the way to the gas chamber in Auschwitz and hiding with a transport of women about to be sent to work in Germany.

Gloria Hollander Lyon born Hajnal Hollender, b. Nagy Bereg, Karpato-Ukraine, 1930. Short Autobiography: “Die Odyssee einer ungarischen Jüdin”, in Claus Füllberg-Stolberg, editor, Frauen in Konzentrationslagern, Bremen, Edition Temmen, 1994, pp. 279–290.

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184 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Some time in April, a large number of prisoners of the external labor camp Beendorf – we do not know how many had been in Ravensbrück before – were loaded on a goods train that brought them to Ravensbrück. We do not know how many additional prisoners joined this train there. After several days, the train left and traveled for at least three days and nights without any clear destination. Hundreds – 3000 according to the estimate of the Schreiber sisters (see chapter 7, “The Frankfurt/Walldorf Transport”section,and also below in this section) – of women and girls were crowded into the wagons without food or water. By the time the train stopped in a meadow and the women were told to get off, many had died, and because of lack of space, the survivors had no choice but to sit on the dead. When leaving the train, the women were convinced that now they were all going to be shot. They were ordered to remove the dead from the train. While standing in line they noticed the arrival of a messenger on a motorcycle, who spoke to the SS man in charge. Then they were thrown some sugar and uncooked rice or noodles. At this point Hajnal Hollender, who had tried to catch the precious food in her dress, discovered that it had all fallen through a big hole in her skirt.As she bent down to collect a few grains from the ground, an SS guard hit her over the head with his baton and she lost consciousness. She awoke in another train on the way to Denmark. The only way to identify Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who traveled on this death train and who were included in the Bernadotte rescue operation was to find Ravensbrück survivors who had mentioned both Sweden and Beendorf. Thus, it was not possible to arrive at a reliable estimate of the number of Ravensbrück prisoners, and of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners among them, who either died on this death train or were saved at the last moment.176 In addition to Gloria Hollander Lyon, we identified 49 Ravensbrück survivors who had been sent from Ravensbrück to work in Beendorf between November 1944 and March 1945. The names of all 50 survivors of the Beendorf–Ravensbrück death train were registered on the Jewish–Swedish lists. Whereas 12 of them had been classified as Hungarian on arrival in Ravensbrück, on arrival in Sweden only 4 registered as Hungarian, while 7 registered as Romanian, 6 as Czechoslovakian, and 5 as Polish. Among them were the six Schreiber sisters from Carei Mari in Romania, who had arrived with the unfortunate Frankfurt/Walldorf transport of 23–25 November 1944.177 The sisters recently told their

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 185 story in a documentary film for Swedish television.178 It is an extraordinary tale of the survival of a tightly knit family group. When they arrived in Auschwitz, on the ramp their parents and their three younger siblings were separated from the six sisters. At the last moment their mother called:“Freidele, now you are responsible for the girls!” A third description of the death train from Beendorf appears in the interview of Lida Holcer, which is one of the group of interviews carried out by the Polish Institute of Sources in Lund, Sweden, at the end of 1945 and in 1946.179 She had arrived with her sister Erna Holcer in Ravensbrück on 6 February 1945 from the Bavarian labor camp Gundelsdorf.She was soon sent to Beendorf,and later loaded with many other women,apparently most of them Jewish,onto a locked goods train which, she reported, traveled for much longer than three days. Women on it died from lack of food and water, and from suffocation. She reported that, after the redirection of the train to Hamburg, the journey lasted several more days, and the group then spent additional days in a camp near Hamburg before finally being evacuated to Denmark. Evacuation from Bergen-Belsen There was another sizeable group of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who were evacuated to Sweden that may be considered not strictly to belong to the Bernadotte-Aktion. On 2 March 1945, a large number of Jewish women and children from Ravensbrück had been sent to Bergen-Belsen.180 As early as 30 January, a group of mothers and children who had arrived in the third period from the Dutch camp Westerbork, as well as others with Hungarian citizenship who had arrived from Berlin, had been “released” to Bergen-Belsen.181 Additionally, a large group of Polish Jewish women and girls who had arrived in Ravensbrück from Auschwitz in August 1944 had been sent on 3 September to the labor camp of Mühlhausen, and, after Mühlhausen was disbanded, to Bergen-Belsen. All in all, we know of about 365 Jewish women, girls, and children who had ever been Ravensbrück prisoners and were sent to Bergen-Belsen. This number, of course, is too small, as all of our information stems from survivors. Bergen-Belsen was well known as a death camp without a gas chamber, where the prisoners hardly worked but died of starvation and of intentionally unchecked epidemics. Yet the survivors report only 24 dead in Bergen-Belsen before its early liberation by the Western Allies on 15 April 1945, or immediately after liberation.

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186 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück To conclude, the evacuation from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden was not a rescue operation before the end of the War. The survivors of Bergen-Belsen were no longer in the power of the SS. Many of them were very sick, some of them unconscious.182 The Western Allied military authorities found it difficult to arrange for adequate medical care for these masses of very sick and emaciated human beings. Thus, they welcomed the offer of the Swedish Red Cross to evacuate even the very sick, and to accept responsibility for their medical treatment. At the same time, the French, Dutch, and Belgian authorities started to organize the repatriation of their citizens among the camp survivors. Thus, some of the survivors had a choice between evacuation to Sweden and repatriation. Figures show that 143 Jewish Ravensbrück survivors of Bergen-Belsen were not evacuated to Sweden, while 197 are known to have arrived in Sweden, 2 of whom died soon after arrival. Apparently, these evacuations to Sweden started in May 1945 and went on for several months. The story of Alice Wolfshörndl, born Grasgrün, a Slovakian Jewish woman, is amazing. She had arrived in Ravensbrück in December 1944, and was flown out of Bergen-Belsen to Sweden in an unconscious state. When she regained consciousness in Malmö, she did not remember what had happened to her two children aged six and three. Only after some time was she reunited with her son, Egon, who had also arrived from Bergen-Belsen. Later the name of the three-year-old daughter Eva was found on the Czechoslovakian death list of prisoners of Ravensbrück. She had been killed in Ravensbrück on 5 February 1945. To sum up, of the 10,362 names of Jewish women, men, and children who were registered on the two lists of Liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945 (JSList 1 and JSList 2), 9677 were women, girls, and children, or 93%.183 Among them I could identify the names of 1438 women, girls, and children known to us to have been prisoners of Ravensbrück, or 14.9%. An additional 44 names of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who were not registered on these JSLists appear on archival material of the Jewish Congregation of Stockholm, on Polish–Swedish lists, or were interviewed by the Polish Institute of Sources in Lund. The significance of Sweden for the survival of the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück A small group of at least 25 “Turkish” women and children were evacuated from Ravensbrück to Sweden on 28 February 1945. They were

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 187 never registered there as Jewish evacuees. Even if we exclude the 197 survivors who were Bergen-Belsen evacuees from the BernadotteAktion, it was possible to identify the names of 1310 Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück whose lives had been saved at the last moment, before the end of the War, by their evacuation to Sweden. We can only surmise their real number. Adding up the major groups who were evacuated in the buses, trucks, and the train from the main camp, the trucks from Malchow, and the death train from Beendorf, a more likely number would be 2000. Significantly, among the 10,362 Jewish evacuees on the JSLists, 8755 (84.5%) were female. At the end of the War, women were a significant minority of Jewish camp survivors. Thus, the fact that the overwhelming majority of Jewish evacuees to Sweden were women and girls invites explanation. It is most likely that Ravensbrück, the sole women-only concentration camp, was one of the major camps from which any Jewish prisoners had been evacuated to Sweden. Ravensbrück prisoners also constituted a sizable portion of the prisoner population of Bergen-Belsen, the camp from which, after liberation by the Western Allies, the largest number of Jews was evacuated to Sweden. Evidence indicates that Bernadotte had an ambitious plan to save many Jewish male concentration camp prisoners. Several male Jewish concentration camp survivors who had spent several weeks in the Ravensbrück women’s camp in March–April 1945 have reported that they had been told that Bernadotte and the Swedish Red Cross had arranged an exchange of concentration camp prisoners for wounded German prisoners in the hands of the Allies. They reported that they had left the camp of Braunschweig and were in a train near Celle, but could not proceed because the tracks had been damaged by bombing. They were then taken to Ravensbrück, from there to Wöbbelin, and finally to Ludwigslust. I found 22 who had survived the War.184

EVACUATION MARCHES FROM RAVENSBRÜCK AND ITS EXTERNAL CAMPS

Our knowledge of the numbers and identities of the Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who were part of the evacuation marches or death marches from Ravensbrück is extremely limited. No document is preserved that can inform us about the numbers and identities of

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188 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück those evacuated, of those who died or were killed during the marches, or of the numbers and fate of survivors. To the best of our knowledge, no Jewish prisoners remained in the camp when the Soviet Army arrived, with the exception of a few doctors and nurses with hidden Jewish identities, and two Jewish patients. Therefore, we can assume that the rest were marched out of the camp either on 23 April or in the evening of 28 April. These were all those Jewish prisoners who had arrived during the third, fourth, and fifth periods, who had neither died nor been “selected”, had not been transferred to external labor camps (Schönholz, Altenburg, Neustadt near Coburg, Mühlhausen, Wittenberg, Spandau, Genshagen, Lippstadt, Hasag-Leipzig, Rechlin-Retzow, Beendorf, Barth, Reinickendorf, Theresienstadt, Venusberg, Meuselwitz, Penig, Burgau, Taucha, or Leipzig) or to the main external camps of Ravensbrück (Malchow or Neustadt-Glewe),185 had not been transferred to Bergen-Belsen or Mauthausen, and had not been evacuated to Sweden and rescued during the last week of April – from Ravensbrück, Malchow, or Hamburg. According to one Ravensbrück document,186 on 23 April the Polish and Hungarian Jewish women who were still in the main camp had been marched in the direction of Malchow. No Jewish survivors have testified to have been part of this earlier evacuation march. In her study of the evacuation marches from Ravensbrück, Simone Erpel assumes that there were then about 14,000 prisoners in the main camp.187 She also assumes that by then the prisoners in the camp were mainly Eastern European, German, and some Italian women, as the majority of the French, Dutch, Belgian, Scandinavian, and Polish Jewish women, and a large group of Polish women, had been evacuated in the framework of the Bernadotte-Aktion.188 From the testimonies of survivors and the research of the Italian Libro della memoria, I identified the following small groups of Jewish prisoners that participated in the Ravensbrück Todesmarsch: 1. A group of Mischlinge, a dozen or more, who had arrived in Ravensbrück from Auschwitz as early as 23 September 1943, most of whom originated in Germany.189 2. A small group of women who had arrived from Piotrków on 2 December 1944.190 3. Two or more groups of Italian Jewish women who had arrived in Ravensbrück, eight on 2 August 1944 and five on 16 January 1945.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 189 4. A group of six friends, apparently all Hungarian Jewish, who previously had worked at Siemens. They succeeded in escaping from the evacuation march.191 The march left in the direction first of Rechlin, then Malchow,192 with the intention of reaching Schwerin. It lasted at least eight days. The prisoners searched for potatoes in the pigsties and on the fields. Some farmers gave them potatoes. Apparently many women who could no longer walk were shot on the way, especially by one drunk SS man.193 Some fled into the forests, and a number of these were shot too. After five days, a group of 30, among them the Italian Jewish women, reached the village of Lübz. The survivors were liberated by either Soviet or Western Allied Forces. After some time, the Soviets transported a group of survivors to Leipzig. Erna Korn, who did not want to be transported to Leipzig, obtained medical treatment with the help of an American Jewish soldier, spent months on a farm, and together with Margot Lichtenstein, also of the group of Mischlinge, succeeded in crossing the border into the American-held zone.

EVACUATION MARCHES FROM, OR ABANDONMENT IN, EXTERNAL CAMPS

Schönholz We know of three Jewish Schönholz prisoners who had been sent back to Ravensbrück on 25 January 1945 and had been killed there several weeks later. This camp, near Berlin, was evacuated in the middle of April, and the prisoners marched to Freistein, where on 8 May, they met with the Soviet army.194 Altenburg From this camp the surviving 377 Jewish prisoners (123 had been previously sent to Auschwitz and 6 more died in Altenburg) were marched, as early as 10 April 1945, for three days to Waldenburg, where they were left by their guards, and US soldiers opened a camp for the women ex-prisoners. As far as we know, there were no additional victims due to the evacuation march.195

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190 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Neustadt near Coburg The over 400 Jewish prisoners were not marched out of the camp. They were abandoned when American soldiers approached. Many of them attempted to reach their hometowns in Hungary on foot196. Mühlhausen The Jewish prisoners (at least 490) were all transferred relatively early to Bergen-Belsen,197 which, as mentioned above, was not evacuated before Western Allied forces liberated it on 15 April. Ninety-seven of the Jewish Ravensbrück–Mühlhausen prisoners are known to have survived Bergen-Belsen, with 84 of them evacuated to Sweden, but 2 dying there soon after arrival. We do not know how many had died while in Bergen-Belsen. Wittenberg The survivors among the 200–250 Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners of this camp, 32 of them from the Ghetto ·ódz´ transport, were freed by Soviet Forces. They had been locked in (except for the two women physicians who had fled) by the escaping SS guards without water or electricity. Genshagen In April, the 60 Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners (among the over 1000 prisoners working there in the Daimler Works) were first transferred on foot and by train (U-Bahn and S-Bahn) to Sachsenhausen, where apparently there was an attempt to kill them all, an attempt that was abandoned at the last moment. They were returned to Ravensbrück, where they joined the evacuation march of 28 April.198 Spandau About 1000 Ravensbrück prisoners worked in Spandau, and apparently 600 of them were Jewish. The SS took them in an evacuation march to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. Some succeeded in escaping during the march, while the others were returned to Spandau, where they were liberated by the Soviet forces.199 A number were extremely sick and spent months in hospital.200

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 191 Lippstadt 250 Hungarian Jewish women and girls worked in this camp. In March, the Reichswehr guards told them that they would soon have to leave. They were marched out in rows of five, and then walked for two weeks, receiving only one potato a day. Any woman bending down to pick a weed or sitting down due to exhaustion was liable to be shot. The way was littered with corpses. In the neighborhood of the village of Wurzen several women managed to escape into the forest.201 The next morning they came out of the forest and soon met Russian soldiers. Rechlin-Retzow Many of the Ravensbrück prisoners who had been sent to Rechlin, non-Jews as well as Jews, were returned to Ravensbrück before the end of the War. According to French research, many of them were “selected” to be killed in the Ravensbrück gas chamber. Yet, from US survivor Bracha Schiff, war name Bronka Blattberg, we learn that a group that was returned from Rechlin to Ravensbrück in late April was evacuated to Sweden on 24 or 25 April with the “white buses” (or converted trucks).202 Presumably the Ravensbrück evacuation march passed through Rechlin on its way to Malchow and the remaining prisoners joined it. According to the testimony of Hungarian survivor Piroska Dome, they were driven out of the camp on 30 April, and the SS soon let them go.203 In Rechlin-Retzow, 224 bodies were buried, mainly of women and children. The researchers Baetcke Ross,204 Regina Scheer,205 and, especially, Simone Erpel,206 have reached the conclusion that these were mainly Jewish victims of the Ravensbrück Todesmarsch. Beendorf An unknown number of women prisoners, perhaps up to 3000 (we do not know how many of them were Jewish and how many had previously been in Ravensbrück) were sent in a locked goods train from Beendorf that may have stopped for several days in Ravensbrück.207 This death train was redirected to Hamburg and from there the surviving prisoners, perhaps one-half of the original number, were evacuated to Denmark and Sweden.

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192 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Barth About 800 women prisoners, we do not know how many of them Jewish, were taken out on an evacuation march.208 Yet according to the testimony of Israeli survivor Leah Dagani, war name Lenke Engländer,209 the Jewish prisoners of Barth were not marched out of the camp; they were locked in it. Meuselwitz There were 5000 women prisoners working in this camp. Only 16 were Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. They were all evacuated in April, first in cattle wagons and later on foot. The SS drove them for two weeks through the forests. Three friends escaped at a farm.210 Apparently all 16 Jewish women survived. Penig The 700 Hungarian Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück who had been sent to Penig, an external labor camp of Buchenwald, in the second half of January 1945, were marched out of the camp on 13 April. The SS guards then changed into civilian clothes and fled. The women reached Chemnitz, begging for food on the way. Burgau Some of the mainly Polish Jewish survivors escaped between Burgau and Schwabhausen. Nearly all the survivors who reached Dachau were hospitalized at St. Ottilien. All the survivors of the Burgau transport were liberated by the Americans and most lived for some time at the Displaced Persons Center at Feldafing. Neustadt-Glewe The women were not sent on any evacuation march, but left locked in the barracks when the SS fled. They freed themselves with the help of French war prisoners. The Soviet forces arrived late on the afternoon of 2 May. The Americans were there for just a few hours on the same day, and then retreated. Many sick prisoners spent months in the military hospital of Neustadt-Glewe and many died there after liberation. Those who were fit to move seem to have been able to choose between either heading towards the Western Allies or relying on the help of the Soviet troops in order to move to their countries of origin.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 193 Malchow In April, 1000 prisoners were transferred to Hasag-Leipzig and 450 others were evacuated to Sweden. Nevertheless, the remaining prisoners of Malchow were forced to join the Ravensbrück evacuation march. What is surprising is that so many Jewish Ravensbrück survivors who testify that they had been in Malchow, and who were not members of the transfer to Hasag-Leipzig, report that they were marched or transported from Malchow – not northwest but in a southerly direction, and were liberated near Taucha or Grimma, meeting with US soldiers and crossing the River Elbe, a very short time before the arrival of the Soviet troops.211 Hasag-Leipzig The many hundreds of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners, those that had been sent to the Hasag-Leipzig labor camp by 3 December 1944 and those who arrived from Malchow at the end of the first week of April 1945, were all marched out through forests in heavy rain, receiving no food except uncooked rice.212 At least one was shot for picking a turnip. They were liberated by the Soviets, and many set out to return to Hungary via Prague by train and on foot.213 Halina Nelken describes the evacuation march as a hunger march, “going around in a circle running away from the front ... five thousand women stumbling along at a snail’s pace with the last ounce of strength in their bodies.”She witnessed the deaths of many who succumbed to exhaustion or were shot by guards. She and her friends escaped into the woods and worked for some time on a German farm, until the arrival of the Russians. She later returned with her small group to Kraków to look for her mother.214 LIBERATION POLICIES

The process of liberation was difficult for both the prisoners driven out on evacuation marches and those left locked in their camps. Shifts of border-line between the areas occupied by the Western and the Soviet troops caused confusion and uncertainty. Thus, the prisoners of Neustadt-Glewe met with American soldiers for only a few hours before the arrival of the Soviet troops. The prisoners who had reached Grimma near Leipzig after their evacuation from Malchow were

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194 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück liberated by American soldiers, but these remained with them for only four days before retreating to the western bank of the River Elbe.A considerable number of liberated Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners used the opportunity to travel westward with the help of the Allied troops. During the large and cruel evacuation march from Ravensbrück, some of those escaping during the march succeeded in reaching the Allied troops, while others waited for the approaching Soviet troops. The policy of the American authorities was to register the camp survivors and issue documents that entitled them to food and shelter, to assist the repatriation of those liberated camp prisoners who originated from Western Europe, and to encourage the congregation of the others in centers for “displaced persons”, where many waited for several years before being able to emigrate. The policy of the Soviet authorities was to allow houses whose German occupants had fled to be looted and temporarily occupied by the liberated camp prisoners. After this first short period of authorized looting, they generously supplied basic food, but although being in favor of the return of the camp survivors to countries of origin within the area of Soviet occupation, they did little to assist them to travel. Apparently only one non-Western country, Czechoslovakia, organized the repatriation of both sick and healthy liberated Jewish camp prisoners. In both the Western and Soviet zones of occupation, many seriously ill liberated Jewish camp prisoners spent weeks, even months, in hospitals administered by the military authorities. The American and Soviet liberators had different reactions to meeting the victims of the Nazi concentration camps. A large number of the survivors remember that many US soldiers reacted with shock and sorrow.215 The survivors of Neustadt-Glewe remember the American soldiers crying: “The Americans drove through the camp, and arrived at the Revier. There lay mountains of corpses. The soldiers cried when they saw this misery.”216 Seren Tuvel Bernstein, a survivor of the Burgau transport, tells that, when she and several other extremely weak and emaciated survivors were carried by US soldiers to the St. Ottilien hospital, she first thought that it was raining, until she discovered that the soldier carrying her was crying. As already mentioned, a large number of sick Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners who had previously been transported to Bergen-Belsen, were – after its liberation on 15 April – evacuated by the Swedish Red Cross to Sweden for medical treatment.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 195 Several survivors mention the special help and assistance they received from Jewish soldiers. Erna de Vries (war name Korn) remembers that, at the end of the evacuation march from Ravensbrück, the Soviet soldiers they met wanted to send them by train to Leipzig.As she intended to return to Western Germany,she did not want to travel eastwards.An American Jewish soldier brought her to a clinic to be treated, helped her to pass to the American-held zone, and also gave her cigarettes for trading so she would not have to beg for food. Sara Seren Tuvel Bernstein tells the story of the few wounded and sick Hungarian Jewish women who, after fleeing from the bombed train at Schwabhausen, were hiding in an abandoned work-camp. US soldiers approached and tried to convince them to join them in their vehicle. The women were afraid, as they neither understood the soldiers’ language nor recognized their uniforms. The soldiers left, and reappeared soon after with a Jewish comrade who explained to them in Yiddish that their intention was to take them to a hospital. Perhaps the most poignant story is that of Israeli survivor Sonja Strochlitz,war name Pfeffer,who remembers that,when she and several other young Jewish girls whose evacuation march from Malchow had ended at Grimma, they were looked after over four days with great dedication and affection by a young American Jewish soldier, Marvin Palanker. He protected them from “wild parties”, played his violin for them, and then helped them to cross the River Elbe into the Americanheld zone.As she said in a phone interview,“he gave me back my life.”217 A great number of sick and wounded Jewish camp survivors, among them many women from the Burgau transport, received crucial help during the first days of liberation from the Jewish physician, Dr. Zalman Grinberg, at the time himself a prisoner who had just been evacuated from the Bavarian Kaufering camp. Finally, the troubling subject of rape and threat of rape by the liberators has to be mentioned. When the Soviet soldiers told the camp survivors to loot the German houses in order to obtain food and clothing, they did not confuse the women survivors of the camps with the civilian German enemy population. Nevertheless, most survivors liberated by Soviet troops mention cases of rape (it usually had happened to a friend), and nearly all of them mention the constant threat of rape. Thus, it appears that many Soviet soldiers considered themselves entitled to rape all the women found after their victory in Germany218 and that – especially when intoxicated – they did not differentiate between German civilians and victims of Nazi Germany.

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196 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück STATISTICAL SUMMING-UP OF ALL FIFTH-PERIOD ARRIVALS

The total number of arrivals during the fifth period was 3757. This number includes the 446 who presumably arrived in 1945 but who may have arrived somewhat earlier. (We have no information about the dates of arrival of another 32, and they are not included here.) Countries of origin Table 8.7 (also see diagram 11, p. 273) shows the countries of origin of fifth-period arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch (AT) compared to those not from it (non-AT). Table 8.7 Country of origin

Total (%)

AT

(%)

non-AT (%)

Poland Hungary Slovakia* German Reich Romania France Italy Greece Netherlands Yugoslavia** Belgium Austria Soviet Union*** Lithuania Turkey Norway Latvia Denmark Bulgaria USA Unknown Total

1620 670 537 166 106 101 80 60 57 55 52 22 14 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 203 3757

1205 596 367 137 90 90 35 46 55 48 50 20 14 4 3 1 0 0 1 1 75 2841§

74.42 89 68.3 82.53 84.90 89.11 43.75 76.66 96.50 87.27 98.15 90.90 100 100 100 100 0 0 100 100 36.58 75.6

415 74 170 29 16 11 45 14 2 7 2 2 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 128 916

43.1 17.8 14.2 4.42 2.82 2.69 2.13 1.60 1.51 1.46 1.38 0.59 0.37 0.10 0.07 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 5.4 100

25.6 11 31 17.47 15.09 10.90 56.25 23.33 3.50 12.72 3.85 9.09 0 0 0 0 100 100 0 0 63.41 24.4

* Slovakia includes Czechia and Czechoslovakia. ** Yugoslavia includes Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. *** Soviet Union includes Ukraine. § Includes the 443 who presumably arrived in the fifth period with the AT, but for whom we have insufficient documentation.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 197 The largest group of the known fifth-period arrivals is the one that came from Poland (1620 women, 43.1%). The second largest, but considerably smaller,is the group from Hungary (670 women,17.8%); 1262 of the 3757 women, girls, and children came from 18 other countries, and the countries of origin of the remaining (203, 5.4 %) are unknown. There are several significant differences in the compositions of two major groups of Jewish arrivals between those who arrived with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch (AT), and those who kept arriving either directly from their countries of origin or from other camps (non-AT). The arrivals from the German Reich, including Austria, whose numbers had dwindled in the third and fourth periods, were a significant part of those arriving with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. Similarly, arrivals from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, who constituted few of the non-AT arrivals, made up sizable groups of those who arrived from the evacuation of Auschwitz (AT). Age groups Among the arrivals of the fifth period, the age groups 19–25 and 26–35 made up a small majority (53.6%). Among the non-Auschwitz arrivals they made up only 47.3%.Among the arrivals from Auschwitz they made up as much as 56.6%, reflecting the systematic killing of Jewish children and older people in Auschwitz. (See Table 8.8, and diagram 12, p. 274.) Table 8.8 Age Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

AT

(%)

Non-AT (%)

Total

(%)

44

1.5

24

2.6

68

1.8

318

11.2

75

8.2

393

10.54

1021 588 180 59 4 74 623 2841

35.9 20.7 6.3 2 0.1 0.1 21.9 75.5 (of total)

247 160 71 55 35 26 223 916

26.9 17.4 7.7 6 3.8 2.8 24.5 24.4 (of total)

1268 748 251 114 39 30 848 3757*

33.7 19.9 6.7 3 1 0.8 22.6 100

* This number includes the 443 who presumably arrived in the fifth period with the AT, but for whom we have insufficient documentation.

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198 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Thus, among the 2841 arrivals of the fifth period coming with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, only 2.2% of the women were over 45, as compared with 12.6% of the non-AT. Fate As previously mentioned, our data about the fifth period are based mainly on survivors’ testimonies, so that the statistical analysis of the fate of the Ravensbrück prisoners of this period is obviously biased. Presumably there were many more Jewish arrivals to Ravensbrück in the fifth period not registered anywhere, about whose fate no survivor reported, and who are therefore not included in this calculation. Only in the case of the arrivals from Krupp-Neukölln do we know that the names of over 220 survivors are missing. Most of the other missing names have to be those who died a few weeks before or after the end of the War. With these reservations, we know of 1882 survivors, 51%, of the total number of 3757 arrivals of the fifth period: 698 US survivors, 420 Israeli survivors, and 764 other survivors; 499 of the arrivals are known to have died, and the fates of 1369 remain unknown. Table 8.9 shows the fate of the fifth-period arrivals, those of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch (AT) and others (non-AT). Table 8.9 Fate

AT

(%)

Non-AT

(%)

Total

(%)

Died Survived Unknown Total

294 1411 1136 2841

10 49.7 40 76

214 469 235 918

23.5 51 25.5 24

508 1880 1371 3759

13.5 50 36.5 100

Table 8.10 indicates where the 1880 survivors settled. A LATE LARGE TRANSPORT OF JEWISH MEN TO THE WOMEN’S CAMP

From the reports of 10 US survivors and 2 Israeli survivors who had registered Ravensbrück as one of their camps, it transpires that during the last weeks of the existence of the camp, a large transport of male

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 199 Table 8.10 Country of settlement

Number

USA Israel Sweden Czechoslovakia Italy France Australia Hungary Germany Poland Greece Belgium Canada Romania Switzerland Great Britain Netherlands Soviet Union Brazil Chile Uruguay Yugoslavia Unknown Total

698 421 59 32 26 21 18 13 9 9 9 9 8 4 4 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 532 1880

% 37.1 22.39 3.13 1.70 1.38 1.11 0.95 0.69 0.48 0.48 0.48 0.48 0.42 0.21 0.21 0.21 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 28.29 100

prisoners originating from the Braunschweig concentration camp arrived.According to these testimonies there were at least 1000 mainly young men – 95% of them Jewish, and most of whom originated from ·ódz´ in Poland, and had previously been in Auschwitz. They spent between a few days and six weeks in the women’s camp – not in the men’s camp – under appalling conditions, before being transferred in open cattle trucks to the Ludwigslust camp. There they were soon liberated by the US army, just hours after their SS guards had fled. Several of these survivors tell two astonishing stories.The first claims that the entire transport from Braunschweig had been selected to be evacuated to Sweden, and that they were supposed to be exchanged for

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200 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück prisoners of war. Due to the bombing of the rails at Celle, they could not continue. After waiting for a new locomotive, the evacuation plans were abandoned and the men were brought to Ravensbrück. These testimonies indicate that Bernadotte had originally included in his prisoners of war exchange activities a scheme involving the evacuation of a large number of male Jewish concentration camp prisoners. The narrator of the second story reports seeing in Ravensbrück a huge heap of male dead – “as long as two barracks”. This shocking story also appeared in Silvia Grohs-Martin’s memoir. This report concerns the fate of the prisoners of the small Ravensbrück men’s camp, which has not been described in this volume. They died, it seems, before the transfer of many of its surviving inmates in March 1945 to Sachsenhausen. NOTES 1. Before that date prisoners in Ravensbrück itself were killed by execution, medical experiments, lethal injection, and perhaps also by gas in a truck or train wagon hidden in the forest behind the Siemens workshops. (Germaine Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, mit einem Anhang “Die Massentötungen durch Gas in Ravensbrück” by Anise Postel-Vinay, Lüneburg, 1998, p. 392.) 2. Starting on 2 March 1945, the selected women were transported directly to the gas chamber. (Grit Philipp, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im FrauenKonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 1939–1945, Berlin, 1999, p. 198.) 3. Charlotte Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne in Ravensbrück: Erinnerungen des Häftlings Nr. 1078, Berlin, 1987, p. 148, quotes reports from the Revier (Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA Bd. 42, Bericht-Nr. 1003) that 727 prisoners died from typhus in December 1944, 1221 in January 1945, and 1514 in February. 4. Testimony about typhus in Neustadt-Glewe: Israeli survivor Niza Ganor, war name Anicka Frenkel, interviewed on 13 March 13 1997 by J.B.A., I.D.K, and A.K. 5. The transfers to Penig and Meuselwitz at the end of January 1945 had nevertheless filled orders from industrialists in these two camps. 6. A large transport, mainly of French and Belgian prisoners, to Bergen-Belsen left Ravensbrück on 3 February 1945 (Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 193); a second larger transport of several thousands left on 27 February (ibid., p. 197). A transport to Mauthausen left on 2 March (ibid., p. 198). Israeli survivor #498 Elisabeth Silagi, war name Laufer, testifies to having been sent to Mauthausen in April 1945, and from there to Gunskirchen, where she was liberated by Americans. 7. The prisoners evacuated from Hasag-Leipzig had been marched by about 15 April, and were liberated on 29 April near the Elbe river (testimony by Israeli survivor Privas, Chana, war name Anna Szklarczyk, Ravensbrück prisoner number 98815). 8. Transfer list to Graslitz, 1 April, with 36 Jewish names, and transfer list to Neu Rohlau, 2 April, with 9 Jewish names; signatures: United States National

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 201

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

Archives, Washington: Record Group 338 Army Commands, stack area 290, row 13, compartment 22, shelf 3, box 536 oversize (volume 126 = book No. 7, volume 127 = book No. 8) (location 000–50–46). Esther Kemeny, On the Shores of Darkness, Burlingame, CA, 2003, p. 96. Isabell Sprenger, Gross-Rosen, ein Konzentrationslager in Schlesien, Cologne, 1996, p. 354; quoted in Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 188. Books of Numbers: United States National Archives, Washington: Record Group 338 Army Commands, stack area 290, row 13, compartment 22, shelf 3, box 536 oversize (volume 126 = book No. 7, volume 127 = book No. 8) (location 000–50–46). The names, the convoglio (convoy) number and the date of leaving Trieste appear in Liliana Picciotto, Il libro della memoria gli Ebrei deportati dall’Italia (1943–1945), Milan, 2002. Transporte von Französinnen nach Ravensbrück, aufgelistet von Dörte Niedorf, September 2001, 32 pp. There was also a family of two adults and four children (Bruck and Rosenberg families, Ravensbrück prisoner numbers 25608–25613), who had Hungarian citizenship and were sent from France to Ravensbrück at the end of 1943, and later to Bergen-Belsen; all survived. See chapter 3, notes 62 and 63. Serge Klarsfeld, Memorial to the Jews Deported From France, New York, 1983, p. 601. Odette Fabius, Ravensbrück prisoner number 27293; Marguerite Solal, Ravensbrück prisoner number 23173; Suzanne Weinstein, Ravensbrück prisoner number 27568; Annette Weill, Ravensbrück prisoner number 39031. French survivor Thais Baumstein, Ravensbrück prisoner number 35175; lived in Toulouse; on the Kaninchen list; liberated in Ravensbrück. Her suicide after the War is reported in the book by her cousin Valentin Singer, Kaiserhofstrasse 12. All the other Kaninchen were young non-Jewish political Polish prisoners who had been sentenced to death in Poland. Margaret Collins Weitz, “French Women in the Resistance: Rescuing Jews”, in Resisting the Holocaust, ed. Ruby Rohrlich, Oxford, 1998, pp. 185–189. The names of three of the four French Jewish women who were sent to Mauthausen were Olympe-Leocadie Amardeilh, Ravensbrück prisoner number 49780; Madeleine Vincent, Ravensbrück prisoner number 49975, and MarieElisa Nordmann. Known to have returned via Switzerland are: Ariane Kohn, Ravensbrück prisoner number 47187; Anna Simanderakis, b. Vadon, Ravensbrück prisoner number 49667; and Olympe-Leocadie Amardeilh, Ravensbrück prisoner number 49780. Picciotto, Il libro della memoria, p. 28. Giovanna Massariello Merzagora – Paolo Masariello, “La ‘Lista delle Donne di Ravensbrück’: 600 Nomi Per Ricordare”, in Bollettino della Società Letteraria, 9bis, Verona, December 1995, pp. 31–57. A group of 17 Italian Jews, who apparently all arrived from Trieste in January or February 1945 and for whom no dates of arrival, transport numbers, or Ravensbrück numbers are known, included 11 men (1 of them a teenager, and 2 older men); they may have been sent to the Ravensbrück men’s camp and evacuated from there to Sachsenhausen with the rest of the Jewish men.

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202 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 25. The fate of four is unknown, apparently due to the fact that at least three had been registered on the Malchow–Hasag-Leipzig transfer list as Yugoslavian, not Italian. Their names do not appear in the Libro della memoria. 26. Nevertheless, several hundred sick prisoners remained in the Auschwitz Revier. Several Italian Jewish prisoners, among them Primo Levi, are known to have been liberated at Auschwitz. Most surprisingly, it is also recorded that several Jewish women prisoners liberated at Auschwitz were evacuated to Sweden. 27. Whereas nearly all survivors remember 18 January 1945, the Israeli survivor Lea Horn, war name Lea Schwalb, remembers leaving Auschwitz on 10 January and arriving on 17 January. The Israeli survivor Niza Ganor, war name Aniza Fränkel, remembers arriving in Ravensbrück not later than 20 January. According to the Kalendarium (p. 189), six women from Auschwitz had already arrived on 17 January. 28. Testimony of Gertrude Gross, Israeli survivor Ahuva Koth, in Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, ed. Karl Heinz Schütt, Schkeuditz, 1998, p. 14. 29. The shortest periods spent marching reported by survivors were one night/10 hours, and three days and two nights (testimony of Belgian survivor Sara Szczupak, widow Goldstein); the longest reported was eight days (testimony of Belgian survivor Tauba Bindel, b. Edelman). 30. Israeli survivor Lidia Vago, war name Lidia Rosenfeld, described this journey: women who died remained standing up. They were glad that it snowed on them, because it gave them a few drops of water. 31. Eva Tichauer, J’étais le numéro 20832 à Auschwitz, Paris, 1988, p. 127. 32. Halina Nelken, And Yet I Am Here!, Amherst, 1999, p. 246. 33. Testimony of Israeli survivor Irmgard Judith Becker, war name Berger: from Mauthausen the women and girls were transported on open trucks to Ravensbrück, arriving there on 23 January. Interview 15 June 1998 by J.B.A. 34. A first group of the final evacuees from Auschwitz arrived on 17 January by train. 35. Israeli survivor Esther Inka Wajsbort, war name Inka Futtermann. 36. Krupp survivor, Polish Jewess Chaja Sure Goldberg, in 1951 registered her Ravensbrück prisoner number as 109954, 1G38:32, Ansökn. G. 37. See Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 192. 38. Significantly, of the 989 Malchow prisoners who were transferred on 2 April from Malchow to Hasag-Leipzig, 751 (75.9%) are registered as Jewish and as coming from Auschwitz. Karl Heinz Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager? Über das Aussenlager Neustadt-Glewe des Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, Schkeuditz, 1997, p. 11, writes about the over-5000 women who arrived in Neustadt-Glewe from Ravensbrück between January and April: “the majority of the prisoners, over 60%, were Jewesses from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Greece and Germany, as well as Roma and Sinti from these countries.” 39. Nelken, And Yet I Am Here!, p. 248. 40. Since December 1944 “selections” had been made in the hospital by the SDG (Sanitätsdienstgrad). Serena Rosenberg (Israeli survivor #273 Serena Weber) tells in her memoirs that her sister Bella Rosenberg and her friends Katerina and Elisabeth Berger, and all the patients of one room in the hospital, were “selected” together and returned to Ravensbrück. Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, p. 90. 41. Israeli survivor #591 Lea Kisch, war name Lea Schwalb, in ibid., p. 115.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 203 42. According to the Ravensbrück Kalendarium, p. 196 – also based on Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Reinbek, 1989, p. 992. 43. Kemeny, On the Shores of Darkness, p. 96. 44. Among these 1000 who crossed the Swiss border, there must have been a considerable number of French prisoners, including several Jewish women. 45. This amazing story was corroborated in a phone interview of Mrs. Lea Horn by J.B.A., 18 May 2003. 46. The book of births (Geburtenbuch) MGR KL 27–1. 47. Schütt: Ein vergessenes Lager?, I; Ein vergessenes Lager?, II; Gedenkbuch der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus im Aussenlager Neustadt-Glewe des Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, Neustadt-Glewe, July 1998; Ein vergessenes Lager?, IV; Namen des Erinnerns: Über das Aussenlager Neustadt-Glewe des Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, Pampow, 2002. 48. Janina Palmowska. 10–11 October 1961. Archiv Staatliches Museum Auschwitz. T 41. Stgn. Osw. 885. Inv-Nr. 107180. 49. A number of these had arrived in Ravensbrück before the Auschwitz Todesmarsch; it was, however, difficult to identify them conclusively, as most are not registered on any existing arrival lists. In this case we could determine their exact dates of arrival in Ravensbrück only if they had registered as survivors and noted their data, or if we were able to contact the survivors. 50. Especially Lista 6 at the Hoover Institute, Stanford, CA, USA. 51. IG38:32, Ansökningen.; IG36:11, Utrest; IG36:44, PCIRO Claims; 1G36:42, Frageformulär; Tegen-Befragung; Nordiska Museet; E12:1–4, SUP; Registering A. All these lists that have been transferred to the Swedish National Archives have been examined by Sabine Kittel. Up to the year 1951, the Jewish survivors mentioned the camp from which they were evacuated to Sweden. 52. Seven others who had not originated from France settled there. 53. Karl Heinz Schütt found lists made by a cemetery worker, and in 1999 a Krankenbuch with the names of many of the patients in the Revier of NeustadtGlewe in the Warsaw Museum. 54. Schütt, Gedenkbuch der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. 55. Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, IV; also Nachtrag 1 (21 January 2003). 56. From 1942 all the female Aufseherinnen were trained in Ravensbrück, 3500 altogether. The time of training was three months. 57. Testimony of Israeli survivor Halina Birenbaum, war name Hala GrinsteinBalin, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, p. 2. 58. The Meister and the German workers from the Hitlerjugend constantly demanded more production. 59. According to several survivors, the hunger in Neustadt-Glewe was worse than in Auschwitz and Ravensbrück; Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, p. 28. 60. Dr. Slawomira Klein, according to testimony of Janina Palmowska, 1969, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, pp. 72–73. After liberation, Dr. Klein arranged the return of many seriously sick women by ambulance to Prague, and also arranged for the Slovakian Jewish Marta Bindiger, Belgian survivor Marta Cige, to work as a nurse in the hospital and to take care of her friend Hanka Wajcblum. 61. Dr. Dabrowska Tetmajer, Dr. Alina (Nulka) Przeyw, Julia. According to the testimony by Anna Szyller-Palarczyk (in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, p. 28), Dr. Tetmajer treated her in the Revier, where she was sick with typhoid fever.

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204 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 62. See testimony by the Polish survivor Wanda Wojtasiuk-Poltawska, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, pp. 127–128. According to the Krankenbuch, 92 Jewish patients of the Revier are registered as having died there, and the fates of 291 Jewish patients of the Revier are unknown. 63. See note 40 above. 64. Twenty-seven Jewish patients are known to have survived the Revier. 65. Testimony of Israeli survivor Shulamit Jisraeli, war name Friedel Gelbard, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, p. 13. 66. Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, pp. 17–23. 67. Testimony by Rena Kornreich-Gelissen, in ibid., pp. 61–62. 68. Ibid., pp. 70 and 107. 69. US survivor Rose Meth, war name Grünapfel, in ibid., p. 50. 70. Testimony of Israeli survivor Halina Birenbaum, war name Balin, in ibid., p. 32. 71. Israeli survivor Lea Kisch, war name Schwalb, describes the fate of a group of three sisters, one of whom was selected in the Revier, in ibid., pp. 114–115. 72. For the friendship between Halina Birenbaum and Celina (Celine Josselowitz), see ibid., p. 29. 73. For the girls originating from the German Hachshara work camps, see ibid., pp. 75–78, and Shoshana Rosenthal in Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 1, ed. Lore Shelley, Lanham, MD, pp. 8–12. Lidia Rosenberg, Israeli survivor #270 Lidia Vago, tells the story of a group of eight girls who decided at liberation to stay together, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, pp. 101 and 103–104. Margita Schwalbova describes a group of 10 women who traveled on foot to Prenzlau, and from there by bus to Czechoslovakia, in ibid., II, p. 24. German survivor Lea Zimmermann, war name Lea Geiger, describes a group of seven who returned together to Yugoslavia, in ibid., I, p. 47. 74. Kemeny, On the Shores of Darkness, p. 98. 75. Testimony of French survivor Irene Hajos, war name Irene Kluger, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, IV, p. 59. 76. Testimony of Slovakian survivor Margita Schwalbova, in ibid., II, p. 24. 77. Testimony of Serena Weber, in ibid., I, p. 90. 78. I later found the names of at least five young women who had already been transferred from Krupp-Neukölln in September 1944, and nine names of women who had been sent from there to Ravensbrück on 14 March 1945. Only one is known to have been evacuated to Sweden. The fate of the rest is unknown. 79. Recently a transfer list, of nine Jewish women from Krupp-Neukölln to Ravensbrück on 3 March 1945, was discovered among documents found in the Sachsenhausen Archive. 80. When several of the non-Israeli survivors of Krupp-Neukölln visited Israel they met their Israeli comrades, who organized a group session in Tel Aviv. 81. Due to the fact that in quite a number of cases the survivors remembered only the first names of their comrades, or only their postwar names, we could not find these names on the two Swedish Jewish lists. 82. We know the names of only three: Edita Kornfeld and her sister Kwieta, who returned to Prague, and Anna Fischel, who was evacuated to Sweden. 83. Margarethe Flanter from Germany, and US survivor ctrl. 256858 Elise Beran, war name Ika Beran, from Austria. 84. Information by Israeli survivor Sonia Shoked, war name Sonja Weingarten. 85. Several of them had worked in the same factory producing blankets for horses.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 205 86. Testimony of Israeli survivor Sonia Shoked. 87. Testimony of Israeli survivor Halina Lis, wounded on way to Sweden, researcher at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot; interviewed by J.B.A. 88. Information by Israeli survivor Tola Meltzer, war name Tauba Walach. 89. Testimony of Halina Lis. 90. Testimony of Halina Lis. 91. Edita Kornfeld, a lawyer from Prague who returned to Czechoslovakia, claimed that she was not appointed Lagerälteste, but only office manager. 92. One exception appears to have been Margarethe Flanter, or Grete F., who was 64 years old. 93. Halina Lis reports five barracks, each with 100 girls, with not more than 20 women to a room. She also reports additional barracks with Ukrainian women. 94. US survivor ctrl. 250980 Rosa Katz, war name Rose Rachel Goldberg. 95. Testimony of Rosa Katz, and of Evelina Widell, war name Evelina (Liuka) Szykier. 96. Testimony of Sonya Shoked. 97. Information by Swedish survivor Malka Marie Brandes Noring, in a letter of 15 October 2000. 98. Information by Australian survivor Ernestyna Freiheiter, war name Ernestyna Szmulowicz. 99. A transfer list does indeed exist (Überstellungsliste 17.9.44d) with two names: Esthera Weselten and Fella Wydergut. We could not confirm that these were the pregnant woman and injured girl that the survivors had known. 100. Israeli survivor Shulamit Bernstein, war name Sulamit Stern, Israeli survivor Tola Meltzer, war name Tauba Walach, and Sonya Shoked. 101. Tola Meltzer. 102. Information by Sonia Shoked; according to Israeli survivor #405, Dvora Lazarkevich, war name Deborah Wajnman, he did not use the money from the productivity bonuses, but rather his own money. 103. Information by Sonia Shoked. 104. Evelina Widell. 105. Israeli survivor Gusta Nomberg (current name). 106. Swedish survivor Maria Lindvall. 107. Cesia Cyrla Smulewicz, b. 15 July 1920, Zdunska-Wola; Chaja Sure Goldberg, b. 6 January 1925, ·ódz´. 108. Wanda Kiedrzyn´ska, Ravensbrück, kobiecy obóz koncentracyjny, Warsaw, 1961 (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive, second part, p. 150). 109. The five Israeli and visiting US survivors who met in Tel Aviv in 2000: Pola Weksberg (war name Zand), Bella Obornik (war name Jablonsky), Genia Kovalski (war name Gelbert), Lili Miller (war name Lea Kwiat), and Nehama Austria (Ostereich) (war name Natka Kosa), agreed that a list of all KruppNeukölln prisoners had been read out. 110. Evelina Widell. 111. According to the testimony of Alfrieda Laufer, Polish Swedish interview #283, the evacuation had taken place on 24 April. 112. From later accounts it became clear that several girls who did not want to be separated could not all find room in a “bus” or converted truck, and therefore were helped into a vehicle serving as an ambulance. As this vehicle traveled a somewhat different route from the others, they avoided the bombardment of the convoy.

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206 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 113. Information by Sonia Shoked. Silvia Grohs-Martin, who was evacuated with the Dutch non-Jewish women, describes in detail the intrusion of German army vehicles into the Swedish Red Cross convoy, in Silvie, New York, 2000, pp. 338–345. 114. Dvora Zilberman, war name Dora Stern. 115. She tells the amazing story that Rabbi Ehrenpreis, then Chief Rabbi of Sweden, opposed the organization of this boarding school, fearing antisemitism. According to her story, Rabbi Jakobson turned to Bernadotte for help. 116. Halina Lis, Israeli survivor Aliza Reshef, war name Frida Gerst, and Swedish survivor Hanni Agerberg, war name Baumgart, were classmates in the Ghetto ·ódz´ gymnasium. 117. Count Folke Bernadotte, The Curtain Falls, New York, 1945, p. 99. 118. L. Buchenwald, Arbeitskommando Hasag-Leipzig; Leipzig, den 8.4.1945; Transport-Liste; Malchow vom 2.4.1945. 119. Nelken, And Yet I Am Here, p. 353. 120. Gloria Hollander Lyon, “Die Odyssee einer ungarischen Jüdin”, in Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen Ravensbrück, ed. Claus Füllberg-Stolberg et al., Bremen, 1994, p. 287. 121. Dr. L. Grinberg, Bericht an den jüdischen Weltkongress Genf vom 31.05.1945, New York, Folder 21. 122. Grohs-Martin, Silvie, pp. 212–213 (see chapter 6, note 8). 123. Warsaw Archive, microfilm 15, BWA HKW 15, containing the names of 480 Jewish women and girls (275 Polish, 181 Hungarian, and 24 Slovakian) arriving on 5 March 1945 “from Ravensbrück”. Only recently has an examination of the 480 names proved that this is a transport list to Burgau, a small external camp of Dachau in Bavaria – therefore BU means Burgau (and not Buchenwald, as presumed earlier). 124. (1) Dr. Eva Langley-Dános, Prison Roulante, journal écrit par Dr. Eva Dános déportée au camp de concentration de Ravensbrück, 1945, St. Ottilien (Bavière); English translation: Eva Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels: From Ravensbrück to Burgau, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 2000, translated by herself from her Hungarian diary, written in 1945; (2) Sara Tuvel Bernstein, with Louise Loots Thornton and Marlene Bernstein Samuels, The Seamstress, New York, 1999, pp. 218–229. 125. Only Israeli survivor #80 Shoshana Bomkol, war name Rosa Goldberg, claims that her transport from Częstochowa arrived in January 1945. 126. Israeli survivor Esther Berger, b. Wollstein, #231 on Burgau list, came from Sered on 24 December 1944. 127. Polish survivor Hana Ritterman, #661 on Israeli list. 128. Gold, Volker, Die “Judengräber” von Schwabhausen, Überarbeitung der Erstfassung vom April 1985 im Januar 1990, p. 31. 129. Testimony of US survivor ctrl. 66086 Bella Schepsman, war name Bella Strasberg. 130. Testimonies of US survivors Anna Hadley ctrl. 16862, war name Hanka Handelsman; Sara Selman ctrl. 110002, war name Szari Grünberger; and Helen Klein ctrl. 212910, war name Helen Sepsz. 131. See Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels, chapter VII, note 52. 132. Ibid., pp. 77–79. 133. Ibid., p. 97.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 207 134. Bernstein, The Seamstress. 135. Her real name was Elisabeth Markovitz, Ravensbrück prisoner number 85784, #216 on the list of the Budapest transport of 21–22 November 1944. 136. This description fits a large transport from Auschwitz that arrived in Ravensbrück in about the third week of December 1944 and included mainly Polish, but also other, Jewish women. No arrival list exists of this transport. Yet most of the Polish women on the Burgau transport had come not from Auschwitz but from Częstochowa, around Christmas 1944. 137. See Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 248. 138. Hana Ritterman; see note 127. 139. According to the description of Eva Langley-Dános, on arrival in Burgau the dead were identified, registered, and even photographed, Prison on Wheels, pp. 116–117. 140. Verzeichnis der in Burgau verstorbenen KZ: Häftlinge im Jahre 1945; das Sonderstandesamt Arolsen, KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, Archiv 15.013. 141. Volker, Die “Judengräber” von Schwabhausen. 142. Israeli survivor # 418 Malka Lamhut, war name on list Fela Markowska (real war name Mela Cukierman), and Israeli survivor #164 Bluma Goldberg, war name Blima Cukierman. 143. Nelli Frey, and her sister Hilde, are listed as 163 and 164, respectively, on the Burgau list; unfortunately we know nothing about their subsequent fate. 144. Testimony of Israeli survivor #10 Rivka Avramovics, war name Renia Lewin. 145. Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 265. 146. Ibid., pp. 273–292. 147. Volker, Die “Judengräber” von Schwabhausen, p. 31. 148. We know of only one Slovakian Jewish woman of the Burgau transport who died at St. Ottilien: Lili Glück, no. 234 on the Burgau list, died on 2 May. 149. Grinberg, Bericht an den jüdischen Weltkongress Genf vom 31.05.1945, Folder 21. He emigrated to the USA in 1955, became a psychiatrist in 1965, and died on 8 August 1983. 150. We know of 25 Jewish women and children with Turkish citizenship transported to Ravensbrück from Belgium who, at the request of the Turkish government, were “released” on 28 February and transported by the Red Cross to Sweden. 151. Bernadotte, The Curtain Falls; Bernadotte, Instead of Arms: Autobiographical Notes, Stockholm and New York, 1948. 152. Elisabeth Alexander, Ravensbrück prisoner number 53002, on JSList, p. 3; Alice Weinberger, Ravensbrück prisoner number 53672, on JSList, p. 26; Irene Winzer, Ravensbrück prisoner number 53688, on JSList, p. 28. 153. Therkel Straede, “Die ‘Aktion Weisse Busse’ ”, in Befreiung, Sachsenhausen 1945, Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, Band Nr. 7, Berlin, 1996, p. 50. 154. The emissary of the World Jewish Congress in Sweden. 155. The representative of the Swedish section of the World Jewish Congress. 156. A Finnish physiotherapist who treated Himmler. 157. Norbert Masur, En Jude talar med Himmler, Stockholm, 1945, pp. 24–26. 158. From Simone Erpel, “Rettungsaktion in letzter Minute”, in Ich grüsse Euch als freier Mensch, ed. Sigrid Jacobeit and Simone Erpel, Berlin, 1995, pp. 22–77. 159. Ibid., p. 37.

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208 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 160. Information by Israeli survivor #246 Lea Schwalb-Horn; see note 41, above. 161. Anna Simanderakis, Olympe-Leocadie Amardeilh, and Ariane Kohn; see also note 21, above. 162. The names of these Austrian Communist Jewish prisoners are: Toni Lehr, Gerti Schindel, and Edith Rosenblüth-Waxberg. The story appears in the memoir of the known Jewish Austrian prisoner Maria Berner, in Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, daß Du ihn noch in Freiheit tragen kannst: Widerstehen im KZ; Österreichische Frauen erzählen, ed. Karin Berger, Elisabeth Holzinger, Lotte Podgornik, and Lisbeth N. Trallori, Vienna, 1987, pp. 194–197. 163. Grohs-Martin, Sylvie, chapter VI, note 8, pp. 332–333. 164. Testimonies on the evacuation of the Siemens group by Basia RubinsteinZajaczkowska, US survivor Betty Rubinstein, in Polish Swedish interview no. 50, and by Jolante Arato (Aufrichtig), Israeli survivor #336 Judith Taube, interviewed by J.B.A., 10 September 1997. 165. See “Neustadt-Glewe” section, above. 166. Information by Judith Taube, interviewed by J.B.A. 167. “‘Die letzten Tage von Ravensbrück’, Tagebuch von Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier vom 27. April 1945”, in: Französische Frauen in Ravensbrück, Vereinigung ehemaliger Ravensbrückhäftlinge (ed.), Paris 1965, S. 420. 168. Among the 215 non-Polish Jewish evacuees from the main camp to Sweden there were 81 Hungarians, 48 Czechoslovakians, 36 Romanians, 7 Dutch, 26 French, and 12 from the German Reich or stateless. 169. Liberated Jews Arrived in Sweden in 1945, Mosaiska Församlingen, Wahrendorffsgatan 3, Stockholm, Malmö, 1946. 170. Source for information about evacuations beginning on 22 April: Couturier, Die letzten Tage von Ravensbrück, p. 394. 171. Erpel, Rettungsaktion in letzter Minute. 172. From this transport 267 women, all Polish Jewish, were evacuated to Sweden, around 38 of whom we know were evacuated from Malchow. 173. That is, they were not transferred to Hasag-Leipzig on 2 April. 174. According to the registrations of the four Beendorf survivors in archival material of the Jewish congregation of Stockholm: Paula Grossova, b. Zelinkova, and Edith, Elisabeth, and Ilona Ackerman. 175. Biography by Claus Füllberg-Stolberg in Frauen in Konzentrationslagern, pp. 279–290. 176. Charlotte Delbo reports (Le Convoidu 24 Janvier, Paris, 1965, p. 22) that the five French non-Jewish women who had come to Ravensbrück from Auschwitz in 1944 and had worked in Beendorf were on this train; they arrived in Sweden at the beginning of May and were soon repatriated to France. 177. Iren (Fradele) Schreiber, the eldest, b. 1 June 1919; Piroska (Hanna) Schreiber, b. 11 July 1921, Swedish survivor Hanna Lazar; Lili Schreiber, b. 18 October 1923, Swedish survivor Lilli Jodelsohn; Ella Schreiber, b. 14 June 1924, Swedish survivor Gabriella Wronkou; Dora Schreiber, b. 15 October 1928, Swedish survivor Dora Bodlander; and Margit Schreiber, b. 15 October 1928, Swedish survivor Miriam Mosesson. Dora and Margit are identical twins who pretended to be born a year apart. 178. Swedish TV documentary film: If One of Us Should Die, 1999; narrator: Miriam Schreiber Mosesson. The film was shown on Israeli TV channel 8 in 2002. 179. Interview #113, by Helena Driednicka, in Doverstorp, 13 January 1946.

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The Fifth Period – the Last Stage 209 180. Source for date: Liliane Rozenberg-Leignel, Souvenirs des Camps de Ravensbrück et de Bergen-Belsen, Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris, Document 16473. 181. Transports from Berlin on 26 October 1943, and from Westerbork on 7 February and 6 April 1944; see List of Names, Third Period. 182. An Israeli survivor told the following story. She was lying on the ground in Bergen-Belsen next to masses of dead bodies, and was no longer able to speak. When she noticed a passing soldier she managed to reach out and touch the cuff of his trousers. Thus someone noticed that she was still alive. 183. Apparently some names are listed twice, with small differences in spelling or data. Therefore, the total number may be somewhat smaller. 184. Sam Silberstein (Zylberstein), Joseph Orlowski, and seven other survivors of this group of Jewish men from Braunschweig; mail interviews with J.B.A., July and August 2000. 185. A very limited number of Jewish Ravensbrück survivors report having been sent from Ravensbrück to additional labor camps not mentioned here. 186. Sammlungen MGR/SBG, RA Bd. 22, Bericht-Nr. 230; mentioned in Philipp, Kalendarium, p. 208. 187. Erpel, “Ravensbrücker Todesmärsche 1945”, in Bulletin für Faschismus – und Weltkriegsforschung, ed. Werner Röhr and Brigitte Berlekamp, Beiheft 1, Berlin, 2002, p. 154. 188. Ibid., p. 161. 189. Testimony of Erna de Vries, war name Erna Korn. 190. Most of the people on this transport had either been transferred to BergenBelsen in March or had been rescued by the Bernadotte-Aktion. Several had died or been “selected” in Ravensbruck. According to the testimony of her friends, Helena Lau, Ravensbrück prisoner number 90176, was shot during the evacuation march. 191. Israeli survivor Klara Christof, war name Klara Hetenyi, interviewed on 13 August 1997 by A.K. 192. Erna de Vries reports that they spent one night in Malchow under terrible conditions. 193. Erpel, Ravensbrücker Todesmärsche 1945, pp. 161–163. 194. Israeli survivor #52 Eva Efrat, war name Eva Adler, telephone interview 21 May 2003 by J.B.A. 195. See chapter 7, note 7. 196. US survivor 80526 Adele Troedl, war name Adel Trödl, and US survivor 44390 Eva Vayda, war name Eva Weiss, who answered questionnaires. 197. Questionnaire answered by US survivor 288011 Dora Bornstein, war name Dwojra Szczukocka. 198. According to the testimony of January 1956 by Eva Feyer (Ewa Feiyer, Ravensbrück prisoner number 86217) Wiener Library, P.III.h., as quoted by Linde Apel, Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939–1945, Berlin, 2003, pp. 276–278. 199. Information by US survivor 7596 Beatrice Doliner, war name Barbara Szafranska (assumed Polish identity), real name Aska Asia Schaffer, Ravensbrück prisoner number 7010. 200. Hungarian survivor Kato Gyulai (interviewed by J.B.A. on 27 July 1998 in Budapest) spent nearly six months in a Russian hospital with tuberculosis.

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210 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 201. This escape was reported by US survivor 43502 Elizabeth Kroo-Teitelbaum. 202. Interview in Rochelle Saidel, The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Madison, WI, 2004, pp. 164–165. 203. War name Piroska Steiner, Ravensbrück prisoner number 89260; interviewed in Budapest by J.B.A. on 27 July 1998. 204. Erprobungsstelle Rechlin, pp. 117–120. 205. “Gedenkzeichen an der Strecke des Todesmarsches, Umgang mit der Erinnerung”, in Protokoll des 32. Bundesweiten Gedenkstättenseminars vom 3.– 6. Juni 1999 in Flecken Zechlin, “Evakuierung und Befreiung – das Museum des Todesmarsches (Belower Wald/Wittstock)”, p. 8; quoted in Erpel, Ravensbrücker Todesmärsche 1945, p. 157. 206. Ibid. 207. See chapter 7, note 102. 208. BStU, ZA ZUV 1, A3, B1.346, 351. 209. Questionnaire information by Leah Dagani, war name Lenke Engländer, Israeli survivor #216. 210. US survivor 16270 Ester Grün, war name Ester Elise Weiss, Ravensbrück prisoner number 95494, Charlotte Feldmann, Ravensbrück prisoner number 95611, and Eva Kupfer, Ravensbrück prisoner number 95683, all Hungarian Jewish. 211. Testimony of Israeli survivor #691 Sonia Strochlitz, war name Sonja Pfeffer; interviews in June and July 2003 by J.B.A. 212. The names of only 68 survivors are known to us: 41 in the USA, 15 in Israel, 5 in Hungary, 3 in Italy, 2 in Sweden, 1 in France, and 1 in Slovakia. 213. Testimonies by Tova R., interviewed on 28 March 2003 by J.B.A, and Martha C., phone interview 30 March 2003 by J.B.A. Both these witnesses report the difficulties of traveling to Czechoslovakia and Hungary due to the constant danger of being raped by Soviet soldiers. 214. Nelken, And Yet I Am Here!, pp. 256–265. 215. Testimony of Anna Szyller-Palarczyk, a Polish political prisoner, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, p. 28. 216. Testimony of Lilli Lang-Müller, in ibid., I, p. 67. 217. The contact between these women and Marvin Palanker lasted until his death, and Sonja Strochlitz renewed the contact with his daughter, Louise Palanker. 218. Erika Kounio Amariglio: “5th May, 1945 ... The Russian soldiers, as we heard later, had been given the order: ‘treat the Germans as they behaved in Russia. Burn, pillage, and rape!’ ... they raped any female they happened across ... even old women were not spared, one of our comrades told us. That lasted for twenty four hours, and then the regular occupation army arrived. We could breathe freely again ...” (From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back, London, 1998, p. 133.)

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9 SUMMING-UP: THE PLACE OF RAVENSBRÜCK IN THE HOLO CAUST OF JEWISH WOMEN

STATISTICAL SUMMING-UP OF ALL FIVE PERIODS

Countries of origin Table 9.1 Country of origin

Number

Hungary Poland Slovakia* Germany France Romania Italy Netherlands Austria Greece Yugoslavia** Belgium Turkey Stateless Soviet Union*** Denmark Spain Lithuania USA Latvia

7,810 3,928 1,620 1,126 391 208 164 164 154 91 91 79 74 41 41 11 8 7 3 2

% 47.85 24.06 9.92 6.9 2.39 1.27 1.00 1.00 0.94 0.56 0.56 0.48 0.45 0.25 0.25 0.07 0.05 0.04 0.02 0.01

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212 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Table 9.1 (cont.): Country of origin Luxembourg Norway Portugal Great Britain Bulgaria China Argentina Unknown Total

Number 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 311 16,331

% 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 1.9 100

* Includes Czechoslovakia and Czechia. ** Includes Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. *** Includes the Ukraine.

The Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück originated from 27 countries, with significant numbers coming from 14 (see Table 9.1, and diagrams 13, p. 275, and 14, p. 276). During the fourth period, Jewish women and girls originating from Hungary became by far the largest group of Jewish arrivals, and thus also constitute the largest “national” group of all the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück. Even when we subtract the arrivals – mainly from the Netherlands – who, in the third period, held formal Hungarian citizenship, as well as those of the fourth period who were classified as Hungarians but later identified as Slovakian or Romanian, the Hungarian group remains the largest by far. Those originating from Poland constituted the second largest group. Age groups during all five periods Table 9.2 Age

Total

%

Children up to 13 Teenagers up to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

349 1,637 5,182 4,060 2,402 762 419 234 1,286 16,331

2.4 10 31.7 24.8 14.7 4.7 2.6 1.4 7.7 100

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Summing-Up 213 Table 9.2 presents the age data. (Also see diagram 15 on p. 277 for a summary, and diagram 16 on p. 278 for an analysis of the individual periods.) During the first two periods, there were no children and hardly any teenagers, but a number of women over 55. In the third period, with family groups from the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, there were a considerable number of children, teenagers, and older women. In the fourth period, the only children, young teenagers, and older women to arrive came in the French family transport from Toulouse, in the three Polish ghetto transports, the Slovakian family transports, and the small Italian ones. The overwhelming majority of the arrivals from Auschwitz, from Auschwitz via Frankfurt/Walldorf, and directly from Budapest, consisted of women considered to be of working age, between 16 and 45. Fate in all five periods Out of the 16,331 names identified, 4164 (25.5%) are known to have survived, 2827 (17.3%) are known to have died, and the fate of 9336 (57.2%) remains unknown. (See Table 9.3, and diagram 17, p. 279.) Table 9.3 Fate

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th + 4/5 Unknown Total

Survivors % of period Known to have died % of period Unknown % of period Total % of total

9 1.26 560

4 0.72 437

232 35.15 143

2014 19.03 1157

1881 50.03 508

21 33.33 33

4164 25.50 2827

78.76 142 19.97 711 4.35

78.88 112 20.39 554 3.39

21.66 10.93 280 7414 43.18 70.03 660 10583 4.04 64.80

13.51 1369 36.47 3759 23.01

52.38 9 14.28 63 0.38

17.31 9336 57.18 16331 100

During the first two periods the number of survivors was minimal, as survival was unintended. The percentage of known dead was extremely high, and most of the rather small number of those whose fate is unknown can also be assumed to have died before the end of 1945. During the third period, due to the – although only temporary – special attitudes of the SS to those with formally Hungarian, Romanian, Turkish, Italian, and Spanish citizenship, I surmise that these slightly less cruel conditions, as well as the early evacuation of “Turkish”mothers and children to Sweden, contributed to a somewhat

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214 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück higher rate of survival. Yet, the 96 women aged 55 or more and the 60 children under age 14 raised the mortality rates of these family groups. The SS tended to send older women to Auschwitz and to “select” children discovered to be sick. The somewhat better work conditions of the Mischlinge, and their being mainly of the average age, appear also to have contributed to their higher survival rate. Information about the fate of the fourth-period arrivals is incomplete, especially of many of those sent from Ravensbrück to external labor camps. Since many of those arriving in Ravensbrück in August and September 1944 spent an extremely short time there, they may never have registered as survivors of Ravensbrück.Yet there is also one camp, Altenburg, for which we have the names of all those “selected” and sent to Auschwitz. So I surmise that both the number of survivors and of dead of those sent to external labor camps is higher than we know. Among those arriving in November and December 1944, the death rate is known to have been high, due to the rapidly deteriorating conditions, the spread of epidemics, and the beginning of killing by gas in Ravensbrück itself in January 1945. The statistics about the fate of the arrivals of the fifth period is somewhat biased in favor of the survivors, since Ravensbrück registrations and death documents regarding the majority of Auschwitz Todesmarsch arrivals are missing. Information is thus overwhelmingly based on the registrations and testimonies of survivors. Similarly, nearly the entire group of women whose dates, and even periods, of arrival are uncertain, consists of survivors who, when registering or testifying, were not asked to supply information about dates; later it was difficult or impossible to reach many of them to fill these gaps. In the third, fourth, and fifth periods, deaths occurring in Ravensbrück were under-reported. By then there was no longer any orderly registration, and three of the four death lists of those killed by gas in Ravensbrück are very partial. Non-Jewish Ravensbrück researchers have assumed that about one-half of all the prisoners of Ravensbrück perished and that the other half survived. Taking into account all the circumstances and limitations surrounding the registration of Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück over the six years of the camp’s existence – and of the authentication of their fate – I came to the following conclusions: of all those who had arrived during the first four years of Ravensbrück’s existence, until March 1943, not more than 1% survived; over the

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Summing-Up 215 entire period, the rate of known survival was lower than 30% and could not have reached even 40% at best. Age and fate for the entire period of Ravensbrück’s existence Table 9.4 is an attempt to correlate the age and fate of the Jewish prisoners for the entire period. It is limited by two factors. The first is that we do not know the age of 1286 women and children, 7.87% of the total. The second, perhaps even weightier, factor is that we have no information about the fate of 9336 (57.17%) – well over half – of the 16,331 prisoners known to us. Within these limitations, it becomes clear that, even from the age of 36, the mortality rate of Jewish prisoners rose, and that for prisoners over the age of 47 it was over 60%, reaching 70% by age 56. Table 9.4 Age

Children up to 13 Teenagers to 18 19–25 26–35 36–45 46–55 56–65 66 and over Unknown Total

Died Number %

Survived Number %

Fate unknown Number %

Total Number %

46

13.18

181

51.86

122

34.96

349

2.14

121

7.39

514

31.40

1,002

61.21

1,637

10.02

356 428 573 462 293 162 386

6.87 10.54 23.86 60.63 69.93 69.23 30.02

1,567 846 285 55 10 2 708

30.24 20.84 11.87 7.22 2.39 0.85 55.05

3,259 2,786 1,544 245 116 70 192

62.89 68.62 64.28 32.15 27.68 29.91 14.93

5,182 4,060 2,402 762 419 234 1,286

31.73 24.86 14.71 4.67 2.57 1.43 7.87

2,827

17.31

4,168

25.52

9,336

57.17

16,331

100

RAVENSBRÜCK AND AUSCHWITZ

As it was the largest death camp,Auschwitz has become a synonym for the Holocaust. What were the relations between the SS authorities of Auschwitz and those of the much smaller women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück, especially concerning the fate of Jewish women and girls? According to an extant document, the Kommandant of Auschwitz ordered the transportation to Auschwitz of the Cyclone B gas that

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216 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück remained at the Euthanasia station in Bernburg, where between February and April 1942 nearly all the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück – women and men – had been gassed. This order may serve as an illustration of the close cooperation of the SS authorities of Ravensbrück and those of Auschwitz in the destruction of Jewish prisoners. It went far beyond the cooperation and exchange that existed between Ravensbrück and other concentration camps. On 23 March 1942, a transport of 1000 Ravensbrück prisoners, mainly “asocial” and “criminal”, left for Auschwitz, accompanied by female SS personnel, including the Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld. Among them also was a group of “political”prisoners who had volunteered to go to Auschwitz, and this group included two popular Lagerläuferinnen (messengers). Thus, Ravensbrück prisoners became the first in the newly-established women’s camp at AuschwitzBirkenau, as well as its first Funktionshäftlinge. From this date, more and more Jewish women began to be sent to Auschwitz. Although no exact dates and no lists are preserved, Tillion, BuberNeumann, and Kiedrzyńska record the transport headed by Langefeld, as well as several transports of Jewish prisoners to Auschwitz during the summer of 1942.1 Thus, the Ravensbrück SS command was deeply involved in the establishment of the women’s camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Another example of this cooperation is the fact that in December 1944, when Auschwitz was no longer accepting new victims, a team of Auschwitz experts arrived in Ravensbrück and built the camp’s own gas chamber, where subsequently c.6000 prisoners, among them about 1260 Jews, were killed between January and April 1945.2 As described in chapter 5, in the second period, 522 Jewish prisoners, all or nearly all of the remaining Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück were sent to Auschwitz on 5 October 1942.3 We know about a smaller transport of 2 October. On 8 October, the SS head wardens of the women’s concentration camps Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück changed places.4 On 30 January 1943, and some time in February, 12 new Jewish arrivals were also sent to Auschwitz, among them three girls from the Jugendschutzlager Uckermark. In total, the names and dates of death of 21 Jewish prisoners who had arrived in Ravensbrück during the first period, and of 339 who had arrived in the second period, are registered in the Auschwitz Deathbooks for 1942 and 1943.5 The registration of deaths that are preserved ended in summer 1943. Of all the

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Summing-Up 217 Jewish prisoners ever sent from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz, only three are known to have been returned to Ravensbrück, two of whom survived. During the third period, the first Jewish women were sent in the opposite direction, from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück in accord with a new directive concerning Jews of mixed Jewish descent. In September 1943, 85 women and girls of mixed Jewish descent who had previously been deported to Auschwitz from Germany and West and Central European countries were transferred to Ravensbrück. In the fourth period, as we know from handwritten remarks on several arrival lists of seven older Jewish women who had arrived in the third period, older and sick Jewish women were sent to Auschwitz in two transports (15 August and 3 October 1944). One of these seven survived. Transports of the sick and old from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz continued until the end of October 1944. Erika Kounio Amariglio, who worked in Auschwitz in the office where arrivals and deaths were registered, reports in her memoir that, at the end of September or beginning of October 1944, “a big transport arrived in Birkenau from Ravensbrück, Germany. None of the prisoners were admitted to the camp; they were all Muselleute, walking dead, and were sent straight to the gas chambers.”6 In the fourth period, during August 1944, a new SS policy brought about 1800 Jewish women and girls directly from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück. Most of them stayed in Ravensbrück only a short time before being transferred to various external labor camps of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück. Ravensbrück had become the central slave market for those Jewish women of working age imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau who had not been killed together with their younger and older relatives. As the supply of forced labor from the countries of Western Europe was drying up due to the Allied invasion in Normandy, they were now considered suitable slave workers for the German war industry. Direct transports of Jewish women from Auschwitz were renewed on 3 November, when a huge transport of 1959, mainly Polish and Hungarian Jewish women, arrived. We know about another transport from Auschwitz in the middle of December. Its arrival list is lost, and only the names of 94 survivors are known. The second largest transport – of 1672 Jewish women and girls, all classified as “Hungarian” – that arrived in Ravensbrück on 23–25 November 1944 from Frankfurt/Walldorf, had originally been

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218 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück sent there from Auschwitz at the end of August 1944. Thus, nearly half of all the arrivals in Ravensbrück during the fourth period originated in Auschwitz. There is an additional connection between Ravensbrück and Auschwitz in the fourth period.We do not know how many of the 1800 women and girls who had arrived in Ravensbrück from Auschwitz in August and September 1944, and had been sent to the external labor camps of Buchenwald, were sent back to Auschwitz to be killed when they were considered to be no longer capable of working. As already mentioned, a document concerning the external labor camp of Altenburg indicates that 123 out of 500 Jewish women and girls were sent from Altenburg to Auschwitz only one month after having arrived there from Ravensbrück.7 There was a general policy in Buchenwald of sending Jewish prisoners who were no longer capable of working from its external labor camps – either to Auschwitz (in November 1944 Auschwitz began to refuse new transports of prisoners) or Bergen-Belsen, or to return them to Ravensbrück to be gassed there. In the fifth period, 2841 Jewish women and girls known to have arrived in Ravensbrück were survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. They comprised 75.7% of a total of 3759 known arrivals in that period. Apparently, the majority of Jewish women prisoners of Auschwitz who survived that camp and its cruel evacuation marches eventually became prisoners of Ravensbrück. (Many others are known to have been sent to Bergen-Belsen.8) In addition, among a second group of the fifth period, of the 913 women who arrived not from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch but mainly from other concentration camps, at least 356 had also spent some time in Auschwitz. Finally, among the third group – those arriving from disbanded labor camps – were 66 Polish Jewish women arriving from Gundelsdorf, an external labor camp of Flossenbürg, who had come from Auschwitz in September 1944.9 The group that arrived last, the c.490 women and girls (271 names were identified) from the small labor camp Krupp-Neukölln in Berlin, had all been sent there from Auschwitz in August–September 1944. Thus, we know that 7195 (44%) of the 16,321 Jewish arrivals to Ravensbrück identified by name in all five periods had previously been prisoners of Auschwitz. Our very partial documentation indicates that at least 544 Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück were sent to

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Summing-Up 219 Auschwitz to die there, and at least 127, and perhaps many more, had previously come to Ravensbrück from Auschwitz and were sent back to Auschwitz from external labor camps. It is thus obvious that there was a close connection between the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück and Auschwitz that lasted from the summer of 1942 until the evacuation of Auschwitz in January 1945. The first rumors about the mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz had reached Ravensbrück already in the summer of 1942, when a group of radical Jehovah’s Witnesses was returned from Auschwitz to be executed in Ravensbrück for their refusal to work for the war effort.10 Yet at the time, those rumors were probably not widely believed. To what extent did the fact that over 44% of the Jewish arrivals in Ravensbrück had previously been prisoners of Auschwitz affect their behavior? In many memoirs by non-Jewish Ravensbrück survivors, and also in those of Jewish direct arrivals from Hungary, we find descriptions of the peculiar and rather frightening behavior of the Auschwitzerinnen. It is said that they fought over food and drink and that they looked different. It was assumed that their terrible experiences in Auschwitz must have been the cause of this conduct. It is, however, significant that these characterizations of women from Auschwitz seem not to have been applied to the thousands who were sent from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück (or to Frankfurt/Walldorf or Krupp-Neukölln) in August–September 1944, but to those arriving on 3 November and in December 1944, and more so to the arrivals from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch from January until the end of February 1945. The aggressive, egotistical, and even irrational behavior described may not, however, have been the result of the horrible experiences of Auschwitz, but to the extreme thirst, hunger, cold, overcrowding, near suffocation, and lack of sleep they endured on the way to Ravensbrück and immediately after their arrival there. It is significant that Seren Tuvel Bernstein describes similar behavior by Hungarian women on their way from the Austrian border to Ravensbrück after they had been denied water for nearly two weeks. Both Bernstein and Eva Langley-Dános describe in their memoirs the horrifying effects on the women transported to Burgau, who had never been in Auschwitz, of the extreme overcrowding in a locked space, and of lack of oxygen, water, and food. How did the Jewish arrivals from Auschwitz see themselves? US survivor Rosa Katz, war name Goldberg, one of those sent to

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220 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Krupp-Neukölln, relates that, on arriving there, she stood for a long time under the hot shower “in order to get rid of the horrible Auschwitz smell”.11 Erna de Vries (Korn), who arrived from Auschwitz with the first transport in September 1943, relates her meeting with an older acquaintance from Auschwitz that caused her to pull herself together. Several later arrivals from Auschwitz mention a moment when they had to make a decision to “remain human”. Lidia Vago (Rosenfeld) even considered the physical condition of the “oldtimers”, of those who had been in Ravensbrück for some time before she arrived from Auschwitz with the Todesmarsch, to be much worse. Obviously, in spite of all the horrors of Ravensbrück, the witnessing of Auschwitz caused an additional and special psychological burden. As Lidia Vago expressed it poignantly in her poem “Auschwitz”: They drove me out when it ceased to be. Yet who will drive it out of me? It still exists. Only death will be my exorcist.12

WOMEN AND GIRLS OF PART-JEWISH DESCENT (MISCHLINGE) IN RAVENSBRÜCK

What role did Ravensbrück play in the imprisonment and destruction of women and girls of part-Jewish descent? Among the Jewish arrivals of the first period known to us, there were only 16 called Jüdin ersten Grades, Halbjüdin, or Judenmischling; during the second period there were 15, during the third 138, the fourth 36, and the fifth 28, a total of 233. The directives for the Nazi policy concerning the so-called Judenmischlinge were unclear and were changed several times. The deportation of Mischlinge from Germany to Auschwitz started somewhat later than that of women of all-Jewish descent. Thus, when the Jewish mother of Erna Korn, later Erna de Vries, was arrested in Western Germany and deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1943, her half-German daughter was still exempt from this arrest and deportation order, and was asked to sign a statement to the effect that she accompanied her mother out of her own free will. Yet in

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Summing-Up 221 September 1942, when Himmler gave the order to make all concentration camps on the territory of the German Reich judenfrei, partJewish concentration camp prisoners were also included in the deportations to Auschwitz of October 1942 and January–February 1943.13 When, shortly before 16 September 1943, the order was issued to return part-Jewish women prisoners from Auschwitz to Germany, most of the 84 Mischlinge transported to Ravensbrück had arrived in Auschwitz in the preceding months. Although the great majority originated from the German Reich or from West and Central European countries, there were also seven from Poland and one from Lithuania. Among the 54 additional Mischlinge who arrived during the third period, before August 1944, 34 originated from the German Reich including Austria, 7 were Polish, 5 Czech, 2 Hungarian, 2 were “stateless”, 1 was French, 1 Italian, and 1 Russian. Thus, the new order to concentrate all the part-Jewish female camp prisoners in Ravensbrück appears to have been applied first and foremost to those originating in the German Reich, but not exclusively so. The order to return part-Jewish women prisoners from Auschwitz to Germany was not applied systematically, as the later arrival of 32 Mischlinge with the Auschwitz Todesmarsch testifies.

NON-JEWISH PRISONERS MARRIED TO JEWS

Contrary to Nazi race theory, several women who were neither Jewish nor of part-Jewish descent married to Jews were imprisoned in Ravensbrück, apparently for no other reason than their being wives of Jews. One was Lili de Rothschild (Ravensbrück prisoner number 57914), a French prisoner who was treated with special cruelty because of her name.14 Another was Lotte Silbermann, a German whose Jewish husband and family were killed while she was imprisoned in Ravensbrück working in the SS-Kantine. She had a comrade who also worked there, Margarete Mader, also a German married to a Jew, who committed suicide in Ravensbrück after receiving the message that her husband had died in the concentration camp Flossenbürg.15 Albert de Cocatrix, a high official of the International Red Cross, reports that, in May 1945, he met a woman clad in rags in Berlin, who had walked 100 km from Ravensbrück; she told him that she

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222 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück was an Austrian who had been sent to the camp only because her husband was a Jew.16

“RIGHTEOUS OF THE NATIONS” IN RAVENSBRÜCK

Among the non-Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück, there were some – we do not know how many – who were arrested and imprisoned solely or mainly because they had helped Jews.We know about the following five German women. Gertrud Luckner studied economics but had an early interest in social work.17 A Protestant by birth, she converted to Catholicism. Starting in 1938, she helped Jews to emigrate. In March 1943, she was arrested and accused of pro-Jewish activities. Arriving in Ravensbrück on 5 November 1943, she was assigned Ravensbrück prisoner number 24648, stayed until the end of the camp, and joined the evacuation march. After the War she edited Freiburger Rundbrief, an important periodical devoted to Christian–Jewish understanding. In 1966, she was awarded the Israeli title “Righteous of the Nations”. Dr. Hildegard Schaeder was a theologian.18 In 1935 she became an active member of the congregation of Pastor Martin Niemöller that cared especially for Jews and for baptized Jews, hiding them and helping them to emigrate. From 1941 onwards, she sent food, clothing, and medication to German Jews who had been deported to Ghetto Lublin. She was arrested in September 1943 and imprisoned in Ravensbrück

Dr. Gertrud Luckner 1900–1995

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Summing-Up 223

Prof. Dr. Hildegard Schaeder 1902–1984

on 15 March 1944, accused of helping Jews.A Polish Catholic prisoner saved her at the last moment from being gassed. Her memoir, Ostern im KZ, was published in 1948. Marie Luise Pleißner (1891–1983) was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers).19 In the 1930s, she secretly taught Jewish children who could no longer go to school, and helped prepare them for emigration. In 1939, she opposed the German invasion of Poland and was sent to Ravensbrück on 5 October 1939 (Ravensbrück prisoner number 2228). She was released in April 1940. After the War she worked as a high school teacher in Chemnitz, and as a member of the

Marie Luise Pleißner 1891–1983

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224 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück city council she worked for the reconstruction of the Jewish cemetery and for the erection of a memorial at the place of the synagogue. Erna Lugebiel, born Voley (1898–1984), helped and hid Jews from 1933 onwards.20 She was arrested in 1943 for “favoring the enemy”, and sent to Ravensbrück in 1944.

Erna Lugebiel b. Voley 1898–1984

Maria Husemann (1892–1975) worked for the Catholic organization Caritas.21 From 1933 to 1943, she was active in helping Jews, halfJews, and baptized Jews, by obtaining papers for their emigration. She was arrested in December 1943 and sent to Ravensbrück in August 1944 (Ravensbrück prisoner number 61542), and then later to the Flossenbürg external labor camp Graslitz. During the evacuation march she looked after two sick Jewish women. Until her death, she was active in the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation. There were also three well-known Dutch women who were arrested for saving Jews. The sisters Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) and Elisabeth (Betsie) ten Boom, whose family belonged to a Christian sect with a special concern for Jews, together with their entire family helped Jews from 1942 to 1944, hiding eight Jews in their own house and thus saving them.22 The sisters were arrested on 28 April 1944, sent to the Vucht camp, and arrived in Ravensbrück on 9 September 1944 (Corrie’s Ravensbrück prisoner number was 66730, Betsie’s was 66729). After Betsie died in Ravensbrück earlier that month, Corrie was released

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Summing-Up 225

Corrie ten Boom 1892–1983

from the camp on 28 December 1944. She wrote two books, The Hiding Place (1972), and Dennoch. Stennie Pratomo-Gret, born 24 January 1920 in Schiedam, the Netherlands, was active in the Underground between 1940 and 1942, assisting Jews to escape.23 Arrested in January 1943, she was first sent to Vucht, and then on 9 September 1944 to Ravensbrück, where she worked at Siemens. In April 1945, she was evacuated to Sweden by the Swedish Red Cross, returned to the Netherlands, and became a journalist. She was active in the Dutch women’s and peace movements, and served as chairperson of the Dutch committee “Women of Ravensbrück”. Jelisaweta Kusmina-Karawajewa (“Mat Maria”) (1891–1945), was another remarkable Christian woman who saved Jews.24 The daughter of an aristocratic Russian family of St. Petersburg, in 1932 she divorced her second husband and became a Russian Orthodox nun by the name “Mat Maria”. In the late 1930s, she opened a shelter for the homeless in Paris, a kitchen for the poor, and a recuperation home for tuberculosis patients. She brought food to the 13,000 French Jews who were left in Paris for five days without food and drink before their deportation to Auschwitz. With the help of the Paris garbage removal men, she succeeded in saving 20 Jewish children by hiding them in empty garbage cans, then supplying them with false documents. After being arrested she arrived in Ravensbrück on 23 April 1943, and worked with the “knitting commando”. At the beginning of 1945, she

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226 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück

Jelisaweta Kusmina-Karawajewa, called “Mat Maria” 1891–1945

was transferred with 260 others to Uckermark and was gassed at the end of March. According to Wanda Kiedrzyńska, 44 Polish Franciscan nuns and at least 20 nuns from the Magdalene Order hid Jews. They were all arrested by the German occupation authorities in the summer of 1944 at the time of the Warsaw uprising,25 and sent from Warsaw to Ravensbrück. NOTES 1. Germaine Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, mit einem Anhang “Die Massentötungen durch Gas in Ravensbrück” by Anise Postel-Vinay, Lüneburg, 1998, p. 398; Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949, p. 314; Wanda Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, kobiecy obóz koncentracyjny, Warsaw, 1961, p. 29. 2. This estimate is based on the fact that Jewish names constitute 21% of those on the four preserved death lists, three of them partial. 3. Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, p. 398; Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, Reinbek, 1989, p. 315. 4. Czech, Kalendarium, p. 306; Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, pp. 316–317. 5. Auschwitz Sterbebuch for 1942 and 1943, Munich, 1995. 6. Erika Kounio Amariglio, From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back, London, 1998, p. 115. 7. See chapter 7, note 10. 8. This was the fate of the famous Anne Frank and her sister, who both arrived in Bergen-Belsen after the Auschwitz Todesmarsch and died there. 9. See chapter 8, note 11.

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Summing-Up 227 10. Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, pp. 306–307. 11. See chapter 8, notes 94 and 95. 12. Lidia Rosenfeld Vago, One year in the Black Hole of our Planet Earth, PetahTikva, Israel, 1995 (119 pp., unpublished), on title page. 13. Of the four Mischlinge of the first period, one died in Auschwitz and one returned from there; of the eight part Jews of the second period, six were sent to Auschwitz and two returned. 14. Information from Anise Postel-Vinay. 15. Lotte Silbermann, “In der SS-Kantine in Ravensbrück”, in: ... und dennoch blühten Blumen – Dokumente, Berichte, Gedichte und Zeichnungen vom Lageralltag 1939–1945, ed. Helga Schwarz and Gerda Szepansky, Potsdam, 2000, pp. 52–55. IfGA, ZPA, St 62/2/29. 16. Sigrid Jacobeit and Simone Erpel (eds.), Ich grüße euch als freier Menech, Berlin, 1995, p. 85. 17. Sigrid Jacobeit and Elisabeth Brümann-Güdter (eds.), Ravensbrückerinen, Berlin, 1995, pp. 123–126. 18. Sigrid Jacobeit and Elisabeth Brümann-Güdter (eds.), Christliche Frauen im Widerstehen gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, Berlin, 1998, p. 44. 19. Ibid., pp. 41–43. 20. Frauen aus Ravensbrück, July–August. 21. Jacobeit and Brümann-Güdter, Christliche Frauen im Widerstehen, pp. 61–62. 22. Ibid., pp. 13–14. 23. Jacobeit and Brümann-Güdter, Ravensbrückerinen, pp. 146–151. 24. Jacobeit and Brümann-Güdter, Christliche Frauen im Widerstehen, pp. 31–32. 25. Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, p. 61.

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10 SO CIAL TIES AND MORAL SURVIVAL

WHY WAS THERE SO LITTLE GROUP-WIDE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AMONG THE JEWISH PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK?

What kind of social organization could concentration camp prisoners establish? It has to be remembered that the SS intended to prevent not only any attempts at initiating grass-root prisoner organization, but also even simple ties of friendship among the prisoners. They were intended to be nameless numbers, ruled by a hostile hierarchy of the SS and of persons hired and trained by the SS or under its authority. The rulers of the camp could at will change the barracks and place of work of any prisoner, decide on her transfer to another camp, send her to the Strafblock or the Bunker, punish her by flogging, and even “select” her to be killed. In order to maintain this kind of order and discipline, the SS used a system of so-called Häftlingsselbstverwaltung (prisoner self-administration), appointing prisoners to the positions of Stubenälteste (room leader), Blockälteste (block leader),and Lagerläuferin (camp runner). Usually the holders of these positions, the Funktionshäftlinge, did not belong to the group they had to supervise. The intention of the SS was to bribe the Funktionshäftlinge by bestowing on them this “authority”, as well as by small improvements in their conditions of housing and clothing and by granting them some freedom of movement in the camp, so that they would serve as loyal enforcers of SS policies, and disregard the interests of their charges. Any contravention of the orders of the SS by the Funktionshäftlinge

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 229 discovered by the camp authorities resulted in cruel punishment. An additional system of preventing the prisoners from attempts at organizing was a network of informers.1 Nevertheless, there were several categories of non-Jewish prisoners with well-developed, lasting, and very effective group-wide organizations. The German political prisoners were organized, and their mainly-Communist leadership enforced its decisions by measures of strict discipline, even ostracizing members of the group who disregarded orders of their leadership, or of disliked prisoners outside their group. With the help of its strict organization,the German “political”group certainly was effective in ensuring a somewhat better standard of housing and nutrition for its members. Its leadership decided on the form and extent of measures of help and support to members of other groups according to their judgement of the relative “value”of that other group. Obviously, they considered Communist and left-wing prisoners of other nationalities, as well as all prisoners from the Soviet Union, to be natural friends and allies. Many members of the German “political” group had been imprisoned for many years and thus had acquired positions of relative power. Naturally, having no language problems in communicating with the camp authorities was useful, too. Whereas the strict centralized discipline that the German Communist prisoners were used to came from the party practice of “democratic centralism”, the group organization of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Bibelforscherinnen) was based on the continuation of the extremely disciplined way of life of their religious sect. This way of life ruled out any fight over scarce food, stealing, untidiness, or neglect of work duties. Yet their seeing themselves as “the chosen few”, and their considering it their sacred duty to choose martyrdom over (even merely formal) betrayal of the sect, restricted their contacts with members of other groups to missionary efforts, and caused them to sacrifice the lives of seriously sick members that could have been saved by signing a formal declaration that they were leaving the sect. Different interpretations of their sacred texts caused division among those demanding more or less extreme refusal to perform any work duties that could be construed as helping the war effort, and resulted in a group of their “radicals” being sent to Auschwitz, returned, and executed. The Red Army group impressed their fellow prisoners with their strict military discipline, and by their collective refusal to perform any work for the camp authorities.2

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230 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Perhaps the most effective organization of any national group of prisoners was by the Polish, which was documented in two books.3 From the beginning of the arrival of Polish political prisoners in 1942, the initiative for their internal organization came from the Roman Catholic political resistance, whose central and most active core was the seven groups of the Catholic Scout Movement (Murów) and the organization of the “Friends of the Scouts”.4 Their main strength lay in their religious and patriotic ideology and practice. They organized regular educational activities, as well as prayer and religious services. In the later stages of the camp, after larger numbers from the Polish left-wing Socialist–Communist underground had arrived in the camp, they even succeeded in establishing a common platform with them. By gaining access to the most important places of work, they succeeded in obtaining enough food and clothing to save many of the weakest members of their group, especially the Kaninchen, those Polish political prisoners on whose legs horrible “experimental”operations had been performed. They established a widespread illegal correspondence with their families in Poland. They also established contact with the International Red Cross in Switzerland through Polish prisoners of war stationed near the work places of some of the Polish women, and even succeeded in informing the BBC about the “selection”of a large group of old and sick prisoners and their deportation to the death camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz.5 They were effective in hiding Kaninchen from execution, but could not prevent the execution in Ravensbrück of more than 160 of their members who had been condemned to death while in Polish prisons.6 A most amazing group activity of the Polish organization was the theft of copies of hundreds of arrival lists from the Massar Nähstube (the sewing workshop preparing the cloth triangles and prisoner numbers) initiated by Ursula Winska. The arrival lists were packed in 70 small parcels for those Polish prisoners who were evacuated on the last train of the Bernadotte-Aktion to carry under their clothes with the declared intention “to let the world know what happened.”7 This highly organized Polish group was composed nearly exclusively of women and young girls arrested for political resistance activities that were ideologically motivated. There were also in the camp, however, thousands of Polish prisoners who had reached Ravensbrück as deported “civilians”, and many who had worked in Germany as foreign laborers, either forced or voluntary, and had been charged with all sorts of offences and imprisoned.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 231 The Austrian, Czech, French, and Norwegian groups, comprising mainly women arrested for resistance activities, also had welldeveloped group organizations, which were not as dominated by Communists as those of the German political prisoners. Was it at all possible for the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück to develop an organization including all or most of the Jewish prisoners in the camp at a certain time, or at least an organization or organizations of the major “national” Jewish groups? Obviously, they lacked the elements that served as the basis of the successful group organization of the non-Jewish groups mentioned above. They lacked a common homeland, a common nationalism, as they came from 27 different countries. Even in those countries in which many Jewish inhabitants had considered themselves loyal and even patriotic citizens, as in Italy and Hungary, the political leadership had eventually collaborated with the German victors in the rounding-up, imprisonment, deportation, and destruction of their Jewish populations. Not only all the Jewish prisoners, but also the members of each of the “national” Jewish groups, lacked not only a common political ideology, but even common religious belief, practice, and organization. Zionist ideology and Zionist youth organizations had affected a sizable minority. Thus, among the large group of prisoners originating from ·ódz´, a number of young women remembered their early affiliation with Zionist organizations. With regards to religion, a considerable number of those originating from Poland, Slovakia, the Hungarian rural areas, those parts of Romania occupied by Hungary, and Belgium and the Netherlands, came from traditional Jewish families. For many of them, home life had been that of closely-knit large families. Their families had still observed all the Jewish holidays and dietary laws, and opposed intermarriage. They accepted their being Jewish. From both the Hungarian group who were sent to the labor camp Frankfurt/Walldorf and from the Polish group who were sent to the labor camp Krupp-Neukölln from Auschwitz at the end of August 1944, we have evidence that a number of women remembered the proper date of Yom Kippur and tried to fast on that day. Yet this common traditional religious background of a group of the Jewish women and girls from different countries apparently did not serve as a sufficient basis for a common social organization. This was so for two additional reasons. First, communication even between those with a traditional Jewish background coming from different countries was often difficult. Second, Jewish

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232 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück women traditionally play a much less active role than Jewish men in religious ceremonies, services, and especially in study. Many of the better educated and urban women came from a more or less “assimilated” background;8 what all or most of the Jewish prisoners knew of Jewish culture, including religion, history, literature, and music, was evidently not enough to serve as a substantial bond between them. Yet for some, the cruel experiences they endured caused them to develop a new kind of Jewish national pride or consciousness. One Israeli survivor, who, as a child in Ravensbrück, was placed with her mother in a block together with Yugoslav nonJewish women, reports that when these women, who had all been arrested for resistance activities, constantly performed sabotage and the whole block was punished, she asked her mother,“Why do they do this?” Her mother answered, “Because they have a fatherland.” She then decided that she, too, wanted to have a fatherland, and would go there. Halina Nelken describes in her remarkable diary from Ghetto Krakow and from the Plaszów concentration camp, how, as a 17-yearold who had grown up in an upper middle class cultured and assimilated family, she developed a Jewish national consciousness. After a massacre in the ghetto, she wrote: What words could describe how we are being driven to slaughter? Worse than cattle. Why? What fault is it of ours? ... Of course I know – we are Jewish. Suddenly, with the broom in my hand, I straightened up, as though the suffering of my nation had given me strength and pride. At this moment I realized what a powerful bond common suffering is. My nation! My Jewish nation, no longer just my Polish nation, as I had felt until now.9

Most important, the great majority of Jewish prisoners lacked the conviction common to all those imprisoned for political and/or religious opposition to the Nazis – that their suffering was the result of their previous effective actions against the regime of their jailers. Although in the first and second periods the SS still maintained the fake distinctions between Jewish prisoners with different reasons for arrest, in reality the persecution and imprisonment of nearly all of them was based on their belonging to a group defined by Nazi ideology as “racially inferior”, a group that – with the outbreak of the War – had been declared an enemy of the German people and collectively condemned to death by the Nazi leadership.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 233 During all five periods, most Jewish prisoners were housed with other Jewish prisoners, worked in separate Jewish work details, and had only rare contacts with non-Jewish prisoners, contacts that were discouraged and even banned by the SS. Nevertheless, conditions permitting or hampering internal Jewish group organization varied greatly from period to period. During the first period, the Jewish prisoners – though from various social backgrounds and with diverse political convictions – nearly all spoke German and had lived in Germany or Austria. Nearly all of them were placed in the Judenblock (Baracken 9 or 11) and in 1940 and 1941 had a Jewish Blockälteste. Thus, in this period, when the general conditions of housing, hygiene, and food were still considerably better than they became later, in spite of the segregation, the especially onerous work tasks and the special humiliations meted out to the Jewish prisoners, the internal life of the Judenblock was relatively orderly, and for some time, regular cultural and educational activities could take place – organized by several courageous and educated women. So, in spite of the constant threats of punishment and persecution by the camp authorities, a certain Jewish prisoner society existed during that period (as described in chapter 4, in the “No Jewish ‘Alte Ravensbrückerinnen’” section). During the second period, after the mass murder of nearly all the Jewish prisoners of the first period in Bernburg between February and April 1942, it could hardly be expected that the few survivors from the first period, together with the several hundred new arrivals, could develop a new Jewish camp society before the mass deportation to Auschwitz on 5 October 1942. During the third period, the period of the “special groups”, at most, only organization within each group separately could be expected. A measure of social organization within the family groups that had arrived from the Dutch internment camp Westerbork is reported, sufficient to establish a school-class for their children in Ravensbrück.10 These families obviously had known each other for some time in Westerbork. There are also reports of children’s birthday parties, lasting close friendships, some outdoor play, and the availability of paper and pencils for the children.11 There is, however, no evidence for a similar social organization of the members of the Belgian group, most of whom claimed Turkish citizenship and were of Sephardic or partSephardic origin, and who had arrived from Brussels and from the Malines internment camp.

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234 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück As to the Mischlinge,who had all arrived together from Auschwitz,and most of whom had originated from the German Reich, there is no evidence of any special group solidarity among the entire group, despite their unusual common fate, although there existed small groups of friends. The remarkable larger group of friends that later formed at the Siemens Works was not based on any special ties between the several members of the Mischling transport working, and later also living, there. It included other Jewish and also some non-Jewish fellow workers.12 Even by the third period, Block 27, the Judenblock, contained women from many countries, who did not even understand each other’s languages.13 During the fourth and fifth periods, there was little chance that the thousands of Hungarian and Polish Jewish arrivals would develop a common social organization that included all or most Jewish prisoners, since about 30% stayed in Ravensbrück for only a short time, often less than a month, before being sent on to the eight or more external labor camps. Even those staying in Ravensbrück until the end of the fourth period, and into the fifth, often experienced serious problems of communication.14 Most of those classified as Hungarian or Polish, the two major “national” groups of Jewish arrivals, had no common language. Obviously, most Hungarian Jews did not speak Polish and Polish Jews did not speak Hungarian, but, most important, most Hungarian Jews neither spoke nor understood Yiddish. Most Romanian Jews and many French and Belgian Jews could communicate in Yiddish, and German Jews could at least understand some of it. For Polish Jews with a secondary education – and for those living in Polish cities with a large German-speaking population – German was another important language of communication in the camps, not only with their German jailers, but also with many Jewish and nonJewish prisoners.A minority of the Hungarian and Romanian women and girls had learned German at school. Many Czech, Slovakian, and Dutch Jewish prisoners spoke German, and of course all German and Austrian Jewish prisoners did. Yet the hard core among the Hungarian, Italian, and Greek Jewish prisoners suffered from serious communication problems. The fact that the hard core of the two largest groups of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners of the fourth and fifth periods – those from Hungary and Poland – could not understand one another, proved a serious obstacle to the development of a general group-wide Jewish social organization among the Jewish prisoners in the main camp of Ravensbrück, as well as in its two major external camps – Malchow and Neustadt-Glewe.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 235 Was there a social organization within the different major Jewish groups of the fourth and fifth periods? About 37% of the over-6000 Hungarian arrivals, and 45% of the c.2000 Polish arrivals of 1944, did not stay long enough in Ravensbrück to develop any groupwide organization there. They were “sold” to at least eight different external labor camps. Who were the Hungarian Jewish women who remained in Ravensbrück for at least several months? They were only a few of those who had arrived in August and September 1944, but a considerable part of those who had arrived with the direct transports from Budapest in November and early December, and of the nearly 1700 arrivals from the cruel labor camp of Frankfurt/ Walldorf. All of these suffered from the horrendous housing and sanitary conditions, and the starvation diet accorded to new arrivals towards the end of 1944. Who were the Polish groups who remained in Ravensbrück for at least several months? Of the 500 arrivals from Ghetto ·ódz´, a sizable group of women had been sent to Wittenberg, and the children were eventually sent to KönigsWusterhausen. The members of the Ghetto Piotrków transport remained in the camp until March 1945, when many of them were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Many of the Polish arrivals in the last two transports from Auschwitz in November and December 1944, and in the transport from Częstochowa at Christmas 1944, were soon sent to Malchow. The fact that many women from these three transports were eventually evacuated to Sweden from Malchow raises the possibility that the women of this Polish Jewish group who spent four months together in Malchow may have developed group ties.15 Apparently, there was no wider social organization among the Hungarian Jews staying in Ravensbrück. In the infamous tent, and later in the rundown blocks where they were located, they lived not as a separate group, but together with other groups, especially with Polish Jewish women with whom they failed to communicate and to overcome mutual animosity and suspicion. They were not able to protect themselves from the extremely bad Blockälteste and Stubenälteste, who systematically stole their food and prevented them from using the washing and sanitary facilities of the block. Although small groups appear to have played an important role among the Hungarians, we hear little about any wider group activities. Seren Tuvel Bernstein reports telling larger groups stories about her childhood and her rural traditional Jewish family, stories that involuntarily

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236 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück tended to end in descriptions of the wonderful food eaten at holidays and festivals. Surprisingly, even within the large group of those who arrived as survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch (originating from different countries), many of whom had a common history of living and working at the Union factory in Auschwitz – that included even the participation by several in underground activities – ties broke down during and after the Todesmarsch.16 Although at least 81 of the Union workers were sent to Neustadt-Glewe, under the extreme conditions of starvation and epidemics, even their common history was not sufficient to permit the creation of a larger group there. (After the War, the Union survivors established a world-wide organization.) Although the Jewish prisoners of the fourth and fifth periods experienced no large-scale, and hardly any medium-scale, social organization, there was affinity between those from the same country of origin, and especially from the same hometown, such as those who had come from ·ódz´, Piotrków, Krakow, Budapest, or Vienna. This affinity permitted such activities as describing the contents of books, reciting poetry, singing songs, and listening to one of the, astonishingly, many artists in the camp. Among a larger group of women and girls from Poland and the Ukraine, who were starving in Malchow, the common greeting in the morning was, “What are you cooking today?” While some described pierogi or knishes, everybody knew that two of them kept kosher, and listened to their chicken soup and noodles recipes.17 In summary, we have seen that there were three major obstacles to the formation of wider group ties and activities among the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück in the fourth and fifth periods: the instability resulting from the constant transports to labor camps, the appalling conditions that caused apathy and extremely high mortality rates, and the tensions resulting mainly from lack of means of communication. Nevertheless, there were rare instances of overcoming the animosities and tensions between different Jewish groups, as well as instances of leadership and initiative. Examples are the heroic leadership by speech and singing of Franka on the Burgau transport,18 and the story of Irmgard Judith Berger, now Becker, who reports that in Malchow her mother, Pepi Berger, prevented dying typhoid patients from being thrown out of the block by convincing her block-mates that, as Jews, they had the duty of sustaining the dying.19

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 237 One exception of a successful larger group organization that existed during the fourth and fifth periods was that of the nearly 500 women and girls who had been sent from Auschwitz to the small allJewish labor camp at Krupp-Neukölln (described in chapter 8, the section “Krupp-Neukölln: an exceptional labor camp”). Their group organization carried over to Ravensbrück during the short time they stayed there, facilitated their evacuation to Sweden as a group, and persisted there too. As to the problematic role of the appointed Funktionshäftlinge, in Ravensbrück they were mostly non-Jewish, and most actively prevented the forming of any solidarity among the Jewish prisoners. The positive role of the Jewish Blockälteste Olga Benario during the first period has already been described. Whereas apparently no further Jewish Funktionshäftlinge were appointed in the main camp, in most external labor camps in 1944, there were some Jewish Blockälteste and even one Lagerälteste. According to a testimony of September 1945 in Hungary, there was in 1944 in the external labor camp Schönholz a Jewish Hungarian Lagerälteste who maltreated her fellow Jewish prisoners.20 Several survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch mention women from the “Auschwitz élite”who behaved badly when appointed, but they also mention several very decent and resourceful Jewish Blockälteste and Lagerläuferinnen in labor camps, who did not prevent the formation of positive ties among the prisoners, and even encouraged them.21 An exception was Hasag-Leipzig, the large external labor camp of Buchenwald, where Jewish women were one-third of the prisoner population. They held no camp positions, whereas the Polish prisoners did – a situation that was designed to cause animosity.22

THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF SMALL-GROUP OR “CAMP-FAMILY” TIES

A special form of social organization played a vital role in the lives of the Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück, which I call here “small group” or “camp family”. This was different from the ties that existed between mothers and their children under age 13. I call family transports those that included young children with their mothers or mother-surrogates, especially aunts. In the third period, late in 1943 and early in 1944, the arrival of such family transports was common, especially from the Netherlands and Belgium, but also from Germany.

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238 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück In the fourth and fifth periods, in the flood of thousands of arrivals that started in August 1944, they constituted a relatively small part of all arrivals. One came from France and several from Slovakia and Italy,23 as well as three from Poland, which were direct transports from Polish ghettos.24 Although maternal care-giving was extremely difficult under concentration camp conditions, it was considered by all as natural for women. This care-giving was truly heroic and it contributed to saving the lives of most of the children. In the words of Lilly Rozenberg,“We remained alive due to Mama. For us she was our entire universe – we relied completely on her. And this was stronger than anything else and gave also to her a lot of strength. The strength to save us! She endured everything for us; the lack of food, the blows. We were three children! Her sufferings were multiplied by three.”25 As described in the previous section, with the exception of the Krupp-Neukölln group, no large-scale Jewish socially organized group was present in Ravensbrück during the fourth and fifth periods. Survivors of the fourth and fifth periods mention only one medium-sized socially organized group, and that it existed for a special purpose. The burial-commando, organized by Rena Kornreich in Neustadt-Glewe (described in chapter 8, “Neustadt-Glewe” section), included 10 girls who, at her initiative and request, volunteered to each day move the bodies that lay outside the hospital, using a cart with a box, to a burial place, first in the Neustadt-Glewe cemetery, and, later, in the woods.26 My aim here is not to describe the mother–child groups,27 nor the few larger Jewish social organizations that existed during the six years of Ravensbrück, but the special form of small group sometimes called a “camp family”. From August 1944 onwards, the thousands who were transported to Ravensbrück from Auschwitz, as well as the members of the direct transports who had walked from Budapest to the Austrian border, were all of working age, and they rarely included girls under 15 or women over 50. From August 1944 to the end of the camp in the first days of May 1945, a great number of mothers arrived with daughters either teenaged or somewhat older, often with many more sisters and cousins from the same city,small town,or ghetto.Many young women had been working in the same workplace or had gone to school together. Middleaged women played the role of mother-surrogates to the daughters of their neighbors. This was the basis of small real-family and surrogatefamily groups, which were usually not larger than four people.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 239 Sometimes a larger group of sisters – for example, the six Schreiber sisters (from the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport) and the six Stern sisters (from the Krupp-Neukölln transport) – formed such a family group. The most common small groups were of two sisters, two best friends, or a mother with one or two daughters.28 For women who had only one sister or friend, separation could have proved fatal. Kato Gyulai, who was deported from Budapest with her younger sister Evi, was separated from her when Kato was “selected” for work in Spandau. Her inability to prevent this separation and to see her sister again was for her the most tragic event in her Holocaust experience.29 Lidia Vago (Rosenfeld) describes her frenzied attempt not to be separated from her sister Aniko (who was away having the bandage changed on a hand on which she had recently had an operation). It was the roll-call for the transport from Ravensbrück to NeustadtGlewe. Lidia had tried to reserve a place for her sister in the row of five. She writes, “this was not an easy task, considering that lonely women were a rarity in the camps, because being alone meant near certain death. Everyone without a close relative, or a good friend, had to have a Lagerschwester (camp sister), or the younger girls whose mothers had been gassed, were adopted by mature women.”30 Seren Tuvel Bernstein described the danger of separation as,“A great cry went out, a moan that welled up from the bottom of despair. Each pair would be cut in two, leaving every woman far less than half of what she had been in a pair. Having a sister, a cousin, or a friend in the camp with you was sometimes the only thing that gave you the courage to go on; each lived solely for the other.”31 Vera Dotan (war name Gellert), the 13-year-old girl from the Frankfurt/Walldorf transport, describes her frenzied and miraculously successful effort not to be separated from her mother, who was transferred to Siemens.32 Even Silvia Grohs, the actress-singer with a gift for making friends, needed the friendship of an older woman, a “camp-mama”.33 This was Gemma Glück, the Hungarian Jewish twin sister of Fiorello LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York at the time.34 One survivor, the then 16-year-old Slovakian/Hungarian/Jewish Rosi Mauskopf, was completely alone, with no relative and no friend. She wrote the following terrible sentence: “There was chaos in the Block. They fought over a slice of bread, in this hell they could not remain human beings. I experienced neither friendship nor solidarity.”35 Several memoirs relate the adoption of single girls by a mother–daughter “small group”. Erika Kounio Amariglio describes

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240 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück how her mother “adopted” three Greek girls at the beginning of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, and thus a camp family of five was formed, which lasted through the Todesmarsch, their stay at Ravensbrück, the months in Malchow, and the evacuation march from Malchow, until their arrival at the American Occupation Zone.36

Erika Myriam Kounio Amariglio, b. Thessaloniki, March, 1926. Autobiography: From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back: Memories of a Survivor from Thessaloniki (The Library of Holocaust Testimonies) London, Vallentine Mitchell, 2000.

Surrogate-family groups also formed on the basis of a common unusual background, such as the Eva Langley-Dános group of four baptized Jewish women from Budapest. Lidia Vago also described how, after existing for some time as just a two-sister group, they found in Neustadt-Glewe two women whom they had known from the Union factory of Auschwitz, and formed a group of four. Somewhat later, they found another congenial group of four, and regularly told one another stories and relieved the hunger pangs by exchanging extravagant recipes. Halina Nelken describes how her group of six, all from Krakow, joined up in Malchow with four neighbors for the purpose of slicing one loaf of stale bread, to divide it fairly among 10 people.37 Groups of this size played a crucial role in “organizing” minimal food and clothing, trading them for other necessities such as medicine, protecting the members against other aggressive prisoners, supporting them in illness, and preventing suicide. Why did well-organized small groups usually not try to include additional members? Seren Tuvel Bernstein’s answer was that making friends with more people was dangerous, even if they appeared

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 241

Lidia Rosenfeld-Vago, b. Romania, 1924. Unpublished memoir, One Year in the Black Hole of Our Planet Earth: A Personal Narrative. Two sections of it are published, “One Year in the Black Hole of Our Planet Earth: A Personal Narrative”, in Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 273–284; and “Neustadt-Glewe”, in Karl Heinz Schütt, ed., Ein Vergessenes Lager? Schkeuditz, 1997, pp. 91–107.

congenial, because you were always in danger of losing them, as mortality was so high.38 Naturally, the small groups tended to be a combination of stronger and weaker members. There was usually one stronger woman whose authority was accepted, and who forbade any behavior that she considered as life-threatening. As Seren Tuvel Bernstein described it: I felt completely responsible for these three young girls; to me we were all sisters. I had to do everything in my power to enable us to remain alive. Survival became a matter of establishing rules and adhering to them religiously. I was the oldest; I made the rules. We were of the old European school of thought: you listened to the oldest even if she was a fool.39

A basic rule was that the members of the group should stay together, against all odds, when being assigned to a workplace or being “selected”to an external labor camp. It was the combination of receiving help and feeling responsible for the well-being of others that played an important role in nurturing the will to live, as well as in avoiding as many dangers as possible. Yet even the best organized small group could not guarantee survival, of course. Three of the four members of Eva Langley-Dános’ group succumbed to typhoid fever in the locked wagon of the Burgau death train, and one of the four members of Seren Tuvel Bernstein’s group died in the same wagon.

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242 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Nevertheless a small group of sisters, cousins, and friends sometimes even succeeded in saving one of their members from certain death. Klara Landau, later Bondy, together with her cousin and friend, convinced the SDG (SS-Sanitätsdienstgrad) to remove her sister’s name from the list of those already “selected” to be returned from the Revier in Neustadt-Glewe to Ravensbrück to be gassed.40 Yet Lea Schwalb-Kisch, also a member of a small group of sisters, who did not know of the danger of “selection” from the Neustadt-Glewe Revier, continues to blame herself for not having saved her sister Blimi a mere two weeks before liberation.41 Interestingly, many of the memoirs of the survivors mention that, at the time of liberation or soon after, in spite of their physical weakness, they found enough energy to form larger medium-sized groups of friends or acquaintances, sometimes from the same camp, sometimes even from different camps.42 These groups, with 7–20 members, undertook the tasks of organizing escape from evacuation marches, finding temporary housing, food, and clothing, and, most importantly, of organizing the journey to wherever they wanted to travel or to where they wanted to return. They are described in the memoirs of several young prisoners of Neustadt-Glewe, including Jutta Pelz-Bergt.43

Jutta Pelz-Bergt, b. Berlin, 1924, Autobiography: Die ersten Jahre nach dem Holocaust, Berlin Edition Hentrich, 1997.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 243 INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP CONTACTS BETWEEN JEWISH AND OTHER PRISONERS

The many obstacles to contacts between Jewish and other prisoners have already been mentioned. The Viennese Jewish survivor Eva Einberger, who arrived in Ravensbrück as a 16- or 17-year-old in the third period, reports that the German and Austrian political prisoners of Block 1, who knew very well that there were Jewish prisoners from Vienna in Block 27, never approached any. The only instance of contact and help she remembers was that of a Czech prisoner named Wanja from Block 2 who talked to her and each day filled her bowl with soup, which Eva then shared with the other two Viennese.44 In most workplaces Jews worked in separate groups. An exception was the Siemens Works, where, at least in the last period, Jewish and other women worked together, were housed together, and formed active friendship groups. To what extent did actions of help and solidarity between nonJews and Jews take place? Both the German politicals (Communists) and the Polish organization claim to have organized the support of the women of the Judenblock during the time of the lock-up and denial of food in November 1939.45 The German “politicals” also claim that they had a relationship of special solidarity (Patenschaft) to the prisoners of the Judenblock. Another example of practical help occurred on a Sunday in January 1941, when Paula Lohagen, a German political prisoner, organized help for the freezing Jewish prisoners who were being denied any food as punishment.46 We know of one other action of support much later, when thousands of Jewish arrivals were starving and freezing to death in the infamous large tent in November–December 1944: several German political prisoners carried two kettles with beet-soup left over after supper in their own block to be distributed to the women in the tent.47 In quite a number of oral and written testimonies of German Communist survivors we find the story of the Christmas party they organized for all the children of the camp at Christmas 1944, which they considered the most important effort at solidarity on their part. Charlotte Müller estimated the number of children in the camp at this time at 400.48 According to our calculations there were 280 Jewish children (aged 13 and below). It is significant that, in spite of the great effort and obvious good will, it did not occur to any of the organizers that Jewish children might have a difficulty with attending a

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244 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück celebration in honor of the birth of Jesus Christ. Some of the surviving children remember the party and their flight from it when somebody told them that this was a ruse by the SS to kill all the Jewish children. Charlotte Müller assumed that most of the children who had attended the Christmas celebration died after being transferred to Bergen-Belsen, and considered the party and the small gifts a last positive event in their short lives. We know that most of the children transferred to Bergen-Belsen survived, as did all the Turkish Jewish children evacuated via Sweden in February 1945. One special case of humanitarian help by the organization of the Polish prisoners for the Jewish family transport from the Netherlands during the third period is on record by survivors. One of their babies was crying incessantly, so the sleep of all the inhabitants of the block was disturbed. The leaders of the Polish group offered to house the mother and her children in the block of the Kaninchen, which was clean and much less crowded.49 Much later, in February 1945, when masses of Jewish women survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch arrived in Neustadt-Glewe, and for several days did not receive any food at all, several Polish non-Jewish prisoners who worked in the airplane factory shared their meager meals with them.50 We do not know to what extent the non-Jewish prisoners, especially the well-organized ones such as the German politicals and the Polish,were aware of the fact that all the Jewish prisoners of the first period were being deported to their deaths in Bernburg, and later, all the Jewish prisoners of the second period to Auschwitz. When discussing the relations between Polish Jewish and Polish non-Jewish prisoners, it should be remembered that most Poles did not consider that Jews living in Poland belonged to their beloved fatherland and the Polish nation at all. This situation is described very well by Halina Nelken.Remembering coming into contact with Polish non-Jewish women prisoners at Hasag-Leipzig, she explains, Some Polish girls were discussing a literary program being organized in celebration of the national holiday commemorating the Constitution of Third of May 1764. “You don’t know anything about it” said one of them. “Oh, really?” I said, and I recited the fragment of Pan Tadeusz by Mickiewicz, Koncert Jankiela, and sang the song that every child in Poland knew by heart. “Would you like to participate in our program, Miss?” (it was ‘Miss’, now!) the Block elder asked. “We’re organizing this among ourselves, unofficially, but every talent counts!” What a change! I had suddenly become one of them, I thought with bitter irony.51

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 245 Many Polish prisoners joined their German jailers in calling Jewish women lazy. After the War, one of the Polish prisoners who had called Halina Nelken in Hasag-Leipzig a lazy Jew apologized when meeting her in Krakow, and explained that she had never before known a Jew face-to-face.52 There are at least two testimonies of close friendships between Czech and Belgian non-Jewish and Jewish prisoners in the second period. The first is by Herta Soswinski, war name Herta Mehl, who, in her interview, described the help she received from her Czech friends in obtaining easier indoor work in Ravensbrück, and the affectionate farewell scene when she was deported to Auschwitz on 5 October 1942.53 The second is the poem by the Belgian non-Jewish prisoner Felicie Mertens, “Die Jüdin”, which she wrote for her three Jewish friends Fanny (Fayga) Jaquemotte,54 Rachelle, and Regina, on the occasion of their deportation to Auschwitz. In this poem, she describes the especially cruel lot of the Jewish prisoners.55 Friendship ties between non-Jewish and Jewish women from Czechia seem to have been more frequent. It is significant that Edita Kornfeld, the Czech Jewish Blockälteste at Krupp-Neukölln, her sister, and a few other Czech Jewish prisoners of that camp, chose not to leave Ravensbrück with the Swedish Red Cross trucks, but to wait for the chance to return with the Czechs to Czechoslovakia. Also, Herta Soswinski reported in her interview that she survived over two years in Auschwitz due to the help of Czech non-Jewish prisoners who arranged a safer workplace for her there. A case of close friendship and systematic help and support between a group of mainly French non-Jewish political prisoners and a group of 16 French or French-speaking Jewish prisoners has been described by Eva Tichauer.56 At the end of January 1943, a group of French women prisoners of the Résistance had been sent to Auschwitz, and not to Ravensbrück as was usual. There they befriended a group of Jewish women who all spoke French. The survivors of the French political group were transferred to Ravensbrück. When the survivors of the Jewish group arrived with the survivors of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch at the end of January 1945, their French friends supplied them with food and came to warm them in the tent, thus saving them from freezing to death. This friendship was based not only on their common loyalty to France and experience of Auschwitz, but also on common political convictions. Eva Tichauer

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246 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück describes how in Auschwitz she had been convinced by, and recruited to membership in, the Communist party. Finally, let me mention a case of individual help and protection. The German political prisoner Erika Buchmann was then Blockälteste of the TB block in the Revier. She took special care of 14-year-old Slovakian Jewish Judith Stern, warned her of the danger of “selection”, and helped her to escape from the Revier and join her aunt at the Siemens factory. This veteran German Communist was not known for respecting prisoners who did not share her political convictions. Nevertheless, in this case, evidently, the adolescent sick Jewish prisoner aroused in her motherly feelings and made her go out of her way to save Judith’s life. About 60 years later this girl, now elderly Judith H. Sherman, expressed in her memoir her deep gratitude to her protector.57

Judith H. Sherman b. Stern. Born Kurima, b. Czechoslovakia, 23 December, 30. Autobiography: Say the Name: A Survivor’s Tale in Prose and Poetry, Albuquerque NM, University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

REMEMBERING THE JAILERS

Just like all other Holocaust survivors, the Ravensbrück women survivors tell stories of the cruelty and sadism of German SS men and women guards, as well as that of some of their non-German helpers. Some survivors report that they welcomed the Allies’ bombardment of German cities, and the suffering of the German civilian population, condemning the entire German people as evil. Surprisingly, several memoir writers state that, when witnessing the flight of thousands

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 247 of miserable German civilians at the end of the War, they did not experience any joy of revenge. Halina Nelken describes her grappling with the problem of the morality of revenge, and explains, Thousands of times we had dreamed of revenge for all the enormous evils the Germans had committed, and I had been unable to avenge anything. I suddenly realized that no vengeance would be adequate, even a death for a death. I could not do, I could not! I did not want to be their judge. Let them live with their guilty conscience – I had enough of blood, corpses, and hatred.58

What is surprising is that so many of the Jewish women survivors of Ravensbrück do differentiate between extremely cruel sadistic behavior and slightly less violent behavior, even among the guards. Many survivors mention that during the later periods, when there was a shortage of SS guards – especially in the labor camps – they were guarded by older German Wehrmacht soldiers, apparently invalids unfit for frontline service. The descriptions of such men taking pity on the starving girls and surreptitiously giving them some of their food appears in several of the memoirs with the explanation that these men must have had daughters at home. Whereas most foreign workers and prisoners of war stationed in the neighborhood of their camp are described very favorably, the descriptions differentiate between the cruel behavior of some of the civilian German workers, especially youngsters from the Hitlerjugend, and that of some of the Meisters, and also of some of the simple German workers, who appeared not to have been Nazis at all. Whereas most of the memoirs describe the civilian German population as either looking away, or even spitting at them when they passed the streets of the neighboring small towns, there are also descriptions of potatoes thrown over the fence of the small camp of Türkheim by neighboring farmers on Easter day, 1945,59 and of potatoes given during the Auschwitz Todesmarsch. During a cruel evacuation march from a labor camp, some Germans threw stones at the starving women, while others threw potatoes. The same goes for the differentiation between cruel and selfish Blockälteste and those who behaved decently. While nearly all SS doctors and nurses are described as murderers, the descriptions of the behavior of prisoner doctors and nurses, whose task was extremely difficult, are also differentiated, and any help was appreciated and remembered as such.60

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248 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück WHAT IS HEROISM – EVERYDAY MORAL BEHAVIOR

When heroism in concentration camps, labor camps, and death camps is discussed, it is usually envisaged as armed or otherwise violent resistance. Obviously, armed resistance was impossible for the Jewish women in Ravensbrück, because they were isolated as a small minority in the camp, and they lacked any large-scale, group-wide organization. We do not know of any cases of organized sabotage among the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück in the factories and installations serving the German army. The Jewish prisoners were punished severely for slow or faulty work, and knew that any case of sabotage would be punished by death. Three Jewish girls who worked at the Union factory in Auschwitz, accused of stealing gunpowder and passing it to the men who planned the blowing-up of the Krematorium, were hung in public. Several instances of organized small-scale sabotage by non-Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners are known. Three of the Jewish prisoners who hid under non-Jewish identities remember their active participation in these attempts.61 As 44% of the Jewish women of Ravensbrück had previously been in Auschwitz, thousands had already experienced serious psychological trauma. Also, towards the end of the fourth period and during the fifth period, the lack of nutrition, housing, and hygiene were even worse in Ravensbrück, Malchow, and Neustadt-Glewe than in Auschwitz. Under such terrible conditions, what can be considered as “moral” or even “heroic” behavior? Many survivors mention a point in time when they recognized that they were in danger of losing their “human face”. This was usually a moment in which they realized that they no longer cared about their appearance, cleanliness, or other human beings, and that they were becoming apathetic; sometimes this realization occurred due to a meeting with an older friend. There are also the stories of moral scruples. What kinds of behavior are permitted in a camp that would be unacceptable in normal life? Examples are Kato Gyulai standing in line a second time to get a portion of soup and not feeling guilty about it, and the girl in Neustadt-Glewe who took a flowered curtain from a German house to sew a summerdress from the material and felt no twinge of conscience. There is the poignant story of Esther Kemeny returning a bottle of eau de cologne, which she had wanted to take after liberation, to its German owner in Neustadt-Glewe, and asking her for a warm bath instead.62

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 249 There are also many expressions of negative judgment towards women fighting over food, wasting food because of fighting, hurting each other – especially hurting the weaker ones – due to fighting for food or space, stealing the bread-ration of a fellow prisoner, and stealing crucial items like shoes, soup-bowls, or cups. Acts of major moral effort, such as sharing scarce food rations or scarce space, not only with a friend or member of a small group, but also with an outsider, are remembered. Niza Ganor (war name Anicka Frenkel) tells how, soon after arriving in Ravensbrück from the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, she noticed a young girl sitting next to a heap of corpses, her shriveled face black with dirt. Nevertheless, it seemed to her that she recognized in her the blond beauty Sela from her own small hometown near Lwow. When Sela told her that months had passed since she had seen any soap, Anicka gave her a piece of the sliver of soap that she kept in a little bag hanging on a shoelace around her neck.63 Other stories concern gifts of precious sugar by a mere acquaintance. Lidia Rosenfeld Vago, for example, tells of being given sugar cubes when she and her sister were on the verge of collapse on the Auschwitz Todesmarsch, and comments, “Dr. Boehm’s gesture of supreme humanity was probably a unique ‘mitzvah’ by anyone on the death march, towards strangers.”64

Nitza Ganor b. Anna Fränkel, Lwow, Poland, now Ukraine, 1925. Autobiography (translated from the Hebrew): Wer bist du, Anuschka? Die Überlebensgeschichte eines jüdischen Mädchens, Munich C. H. Beck 1996.

Lotte S., the Austrian–Belgian Jewish survivor of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück, wrote in her short memoir the following definition of

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250 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück resistance:“In reality anybody who strived to survive performed resistance. Any act of solidarity, any small piece of bread, each friendly and encouraging word was resistance. Any attempt to evade a blow of the stick of a guard was resistance. But equally so if one went to one’s death with head held high and contempt for one’s tormentors.”65 There were also major moral acts that can be called heroic, including saving a fellow prisoner from killing herself on the electrically charged barbed-wire, or supporting and/or pulling along another person during a roll-call or an evacuation march, in spite of being near collapse oneself. The dedicated care that mothers gave their small children under appalling conditions, and the nearly always hopeless attempts of mothers that gave birth in the camp to save their newborn babies, also deserve to be viewed as heroic.

GENDER-SPECIFIC ISSUES

This research project is about a large group of women and young girls, and a smaller number of children of both sexes. Although there were seven women’s concentration camps, Ravensbrück was the only women-only one. Consequently, it is easily assumed, and so I had hoped, that my research would result in conclusions about the special fate and behaviors of Jewish women during the Holocaust, in contradistinction to those of Jewish men. I would like, first of all, to point out the limitations. Comparison is impossible because we know of no group of Jewish men who resemble this group of Jewish women in their countries of origin, age groups, conditions of arrest, imprisonment in ghettos, deportations, and time spent in Auschwitz or similar death camps, that also spent time in a concentration camp with conditions similar to that of Ravensbrück. It may be possible to find smaller groups of male Holocaust survivors with fate and itineraries similar to certain groups of Ravensbrück prisoners of the five periods, and to attempt to compare – on the basis of memoirs and testimonies – the social and moral behavior of Jewish men and women during the Holocaust, yet it would be a difficult and arduous undertaking. We can, however, try to compare them on several issues. We begin with similarities and differences in the policies of the German authorities and their allies concerning the arrest, deportation, and maltreatment of Jewish men and women in different countries and

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 251 periods, and the impact of differences in these policies on the experience and age composition of the prisoner population of both genders. In Germany, until the end of 1938, the Nazi authorities arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps many more Jewish men than women, especially during the wave of persecution of the November Pogrom (1938). Yet, due to the fact that during over six years of very difficult Jewish emigration from Germany, the percentage of Jewish women and girls who emigrated was much lower than that of Jewish men and boys, and the population census of 17 May 1939 shows twice as many women as men listed as Jews in the population of the German Reich. Therefore, considerably more German Jewish women and girls than men and boys were affected by the systematic deportation to, and imprisonment in, concentration camps – a process that started in earnest in 1942. In the special groups of Dutch and Belgian Jews who had succeeded in claiming Hungarian, Romanian, or Turkish citizenship, the Nazis apparently treated men and women similarly. These Jews were sent out of the Netherlands or Belgium in family transports, men being sent to Buchenwald, women and children to Ravensbrück, as all the children went with their mothers. Except for this major difference, I assume that, in these special groups, Jewish men and women had a similar history of imprisonment, first in internment camps and then in the concentration camps Buchenwald and Ravensbrück, which also became death camps. Therefore, I may attempt to compare what is known about their behaviors and fate. At first glance, no difference appears between the mortality rates of the mothers and fathers of young children in this group. In Slovakia, young Jewish men were recruited to military units as workers, whereas single young Jewish women were sent to Auschwitz as early as 1942. In 1944, family transports were sent from Slovakia to Auschwitz, and when Auschwitz no longer accepted them, they were separated. Men were sent to Sachsenhausen and women and children to Ravensbrück, with the exception of one transport, whose men and boys were sent to the small Ravensbrück men’s camp. In Hungary,Jewish men,too,were recruited to work for the military; young men were in uniform. When, at the end of March 1944 Hungary lost its “independence”, and when in April the Jewish family transports from the provinces (including the occupied Romanian and Slovakian areas) started, younger men were left in the military.66 In November 1944, when there were no longer sufficient trains to complete the

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252 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück deportation of the Jews of Budapest, which had been interrupted since 9 July by Admiral Nicholas Horthy, “80,000 persons, most of them women aged 16 to 60, were marched on foot to the German border”.67 Although we know the names of only 3086 Hungarian Jewish women and girls who arrived in Ravensbrück from Budapest in November and December 1944, Seren Tuvel Bernstein, who in her memoir describes the fate of this large-scale deportation most thoroughly, claims that there had been 10,000 in her transport who had walked out of Budapest, and that later, before she and her sister and friends were “selected” to be transported on the train to Burgau, only 1000 of them were left in Ravensbrück.68 It is clear that the conditions and experiences of Hungarian Jewish men and women in the Holocaust were different. Similarly, during the summer and fall of 1944, many thousands of Jewish women and girls of working age were sent from Auschwitz to Germany to work in the war industry – with Ravensbrück as the central slave market – most of them ending up in an external labor camp. The major “national”groups were Hungarian and Polish. It is difficult to know if similar numbers of Jewish men were also transported from Auschwitz to Germany to work there, under conditions similar to those of the women prisoners of Ravensbrück. In the last weeks of the War, many Jewish men were starving and perishing from epidemics in German camps or on evacuation marches from them, while others, who had managed to work for German farmers, usually hiding their Jewish identity, fared less terribly. At that time, German farmers were in great need of labor, and tended to feed their workers even if they suspected them of being Jewish. The option of working for German farmers did not exist for Jewish women prisoners. Halina Nelken and her two friends were an exception for a short time, and they escaped the terrible evacuation march from Hasag-Leipzig and worked for a farmer, pretending to be Polish civilian workers.69 Similarly, Esther Weiss Grün and two of her friends succeeded in escaping from the Meuselwitz evacuation march and found work, shelter, and food with German farmers until the arrival of Russian soldiers.70 Although we cannot compare well enough the educational and vocational status of Jewish women with those of Jewish men in the major countries from which the Jewish prisoners of Ravensbrück originated, we can at least speculate about the possible impact of the differences in education and work experience on the behaviors of these women, as compared to that of Jewish men of similar backgrounds.We have information about the previous vocational status of

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 253 nearly 2900 women, all classified as Hungarian, whose names appear on transfer lists, as follows. On an arrival list from Budapest of 19 November 1944, among the 270 sent to Hasag-Leipzig, 19.5% had worked in the household and 47.5% in traditional women’s occupations such as dressmaker, but 23% had worked in occupations unusual for women, such as butcher and shoemaker, 9.5% had worked in semi-professions such as civil servant or photographer, and there was one professional chemist. On the transfer list to Penig, comprising 700 Hungarian women who were registered there on 17 February 1945, 13% were housewives or household workers, 60% worked in traditional women’s occupations such as dressmaker, seamstress, weaver, and milliner, 12% worked in traditional men’s occupations such as car-repair and factory worker, 11% worked in semi-professions such as medical and dental assistants, and 1% worked as professionals, such as pharmacist, physician, and professional chemist. This vocational distribution appears to be typical for the nearly 2900 women, all officially Hungarian Jewish. The conclusions from these data concerning gender differences suggest that only a minority of the members of the largest “national”group of Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners were traditional housebound women, without an occupation – not earning any money on their own. The majority had worked outside the home, the largest group of these in traditional women’s occupations centering on textile and clothing, but a sizable group – 20 to 33% – had worked in occupations considered atypical for women, including the semi-professions and professions. Hence, the work experiences of most of these Jewish women were not fundamentally different from those of the men of their country of origin. On the other hand, most of the women and girls were still presumably more familiar than the men and boys with the domestic skills of preparing food, repairing and cleaning clothing and shelter, skills that were essential for survival in camp conditions. We have no detailed information about the educational status of most of the Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück. The school education of nearly all the young girls who spent time in Polish ghettoes had been truncated. In all the countries under German rule, young Jewish women, just like Jewish men, could no longer matriculate from high school or study at a university, even before their being locked-up in ghettoes and the deportations began.

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254 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück The registered vocational and professional experience of the Jewish camp prisoners was hardly ever taken into account when the SS assigned work tasks to them, although any work experience helped whenever the SS was in urgent need of it. Over the five periods, 24 women in all were registered as physicians (doctors), 4 as Dr. Phil., and 2 as lawyers.71 Some Jewish women prisoner physicians had worked as physicians in Auschwitz. Prisoner physicians known to be Jewish were not permitted to work at the Ravensbrück Revier, yet several of them were sent to work as physicians in external labor camps.72 Others treated their fellow prisoners secretly. An outstanding example was the operation on Seren Tuvel Bernstein’s gangrenous toe by a prisoner physician, conducted at night on the third level of the bunk beds.73 Surprisingly, there were many artists, actors, and especially singers among the Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück. Several of the singers are remembered as singing to a larger number of prisoners and playing an important role in giving the tortured women some comfort. One was the actress Silvia Grohs,74 and another was Louise van de Montel, who sang before 800 women prisoners in the isolation ward of the Revier.75 The third was an opera singer from Budapest, whose name we unfortunately do not know, who used to sing at night for her unfortunate fellow prisoners, and later was forced to sing by an obviously deranged sadistic SS woman each day at the lunch break in the Kartoffelkeller (a cellar where potatoes and vegetables were sorted). Each day the SS woman commanded the singer to sing and her face was bathed in tears while listening. Then she would start to beat up the singer, and one day she beat her to death.76 In Malchow, Halina Nelken relates that “Pani Preger, sang Grieg’s Solvejg’s Song in her clear, well-trained voice.”77 Thirty-three survivors later wrote and published full-length memoirs and 67 contributed shorter memoirs to books edited by others. This points to the prevalence of story-telling and literary talents among this population of Jewish women and girls.78 A notable gender-specific difference concerns the number and percentage of Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück who cared for children and young teenagers, as this especially difficult situation was rare among male Jewish concentration camp prisoners. A number of Slovakian Jewish prisoners at the small men’s camp of Ravensbrück who were imprisoned together with their young sons were exceptions.79 As over the entire five periods there were 349 (2.14%) children up to 13 and 1638 (10.03%) teenagers up to 18, there must have been over

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 255 500 women who cared for children and young teenagers, which made it difficult for them to carry the heavy workload that was obligatory in Ravensbrück.Yet while the maternal duties placed an extra burden on these women, the special responsibility they felt for their children also strengthened their will to survive. In the few cases known to us of fathers and young sons under similar camp conditions, mutual ties of care and responsibility seem to have been equally strong. We should also consider the possible impact of the physiological differences between women and men, and the traditional differences in education as to modesty and personal appearance, on the ability of their jailers to humiliate and cause suffering to female and male prisoners. Obviously, the fact that on average the muscular strength of women is less than that of men placed a special burden on the women prisoners. Nevertheless, most Jewish women prisoners, more than was the case with other groups of prisoners, were employed in hard physical labor, such as shifting earth and stones, road-building, and the unloading of trains and boats, and in all branches of the munitions and armaments industry, even those most harmful to the health of the workers, including also repair of military airfields and digging of anti-tank trenches. Menstruation and pregnancy complicated and even endangered women’s lives. Most were glad when their menstruation stopped. Whereas in Auschwitz some pregnant Jewish women were gassed, and many lost their babies, in the external labor camps of Sachsenhausen or Buchenwald, women whose pregnancies were discovered were transferred back to Ravensbrück. Nearly all the babies and many of the new mothers consequently perished. The fact that women are much more prone to sexual assault and rape than men put a special burden on women prisoners, both in captivity and at the time of liberation. It was not only the mental and physical damage, but the shame connected with being a rape victim, that heavily afflicted women prisoners. The upbringing of girls, which put special emphasis on modesty, made it much easier for the SS to humiliate women than men. Nearly all the memoirs mention the horror of being poked and jeered at by SS men while standing naked. The lack of privacy and the need to relieve themselves under the mocking eyes of their male jailers made the women’s lives especially difficult.80 Another gender-specific difference is the particular emphasis on attractive appearance and personal cleanliness in the normal

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256 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück upbringing of girls. Many men and boys felt humiliated by the forced shaving of their heads (and the cutting of beards and sidelocks of orthodox men was a special humiliation of Jewish men), yet many memoirs of women survivors report the loss of their own hair and that of their friends as a traumatic experience, as a loss of individuality – sisters did not recognize each other81 – and, in some cases, it even caused the onset of total despair.82 Yet the education that emphasized the importance of personal cleanliness for girls may have saved many lives. We should also consider the impact of traditional differences in the education of girls and boys regarding assertiveness and independence. Differences in work experience have already been mentioned as not very significant under camp conditions. The knowledge of languages, especially German, which may have been equally, if not more, developed among Jewish girls and women than among boys and men, sometimes helped to secure a somewhat more tolerable workplace. Female office skills were not helpful for Jewish prisoners in Ravensbrück, since, unlike Auschwitz, the SS did not permit Jewish women prisoners to work in any of the camp offices.83 Previous greater financial independence did not make any difference, as on entering the camps both men and women lost the chance to use financial initiative (with rare exceptions). Skills of trading and exchange were probably equally widespread among male and female Jewish prisoners and were useful for survival. Previous assertiveness of male prisoners, and that of female prisoners, was broken by constant blows, humiliation, and threat of death, and by physical deterioration and exhaustion due to starvation, lack of sleep, filth, and disease. Regarding possible gender differences in membership in political organizations, especially youth organizations, we have too little information. Jewish girls definitely were members in all the Zionist youth organizations as well as in non-Zionist left-wing organizations. What is interesting, however, is that whereas fierce ideological debates are known to have occurred among male prisoners of Ghetto Warsaw, our Ravensbrück prisoners relate close and friendly relations between those holding Zionist and non-Zionist, or left-wing, opinions in the frameworks of their camp families, with these women parting peacefully after liberation and going their separate ways.84 We also do not hear about any divisions among the women on the basis of observance or non-observance of Jewish dietary law. Finally, there are the sex-specific differences in developing the ability to form stable relations of help, of care of and responsibility for the

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 257 younger, weaker, sick, and old – especially of one’s own family. These abilities were expected in most Jewish families, and demanded more of women and girls than of men and boys. I speculate that these higher expectations and more developed skills were the basis of the apparently considerably greater prevalence and persistence of small groups, of camp families, among the Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück, than among Jewish men prisoners under similar camp conditions. This in turn somewhat enhanced their chances of survival. Followers of the Freudian bio-psychological theories of unavoidable behavioral gender-differences claim that, from infancy, males of the species show capability and disposition for autonomy, whereas the females of the species show capability and disposition for attachment. Many Freudians use this claim as the major explanation and justification for women’s lower status in society. On the face of it, we have found support for this in the story of the Jewish women of Ravensbrück and their amazing capacity to form and maintain small groups (camp families). Does this mean that these women and girls were necessarily less capable of autonomy than men? If autonomy means thinking and acting independently, then surely the answer is in the negative, as the functioning of these small groups demanded a considerable measure of initiative,of inventive and courageous action,at least from the strongest members. The experience of the camp families shows that in real life the contrast between attachment and autonomy is foolish. In my view, the greater tendency and prevalence of Jewish women who were concentration camp prisoners to form stable small groups does not mean that they were less capable of autonomy than male Jewish prisoners, nor does it mean that they were destined to attachment from birth or infancy. Rather, it means that this gender difference in social behavior under extreme conditions was the outcome of the differences in the education of girls and boys in most Jewish families, whether traditional or more or less “assimilated”. Girls much more than boys were educated towards a high degree of responsibility, loyalty, and readiness to make sacrifices, and to support all the weaker members of their families.

CONCLUSIONS

This study points at the heroic character of the mere experience of the hell of Ravensbrück and survival there. It is impossible to describe

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258 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück the experiences of Ravensbrück’s Jewish prisoners separately from the prisons, ghettoes, and internment and other camps that the prisoners suffered in before being sent to Ravensbrück, and from the camps to which so many of them were sent from Ravensbrück. Taken as a whole, then, the very survival under these hellish conditions for any length of time was heroic. Of course, some of the bravest and most decent paid with their lives for their heroism, others succumbed to disease and to the constant “selections” despite their heroism; and still others survived due to chance, determination, and heroic mutual support. We must learn both from the depth of depravity and cruelty of which human beings like the SS jailers and their helpers were capable, and from their victims’ capacity for retaining their dignity and compassion under these extremely adverse conditions. The Jewish women prisoners of Ravensbrück shared their suffering with many other non-Jewish prisoners, but, together with the Sinti and Roma, they were at the bottom of the prisoner hierarchy. Whether they were this or that kind of Jew – observant, secular, assimilated, or Zionist – matters less than that they were persecuted as Jews. Nevertheless, the humanism of their Jewish heritage and the demand for support of those weaker than themselves which Jewish education instilled, especially in girls, helped them face the horrors of their condition while upholding their dignity and humanity. NOTES 1. Margarete Buber-Neumann, Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, Munich, 1949, p. 295. 2. They did, however, perform work in the Revier, the prisoner hospital. 3. Wanda Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, kobiecy obóz koncentracyjny, Warsaw, 1961, full length German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive; and Ursula Wińska, Zwiciezy¢y wartosci: Wspomneinea z Ravensbrück: Wyd 1, Gdansk, 1985. A German translation exists in the Ravensbrück Archive as Die Werte siegten. 4. Kiedrzyńska, Ravensbrück, pp. 233–234. 5. Ibid., p. 234. 6. Ibid., p. 150. 7. Ibid., pp. 7–8. 8. Sara Tuvel Bernstein writes (The Seamstress, New York, 1997, p. 228): “Lily and many of the other women in the camp were children of mixed marriages where Jewish customs had ceased to be observed generations ago.” 9. Halina Nelken, And Yet I Am Here!, Amherst, MA, 1999, pp. 173–174. Italics in the original text. After Plaszów she was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Malchow, and Hasag-Leipzig.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 259 10. According to Israeli survivor Judith Harris, war name Judith Hirsch, interviewed 26 August 1997 by A.K., “Mrs. Kraus taught the children in Dutch.” 11. See the story told by Arthur (Abraham/Buma) Stahl. 12. See chapter 6, note 10, for the interview with Judith Taube, war name Jolanta Aufrichtig (Arato). 13. Memoir by Eva Einberger, in Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, daß Du ihn noch in Freiheit tragen kanns: Widerstehen im KZ; Österreichische Frauen erzählen, ed. Karin Berger, Elisabeth Holzinger, Lotte Podgornik, and Lisbeth N. Trallori, Vienna, 1987, pp. 90–91. 14. Charlotte Delbo describes in her book (Le Convoi du 24 Janvier, Paris, 1965, p. 17) the lack of a common language as the major cause for the absence of largergroup organization among the Jewish women prisoners in Auschwitz–Birkenau in 1944. 15. It is significant that hardly any of the Polish Jewish women who had arrived before the end of 1944 were sent from Malchow to Hasag-Leipzig. 16. Lidia Vago Rosenfeld, One year in the Black Hole of our Planet Earth, PetahTikva, Israel, 1995 (119 pp., unpublished), pp. 43, 52. 17. Nelken, And Yet I am Here!, pp. 249–250. 18. Eva Langley-Dános, Prison on Wheels: From Ravensbrück to Burgau, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 2000, translated by herself from her Hungarian diary, written in 1945, pp. 76–79. 19. Interview with Judith Becker, war name Berger, on 15 June 1998, by J.B.A. 20. Testimony of Gesane Hajdu, b. Erzsebet Szilard; 15 November 1945. MAAHDK, 3543, as quoted by Linde Apel, Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939–1945, Berlin, 2003, p. 174. 21. Examples are: Edita Kornfeld, the Czech lawyer who was appointed head of the office, or Blockälteste, at Krupp-Neukölln (see chapter 8, note 91), and Paula Katz-Eisen in Neustadt-Glewe – Anna Szyller-Palarczyk states that she and another Polish prisoner, Wanda Marosanyi, survived the camp due to her (in Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, ed. Karl Heinz Schütt, Schkeuditz, 1998, p. 28). 22. Dr. Irmgard Seidel: “Jüdinnen in den Aussenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald”, paper for international conference “Genocide and Gender”, FU Berlin, October 2003. 23. With the family transport from Toulouse came 15 children and 4 young teenagers; in the various Slovak transports there were 32 children and 13 young teenagers; and the Italian transports included 6 children and 2 young teenagers. All of these transports also included older women. 24. Ghetto Częstochowa (arrived on 3 September 1944): 5 children; Ghetto ·ódz´ (arrived on 22 October 1944): 36 children and 10 young teenagers, most of whom were transferred to KönigsWusterhausen; and Ghetto Piotrków (arrived on 2 December 1944): 55 children and 15 young teenagers. 25. Interview in Loretta Walz, Die Frauen von Ravensbrück, Munich, 2005, p. 365. 26. Rena Kornreich-Gelissen, in Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, ed. Karl Heinz Schütt, Schkeuditz, 1997, pp. 60–61. 27. Among the 2400 known names of arrivals in Ravensbrück who were survivors of the final evacuation of Auschwitz in January–February 1945, we know of only 24 children aged 13 or less. 28. An example was Irmgard Judith Berger, later Becker, and her mother Pepi and sister Marlit (see chapter 8, note 33).

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260 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 29. Kato Gyulai, Eine einfache Deportiertengeschichte, Budapest, 1947; see chapter 7, note 63. 30. Rosenfeld, One Year in the Black Hole of our Planet Earth, p. 55. 31. Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 243. 32. Vera Dotan, Rising from Hell, 2006, chapter 5. 33. Silvia Grohs-Martin, Silvie, New York, 2000, p. 316. 34. Gemma LaGuardia Glück had arrived in Ravensbrück in June 1944 as a special status prisoner. 35. Rosi Forsberg, b. Mauskopf, in Ravensbrückerinnen, Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, Nr. 4, Berlin, 1995, p. 152. 36. Erika Kounio Amariglio, From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back, London, 2000, pp. 120–137. 37. Nelken, And Yet I am Here!, p. 251. 38. Bernstein, The Seamstress, pp. 215–216. 39. Ibid., p. 210. 40. Israel/US survivor #425/270011 Klara Landau Bondy, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, pp. 62–63. 41. Testimony of Lea Schwalb-Kisch, in ibid., pp. 114–115. 42. Thus Esther Loewy, later Bejarano, reports in her interview (22 June 1994) with Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow that, after leaving Ravensbrück with the evacuation march, she met six girls with whom she had been together in the Hachshara camp-Neuendorf; she had not seen these girls since being sent to Ravensbrück as a Mischling in September 1943. These six girls had come to Ravensbrück from Auschwitz with the Todesmarsch in January 1945, and then had been sent to Malchow. As a group of seven they managed to escape into the forest, changed into civilian clothes to pretend that they were German refugees, and obtained food and shelter from farmers. In Ich Grüße Euch als Freier Menech, ed. Sigrid Jacobeit and Simone Erpel, Berlin, 1995, pp. 103, 121. Similarly, Vera Dotan (war name Gellert) reports in her memoir of 2006 (Rising from Hell, chapter 5) that after the evacuation march from Ravensbrück she and her mother joined a group of eight ex-prisoners who, for several weeks, wandered about Germany searching for a way to reach their hometowns. 43. Testimonies of: Margita Schwalbova, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, p. 24; Lea Gelbgras-Ferstenberg, in ibid., I, p. 48; Jutta Pelz-Bergt, in ibid., pp. 75–78; Lidia Vago, in ibid., p. 103; Irene Kluger-Hajos, in ibid., II, p. 57. A group of 20 set out from Neustadt-Glewe in the direction of Czechoslovakia – in ibid., p. 8. See also chapter 8, note 73; Sophie Löwenstein (Israel survivor Sohlberg), in Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 1, ed. Lore Shelley, Lanham, MD, p. 173. 44. Memoir by Eva Einberger, in Berger et al., Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, p. 90. 45. See chapter 4, note 13. 46. See chapter 4, note 15. 47. Testimony of Ilse Hunger, in Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück – ... und dennoch blühten Blumen, ed. Helga Schwarz and Gerda Szepansky, Potsdam, 2000, pp. 141–142. Dok.-Zentrum Berlin, KL u. Hafta, Ravensbrück Nr. 17. 48. Charlotte Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne in Ravensbrück: Erinnerungen des Häftlings Nr. 1078, Berlin, 1987, p. 167. 49. Testimony of Zali (Sara) Kallus, born Eliovits, see chapter 6, note 15.

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Social Ties and Moral Survival 261 50. Testimony of Israeli survivor Halina Birenbaum, war name Hala GrinsteinBalin, in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, I, pp. 25–26. 51. Nelken, And Yet I am Here!, p. 254. 52. Ibid. 53. See chapter 4, note 6. 54. Belgian Jewess, Ravensbrück prisoner number 12905. 55. Felicie Mertens, “Die Jüdin”, in Schwarz and Szepansky, Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, p. 68. 56. Eva Tichauer, J’étais le numéro 20832 à Auschwitz, Paris, 1988, pp. 106–110, 131–132. 57. Judith H. Sherman, Say the Name, Albuquerque, NM, 2005, pp. 113, 118, 124, 128, 154. 58. Nelken, And Yet I am Here!, p. 262. 59. Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 261. 60. Lidia Vago’s description of an operation under general anesthetic on the hand of her sister Aniko that took place in the Revier of Ravensbrück immediately after their arrival with the thousands of the Auschwitz Todesmarsch in her One Year in the Black Hole of our Planet Earth, p. 51. Similarly, Vera Dotan reports in chapter 5 of her memoir Rising from Hell that to everyone’s surprise her mother was successfully operated on in the Revier for a serious infection in her back, as late as 23 January 1945. 61. Kasimira Bergman, in two interviews with A.K. (8 December 1997 and 19 February 1998); Galina Matusova, interviewed by J.B.A. and Bärbel Schindler-Saefkow on 10 November 2000 in Safed; and Maria Schneidmesser, war name Wanda Vatneipka (false identity), interviewed on 25 May 1997 by A.K. and I.D.K. 62. Esther Kemeny, On the Shores of Darkness, Burlingame, CA, 2003, pp. 99–100. 63. Niza Ganor, Who Are You Anouschka?, in Hebrew, Omer, p. 143; German: 2000. 64. Rosenfeld, One Year in the Black Hole of our Planet Earth, p. 45. 65. Berger et al., Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, p. 228 (translated from German). 66. “Many ten thousands of Jewish males of military age, from all parts of Hungary, were saved by the Armed Forces” (Randolph, L. Braham, “The Holocaust in Hungary: a Retrospective Analysis”, p. 43, in Genocide and Rescue: the Holocaust in Hungary 1944, ed. D. Cesarani, Oxford, 1997, pp. 29–46). 67. Asher Cohen, “Resistance and Rescue in Hungary”, p. 130, in ibid., pp. 123–134. 68. Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 222. 69. Nelken, And Yet I am Here!, pp. 259–62. 70. See chapter 8, note 210. 71. We know about 3 physicians, 1 Dr. Phil., 1 Dr. Jur., and 1 anthropologist during the first period, 3 physicians during the third period, 6 physicians and one Dr. Phil. during the fourth period, and 12 physicians, 4 pharmacists, 1 dentist, 1 chemist, and 1 lawyer during the fifth period. 72. Israeli survivor #410, Dr. Miriam (Mina) Litwin, a physician, and Israeli survivor #550, Dr. Estera Frankel, a physician, both served the Jewish women in Wittenberg; Dr. Slavka/Dorotha Klein-Lorska (Dobroszˇawa), b. Goldschneider, worked in the Neustadt-Glewe Revier (mentioned in Schütt, Ein vergessenes Lager?, II, p. 36, as a physician who did all she could to help the sick there). 73. Bernstein, The Seamstress, pp. 234–237.

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262 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 74. Grohs-Martin, Silvie, p. 274. 75. Claus Füllberg-Stolberg et al. (eds.), Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: BergenBelsen Ravensbrück, Bremen, 1994, pp. 318–319. 76. Bernstein, The Seamstress, pp. 224–226. 77. Nelken, And Yet I am Here!, p. 249. 78. See list of memoirs by Jewish Ravensbrück prisoners at the end of this volume. 79. Information by Walter Morgenbesser; interviews on 19 and 26 February 1998, by J.B.A. and Nathan B. 80. Bernstein, The Seamstress, p. 178. See also Françoise Maffre Castellani, Femmes déportées: Histoires de résilience, Paris, 2005, pp. 29–74, for a description of the special suffering of women concentration camp prisoners due to the complete absence of privacy, and the constant filth and stench. 81. Bernstein: “The shearing of our heads and vulvas ... took from us the last traces of who we had been” (The Seamstress, pp. 196–199). 82. Langley-Dános: “‘What will become of me? My hair has been cut off. I shall never get home.’ ... Something has been broken inside Hanna”, in Prison on Wheels, p. 36; also Erna Musik, in Berger et al., Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, p. 167 (note 57). 83. An exception were two Jewish women who lived in the German political prisoners’ block at the beginning of the third period, and apparently worked as secretary and clerk: Irene Rumler and Ilse Heinemann, Ravensbrück prisoner numbers 19542 and 21816, Blockbuch 1. 84. Ganor, Who Are You Anouschka?, p. 150; also in Amariglio, From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back, pp. 136–137.

Appel! (Edith Kiss)

La Nuit (Edith Kiss)

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12 LITERATURE CONCERNING THE JEWISH PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK

FULL-LENGTH PUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Bernstein, Sara Tuvel, Thornton, Louise Loots, and Samuels, Marlene Bernstein, The Seamstress: A Memoir of Survival, Berkley, New York, 1999. Birenbaum, Halina, Hope is the Last to Die: A Coming of Age Under Nazi Terror [first published in Polish: 1967, Hebrew: 1981, German: 1989], NY, 1996; and “Rückkehr einer Kind-Greisin aus Auschwitz”, in Dachauer Hefte Nr. 9, Dachau, 1993. Buchman, Salusia, Un livre pour mon fils, Productions Chanteclair, Paris, 1987. Dagan, Batsheva, Gesegnet sei die Phantasie: verflucht sei sie! Überlebenszeugnisse, Metropol, Berlin, 2005. Dotan, Vera (Miriam) and Moshe Dotan, Rising from Hell, Docstory, Raanana, 2005, Hebrew and English. Fabius, Odette, Sonnenaufgang über der Hölle – von Paris in das KZ Ravensbrück Erinnerungen, [first published in French 1986], Berlin, 1997. Ganor, Niza, Who Are You Anuschka?, in Hebrew, Omer, Sarah Batz; in German, Wer bist du, Anuschka? C. H. Beck, 2000. Glas-Larsson, Margareta, I Want to Speak, Ariadne Press, Riverside, CA, January 1991. Greenfield, Hanna, Von Kolin nach Jerusalem: Bruchstücke aus meinen Erinnerungen, Jerusalem and New York, 1993. Grohs-Martin, Silvia, Silvie, Welcome Rain, New York, 2000. Gyulai, Kato, Zwei Schwestern: Geschichte einer Deportation. Written: Budapest, 1947; published: Freie Universität Berlin, 2000.

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Literature concerning the Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 281 Heftler, Nadine, Si tu t’en sors ...: Auschwitz, 1944–1945, Découverte, Paris, 1992. Kallus, Menachem, Als Junge im KZ Ravensbrück, Metropol, Berlin, 2005. Kemeny, Esther, On the Shores of Darkness, Haller, Burlingame, CA, 2003. Kopecky, Lilli, Im Schatten der Flammen (Sechs Vorlesungen über den Holocaust), Düsseldorf, 1992. Kornreich-Gelissen, Rena, Renas Versprechen, Knesebeck-Verlag, Munich, 1996. Kounio-Amariglio, Erika (Myriam), From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz and Back, Thessaloniki, 1998. Langley-Dános, Eva, Prison on Wheels: From Ravensbrück to Burgau. Written: St. Ottilien, 1945; published: Canada, 2000; in German, Einsiedeln, Switzerland, Daimon Verlag, 2000. Lundholm, Anja, Das Höllentor: Bericht einer Überlebenden, Reinbek bei Hamburg (1988) 1996; [not strictly autobiographical]. Nelken, Halina, And Yet I Am Here!, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1999. Pelz-Bergt, Jutta, Die ersten Jahre nach dem Holocaust, Berlin, 1997. Schmidt-Fels, Lucia, Deportiert nach Ravensbrück: Bericht einer Zeugin 1943–1945, Düsseldorf, 1981. Shelley, Lore (ed.), The Secretaries of Death, Shengold, New York, 1986 [mainly Auschwitz]. Shelley, Lore (ed.), Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 1, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1992 [mainly Auschwitz]. Sherman, Judith H., Say the Name: A Survivor’s Tale in Prose and Poetry, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2005. Sommer-Lefkovits, Elisabeth, Ihr seid auch in dieser Hölle? Erinnerungen an die unheilvollen Zeiten 1944–1945, Chronos Verlag, Zurich, 1994. Tichauer, Eva, J’étais le numéro 20832 à Auschwitz, Editions L’Harmattan, Paris, 1988. Wajsbrot, Inka, Together and Alone Facing Terror [in Hebrew, translated from the Polish], Tel Aviv, 1992. SHORT MEMOIRS, EDITED BY OTHERS

The following memoirs have been published in Schütt, Karl Heinz (ed.), Ein vergessenes Lager? Über das Aussenlager Neustadt-Glewe des Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück, Schkeuditz, 1997; or in: Schütt, Karl Heinz (ed.), Ein Vergessenes Lager?, II, Schkeuditz, 1998:

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282 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Atlas-Solar, Edith, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 7–8. Badour-Esrael, Liane, in: Schütt (1997), p. 34. Berger (Maityn)-Weiss, Irene, in: Schütt (1997), p. 33. Bindiger-Cige, Marta, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 9–10. Buchman, Salusia, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 40–42. Celogh-Segal, Fanny, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 34–35. Czarna-Welcman, Ida, in: Schütt (1997), p. 35. Fensterszab-Grinspan, Ida, in: Schütt (1997), p. 36. Friedman-Olomucki, Halina, in: Schütt (1997), p. 46. Geiger-Zimmermann, Lea, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 46–47. Gelbard-Jisraeli, Shulamit, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 11–13. Gelbgras-Ferstenberg, Lea, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 47–48. Goldberg-Blumen, Regina, in: Schütt (1997), p. 37. Goldring-Gold, Hanna, in: Schütt (1997), p. 38. Gross-Koth, Gertrude, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 14–17. Grünapfel-Meth, Rose, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 48–50. Heinovits-Paskus, Regina, in: Schütt (1997), p. 51. Ickovics-Lebowics, Etelka, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 18–20. Jarzcun, Estera, in: Schütt (1998), p. 21. K., Fela, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 51–53. Karliner-Bulder, Edith, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 53–55. Kotliarevsky-Korb, Caterine, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 38–39. Kluger-Hajos, Irene, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 56–59. Kornreich-Gelissen, Rena, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 60–61. Landau-Bondy, Klara, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 62–64. Lang-Müller, Lilli, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 65–67. Libman-Weill, Ruth, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 21–22. Liebermann-Shiber, Ella, in: Schütt (1997), p. 67. Mankowska-Bruk, Selena, in: Schütt (1997), p. 69. Neumann-Votavova, Eva, in: Schütt (1998), p. Pelz-Bergt, Jutta, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 73–78. Piatkowska, Antonina, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 79–84. Polak-Kupferschmidt, Anna S., in: Schütt (1997), pp. 85–87. Rosenberg-Weber, Serena, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 88–90. Rosenfeld-Vago, Lydia, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 91–107. Saady-Tabb, Elvira, in: Schütt (1997), p. 109. Schmelz, Margot, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 109–110. Schwalb-Horn, Lea, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 113–114. Schwalb-Kisch, Lea, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 114–115. Schwalbova, Margita, Dr., in: Schütt (1998), pp. 22–24. Schwartz-Fried, Elisabeth, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 25–27.

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Literature concerning the Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 283 Svoboda-Kopecky, Lilli, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 118–121. Telner-Baum, Salomea, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 122–125. Treibich (Huppert), Christina (Rina), in: Schütt (1998), pp. 31–32. Wynschenk-Lissing, Rebecca, in: Schütt (1997), pp. 130–131. Zimmerspitz-Neumann, Eta, in: Schütt (1998), pp. 39–41. Shelley, Lore, The Secretaries of Death, Shengold, New York, 1986: Duschinsky, Lili, pp. 197–203. Duschinsky – Rothova, Grete, pp. 224–232. Friedman (war name Spandau), Elizabeth (Elfi), pp. 159–166. Glueck, Renee, b. Vesely, pp. 70–73. Grossman, Helene, b. Brody, pp. 184–196. Grün – Kellner, Else, pp. 85–56. Grünwald – Frenkel (Löwinger), Irene, pp. 211–223. Hönig, Lily, b. Reiner, pp. 86–91. Kopecky, Lilli, war name Sonnenfeld-Svoboda, pp. 233–247. Kounio, Hella, b. Loewy, pp. 52–54. Kounio Amariglio, Erika Myriam, pp. 42–51. Majerczyk, Lili, b. Stark, pp. 144–147. Markowitz, Herma, b. Hirschler, pp. 116–130. Ostermann, Dagmar, b. Bock, pp. 170–183. Paskus, Rivka, b. Heinovitz, pp. 204–210. Pollak, Aurelia, b. Klein, pp. 150–158. Rosenthal, Maryla, b. Obstfelt, pp. 148–149. Schwarz, Irene, b. Anis, pp. 11–20. Sender, Frieda, b. Adler, pp. 78–80. Shelley, Dr. Lore, b. Weinberg, pp. 92–104. Spatz Susan Cernyak, b. Eckstein, pp. 107–115. Steinberg (war name Lebensfeld), Regina, pp. 131–143. Turteltaub, Elsa, b. Waldner, pp. 257–260. Weiss, Berta, pp. 74–76. Weiss, Irene, b. Berger, pp. 55–69. Shelley, Lore, Auschwitz: The Nazi Civilization, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 1, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1992: Aloni, Ora, b. Borinski, pp. 179–192. Atlas, Esther, b. Kassvan, pp. 102–114. Bergt, Jutta, b. Pelz, pp. 201–212. Grunstein, Katarina, b. Feldbauer, pp. 229–240. Heymann, Shoshana, b. Rosenthal, pp. 8–12. Maliarova, Edith, pp. 62–72.

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284 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Moses, Rachel, b. Petzal Inge, pp. 192–201. Müller, Irmgard, pp. 38–42. Rosenhain (West), Anny, b. Neumann, pp. 34–37. Rotstein, Helena, b. Gutman, pp. 14–18. Sohlberg, Sophie, b. Löwenstein, pp. 164–177. Soswinski, Herta, b. Mehl, pp. 125–144. Berger, Karin, Holzinger, Elisabeth, Podgornik, Lotte, and Trallori, Lisbeth N. (eds.), Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, daß Du ihn noch in Freiheit tragen kannst: Widerstehen im KZ; Österreichische Frauen erzählen, Promedia, Vienna, 1987: Einberger, Eva, pp. 89–91. Fritz, Mali, pp. 253–258. Lehr, Antonie, pp. 194–197. Musik, Erna, pp. 165–174. S., Lotte, pp. 225–234. Schindel, Gerti, pp. 282–284. Soswinski, Herta, pp. 239–246. Tencer, Ester, pp. 235–238.

The following memoirs have been edited by others Fuchs, Herta, b. Ligeti, “Camp Love with a capital L”, in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, ed. Lore Shelley, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 13, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1996, pp. 58–76, 354–357. Kraskin, Rysia. “The Story of a Survivor”, in Generation to Generation, compiled by Gillian Levy, Jewish Community in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 1996. Litwin, Mina Miriam, published testimony, in Renate Gruber-Lieblich, ... und morgen war Krieg!” – Arado Flugzeugwerke GmbH Wittenberg 1936–1945, Wittenberg, 1995, pp. 78–88. Lyon, Gloria Hollander, in “Die Odyssee einer ungarischen Judin”, in Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen/Ravensbrück, ed. Claus Füllberg-Stolberg et al. Bremen, 1994, pp. 279–290. Menzer, Rosa, “Die rote Rosa von Striesen”, in Sigrid Jacobeit and Lieselotte Thoms-Heirich, Kreuzweg Ravensbrück, Verlag für die Frau, Leipzig, 1987, pp. 125–137. Rosenfeld-Vago, Lydia, “One year in the Black Hole of our Planet Earth: A Personal Narrative”, in Women in the Holocaust, ed. Dalia Ofer and Leonore J. Weitzman, Chapter 15, New York, 1998, pp. 273–284.

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Literature concerning the Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 285 Schwartz-Fried, Elisabeth, “I worked for Mengele”, in Survivors’ Chronicle, Vol. 4, Issue 1, New York, Spring 1998. Silbermann, Lotte, “In der SS-Kantine in Ravensbrück”, in Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück: ... und dennoch blühten Blumen – Dokumente, Berichte, Gedichte und Zeichnungen vom Lageralltag 1939–1945, ed. Helga Schwarz and Gerda Szepansky, Potsdam, 2000, pp. 52–55. Sonntag, Lotte-Brainin, in The Union Kommando in Auschwitz, ed. Lore Shelley, Studies in the Shoah Series, Vol. 13, University Press of America, Lanham, MD, 1996, pp. 88–96, 361–364. van de Montel, Louise, “... der Zukunft optimistisch entgegensehen”, in Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen/Ravensbrück, ed. Andreas Pflock, Bremen, 1994, pp. 313–320.

Short biographies published in Ravensbrück calendars Frauen aus Ravensbrück 1995, Edition Hentrich, 1994: Benario-Prestes, Olga; Kiss, Edith, b. Rott; Leichter, Marianne-Katharina (Käthe), b. Pick. Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück, Kalender 2000, Berlin, 1999: Bejerano, Esther, b. Loewy; Hazai, Rozsi, b. Traijar; Konrad, Irmgard, b. Adam; Nikifora, Stella, b. Kugelman; Tettenborn, Elisabeth, b. Witzig; Timar, Eva. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL DOCUMENTS Benario-Prestes, Olga, “Brief an Dona Leocadia Prestes in Mexiko”, in Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück: ... und dennoch blühten Blumen – Dokumente, Berichte, Gedichte und Zeichnungen vom Lageralltag 1939–1945, ed. Helga Schwarz and Gerda Szepansky, Potsdam, 2000, pp. 63–65. Eckler, Irene, Die Vormundschaftsakte 1935–1958, Horneburg Verlag, Germany, 1996. Kugelmann, Stella, “Erinnerungen an das Lager” [letter to Erika Buchmann (1963), letter to Antonina Nikoforowa (1960)], in Frauen-KZ Ravensbrück: ... und dennoch blühten Blumen – Dokumente, Berichte, Gedichte und Zeichnungen vom Lageralltag 1939–1945, ed. Helga Schwarz and Gerda Szepansky, Potsdam, 2000, pp. 125–126.

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286 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Murr, Emma, and Fiedler, Selma, letters and documents, collected in Reinhard Schramm, Ich will leben, Weißenfels, 1990.

UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS Katz, Rosa, b. Goldberg, 1974 interview for Madison Historical Society, 63 pp. Neumann, Irma, untitled and unpublished memoir, Berlin, Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, 1948. Shragay, Mania, From Piotrków to Ravensbrück [in Hebrew], 18 December 1997. Teitelbaum, Margit, b. Schwartz, Kurze Beschreibung der Erlebnisse in Auschwitz von Häftling 4826, Yad Vashem Archive 12414. Vago, Lidia Rosenfeld, One year in the Black Hole of Our Planet Earth, PetahTikva, Israel, 1995, 119 pp.

BOOKS ON RAVENSBRÜCK BY NON-JEWISH PRISONERS WHO DESCRIBE THE SITUATION OF JEWISH PRISONERS Buber-Neumann, Margarete, Under Two Dictators, English: UK, 1949, USA, 1950; in German: Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler, 1949, recent edition: Ullstein, 2002. Buber-Neumann, Margarete, Milena, Kafkas Freundin, in German: Munich, 1977; in English: Milena, U.K., 1977. Kiedrzyn´ska, Wanda, Ravensbrück Frauenkonzentrationslager, Polish: Warsaw, 1961, 379 pp. (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive.) Tillion, Germaine, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, Lüneburg, 1998 (in French: Paris, 1973, 1988, 1997). Winska, Urzula, Die Werte siegten: Erinnerungen an Ravensbrück, in Polish: Morskie, 1985, 418 pp. (German translation in the Ravensbrück Archive.) Maffre Castellani, Françoise, Femmes déportées: Histoires de résilience, Editions des femmes: Antoinette Fouque, Paris, 2005. RESEARCH CONCERNING THE JEWISH PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK Apel, Linde, Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939–1945, Metropol Verlag, Berlin, 2003. Gisela Bock (ed.), Genozid und Geschlecht: Jüdische Frauen im nationalsozialistischen Lagersystem, Campus, Frankfurt am Main and New York, 2005.

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Literature concerning the Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück 287 Erpel, Simone, “Ravensbrücker Todesmärsche 1945”, in Bulletin für Faschismus: und Weltkriegsforschung, ed. Werner Röhr and Brigitte Berlekamp, Beiheft 1, Edition Organon, Berlin, 2001. Massariello Merzagora, Giovanna, and Massariello, Paolo, La Lista delle donne di Ravensbrück: 600 nomi per ricordare, Bollentino della Societa Latteraria, 9bis, Verona, December 1945, pp. 31–54. Massariello Merzagora, Giovanna, Ecologia della memoria: la conservazione dei lager sul territorio della Germania, ibid, pp. 59–65. Saidel, Rochelle G., The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2004. Seidel, Irmgard, “Jüdinnen in den Aussenkommandos des Konzentrationslagers Buchenwald”, paper for international conference “Genocide and Gender”, FU Berlin, October 2003. Schindler-Saefkow, Bärbel, “Todestransporte aus Ravensbrück” and “Ein Gedenkbuch für die Opfer von Ravensbrück”, in Bulletin für Faschismus: und Weltkriegsforschung, ed. Werner Röhr and Brigitte Berlekamp, Beiheft 1, Edition Organon, Berlin, 2001, pp. 123–145 and 169–192. Walz, Loretta, “Und dann kommst du dahin an einem schönen Sommertag”: Die Frauen von Ravensbrück, Kunstmann, Munich, 2005.

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13 LISTS OF INTERVIEWS

Bawer, Zsuzsanna

08.12. 1944

92416

86242

22.11.44

Bartha, Agnes

Galambos, Agnes Herczog, Zsuzsanna (Imrené)

43420

Arato Taube, Judith June 1944 (Aufrichtig), Jolanta Bart-Nomberg, Bart-Nomberg, Jan. 1945 Helena Helena

24.12.44

Aug. 1944

Sweden: Trelleborg #311 By mail and phone By mail, Budapest

22.05.46

19.07.05

Sep. 2005

Israel: Rehovot

USA

10.07.97

21.05.03

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

Luba Melchior

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

Israeli survivor

Israeli #52 Survivor US survivor 61001

Chap. 6, p. 5

Chap. 8, p. 8

No. on Quoted US or Israeli list US survivor 35841

Hungarian survivor To Freiburg, Hungarian then to Szvodav survivor

*

Detailed letter Phone interview Videotaped interview for Shoah Foundation

Interviewer Additional information

3:11 PM

Ajlman, Estera Wasserman, Esther

Efrat, Eva

02.05.01

Adler, Eva

88778

Ross, Rose

Adler, Roszi

Place of interview

11/12/2006

22.11.44

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

War name

Table 13.1 List of all (138) interviews with survivors, including interviews taped and recorded by the team of researchers; recorded phone interviews by J.B.A.; interviews carried out in Sweden and Belgium soon after the War – recorded and translated; mail and phone interviews by J.B.A.

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99447

09.11.97

Biwas, Estera

Alalouf, Ester

Bindel, Tauba, Bibdel, Tauba b. Edelman

Berger, Magda, Berger, Esther b. Wollstein Bienstock, Bienstock, Dwojra Dwojra m. Ruth

25.08.97

April 56

Israel

Belgium #1047

April 1956 Belgium

Jan. 1945

Jan. 1945

2003

Israel: Herzlia

Israel: Jerusalem

24.12.44

Nov. 1944

Berger, Klara

Cohen, Klara

15.06.98

A.K.

J.B.A.

I.D.K.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

#36

Chap. 8, p. 29

Chap. 8, p. 124

Chap. 8, 38

#527

No. on Quoted US or Israeli list

US survivor, 1866/ Israeli #118 survivor Israeli #372 survivor Israeli survivor Belgian survivor

Israeli survivor

phone interview Material in Yad. Vashem, translated from French to English by J.B.A Material in Belgian Yad Vashem, survivor translated from French to English by J.B.A Israeli survivor

Phone interview, especially on Retzow

Interviewer Additional information

3:11 PM

Berger, Irmgard Becker, Irmgard 23.01.45 Judith Judith

12.11.03

Fürst, Naomi

Bennerova, Agota

Place of interview

11/12/2006

Nov. 1944

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

War name

ch13.080 Page 290

Schulzer, Zipora Hartuv, Zipora

Deutsch, Rosa

Taublib, Adela 24.12.44

Davidovitz, Feige Davidovitz, Zirel

Deutsch, Rosa

Esses, Adela

Oct.–Nov. 1944 Claims to have arrived in Sep. 1944 06–09.12.44 93000

Goldberg, Bluma

Cukierman, Blima

96130

July 1944

Coperbac, Rauchla

Coperbac, Rauchla

05.12.05

16.12.97

Feb. 2003

J.B.A.

Israel: I.D.K. Herzlia Israel: I.D.K. Kfar Hasidim By phone J.B.A. and by mail, Budapest

J.B.A.

On Penig list; testified about 3 women who died in Penig Replied to specific inquiries

Phone interview Letter from her son George Weissberg Material in Yad Vashem, translated from French to English by J.B.A Replied to specific inquiries

US survivor

Hungarian survivor

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor

202514

#257

#675

#164

US survivor 259883

Israeli survivor US survivor

Evacuation of Penig

Chap. 8, p. 141

3:11 PM

24.12.44

16.07.03

Jan 45

Cattan, Aimée Weissberg, Aimée

J.B.A.

11/12/2006

April 1956 Belgium #466

2003

Blavat, Marilka Serna, Miriam Jan. 1945

ch13.080 Page 291

Nov. 1944

Weisner, Sara

Goldband, Rosalia

Gellert, Kato

Goldband Mordowicz, Rosalia

Nov. 1944

Jan. 1945

Frenkel, Anicka Ganor, Niza

82072

20.03.46

04.08.97

13.03.97

01.09.98

Israel: Petach Tikwa Sweden: Malmö #240

Israel: Jerusalem

Israel

Jan. 1945

Filusch, Sara

Zvi, Sara

By mail, Budapest

Place of interview

Krystyna Karier

J.B.A., A.K., and I.D.K. A.K.

A.K.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

*

Died in 1991; letter from her daughterin-law and phone interview with her son Sent to Venusberg and Mauthausen

Interviewer Additional information

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

Hungarian survivor

Israeli survivor

#281

#191

Chap. 8, 5

No. on Quoted US or Israeli list

3:11 PM

Fenyö, Rozália Kovács Rozália Dec. 1944 (Muklosne)

Nov. 2000

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

11/12/2006

Farkas, Matilda, Farkas, Matilda Dec. 1944 b. Kahan

War name

ch13.080 Page 292

28.11.44

Gyulai, Kato

Hauptman, Felicija

Hauptman, Felicija

Haberfeld, Zemer, Chana Johanna Handelsmann, Hadley, Anna Hanka

25.01.45

24.12.44

20.11.44

28.11.44

Gutman, Vera Engel, Vera

Gyulai, Kato

Jan. 1945

88927

88973

86055

03.10.46

24.09.98

27.07.98

Feb. 2003

01.09.97

Sweden: Trelleborg #487

Israel: Tel Aviv

Budapest

Israel

Luba Melchior

J.B.A. and A.K. J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

A.K.

Sweden: Helena Doverstorp Driedricka #115 J.B.A.

J.B.A.

30.11.03

13.01.47

J.B.A.

01.05.01

Replied to specific inquiries *

Replied to specific inquiries

Replied to specific inquiries

Detailed letter Phone interview Photocopy of testimony by Judith Taube *

Hungarian survivor Israeli survivor US survivor

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

US survivor

Australian survivor

US survivor

Chap. 6, 5

16862

#330

#48

#194

Chap. 8, 128

Chap. 8, 195

110002 Chap. 8, 128

91424

3:11 PM

Gruta, Bella

24.12.44

Selman, Sara

82285

88938

11/12/2006

Gruta, Bella

Nov. 1944

Gottfried, Rachela

Gottfried/ Teitelbaum, Rachela Grüberger, Szari

22.11.44

Schaeffer, Rose Olshinzky, Shulamit Peer, Edith

Goldberger, Rozsi Goldblatt, Faige (Fanny) Gombus, Edith

ch13.080 Page 293

Holcer, Lida

Holcer, Lida

Feig, Rivka

Joffe, Chaika

Arbel, Amira (Emmi)

Jakubovics, Regina-Rivka

Joffe, Chaika married Gruman

Kallus, Emma

Hufert, Rivaka Treibich, Reina (Christina)

07.02.44

Harris, Judith

Hirsch, Judith

07.02.44

06.06.44

Nov. 1944

28052

14.07.97

13.08.97

Israel: Kiryat Tivon

Israel: Netanya 28044 26.08.97 Israel: Ra’anana 13.01.46 Sweden Doverstorp #113 104455 13.05.97 Israel: Ramat Aviv 19.11.97 Israel: Kiryat Haim April 1956 Belgium: #273

87113

Place of interview

A.K. and I.D.K.

Yad Vashem,

I.D.K.

A.K. and I.D.K.

Helena Driedricka

A.K.

A.K.

Interviewer

Material in survivor translated from French to English by J.B.A.

*

Additional information

Israeli survivor

Belgian

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

#57

#521

#346

#235

#625

Chap. 8, 177

Chap. X, 9

Chap. 8, 187

No. on Quoted US or Israeli list

3:11 PM

Feb. 1945

Nov. 1944

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

11/12/2006

Hetenyi, Klara Kristof, Klara

War name

ch13.080 Page 294

Shlomi, Hanna Jan. 1945

Razon, Yvonne Kiss, Judit

Kempel, Hanna

Kimchi (Kamchi), Kiss, Judit

Auschwitz Todesmarsch ~1.12.44

21.08.44

Liefschitz, Sally

Kawenoki, Sally

03.11.44

60879

82297

81384

Nov. 1944

S.K and J.B.A.

A.K.

A.K. and I.D.K.

Israel: Tel Aviv Israel A.K.

J.B.A.

Sweden: Krystyna Doverstorp Karier #102 J.B.A.

Israel: Kiryat Tivon Israel: Beit Itzhak

Aug. 2005 By mail J.B.A. and phone, Budapest

03.09.97

07.02.01

19.02.02

12.01.46

2003

17.07.97

14.07.98

Sent to Spandau and Oranienburg; gave information about 2 other survivors

Hungarian survivor

Replied to US survivor 16185 specific inquiries about arrivals in Aug. 1944 Israeli survivor #658

in Israel until 1968; interview by S.K.; phone interview 2003 by J.B.A. *

#596

Israeli #597 survivor US survivor 281187

Israeli survivor

Chap. 7, 20

Chap. 6, 9

Chap. 6, 12

3:11 PM

Kaplan, Gustawa

28027

07.02.44

Kallus, Zali (Sara) Senator, Margaret

28053

07.02.44

Kallus, Menachem

11/12/2006

Kaplan, Gustawa

Kallus, Menachem (Otto) Kallus, Zali, b. Eliovits Kanitz, Margit

ch13.080 Page 295

Benet, Eta

Loeb, Irene Trattner, Sara Mor, Aliza

Krakowski Dr., 22.10.44 Fruma Königsberg, Nov. 1944 Renata De Vries, Erna 16.09.43

Krajanek, Estera

Klein, Eta

Klein, Irene Klein, Schari Kohn, Alice

Kokocinska, Priemeta Königsberg, Renata Korn, Erna

Krajanek, Estera, b. Gruk

82397

20.12.45

82226

15.06.46

14.05.99

15.12.98

2003 April 2001 Feb. 1998

79546

89061

Luba Melchior J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A. J.B.A. J.B.A.

I.D.K.

Sweden: Helena Ystad #360 Mikloszews ka

Israel: Ramat Gan Sweden: Lund #137 Israel

Israel: Herzlia

On “sheelon sofi”; also letter *

German survivor

Israeli survivor Letter US survivor Detailed letter US survivor Questionnaire Israeli and phone survivor interview Israeli survivor *

#217

311001 208886 #443

#115

No. on US or Israeli list

Chap. 4, 3

Quoted

3:11 PM

Nov. 1944

Aug. 1944 22.11.44 Nov. 1944

09.11.97

Ravens Date of Place of Interviewer Additional brück interview interview information no.

11/12/2006

Nov. 1944

Current name Arrived in Ravensbrück

War name

ch13.080 Page 296

Litwin, Mina

Lorentz, Yalnka Rot, Tova (Lenka)

Litwin Dr., Miriam Mina Maria

Lis, Halina

19.11.44

22.10.44

Early Nov. 1944 April 1945

Lieberman, Edith Lis, Halina

Rieder, Edith

21–22.11.44

Lengyel, Janka, b. Stern

84734

79364

85721

53600

28.03.03

27.01.98

30.11.03

Nov. 2003

09.11.97

Aug. 1944

Lax, Frieda

J.B.A.

Israel: J.B.A. Rechovot Israel: Tel J.B.A. Aviv

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

Luba Melchior

I.D.K.

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor

Belgian survivor

Also interviewed by Renate Gruber-Lieblich Letter Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

Correspondence with her son Gabor Lengyel Letter US survivor

*

Material in Yad Vashem, translated from French to English by J.B.A.

#648

#410

62797

#159

#498

Chap. 7, 34

Chap. 8, 84

Chap. 7, 7

Chap. 8, 109

Chap. 8, 7

Chap. 3, 49

3:11 PM

Petrower, Zipora

28.04.46

Israel: Yavne Sweden Malmö #283 Israel: Ramat Gan

Belgium: #270

11/12/2006

Laufer, Alfreda Laufer, Alfreda Krupp

05.06.97

Laufer, Elisabet Siliagi, Elisabet 22.11.44

85688

08.06.56

Landskroner, Bertha

Jan. 1945

Landskroner, Bertha, married Rieg

ch13.080 Page 297

53719

Kallus, Tova

Mayzel, Sara

Mayzel, Sara

25584

16.12.43

82103

82006

Miodownik, Maria Gottfried, Lily

Miodownik, Maria Misrachi, Rebecca

04.09.46

21.12.97

21.09.97

20.03.47

25.04.46

15.04.97

101827 19.09.97

Nov. 1944

Schwartz, Ester Nov. 1944

Melchior, Estera

Jan. 1942

Jan. 1945

Sept. 1944

Feb. 2003

J.B.A.

Luba Melchior

Sweden: Trelleborg #277 Sweden: Malmö #242 Israel: Rishon Letzion

Vienna

Luba Melchior J.B.A. and A.K.

Luba Melchior

S.K.

Israel: I.D.K. Kiryat Tivon Brussels: Luba #492 Melchior Israel A.K.

Sweden: Trelleborg #304

Interviewer

*

*

Gave report to J.B.A.

survivor *

Replied to specific inquiries

*

Additional information

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor Czech/ Austrian survivor US survivor

Israeli

Israeli survivor

#161

38689

#574

#571

#418

No. on US or Israeli list

Chap. 6, 14

Chap. 4, 7

Chap. 8, 141

Quoted

3:11 PM

Medina, Frieda Kobo (Kovo), Frieda Mehl, Herta Soswinski, Herta

95925

Lamhut, Malka 24.12.44

16.05.46

Markowska (Cukierman), Fela Marosi, Olga

27223

Mandelkern, Lajka

Mandelkern, Lajka

Place of interview

11/12/2006

Feb. 1944

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

War name

ch13.080 Page 298

Nirenberg (Nierenberg), Cipora (Tzipora)

Nirenberg (Nierenberg), Rifka

Abram, Pola

Békés, Magdolna (Tamasné) Dr. Szilágyi, Rózsa (Dezsöné) Kimelman, Gina

24.08.45

24.08.44

Dec. 1944

60926

60925

34252

06.04.44

Dec. 2001

Dec. 2001

July 2005

19.07.05

02.07.97

Mail and phone, Budapest

Israel: Tel Aviv Israel: Netanya Israel: Netanya

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

A.K. and I.D.K. J.B.A. and I.D.K.

J.B.A.

Was sent to Venusberg and Mauthausen Correspondence with her son Mikael Kimelman (information on Mühlhausen) Correspondence with her nephew Mikael Kimelman (information on Mühlhausen)

Was sent to Venusberg

Replied to specific inquiries Video interview

#445

#545

US survivor

119

Hungarian survivor 361-3120096 US survivor 21879

Hungarian survivor

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

Canadian survivor

Medical experiments in Venusberg

Chap. 6, 13

Chap. 10, 61

3:11 PM

Nagy, Rózsa

34253

06.04.44

19.02. 98 26.02.98 23.06.97

J.B.A.

11/12/2006

03–04.12.44

11707

10.11.44

Morgenbesser, Walter Moskovits, Neomi Moskovits, Frieda, b. Heinovits Munk, Magdolna

Morgenbesser, Walter Friedman, Neomi Moskovits, Neomi

24.12.44

Modrzewiecka, Kraskin, Rysia Rysia

ch13.080 Page 299

Aug. 1944

Jan. 1945

Flutzer, Sara

Lax, Frieda

Strochlitz, Sonia

Perelmuter, Sala

Petrover, Zipora Pfeffer, Sonja

Pszczol (Widawska), Masza Raskin, Mania

Aug. 1943

Bergman, Kazimira

Pawovska, Anna Kazimira

Krupp

Christmas 1944

Pszczol, Masza

Birencwaig, Mania

53600

23.06.03

16.05.47

June and July 2003

09.11.97

102275 17.12.97 and 21.12.97 Dec. 1997 to Feb. 1998 Feb. 2003 J.B.A.

A.K. and A.T.

I.D.K.

Sweden Trelleborg #308

J.B.A.

Luba Melchior

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor

Israeli survivor

#691

#519

#535

#125

#478

No. on US or Israeli list

Letter by US survivor 295494 daughter Hudes Birencwaig McCartny

Israeli survivor Phone interview Israeli and survivor Correspondence with Louise Palanker *

Replied to Specific inquiries

Six video interviews

Interviewer Additional information

Israel: J.B.A. Ramat Gan J.B.A.

Israel: Tel Aviv

Israel: Tel Aviv

Place of interview

Chap. 8, 204

Chap. X, 45

Quoted

3:11 PM

24.12.44

Jan. 1945

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

11/12/2006

Numberg Malka Weissrosen, Malka

War name

ch13.080 Page 300

Doliner, Beatrice Schlipke, Rosa Gamburg, Shoshana Schreiber, Lili Jodelsohn, Lili

Schaffer, Asia

Dagan, BatSheva

Jan. 1945

Kaiser, Sabine (Sprinza), b. Eissrosen Rosenthal, Aranka

Rosental, Aranka, b. Elster Rubinsztajn, Isabela

Feb. 2001

23.11.45

Lowy, Silvia

Nov. and Dec. 1944 23.11.44

16.09.44

Jan. 1945

22.11.44

70101

89211

11.04.01

09.06.98

2001

25.02.00

07.05.01

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

I.D.K.

Israel: J.B.A. Givatayim J.B.A.

Israel: Tel Aviv

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

US survivor

Israeli survivor

#190

7596

#215

35586

#643

Israeli #661 survivor/Poli sh survivor Israeli survivor US survivor

Hungarian survivor

Questionnaire, Israeli and phone survivor interview Letter from her son US survivor George Schaeffer Israeli survivor Correspondence

Detailed letter

Liberated at Ravensbrück; information on 4 other prisoners Replied to specific inquiries Phone interview Correspondence

Chap. 7, 48

Chap. 8, 194

Chap. 8, 125

3:11 PM

102292 17.12.97 and 21.12.97

2000

Gross, Ziva

Rosenbaum, Zvia Rosenberg, Szidonia Rosenblum, Sabine

Feb. 2003

Mail interview

11/12/2006

24.12.44

Ritterman, Hanna

Ritterman, Hanna

21–22.11.44

Ferenczi Katalin (Pálné)

Reiser Katalin (Karolin)

ch13.080 Page 301

Klein, Helena

Sepsz, Helen

Náté, Nora

27.07.99

16.03.98

34265

Stahl, Arthur Avraham Stark, Nora

06.04.44

14.09.98

34266

Stahl, Charlotte Ge’alel, Zehava 06.04.44

Stahl, Buma

12.01.46

82256

Skorecka, Skorecka, Nov. 1944 Cecylia Cecylia Solewicz, Erna Solewicz, Erna Feb. 1945

30.01.46

85781

Sweden: Lund #174 Sweden: Doverstorp #111 Israel: Ramat chen Israel: Jerusalem Budapest

By email, Budapest

Mail and phone interview, Budapest

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

Luba Melchior Krystyna Karier

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

*

Sent to Venusberg and Mauthausen; information on mother and 3 other women prisoners Sent to Venusberg and Mauthausen Replied to specific inquiries *

Interviewer Additional information

Israeli #152 survivor Israeli #682 survivor Hungarian survivor

US survivor 212910

Hungarian survivor

Hungarian survivor

No. on US or Israeli list

Chap. 7, 54

Chap. 6, 11

Chap. 6, 8

Chap. 8, 128

Quoted

3:11 PM

Nov. 1944

16.08.05

Kádár, Mártha Dec. 1944 (Lajosné)

Schwarcz, Mártha

92709

Gábor Katalin (Fenöné)

Schwarcz, Katalin

Place of interview

11/12/2006

Dec. 1944

Current name Arrived in Ravens Date of Ravensbrück brück interview no.

War name

ch13.080 Page 302

Jan. 1945

Nov. 1944

24.12.44

Szczupac, Sara, Szczupack, widowed Sara Goldstejn

Szuldman, Gwendla

Jay, Luba

Szykman, Helena

Troedel, Adele Oct.–Nov. 1944

SzuldmanDiamant, Gwendla (Genendla) Szustak, Liba

Szykman, Helena

Trödl, Adél

82148

USA

Sweden: Hochina Trelleborg Strelecka #462

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

Video interview *

Phone interview Replied to specific inquiries Material in Yad Vashem, translated from French to English by J.B.A. *

1945 to Penig

Sweden: Luba Trelleborg Melchior #491 May 2003 J.B.A. replied to specific inquiries

17.10.46

02.09.46

J.B.A.

Budapest, J.B.A. by mail

Budapest

April 1956 Belgium #1054

100623 14.01.04

5.9.05

27.07.00

US survivor

Belgian survivor

Israeli survivor US survivor

Hungarian survivor Hungarian survivor

80526

19794

66086

#142

Chap. 7, 13

Chap. 8, 29

Chap. 8, 127

Chap. 8, 197

3:11 PM

01.11.44

24.12.44

Jan. 1945

08–09.12.44

Schepsman, Bella

Nádas, Erzsébeth (Gyórgyné) Brener, Chaja

89260

11/12/2006

Sternbach, Irena Strasberg, Bella

Stern, Erzsébeth

Steiner, Piroska Dome, Piroska 28.11.44

ch13.080 Page 303

Sep. 1944

Gonen, Bella

Abiram, Pnina Sep. 1944

Zeidner, Pola

90316

90318

72316

12.12.45

J.B.A.

S.K

A.K. and I.D.K. J.B.A.

Sweden: Luba Malmö Melchior #50 Israel: Tel Aviv Israel: Givataym

Budapest

Israel: Holon Mail, Budapest From Frankfurt/ Walldorf Also correspondence with J.B.A. Jan 2004 On Gomaron list; sent to Spandau *

Israeli survivor Israeli survivor

US survivor

Hungarian survivor

US survivor

#7

#179

36521

16270

Israeli #707 survivor Hungarian survivor

Chap. 7, 83

Chap. X, 45

Quoted

* Interviews with Polish Jewish Ravensbrück survivors, made in Sweden after the War by the Polish Institute of Sources (Lund); all were translated into English in 1998–99 by Wiener Library volunteer Ms. Wanda Wasserman. ** Nineteen additional interviews, mainly with US survivors, were carried out by Sabine Kittel.

Oct.–Nov. 1944

Rubinstein, Betty

ZajserkovskaRubinstein, Basia Zeidner, Bella

28.11.44

Dr. Hegedüs, Edit

Wertheimer, Edit

95494

25.05.97

No. on US or Israeli list

3:11 PM

Weiss(z), Esther Elise

Schneidmesser, Sep. 1942 Maria Groszman Nov. 1944 Erzsébet (Jószefné) Grün, Esther Dec. 1944

Vatniepka, Wanda Weltner Erzsébet

Date of Place of Interviewer Additional interview interview information

11/12/2006

88528

Current name Arrived in Ravens Ravensbrück brück no.

War name

ch13.080 Page 304

Current name

Ferleger, Arthur

Fishman, Michael

Geclewicz, Daniel

Gottesman, Simon

Green, Philip

Litwin, Michael

Orlowski, Max

Rabinek, George

Sznurman, Majer

Silberstein, Sam

War name

Ferleger, Abram

Fishman, Michael

Geclewicz, Gedalia

Gottesman, Simon

Gniazdo, Fajwash

Litwin, Mendel

Orlowski, Joseph

Rabinek, Gryoray

Shnurman, Jacob

Zylbersztajn, Samuel

April 1945

April 1945

April 1945

Feb. 1945

April 1945

April 1945

April 1945

23.07.00

09.07.00

02.01.01

11.03.01

2000

17.07.00

29.06.00

21.08.00

10.08.00

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

J.B.A.

Interviewer

Questionnaire and letter

Replied to specific inquiries

Questionnaire and letter

Questionnaire and letter

Replied to specific inquiries

Letter

Letter

Replied to specific inquiries

Detailed letter

Replied to specific inquiries

Additional information

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

US survivor

67789

39644

33593

300750

27176

15451

15195

60204

292036

73584

No. on US or Israeli list

3:11 PM

April 1945

March 1945

25.07.00

Date of interview

11/12/2006

April 1945

Arrived in Ravensbrück

Table 13.2 Specific information supplied by 10 men who spent between a few days and six weeks in March–April 1945 in the women’s camp Ravensbrück

ch13.080 Page 305

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3:14 PM

Page 306

14 APPENDIX

LIST OF MAJOR CAMPS AND GHETTOS FROM WHICH JEWISH PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK CAME

First period: 1939 to end of January 1942 The women’s concentration camp Lichtenburg, and from police prisons all over Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Second period: February 1942 to end of February 1943 Police prisons all over Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, as well as from Warsaw. The first prisoners arrived from the “youth camp” Uckermark. Third period: March 1943 to end of July 1944 A prisoner of war camp in Soviet Russia; Auschwitz; the internment camp Malines near Brussels; Paris; Compiègne; the internment camp Westerbork (the Netherlands); Warsaw, Lublin, Krakow, and Bialystok in Poland; and from the police prisons in Berlin and in Leipzig. Fourth period: August 1944 to end of December 1944 Verona, Trieste, and Bolzano in Italy; Toulouse and Paris in France; in many large transports from Auschwitz; the ghettos of Częstochova, Lodz, and Piotrikow in Poland; directly from Hungary (Budapest or

INDEX.080

11/12/2006

3:18 PM

Page 322

322 Index of Names of Victims and of Survivors of Nazi Camps Cige, Marta, 203 Cohen, Herta, 42 Couturier, Marie-Claude Vaillant, 181, 208 Cukierman sisters, 175, 207 Cukierman, Berta, 131 Czech, Danuta, 44, 144, 203, 226 Czyzyk (Grete Bilski), Greta, 165 Dachs, Mme P., 45 Dagani, Leah, 192, 210 Dangaard, Cäcilie, 40 Danos, Dr. Eva Langley, 41, 110–11, 114–15, 129–30, 132–3, 170–5, 177, 206–7, 219, 240–1, 259, 262 Delbo, Charlotte, 208, 250 Dolanski, Ilse, 51 Doliner, Beatrice (Barbara Szafranska, assumed Polish identity; real name, Aska Asia Schaffer), 209 Dome, Piroska (Steiner), 191, 210 Dotan, Vera (Miriam Gellert), 109, 239, 260–1 Driednicka, Helena, 208 Dziewiensk, Ruchla, 128 Eckler, Irma, 42, 56, 65 Efrat, Eva (Adler), 127, 209 Einberger, Eva, 243, 258, 260 Eiren, Shoshana (Ibolia Rosner), 131 Eva V., 92 Eva, 116 Fabius, Odette, 140, 201 Farkacz, David, 131 Farkacz, Mathilda, b. Kahan, 131 Farnoux, Yvette Bernard, 141 Feinkuchen, Jochevet (Jechet), 42 Feldmann, Charlotte, 210 Feyer, Eva (Feiyer), 103, 130, 209 Fiedler, Selma b. Engel, 42, 55 Fischel, Anna, 204 Fischer, Edith, 131 Flanter, Margarethe, 204, 205 Forsberg, Rosi, b. Mauskopf, 129–30, 259 Frank, Anne, 226 Freiheiter, Ernestyna (Ernestyna Szmulowicz), 205 Frenkel, Dr. Elisabeth (Estera Frankel), 95–6, 261 Frey, Hilde, 176, 207 Frey, Nelli, 176, 207

Galesz, Mariana, 127 Gamburg, Shoshana (Roza Schlipke), 129 Ganor, Niza, b. Anna Fränkel or Anicka Frenkel, 143, 200, 202, 248–9 Ge’alel Zehava (Charlotte Stahl), 86 Ginsberg, Taube, 128 Glimt, Irmgard (Glint), 65 Glück, Gemma La Guardia, 207, 239, 259 Goldberg, Bluma (Blima Cukierman), 207, 297 Goldberg, Chaja Sure, 202, 205 Gostynski, Ilse, later Rolfe, 47–8, 58, 63 Gelbgras-Ferstenberg, Lea, 260 Grete F., 205 Grinberg, Dr. Zalman, 169, 178, 195, 206–7 Grohs-Martin, Silvia, 77, 86, 143, 181, 200, 206, 208, 239, 254, 259, 261 Gross, Gertrude, 202 Grossova, Paula b. Zelinkova, 208 Grün, Esther Elisabeth (Elise Weiss(z)), 115, 133, 210, 252 Grünapfel, Rozalie, 153 Grünewald, Selma (Nora Sara), 42 Grünspan, Ruth, 52 Gyulai, Evi, 239 Gyulai, Kató (Katalin), 41, 106–7, 129–32, 209, 239, 248, 259 Hadley, Anna, 206 Hajdu, Gesane, b. Erzsebet Szilard; 259 Hajos, Irene (Kluger), 204, 260 Hamer, 165 Hanna, 111, 114, 133, 172, 262 Hanna R., 177 Hava, 108 Harris, Judith (Hirsch), 86, 258 Husemann, Maria, 235 Heftler, Nadine, 143 Heinemann, Ilse, 73, 262 Hela St., 130 Hellinger, Nelli, 131 Hendlish, Cesia, 128 Herz, Julie Sara, 42 Heymann, Shoshana (Susanna Rosenthal), 76, 204 Hirschkron, Ida, 47–8, 63–4 Hoblik, Elise, 43 Hocke, Hermine, 43, 48 Holcer, Erna, 185 Holcer, Lida, 132, 185

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Appendix 307 via Gomarom); directly from Slovakia (Sered or Pre•ow); Agram in Croatia; and from the Natzweiler external labor camp Frankfurt/ Walldorf. Fifth period: January 1945 to end of April 1945 Direct transports from Slovakia, France, and Italy continued, but the overwhelming number of arrivals came from the dismantlement of Auschwitz and of Gleiwitz in the Auschwitz Todesmarch. Smaller numbers came from the dissolution of the labor camps Gundelsdorf, Graslitz, and Krupp-Neukölln. Many prisoners returned from the external labor camps to which they had previously been sent. LIST OF MAJOR CAMPS TO WHICH JEWISH PRISONERS OF RAVENSBRÜCK WERE SENT

First period: 1939 to end of January 1942 Nearly all were sent to the gas chamber of the Bernburg hospital for the mentally ill. Some were sent later to Auschwitz together with the Jewish prisoners of the second period. Second period: February 1942 to end of February 1943 Nearly all were sent to Auschwitz in October 1942. Third period: March 1943 to end of July 1944 Some of the older prisoners were sent to Auschwitz. In 1945, a group was evacuated to Turkey via Sweden, and another was sent to Bergen-Belsen. Fourth period: August 1944 to end of December 1944 The systematic transfer began of Ravensbrück prisoners to the following external labor camps of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück itself: Schönholz, Altenburg, Neustadt near Coburg, Mühlhausen (Thüringen), Spandau, Genshagen, Lippstadt, Wittenberg, Barth, Rechlin-Retzow, Malchow, and Beendorf.

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308 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück Fifth period: January 1945 to end of April 1945 There were transfers to the following external camps: Malchow, Neustadt-Glewe, Penig, Meuselwitz, Burgau, Venusberg, Hasag-Leipzig (from Malchow), Leitmeritz, Wöbbelin, and KönigsWusterhausen. Finally, great numbers were transferred to the death camps BergenBelsen and Mauthausen.

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Map courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, USA.

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MAPS

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310 The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück

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Maps 311

Ravensbrück Concentration Camp

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INDEX OF ARCHIVES AND D O CUMENTS

Note: see page 27 ff. Archiv jüdisches Museum Prag, 30, 43 Archiv staatliches Museum Auschwitz, 203 Archive Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporarea, xi Archive of the Jewish congregation of Stockholm (DJBR), 157 Archives at Arolsen, 30, 41–2, 56, 65, 131, 133, 207 Arrival lists, Zugangslisten, 4, 10–11, 17, 21–3, 25–30, 33, 35–8, 41, 44, 58–60, 65–6, 75, 80, 87, 89, 100–1, 107–9, 111, 114–16, 126, 132, 136, 138, 140, 144, 146, 174, 181–2 203, 207, 217, 230, 252 Auschwitz death books, Auschwitz death registry, 29, 33, 71 Auschwitz-Birkenau Kalendarium, 44, 144, 182, 203, 209, 223, 226 Beit Terezin (Israel), 179 Bericht an den jüdischen Weltkongress Genf vom 31.05.1945, 206–7 Bestand Belgien, 127 Bestand Prag, 133 Book of Births (Geburtenbuch), 30, 138, 147, 203 British Ravensbrück trial in Hamburg, 48 Buchenwald Archive, xi–xii, 89, 219 Buchmann Bestand, 43, 64 Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, Paris, 209 Czechoslovak death list, 30, 107, 131, 186

Gedenkbuch der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, 42, 44–5, 203 Jewish Agency MAA-HDK, 42, 45 Jewish Museum and Archives Budapest, 41 “JSLists” (Liberated Jews arrived in Sweden in 1945, I and II, Mosaiska Församlingen), 42, 86, 93, 127–9, 147, 182, 186–7, 207–8 Kalendarium Ravensbrück, 17, 28, 41, 43, 44, 72, 111, 130, 133–4, 144, 182, 200–3, 209 Kennkartenliste, 29, 58–9, 64 Korherr Report, 30, 35, 44 Krankenbuch, 203–4 KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, Archiv, xi, 131, 207 Libro della memoria gli Ebrei deportati dall’Italia, 41, 44, 132, 141, 188, 201–2 Lista 6 at the Hoover Institute, Stanford, California, 182, 203 Lista delle donne di Ravensbrück, 41, 201 Ludwigsburg, Museum Schloß Lichtenburg Archiv, 43 MGR Research project, 42, 44, 64, 72, 86, 128, 130, 134, 200, 203, 209 Mittwerda list, 30, 37, 42, 45, 110 Mosaiska Församlingen, 42, 127, 129, 208 Multinational Tabelle, 41, 100, 105, 112, 133 Museum der Stadt Mörfelden-Walldorf, xi, 42, 109, 132

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314 Index of Archives and Documents Nuremberg trials documents, 30, 42 ODF Berlin, 43 Polish Institute of Sources (Polski Instytut Zròdlowy), Lund, Sweden, xii, 27, 31, 43, 147, 185–6 Ravensbrück Archive, 11, 17–18, 28, 37, 41, 131–2, 205, 258, 281 Registry of Jewish Holocaust survivors USA, xi, 21, 31 Revierkarten, 29, 89, 92, 127 Sachsenhausen Archive, 128, 204 Sammlungen MGR/SBG RA, 44, 64, 72, 130, 134, 200, 209 Staatsarchiv Berlin, 30

Staatsarchiv Nürnberg, 30 State Archive Prague, 129 State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, 42 Swedish National Archives, 203 Uckermark lists A and B, 30, 42, 45 United States National Archives, Washington DC, 41, 129, 201 Uro-Bestand, 42 Wachstein Letter, 48, 50 Weimar-Buchenwald Politische Abteilung, 127, 129 Weinreb List, 86 Wiener Library, Tel-Aviv University, 41, 43, 48, 130, 209 Yad Vashem, xi, 4–5, 15, 30–1, 41–2

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INDEX OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS, LAB OR CAMPS AND INDUSTRIAL INSTALLATIONS THERE

Note: Several external labor camps were shifted among Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück. “Jugendschutzlager” Uckermark at Ravensbrück, 43, 48, 72, 80, 216 “Schonlager” (light-work camp), 52 AKDO, Aussenkommando, Aussenlager, External labor camp, External camp, ix, 1, 20, 24, 31, 42, 45, 48, 74, 82, 89–90, 92, 94–5, 97–9, 101, 103–4, 110, 112–13, 120, 122, 124–5, 127–8, 130, 132, 136–8, 147, 149–50, 152, 157, 164, 168–9, 171, 176, 178, 182, 184, 187–9, 192, 202–3, 206, 214, 217–19, 223, 234–5, 237, 241, 252–3, 255, 259 Allach-Dachau, 45, 176 Altenburg, external labor camp of Buchenwald, 40, 45, 89–91, 120, 127, 134–5, 188–9, 214, 218 Arado Flugzeugwerke GmbH at Wittenberg, 42, 95, 122, 128, 136 Argus factory, 90, 138 Auschwitz (and Birkenau) concentration camp, 3, 7, 13–14, 17, 20, 22–3, 26–9, 33–9, 41–4, 48, 60–1, 64, 66–73, 75–6, 80–2, 86–97, 99–100, 107, 109, 115, 117, 120–2, 124, 127, 129–32, 134–49, 151–2, 154–5, 157–9, 161, 168, 170, 174, 180–3, 185, 188–9, 196–9, 202–4, 207–8, 210, 213–21, 223, 226, 230–1, 233–8, 240, 244–53, 255–6, 258–62

Barth, external labor camp of Ravensbrück, 74, 98, 104, 120, 131, 135, 188, 192 Beendorf concentration camp, 14, 39, 98, 110, 115, 120, 132, 135, 169, 183–5, 187–8, 191, 208 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 10, 14, 17, 37, 39–43, 78, 80–3, 87, 91–4, 97–8, 100, 105, 110, 113, 115, 117, 129, 135, 137, 139, 142, 145, 185–8, 190, 194, 200–1, 206, 209, 218, 226, 235, 244, 261, 279–80 Bernburg/ Saale, Heil-und-Pflege-Anstalt (mental hospital), 3, 12–13, 25, 34, 43, 49, 50, 52–7, 60–1, 65, 67–9, 71, 216, 233, 244 Brandernburg concentration camp, 85, 259 Braunschweig concentration camp, 73, 187, 199, 209 Buchenwald concentration camp, 10, 20, 28, 35–6, 38–40, 44–5, 78–80, 82, 86, 89, 92–4, 98, 101, 113, 120, 127–30, 140, 169, 192, 206, 217–18, 287, 251, 255, 259, 282 Burgau (Bavaria), external labor camp of Dachau, 39–40, 45, 105, 112, 114, 117, 121, 129, 131, 133, 137, 168–75, 177–8, 192, 194–5, 206–7, 219, 236, 241, 251, 259, 276

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316 Index of Concentration Camps Częstochowa labor camp, 38, 94, 116–17, 121–2, 133, 136, 171, 175, 181–2, 206–7, 235, 259 Dachau concentration camp, 16, 35, 45, 106, 120, 131, 170–1, 175–8, 192, 206–7, 275 Daimler-Benz works, 104, 190 Dornier works at Neustadt-Glewe, 151 Flossenbürg concentration camp, 28, 97, 104, 112, 120, 137–8, 218, 221, 223 Frankfurt/Walldorf, external labor camp of Natzweiler, 29, 31, 89, 106, 109–11, 113, 121, 131–2, 135, 184, 213, 217, 219, 231, 235, 239 Genshagen, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 103–4, 115, 120, 131, 135, 188, 190 Gerätebau GmbH at Mühlhausen (Thüringen), labor camp, 93, 127 Gleiwitz, sub-camp of Auschwitz, 110, 136, 145–6, 154 Glöwen, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 115 Graslitz, external labor camp of Flossenbürg, 97, 110, 129, 137, 200, 223 Gross-Rosen concentration camp, 138, 144, 201 Gundelsdorf (Bavaria), external labor camp of Flossenbürg, 29, 138, 185, 218 Hasag labor camp at Częstochowa, 121, 133, 136, 171 Hasag-Leipzig external labor camp of Buchenwald, 40–1, 45, 101–2, 110, 120, 125, 129–30, 132, 134–7, 146–7, 169, 188, 193, 200, 202, 206, 208, 237, 244–5, 252, 258–9 Kaufering (Bavaria), external labor camp of Dachau, 169, 176, 178, 195 KönigsWusterhausen, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 95–6, 101, 122, 128, 135, 169, 235, 259 Krupp factory at Neukölln, Berlin, KruppNeukölln external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 45, 89, 157, 159–60, 164–8, 181, 198, 202, 204–5, 218–20, 231, 237–9, 245, 259, 292, 295

Leitmeritz, external camp of Theresienstadt, 98, 105, 110, 179 Lichtenburg, early small women’s concentration camp, 43, 46, 53, 58–9 Lippstadt, external labor camp of Buchenwald, 45, 98, 115, 120, 125, 129, 134–5, 188, 191 Ludwigslust, external camp of Sachsenhausen, 43, 65, 129, 154, 187, 199 Majdanek (Lublin) concentration cmap, 35, 230 Malchow, external labor camp of Ravensbrück, 14, 20, 39–41, 45, 98–99, 104, 110, 115, 120–2, 129–31, 135–7, 142, 145–7, 150, 153, 169, 181–3, 187–9, 191, 193, 195, 202, 206, 208, 234–6, 240, 248, 254, 258–60 Malines (Mechelen), 78 Malines internment camp, 78, 233 Mauthausen concentration camp, 17, 39, 101, 104–5, 110, 112–13, 115, 120, 130, 133, 137, 141, 144, 180, 188, 200–2, 287, 294, 296 Max Gerth Werke at Penig, 114 Messerschmitt factory at Burgau, 121–2, 171 Meuselwitz, external labor camp of Ravensbrück, 39, 45, 115, 137, 188, 200, 252 Moringen, small early women’s labor camp, 46 Mühlhausen (Thüringen), external labor camp of Buchenwald, 92–4, 121, 127, 134–5, 195, 188, 190 Natzweiler concentration camp, 31, 42, 132 Neu Rohlau, external labor camp of Flosssenbürg, 137, 200 Neubrandenburg concentration camp, 85 Neuengamme concentration camp near the Danish border, 169 Neustadt near Coburg, external labor camp of Buchenwald, 45, 89–92, 120, 127, 134–5, 188, 190 Neustadt-Glewe, external labor camp of Ravensbrück, xii, 20, 31, 39–40, 42, 45, 115, 120, 136–7, 142, 145, 147–55, 180, 188, 192–4, 200, 202–3, 208, 234, 236, 238–42, 244, 248, 259–61

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Index of Concentration Camps 317 Penig, external labor camp of Buchenwald, 39, 45, 98, 112–4, 121, 134, 137, 188, 192, 200, 252 Plaszów labor camp near Krakow, 232, 258 Rechlin-Retzow, external labor camp of Ravensbrück, 110, 115–6, 120, 133, 135, 164, 188–9, 191, 210 Reinickendorf, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 98, 188 Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp, 20, 28, 35, 38, 40, 57, 89–90, 95, 103, 107–8, 116, 120, 127, 157, 162–3, 169, 179, 190, 200–1, 204, 207, 217, 251, 255 Schönholz, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 89–90, 120, 127, 134–5, 188–9, 237 Siemens factories at Ravensbrück, 48, 77, 83, 91, 93, 135, 181, 189, 200, 208, 223–4, 239, 243, 246 . Skarzysko-Kamienna concentration camp, 133 Spandau, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 39, 106–7, 115, 120, 134–5, 188, 190, 239

Taucha near Leipzig, external labor camp of Buchenwald, 45, 94, 115, 188, 193 Theresienstadt (Terezin), Ghetto and concentration camp, 78, 88, 98, 105, 179, 188 Turgau, external labor camp of Buchenwald, 115 Türkheim, a small external camp of Dachau, 171, 175–6, 247 Uckermark death camp at Ravensbrück, 30, 37, 42–3, 48, 52, 72, 80, 87, 100, 110, 127, 133, 136, 224 Union ammunition factory at Auschwitz, 17, 236, 240, 147 Venusberg, external labor camp of Flossenbürg, 41, 104–5, 110, 112–13, 121, 137, 188 Vught, 223 Wandsbeck near Hamburg, external labor camp of Neuengamme, 189 Wittenberg, external labor camp of Sachsenhausen, 31, 40, 42, 45, 95–6, 122, 128–9, 134, 136, 188, 190, 235, 261 Zillertal, external labor camp of Mauthausen, 110

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INDEX OF NAMES OTHER THAN VICTIMS OF NAZI CAMPS

Note: see page 27 ff.

Agassi, Joseph, xii Alon, Nili, xi Apel, Dr. Linde, xi, 5–6, 64, 130, 209, 259, 281 Arlozorov, Chaim, 167 Arndt, Ino, 16, 18 Baumgartner, Andreas, 112, 130, 133 Ben Gurion, David, 15, 166 Berger, Karin, 208, 258, 260–2 Berlekamp, Brigitte, 45, 209, 282 Bernadotte, Count Folke, 14–15, 17, 39, 97, 110, 157, 165, 169, 178–80, 184–5, 187–8, 200, 206–7, 209, 230 Berndorff, Dr., 44 Beyrak, Nathan, 131, 261 Boehm, Dr., 249 Breuer, Herta, 49 Buber Agassi, Judith, 18, 41, 43, 44, 64, 85–6, 127–33, 200, 202–3, 205, 208–10, 250, 261 Chroust, Peter, 65 Clauberg, Dr., 130 Cohen, Asher, 261 Cohen, Joshua, 15, 17 Dotan, Moshe, 132 Drabkin, Prof. Jakow Samojlowitsch, 75, 86 Dublon-Knebel, Dr. Irith, xi, 5, 7, 17, 45, 64, 86, 128–9, 132, 150, 200, 261

Eckler Irene, 42, 56, 65, 280 Ehrenpreis, Marcus, Chief Rabbi of Sweden, 206 Eichmann, Adolf, 76 Elling, Hanna, 63, Engel, Herr, 161 Erpel, Simone, xii, 43, 45, 188, 191, 207–10, 227, 260, 282 Fank, Petra, xi, 18 Freud, Sigmund, 256, Füllberg-Stolberg, Claus, 41, 87, 129, 183, 206, 208, 261, 279 Gaulle, Charles de, 12 Gil’ad, Z., 17 Grieg Edvard, 254 Gruber-Lieblich, Renate, 42, 128–9, 279 Hahn, Walter, 161 Heine, Heinrich, 161 Herzl, Theodor, 167 Herzog, Monika, xi Herzog, Prof. Hanna, 5 Himmler, Heinrich, 9, 15, 17, 30, 35, 71, 73, 179–80, 207, 221 Hitler, Adolf, 2, 7, 17, 43–4, 65, 72, 161, 203, 226, 247, 258, 281 Hördler, Stefan, 18 Hoffmann, Cordula, xi Horthy, Admiral Nicholas, 126, 251

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Index of Names Other than Victims of Nazi Camps 319 Jacobeit, Prof. Sigrid, xi, 5, 16–18, 53, 64, 207, 227, 260 Jakobson, Rabbi of Frankfurt, 166, 206 Jesus Christ, 244 Kalechmann-Khatav, Tamara, xi Kanyuk, Yoram, 17 Kemp, Dr. Adriana, xi, 86, 200, 209, 258, 261 Kersten, Felix, 179 Kittel, Dr. Sabine, xi, 17, 50, 64, 72, 133, 203 Klaimann, Judith, xi Klarsfeld, Serge, 22, 40–1, 45, 140, 201 Klee, Ernst, 43 Kootz, Johanna, xii Korherr, Richard, 30, 35, 44 Kreitich, Bruno (“Vati”), 161–4, 168 LaGuardia, Fiorello, 239 Langefeld, Johanna, 216 Leichter, Otto, 50 Levi, Hemda, 167 Lewis, Megan, xi Libermanova, Hulda, 129 Maffre Castellani, Françoise, 261 Massarriello, Paolo, 41, 201 Masur, Norbert, 15, 17, 179, 207 Meged, M., 17 Meijers, C. M., 68 Mendelson, John, 42 Mennecke, Dr. Friedrich, 54, 61, 65 Merzagora, Giovanna Massariello, 23, 41, 201, 282 Mickiewicz, Adam, 244 Morais, Fermamdo, 49 Neumann, Heinz, 2 Noded, Y., 17 Ofer, Dalia, 241 Palanker, Marvin, 195, 210 Palanker, Louise, 210 Pawelke, Britta, xi Perlasca, Giorgio, 99, 129 Philipp, Grit, 16–18, 41, 43, 72, 130, 133–4, 200–2, 209 Picciotto, Liliana, 23, 41, 44, 132, 201 Porat, Prof. Dina, 5 Prestes, General Luís Carlos, 53

Ragwitz, Renate, 45 Rajwan, Tomer, xi Röhr, Werner, 45, 209 Rohrlich, Ruby, 201 Rom, Sefi, xi Rosenfeld, Harvey, 129 Ross, Baetcke, 191 Röver, Sabine, xi Rühlig, Cornelia, xi, 109, Runge Erika, 63 Saidel, Dr. Rochelle G., 5–6, 210 Samuels, Marlene Bernstein, 103, 206 Scheer, regina, 191 Schiedlausky, SS physician, 70 Schilling, Adi, xi Schindler, Oscar, 128 Schindler-Saefkow, Bärbel, xii, 41–3, 60, 64–5, 85–6, 128, 260–1 Schlaefer, Kristine, 16, 41, 65 Schnell, Monika, xii Schramm, Prof. Reinhardt, 42, 55, 64–5 Schröder, Frank, 16, 41, 65 Schütt, Karl Heinz, xii, 31, 42, 45, 147, 150–1, 202–4, 210, 241, 259–61, 277–8 Schwarz, Helga, 64, 227, 260 Seidel, Dr. Irmgard, xii, 45, 127–8, 130, 259 Seifert, 94–6 Sheleg, Yaïr, 17 Shelley, Lore, 43, 66, 86, 204, 260 Shmilovitz-Vardi, Dr. Nurit, xi Singer, Valentin, 201 Sprenger, Isabell, 138, 201 Stalin, Joseph, 2, 7, 11, 17, 44, 65, 72, 226, 258 Steiner, Herbert, 49, 210 Steir, Frank, 128 Storch, Hillel, 179 Straede, Therkel, 207 Strebel, Bernhard, 16, 41, 61, 65 Szepansky, Gerda, 64, 227, 260 Thomas-Heinrich, Lieselotte, 64 Thornton, Louise Loots, 103, 206 Trallori, Lisbeth N., 208, 258 Trampnan, Margarete (Maria, “Mutti”), 161, 163, 164, 168 Volker, Gold, 206–7 Wallenberg, Raoul, 99, 129

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320 Index of Names Other than Victims of Nazi Camps Walz, Loretta, 17, 86, 259 Wasserman, Wanda, xii, 43 Watson, Ellen, 49 Weinreb, Friedrich, 86 Weitz, Margaret Collins, 201

Weitzman, Lenore J., 241 Werner, Ruth, 64 Wilhelm, Dr., 48 Yehezkeli, Dr. Chen, xi

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INDEX OF NAMES OF VICTIMS AND OF SURVIVORS OF NAZI CAMPS

Abraham, Lucienne, 131 Ackerman, Edith, 208 Ackerman, Elisabeth, 208 Ackerman, Ilona, 208 Adele T., 91 Agerberg (Baumgart), Hanni, 206 Alexander, Elisabeth, 207 Amardeilh, Olympe-Leocadie, 201, 208 Arato, Jolanta Aufrichtig, 86, 208 Aronson, Zvia (Cesia Silberman), 138 Austria (Ostereich) Nehama (Natka Kosa), 205 Avramovics, Rivka (Renia Lewin), 207 Balaska (Skotland), Maria Artemowna, 85 Ban, Edith, b. Rott, 104, 131 Basowa, Milena, 127 Bauer, Elizabeth, (Erzsebet Balazs), 134 Baumgart, Luba, 128 Baumstein, Thais, 140, 201 Becher, Ella, 127 Becker (Berger), Irmgard Judith, 202, 236, 259 Bein, Katalin (Katherine S.), 41, 112–13, Bejarano Esther (Loewy), 86, 260 Benario-Prestes, Olga, 48–54, 237 Beran, Elise (Ika), 204 Berenyi, Magdalena R. (Magda Roth), 131 Berger, b. Wollstein, Esther, 206 Berger, Elisabeth, 202 Berger, Katerina, 202 Berger, Marlit, 259 Berger, Pepi, 259 Berkowics, Ibolya, 98

Berkowicz, Gita, 127 Berlinska, Hela, 129 Berner, Maria, 208 Bernstein, Sara (Seren) Tuvel, 40, 103, 110, 115, 129–32, 171, 173–7, 194–5, 206–7, 219, 235, 239–41, 251, 253, 258–61 Bernstein, Shulamit (Sulamit Stern), 205 Bilski, Ruth, 165 Bindel (Edelman), Tauba, 202 Bindiger, Marta, 203 Birenbaum, Halina (Hala Grinstein-Balin), 143, 203–4, 260 Biro, Erzebeth, 133 Blattberg, Bronka, 191 Blum, Klara, 127 Bodlander, Dora, 208 Bodor, Lilly, b. Fenyves, 130 Bomkol, Shoshana (Rosa Goldberg,), 206 Boom, Corrie ten, 235 Boom, Elisabeth (Betsie) ten, 235 Boom, Claire, van den, 94 Borkowska, Hinda, 127 Bornstein, Dora, (Dwojra Szczukocka), 128, 209 Borowiecki, Natan, 95, 128 Bruck family, 201 Buber-Neumann, Margarete, 2, 7, 17, 53, 57, 64, 65, 70, 72, 216, 226, 259 Buchmann, Erika, 11, 246 Bürgenthal, Gerda, 129 Burghardt, Rudolfine, 43, 48, 72 Chalut, Annette (Weill, “warnod”), 140, 201 Christof, Klara (Hetenyi), 209

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Index of Names of Victims and of Survivors of Nazi Camps 323 Hollander Lyon, Gloria, b. Hajnal Hollender, 129, 132, 183–4, 206 Holzinger, Elisabeth, 208, 258 Horn, Lea (Schwalb), 145, 202–3, 208 Idsikowskaja, Eleonora, 85 Itzkovitz, Helen (Ilona Komorn), 134 Jacoby, Dr. med. Bertel, 53 Jaquemotte, Fanny (Fayga), 245 Jesenska, Milena, 3 Jisraeli, Shulamit (Friedel Gelbard), 204 Jochmannn, Rosa, 65 Jodelsohn, Lili, 208 Josselowitz, Celina, 204 Jung, Ida, b. Schlesinger, 131 Kallus, Menachem (Otto), 78–9, 86 Kallus, Zali (Sara Eliovits), 86 Kamisewicz, Helena, 128 Kamisewicz, Sara, 128 Kaplan, Dr, Maria, 85 Katherine S., see Bein, Katalin Katz, Rosa (Rose Rachel Goldberg), 159, 205, 219 Katz, Ruth, 165 Katz-Eisen, Paula, 259 Kemeny, Esther, b. Michalowce, 138–9, 143, 145–6, 154, 201, 203–4, 248, 261 Ketti W., 130 Kiedrzyn´ska, Wanda, 16–17, 41, 43, 65, 205, 132, 216, 224, 226–7, 258 Kisch (Schwalb), Lea, 145, 202, 204, 242, 260 Kisch, Blimi (Ljubim), 145, 242 Kiss, Edith (Ban, b. Rott), 104–5 Klara, 111, 114, 133, 172, 174, 262 Klein, Dr. Slawomira, 203 Klein, Helen (Helen Sepsz), 206 Klein, Martha (Marta Seiler), 131 Klein-Lorska Dr. Slavka/Dorotha (Dobrosz´awa, b. Goldschneider), 261 Klemm, Dr. Jewgenia Lazarewna, 74, 85–6 Kliger, Rosa, 50, 56, 64 Klugmann, Dr. Musja Nisowna, 74, 82, 85 Kohn, Ariane, 201, 208 Kohne, Helga, 64 Konnikova, Ljuba, 85 Konrad, Irmgard, b. Adam, 86 Konskier, 165 Koretz, Arieh (Leo), 129

Korn, Erna (de Vries), 44, 48, 64, 76, 86–7, 189, 195, 209, 220 Kornfeld, Edith (Edita), 163–4, 168, 204–5, 259 Kornreich-Gelissen, Rena, 153, 204, 238, 259 Korzec, Mira, 128 Koth, Ahuva, 202 Kounio, Erika Myriam (Amariglio), 143, 210, 217, 226, 239–40, 259 Kovalski, Genia (Gelbert), 205 Kralovitz, Annemarie, 79 Kralovitz, Martha, 79 Kralovitz, Rolf, 35, 44, 86 Kraus, Irene, 86, 258 Kroch, Frau, 57 Kroo-Teitelbaum, Elizabeth, 129, 210 Krug, Else, 60 Kunke, Stefanie, 64 Kupfer, Eva, 210 LaGuardia Glück, Gemma, 259 Lamhut, Malka (Fela Markowska Cukierman), 207 Landau, Klara (Bondy) 242, 260 Landskroner, Berta, married name Reig, 45 Langer, Dr. med. Irene, 53 Lau, Helena, 209 Laufer, Alfrieda, 205 Lazar, Hanna, 208 Lazarkevich, Dvora (Deborah Wajnman), 205 Lehr, Toni, 108 Leichter, Dr. Marianne-Katharina (Käthe) b. Pick, 49–52, 54, 64 Leschinska, Lidia (Olympiada Wassiliewa), 74, 85–6 Levi, Primo, 202 Lichtenstein, Margot, 198 Lifschitz, Sally (Kawenoki), 93–4, 128 Lili, 111, 114, 133, 172–4 Lindvall, Maria, 205 Lis, Halina, 205–6 Litmanowic, Ahuva (Ibolya Berkowics), 98, 129 Litwin, Dr. Mina (Maria), 95–6, 128, 261 Lohagen, Paula, 51, 243 Lotte, S., 249 Löwenstein, Sophie (Sohlbereg), 260 Löwy, Irene, b. Kallus; 131 Löwy, Valeria, 133 Luckner, Gertrud,

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324 Index of Names of Victims and of Survivors of Nazi Camps Lugebiel, Erna, b. Voley, 234

Orlowski, Joseph, 209

Maase, Dr. Doris b. Franck, 63 Mader, Margaarete 40, 221 Mallasz, Gitta, 11, 132 Mandel, Franka, 172 Manus, Rosa (Rosette Susanna), 67–8, 73 Margot H., 54 Markiewicz, Estera (Salajek), 43, 67 Markovitz, Elisabeth (Lily), 40, 173–4, 207, 258 Marosanyi, Wanda, 259 Martha C., 101–2, 130, 210 “Mat Maria”, Jelisaweta KusminaKarawajewa, 235 Matusova, Galina, 41, 74, 85, 261 Maximowa, Ludmila, Woloschina, 85 Meltzer, Tola (Tauba Walach), 205 Mendel, Regina, (Ilona Laupe (Lenke)), 131 Menzer, Rosa (Hiende Reise), 52–4 Mertens, Felicie, 245, 260 Meth, Rose, (Grünapfel), 204 Miendrzyziecka, Hela, 162 Miller, Lili (Lea Kwiat), 205 Misrahi, Rebecca (Lilli Gottfried), 39, 79, 86 Misrahi, Joseph, 86 Montel, Louise de, 181, 254 Morgenbesser, Walter, 131, 261 Moscowits, Noemi (Friedman), 86 Mosesson, Miriam b. Schreiber, 132, 208 Müller, Charlotte, 82, 86–7, 133, 200, 210, 243–4, 260 Murr, Emma, b. Engel, 42, 55, 161 Musik, Erna, 262

Palmowska, Janina, 203 Panovova, Ema, 131 Pawovska, Bergman, Kasimira, b. Kagan, 75, 86, 261 Peet-Taneva, Georgia (Nadja Smirnowa), 43 Pepi (Josephine), 116 Per, Edith b. Gombus, 86 Petrover, Zipora (Frieda Lax), 127 Pleißner, Marie Luise, 234 Podgornik, Lotte, 208, 258 Porz, Dr. Ie, 42 Postel-Vinay, Anise, b. Girard, xii, 18, 22, 35, 40, 42, 44–5, 65, 75, 126, 134, 140, 200, 226 Potetz, Helene, 50, 64 Pratomo-Gret, Stennie, 235 Preger, Pani, 254 Privas, Chan a (Anna Szklarczyk), 200 Przeyw, Dr. Alina (Nulka), Julia, 203

Náté, Nora, (Stark), 130, 132–3 Nelken, Halina, v, 6, 142, 145–6, 193, 202, 232, 240, 244–6, 252, 254, 258 Neufeld, Ciwia, 128 Neuwirth, Emma (Panovova), 45 Niemöller, Pastor Martin, 234 Nikifora, Dr., 74, 82, 86 Nikiforova, Stella, b. Kugelmann, 81–2, 87 Nomberg, Gusta, 205 Norbert, Emilie, 63, 179 Nordmann, Marie-Elisa, 201 Noring, Malka Marie Brandes, 205 Obornik, Bella (Jablonsky), 205 Odessa, 153

Rachelle, 245 Rechtschaffen, Lea b. Wirth, 42, 56–7 Rechtschaffen, Schulim, 57 Regina, 245 Reshef, Aliza, (Frida Gerst), 206 Richter, Lola, b. Seeliger, 47 Reingewürz, Zofia, 127–8 Ritterman, Hana, 174, 206–7 Rosenak, Hedwig, 130 Rosenbaum, Clara (Klara Szabo), 92, 127 Rosenberg (Rozenberg) family, 201 Rosenberg, Bella, 202 Rosenblüth-Waxberg, Edith, 208 Rosenfeld, Anikó, 131, 239, 261 Rosenfeld-Vago, Lidia, 202, 204, 220, 226, 239, 240–1, 249, 259, 260–1 Rothschild, Lili de, b. Chambur, 40, 221 Rozenberg-Leigne, Liliane, 209 Rubinstein, Isabella (Bat-Sheva Dagan), 143 Rubinstein-Zajaczkowska, Basia Betty, 208 Rumler, Irene, 73, 262 Rupp, Clara, 49 Rysia K., 175 Schaeder, Dr. Hildegard, 234 Sara S., 130 Schaffer, Aska Asia, 209

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Index of Names of Victims and of Survivors of Nazi Camps 325 Schepsmanm Bella, (Strasberg), 206 Schidlowskaja, Klara, 85 Schiff, Bracha (Bronka Blattberg), 191 Schiff, Chava (Hedwig Grossmann), 103 Schindel, Gerti, 208 Schneidmesser, Maria (Wanda Vatniepka), 43, 261 Schreiber Sisters, 110, 132, 184, 239 Schreiber, Dora, 208 Schreiber, Ella, 208 Schreiber, Iren (Fradele), 208 Schreiber, Lilli, 208 Schreiber, Margit, 208 Schreiber, Piroska (Hanna), 208 Schulzer, Zipora (Feige Davidovitz), 128 Schwalbova, Margita, 204, 260 Sela, 248–9 Selma G., 55 Selman, Sara (Szari Grünberger), 206 Shari (Charlotte), 116 Sherman, Judith H., 44, 246, 260 Shoked, Sonia (Sonja Weingarten), 204–6 Silagi, Elisabet (Laufer), 200 Silbermann, Lotte, 40, 221, 226 Silberstein, Sam (Zylberstein), 209 Simanderakis, Anna, 201, 208 Sinasohn, Else, 47–8, 64–5, 72 Smulewicz, Cesia Cyrla, 205 Solal, Marguerite, 140, 201 Soswinski, Herta (Mehl), 43, 47, 50, 54, 64–5, 70, 72, 245 Stahl, Arthur (Abraham, Buma), 80, 86, 258 Stark, Nora, 41, 111, 113, 130, 133 Stern sisters, 166, 239 Storch, Maria, 35, 44, 64 Strassberg, Mrs., 165 Strochlitz, Sonja, b. Pfeffer, 195, 210 Szczupak, Sara (widow Goldstein), 202 Szykier, Evelina (Liuka), 205 Szyller-Palarczyk, Anna, 203, 210, 259 Tandlich, 108

Taube, Judith (Jolanta Arato Aufrichtig), 86, 208, 258 Thassim, Evelyn b. Schwartz, 79–80, 86 Tetmajer, Dr. Dabrowska, 203 Tichauer, Eva, 143, 202, 245, 260 Tillion, Germaine, 16, 18, 35, 44, 134, 200, 216, 226 Tova R., 101, 130, 210 Troedl, Adele (Adel Trödl), 209 Tuvel, Esther, 103, 173, 176–7, Vayda, Eva (Weiss), 127, 209 Vincent, Madeleine, 201 Wachstein, Marianne, 48, 50 Wajcblum. Hanka, 203 Wajsbort, Esther Inka (Inka Futtermann), 202 Wanja, 243 Weber (Rosenberg), Serena, 202, 204 Weinberger, Alice, 207 Weinstein, Dr. Suzanne, 140, 201 Weintraub, Eva, 128 Weisser, Jacob, 127 Weitzmann, Pesa, 128 Weksberg, Pola (Zand), 205 Weselten, Esthera, 205 Widell, Evelina, 163–5, 205 Wiedmaier, Maria, 43, 51 Win´ska, Ursula, 16, 18, 41, 105, 131–2, 230, 258 Winzer, Irene, 207 Wislicka, Helena (Helena Bornstein), 131 Wojtasiuk-Poltawska, Wanda, 204 Wolf, Ryfka b. Kottlar, 131 Wolfshörndl, Alice b. Grasgrün, 186 Wolfshörndl, Egon, 186 Wolfshörndl, Eva, 186 Wollner, Olga (Löwy), 116, 133 Wronkou, Gabriella, 208 Wydergut, Fella, 205 Zilberman, Dvora (Dora Stem), 166, 206 Zimmermann, Lea (Lea Geiger), 204

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INDEX OF PLACES

Agram, Croatia, 108 Amsterdam, 68 Antwerp, 81 Argentina, Argentinean, 118, 212 Australia, Australian, 21, 32, 86, 110, 116, 150, 156–7, 166–7, 171, 199, 205 Austria, Austrian, 3, 19–21, 32–3, 50–1, 54, 60–2, 65–6, 68–9, 73, 88, 100, 103, 106, 110, 118, 148, 155, 171, 173, 180, 196–7, 204–5, 208, 211, 217, 219, 222, 231, 233–4, 238, 243, 249 Bavaria, 45, 105, 114, 138, 170–1, 185, 195, 206 Bayreuth, 173 Belgium, Belgian, 14–15, 17, 31, 36–7, 68–9, 78–84, 88–9, 110, 118, 127, 135, 148, 150, 155–6, 167, 196–7, 199–200, 202–3, 107, 211, 213, 231, 233–4, 237, 245, 249, 251, 260 Benelux, 181 Berlin, 2, 4–5, 12, 30, 41, 43–5, 53, 57, 65, 78–80, 87, 89, 93, 106, 111, 137–8, 157, 159–64, 167–8, 185, 189, 200, 209, 218, 221, 242, 259–60 Bolzano, 111, 141 Bratislava, 102, 107 Brazil, Brazilian, 53, 82, 150, 156, 199 Bremen, 74, 85, 183 Brussels, 82, 87, 127, 233 Budaliget, 111 Budapest, 22, 38, 40–1, 99–100, 102–8, 111–13, 115, 121, 126, 128–35, 170–1, 173, 207, 209–10, 213, 235–6, 238–40, 251–2, 254, 259

Bulgaria, Bulgarian, 148, 196, 212 California, 167 Canada, 21, 91, 110, 133, 150, 156–7, 167, 171, 199 Carei Mari, 184 Celle, 187, 200 Cˇeska Lipa, 55 Chemnitz, 114, 192, 222 Chicago, 103 Chile, Chilean, 150, 156, 199 China, Chinese, 84, 212 Croatia, Croat, 84, 97, 108, 118, 132, 148, 196, 212 Cyprus, 167 Czechia, Czech, Czechian, 3, 32, 36, 44, 50, 61–2, 65, 67–8, 70, 72, 97, 102, 110, 118, 122, 120, 122, 125, 129, 148, 164, 168, 181, 196, 202–3, 212, 221, 226, 231, 234, 243, 245, 259 Czechoslovakia, 19, 30, 42, 61–2, 68–70, 84, 86, 88–91, 193, 107, 115, 118, 120–2, 127, 129, 131–2, 138–9, 148, 150, 154–6, 158, 163–4, 167, 182, 184, 186, 194, 196, 199, 204–5, 208, 210, 212, 145, 245, 260 Degania, 167 Den Haag, 79 Denmark, Dane, Danish, 15, 17, 39–40, 78, 83–4, 111, 165, 169, 178–85, 191, 196, 211 Dessau, 13, 34, 60 Doverstorp, 208, 288–90, 297 Elbe, River, 40, 154, 193–5, 200, 205

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Index of Places 327 Elde, River, 154 Europe, 13, 19, 21, 34, 168, 170, 241 Europe, central, 217 Europe, eastern, 188 Europe, southeastern, 154, Europe, western, 89, 154, 194, 217 Feldafing, a Displaced Persons Center, 178, 192 Florida, 167 France, French, 3, 12, 15–18, 22–3, 26, 30, 36–8, 40–5, 52, 68–9, 75, 83–4, 88–9, 97, 105–6, 110, 118, 125–6, 131, 134, 136–7, 139–42, 148, 150, 153, 155–6, 159, 172, 178, 180–1, 186, 188, 191–2, 196–7, 199, 200–4, 208, 210–11, 213, 221, 223, 228, 231, 234, 238, 245 Frankfurt/Main, 7, 29, 31, 43, 89, 106, 108–11, 113, 121–2, 131–2, 135, 166, 184, 213, 217, 219, 231, 235, 239 Freistein, 90, 189 Fürstenberg, 29, 33, 60, 65 Geneva, 48 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 2, 11–12, 15, 77 German Reich, Germany, 2–4, 12, 15, 17, 19–21, 32–4, 35–6, 40, 46–7, 51, 53, 56, 59, 61–3, 66, 68–9, 71–6, 78, 82, 84–5, 88–9, 110–11, 118, 126, 131–2, 136, 148–50, 155–6, 158, 168, 170, 183, 188, 195–7, 199, 202, 204, 208, 211, 213, 217, 220–1, 230, 233–4, 237, 250, 252, 260, Gomarom (Komarom), 22, 100, 106, 115, 131 Great Britain, 62, 150, 156, 167, 177, 199, 212 Greece, Greek, 81, 97, 118, 148, 150, 155–6, 196, 199, 202, 211, 234, 240 Grimma, 193, 195 Gunskirchen, 200 Hamburg, 14, 31, 39, 48, 56, 65, 101, 111, 183, 185, 188, 191 Herford, 64 Holland, Netherlands, Dutch, 15, 17, 21, 36–7, 56–7, 62, 67–70, 73, 78–9, 81–6, 88–9, 97, 118, 135, 148, 150, 155–6, 180–1, 185–6, 188, 196–7, 199, 202, 208, 211–13, 206, 208, 223, 231, 233–4, 237, 244, 251, 258 Hungary, Hungarian, 12, 17, 21–3, 32, 36–8, 40–1, 44–5, 62, 68–9, 78–80, 84, 88–91,

93, 95, 97–117, 120–33, 135, 137, 148, 150, 155–6, 171–4, 177–8, 182, 184–5, 188–93, 195–7, 199, 201–2, 206, 208–13, 217, 219, 221, 231, 234–5, 237, 239, 251–3, 259, 261 Israel, Israeli, 1, 3–6, 12–15, 17, 21, 31–2, 41, 74–8, 81, 85–6, 91, 94, 96–8, 100–3, 105, 107, 110, 114, 122, 127–9, 131–3, 147, 150–1, 156–7, 159, 166–7, 171, 175–6, 192, 195, 198–200, 202–210, 222, 226, 232, 258–61 Istanbul, 81, 88 Italy, Italian, 17, 23, 30, 37–8, 41, 78, 80, 88, 97, 99, 111, 115, 118–19, 126, 132, 136, 139, 141–2, 148, 150, 167, 188–9, 196, 199, 201–2, 210–11, 213, 221, 231, 234, 238, 259 Jerusalem, xi, 4, 15, 41 Kaltenberg on the river Lech, 175 Karpato-Ukraine, 183 Käsmark (Slovakia), 131, 138–9 Kaunas (Kowno), 178 Klagenfurt, 73 Krakow, 138, 146, 174, 193, 232, 236, 240, 245 Kreuzlingen, 178, 180 Landsberg, 175 Latvia, 84, 196, 211 Lech, 175 Lidingö (near Stockholm), 166 Lithuania, 53, 62, 118, 148, 178, 196, 211, 221 ·ódz´, 89, 92–6, 122, 128, 135, 143, 157–60, 162–3, 166–7, 169, 181, 190, 199, 205–6, 231, 235–6, 259 London, 48 Lübeck, 165 Lübz, 142, 153, 189 Ludwigsburg, 43, 65, 129 Lund, xii, 27, 31, 43, 147, 185–6 Luxembourg, 84, 148, 212 Lwow, 248–9 Magdeburg, 169 Malmö, 42, 94, 127, 129, 165, 186, 287, 292–3, 299 Marnitz, 153 Mecklenbourg, 140

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328 Index of Places Milan, xi, 41, 132, 201 Mörfelden-Walldorf, xi, 42, 109, 132 Moscow, 64, 74, 85 NagyBereg, 183 New York, 22, 77, 167, 206, 239 Nikolaew, 86 Norrköping, 166–7 Norway, Norwegian, 3, 15, 84, 148, 155, 196, 212, 231 Odessa, 74, 85 Palestine, 2, 57, 63, 102, 166, 178 Piotrków, 96–7, 11, 122, 136, 181, 188, 235–6, 259 Poland, Polish, 3, 12, 14, 16–17, 19, 21–2, 27, 29, 31, 36–8, 43, 52, 56, 61–2, 65, 67–70, 75, 79, 84, 88–9, 92–4, 96–9, 101, 110, 115, 117–25, 129–33, 135–6, 138, 140, 144, 147–8, 150–2, 155–6, 158, 162–8, 171–8, 180–6, 188, 192, 196–7, 199, 201–2, 204–13, 217–18, 221–2, 224, 230–2, 234–8, 243–5, 249, 252–3, 259 Portugal, 84, 212 Potsdam, 64 Poznan´, 176 Prague, 30, 43, 50–1, 72, 101–2, 124, 129, 154, 160, 193, 203–5 Prenzlau, 154, 204 Presˇov, 23 Rastatt, 31, 140 Romania, Romanian, 36–7, 62, 78, 84, 89, 97, 103, 110, 115, 118, 120–1, 126–7, 129, 132, 148, 150, 155–6, 173, 182, 184, 196, 199, 208, 211–13, 230–1, 234, 241, 251 Russia, Russian, 12, 19, 73, 98–9, 101–2, 107, 120–1, 154, 191, 193, 209–10, 221, 223, 252 Saloniki, Thessaloniki, 81, 210, 226, 240, 249, 259, 262 Safed, 41, 261 Schwabhausen, 170–1, 175–8, 192, 195, 206–7 Schiedam, the Netherlands, 223 Schwerin, 189 Serbia, 68–9, 118, 148, 196, 212 Sered, 23, 38, 107–8, 116, 122, 131, 133, 171, 206

Siberia, 3 . Skarz ycko-Kamienna, 133, 171 Slovakia, Slovak, 17, 21, 23, 28, 30, 37–8, 45, 61–2, 68–9, 97, 101–3, 107–8, 110, 115–26, 131–2, 136, 138–9, 146, 148, 155, 171–3, 177, 186, 196, 202–4, 206–7, 210–13, 231, 238–9, 246, 251, 259 Slovenia, 68–9, 118, 148, 196, 212 South Africa, 21, 110 Soviet Union, Soviet, 2–3, 7, 11–12, 19, 36, 39–40, 45, 47, 68–9, 74–5, 82, 84–5, 90, 96–7, 102, 118, 120–1, 132, 136, 148, 150, 152–6, 155–6, 169, 180, 188–90, 192–6, 199, 202, 210–11, 229 St. Petersburg, 223 Striesen, 64 Stutthof, 179 Sudeten, 163 Spain, Spanish, 2, 36, 78, 80, 82, 84, 99, 129, 211, 213 St. Ottilien (Bavaria), 170, 172, 175, 177–8, 192, 194, 206–7 Stockholm, 17, 31, 42, 127, 129, 147, 157, 166, 186, 207–8 Sweden, Swede, 2, 10–11, 14–15, 17, 27, 31–2, 37, 39, 42–3, 45, 52, 65, 77, 81, 83, 85–7, 91, 93–4, 96–101, 105, 107, 110–11, 115, 117, 122, 127, 129–33, 135, 137, 147, 150, 156–7, 164–9, 178–88, 190–1, 193–4, 199, 202–8, 210, 213, 223, 235, 237, 244–5 Switzerland, Swiss, 2, 129, 132, 141, 150, 145, 156, 179, 178, 180, 199, 201, 203, 206, 230, 259 Tarnow, 138 Tel Aviv, 5, 41, 204–5 Teplice Sanor (Czechia), 154 Torino, 141 Toulouse, 22, 28, 37, 40, 45, 88, 119, 140, 201, 213, 259 Transylvania, 173 Trieste, 138–9, 141, 201 Turkey, Turk, Turkish, 14, 36–7, 78–81, 83–4, 87, 97, 118, 135, 148, 155, 171, 175–6, 186, 196, 207, 211, 213, 233, 244, 247, 251 Ukrainia, Ukrainian, 12, 19, 68–9, 73, 84–5, 89, 90, 98, 148, 159, 165, 183, 196, 205, 212, 136, 149

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Index of Places 329 United States of America, USA, American, 6, 21, 28, 31–2, 40–1, 45, 91–2, 96–7, 100, 105, 107, 110, 114, 118, 122, 127, 129, 132–3, 137, 147–8, 151, 154, 157, 167, 171, 175–90, 192–6, 199–201, 203, 207, 210–11, 240, Uruguay, 167, 199 Vadon, 201 Verona, 41, 44, 88, 141–2, 201

Vienna, 48–9, 56, 77, 100, 130, 133, 208, 236, 243 Warsaw, 17, 28, 38, 41, 97, 111, 138, 143–4, 151, 203, 205–6, 224, 256, 258 Weißenfels, 55 White Russia, 89 Wurzen, 99, 191 Zdunska-Wola, 158, 205

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INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Abschiebung, 54, 69 Aliya B, 102, 167 Allies, 10, 14, 39–40, 81, 89, 94, 160, 163, 165, 169, 170–1, 180–1, 185, 187, 189–90, 192, 194, 217, 229, 246, 250 Alte Ravensbrückerinnen, 47, 58, 233 Antisemitism, 1, 48, 90, 206 Arrival lists, Zugangslisten, 11, 27–8, 41, 58–9, 129, 132, 144, 205 “Aryan”, 14, 19, 40, 55, 76 Asozial (anti-social prisoner), 12, 17, 19, 54, 57, 60, 69, 216 Aufseherin, Hauptaufseherin, Oberaufseherin, 159, 161–2, 203, 216 Auschwitz Todesmarsch, 20, 23, 27, 39, 45, 99, 115, 130, 137–9, 141–9, 151, 154–6, 182–3, 188 191, 196–8, 203, 209–10, 214, 218–21, 226, 236–7, 240, 244–5, 247–9, 260–1 Autobiography, 77, 79, 86, 103, 106, 143, 146, 183, 240, 242, 249 B. V. (Befristete Vorbeugungshqft, protective custody), 54, 57, 64, 69 Beihilfe zur Rassenschande, 55 Berlin wall, 2, 12 Bernadotte-Aktion, 14–15, 39, 97, 110, 157, 178, 185, 187–8, 209, 230 Biography, 15, 17, 49, 53, 55–6, 74, 77, 79, 81, 86, 103, 106, 143, 146, 183, 208, 240, 242, 249 Black transport, 137, 141 Blockälteste, 14, 48, 51, 53, 70–1, 95, 110, 163, 228, 233, 235, 237, 245–7, 259

Bombardments, Bombing, 10, 39, 93, 106, 109, 137, 160, 162–3, 165, 168–9, 175–6, 181, 183, 187, 195, 200, 205, 246 British Navy, 167 British secret service, 30 Bunker, 48, 86, 175, 228 Burial commando, 152–3, 238 “Camp-families”, 13, 17, 24, 153, 175, 234–5, 237–43, 249, 256–8 Caritas, 223 Catholic resistance, 12, 16, 230 Catholic Scout Movement (Murów), 230 Chevra Kadisha, 153 Command, Commander, 11, 44, 76, 215 Christians, non-Jews, 2–3, 6, 13, –14, 17, 21–25, 31–2, 35, 39–4043–4, 49–52, 59–60, 65, 67, –8, 70–2, 74, 76, 82–3, 86, 97, 101, 110, 115, 124, 136–7, 140–2, 144, 151, 164–6, 180–1, 191, 201, 206, 208, 214, 219, 221–3, 227, 229, 231–4, 237, 243–5, 248, 258 Christian–Jewish understanding, 222–3 Christmas, 112, 116, 121, 133, 136, 161, 171, 181–2, 207, 235, 243–4 Cold, Cold weather, Freezing, Frostbite, 9, 50, 92, 96, 100–1, 106, 113, 144, 172, 219, 243, 245 Comintern, 2, 53 Committee of Liberated Jews in the US Zone, 178 Committees of Ravensbrück survivors, see Ravensbnick

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Index of Subjects 331 Communism, Communists, 2–3, 11–12, 22, 43, 51, 53–4, 72, 77, 161, 180, 208, 229–31, 243, 246 Convoglio, 44, 139, 201 Corpses, 10, 91, 99, 110, 144, 152, 174, 177, 191, 194, 246, 248 Courage, 13, 15, 53, 161, 175, 194, 229, 233, 239, 257 Crematorium, 10, 158, 163, 248 Criminal prisoners, 12, 19, 60, 64, 216 Cruelty, Brutality, 8, 27, 79, 96, 100, 106, 122, 168, 194, 213, 218, 221, 229, 232, 235, 245–7, 257 Cyclon B, 215 Death trains, xi, 10, 14, 39, 45, 96, 105, 110, 117, 121, 132, 168–70, 177, 183–5, 187, 191, 241 Dehydration, 10 Deportation, 3, 7, 22–3, 34–5, 40–1, 43, 45, 47–8, 50, 54, 59, 60, 67, 70–2, 78, 83, 88–9, 99–100, 104, 106–7, 111, 120, 126, 129, 131–2, 139–42, 158, 179, 201, 206, 217, 220–3, 230–1, 233, 239, 244–5, 250–1, 253, 259, 261 Deterioration of conditions, 40, 52, 70, 78, 80, 82, 99, 105–6, 113, 140, 159, 162, 172, 174, 214, 256 Direct transports to Ravensbrück, 37, 88, 100, 103, 105–8, 111, 113, 116, 121–2, 131, 135–6, 138–9, 141–2, 217, 235, 238 “Disinfection”, 101 Displaced persons centers or camps, 166, 176, 178, 192, 194 Dysentery, 106, 145 Easter, 222 Edema, starvation-induced, 154 Emigration, 46–7, 57, 63, 70, 74–5, 82, 86, 101–2, 1550, 166–8, 194, 207, 222–3, 250 Epidemics, 10, 113, 136, 142, 145, 151, 185, 214, 236, 252 “Euthanasie”, 13, 34, 43, 60, 67, 216 Evacuation marches, 27, 39–40, 76, 97, 99, 102, 114–16, 125, 130, 137, 142–3, 153, 187–95, 209–10, 218, 222–3, 240, 242, 247, 249, 252, 260 Evacuation, 10, 14–15, 27, 31, 39–40, 43, 45, 52, 65–6, 72, 76–7, 83, 94, 96–9, 102, 105, 107, 110, 114–17, 122, 125, 127, 130, 135–7, 141–7, 153–4, 157, 164–5, 168,

177–83, 185–95, 197, 199–206, 208–9, 213, 218–19, 222–3, 230, 235, 237, 240, 242, 244, 247, 249, 252, 259, 260 Exhaustion, 10, 50, 52, 99, 115, 144, 152, 173–4, 191, 193, 256 “Experimental” bone transplant, 140, 151 Family transports, 223, 88, 119, 122, 125, 138–4, 213, 237, 244, 251, 259 “Final Solution”, 30, 44, 47, 67 Five periods of Jewish prisoners in Ravensbrück, 26, 40, 82, 211–13, 218, 233, 250, 253–4 Flogging, 9, 60, 228 Food, 10, 51, 80, 90–3, 96, 98–9, 101, 106, 108, 110–11, 151–4, 164, 169–70, 174–5, 184–5, 192–5, 219, 222–3, 229–30, 233, 235–6, 238, 240, 242–5, 247–8, 252–3, 260 Franciscan nuns, 224 Free University Berlin, 5 Freiburger Rundbrief, 222 Friends, friendships, 3, 24, 55, 77, 82, 95, 102, 116, 132, 152–3, 163, 172–3, 175–6, 189, 192–3, 228, 233, 239, 240, 242–3, 245, 248–6, 252, 256 Friends (Quakers), 222 Gas, Gassing, Gas chambers, 9–10, 13, 17–18, 21, 30, 34, 36, 38, 41–4, 52, 54–5, 60, 65, 67, 70–1, 76, 82, 90–1, 97, 110, 117, 125, 134, 136, 140, 145, 152, 158, 163, 183, 185, 191, 200, 214–18, 222, 224, 226, 239, 242, 255 Gender, Gender issues, 1, 12, 24, 45, 127, 250, 253–9 German war industry, 89, 97, 115, 119, 121, 137, 158–9, 169–71, 217, 252 German–Israeli Foundation (GIF), xi, 5 Gestapo, 7, 9, 20–1, 50, 54, 57, 140 Ghetto, 96, 117, 125, 135, 213, 238, 250, 253, 257 Czestochowa, 122, 259 Krakow, 232 Lublin, 222 Piotrków, 96, 111, 136, 181, 235, 259 ·ódz´, 157–9, 162–3, 166–7, 169, 190, 206, 235, 259 Kowno, 178 Theresienstadt, 179 Warsaw, 256

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332 Index of Subjects Goods trains, 144, 168, 171, 184–5, 191 Gordonia, 102 Guards, 3, 9, 14–15, 31, 42, 80, 91, 98–9, 116, 144, 151, 153–4, 159–61, 170, 174–7, 184, 189–93, 199, 239, 247–249, 259 Hachshara, 204, 260 Hakibutz hameuchad, 17 Hashomer Hazair, 166 Heil- und Pflegeanstalt (mental hospital), 34, 60 Heroes, Heroism, xii, 4, 7, 12–13, 15, 17, 53, 60, 229, 236, 238, 247–9, 257 Heterogeneity, 8–9, 19 Hidden Jewish identity, 26, 36, 73, 75, 82, 86, 188, 207, 209, 248, 252, 261 Hitlerjugend, 203, 247 Holocaust, 1–2, 4–7, 12–13, 17, 21, 24, 31, 42, 45, 64–5, 77, 81, 100, 104–5, 127, 129, 141–2, 146–7, 150, 157, 174, 176, 201, 211, 215, 239–42, 246, 250–1, 261 Hospital, Hospitals, Revier, 3, 29, 34, 39, 43, 45, 48, 51–2, 60, 63, 70, 73–4, 82, 85, 89, 92–3, 107, 127, 145, 147, 149, 152–4, 162, 165–6, 171, 175, 177–8, 190, 192, 194–5, 200, 202–4, 209, 238, 242, 246, 253–4, 258, 261 Housing, 52, 78–9, 93, 95, 98–9, 101, 105–6, 112–13, 142, 151–2, 228–9, 233, 235, 242, 248 “Human face”, 5, 7, 13, 24, 248, 258 see also Heroism Humboldt Univesität, 18, 41 Hunger, Near-starvation, Starvation, Thirst, 9–10, 24, 80, 96, 103, 105, 109, 144, 151–4, 154, 172–5, 185, 193, 203, 219, 235–6, 240, 243, 247, 249, 252, 256 Hunger-dysentery, 10, 132, 136, 152, Humiliation, 8, 24, 101, 168, 170, 233, 254–6 Identity, 20, 27, 58, 77, 82, 162 Illegal immigration to Palestine, 102, 166–7 Interviews, 1, 4, 6, 13–16, 31–2, 41, 43–5, 48, 50, 64, 72, 85–6, 91, 127–33, 147, 159, 161–4, 182, 185–6, 195, 200, 202–3, 205, 208–10, 245, 258–61 Israeli Ravensbrück survivors, 4–5, 157 Italian transports, 126, 141, 259 Jehovah’s Witnesses (Ernste Bibelforscher; Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung),

12, 19, 44, 58, 60, 71, 219, 229 Jewish Block, 43, 51, 53, 65, 67, 233, 237, 245 Jewsih Community in Prague, 124 Jewish Community in Stockholm, 31, 147, 157, 165–6, 186, 208 Jewish Men in and around Ravensbrück, 23, 34, 46–7, 61, 99, 140, 175, 177, 198, 201, 209, 232, 250–3, 255–6 Jewish World Congress, 17, 206–7 Jewsih Kennkarte (identity card), 29, 58–9, 64 Judenblock, 34–5, 48–51, 61, 63, 67–8, 73, 233–4, 243 “Kaninchen”, 52, 79, 151, 201, 230, 244 “Kristallnacht” (November Pogrom, 1938), 46 Lagerälteste, 14–15, 163–4, 205, 237 Leipzig Judenhaus, 80 Liberation, ix, 2–3, 11, 14, 21, 25, 32, 42, 62, 67, 74, 82–3, 85–6, 94, 103, 107, 124–5, 131–2, 141, 145, 152, 154, 171, 185, 187, 192–5, 203–4, 242, 248, 255–6 Locked trains, 93, 168, 171–3, 176 Looting, 154, 194–5 Magdalene Order, 224 Massar Nähstube (the sewing workshop preparing the cloth triangles and prisoner numbers), 27, 230 “Medical Experiments”, 52, 101, 130, 140, 151, 200 Menstruation, 255 Memoirs, 1, 11, 13, 1516, 32, 40, 76, 82, 85–6, 100, 103, 106, 110, 114–15, 131, 143, 146, 151, 153, 200, 202, 208, 217, 219, 222, 239, 241–2, 246–7, 249–51, 254–5, 258, 260–1 Mischlinge, ix, 20, 36–7, 43, 48, 63, 72, 76–7, 82, 85, 126, 135, 141, 181, 188–9, 214, 220–1, 226, 234, 260 Muselleute, 217 Nacht und Nebel (N. N.), 22, 52, 141 New Year’s Eve, 162 O.B. (Ohne Befund), 92 Occupations, 32, 61, 63, 79, 98, 100, 102, 113–14, 130, 158, 194, 210, 224, 240, 252–3 Open wagons, 39, 144

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Index of Subjects 333 Orthodox Jews, 255 Orthodox Russian nuns, 223 Overcrowding, 9, 34, 38, 103, 105, 108–9, 113137, 151–3, 164, 168, 170, 172, 174, 184, 219, 244 Parcels, 164 “Patenschaft” (godmother role), 51, 243 Persecution, 19, 23, 30, 46, 55, 232–3, 250, 258 Physicians, 31, 41–2, 48, 53–4, 61, 63, 70, 73–4, 82, 85–6, 95–6, 98, 114, 128, 130, 140, 152, 154, 169, 172–3, 178, 190, 195, 203, 206, 249, 253, 261 Platina (galvanization), 159–61 Pneumonia, 177 Poems, Poetry, 16, 161–2, 220, 236, 245 Police, 1, 25, 301, 42, 54–7, 176 Political Block, 51 Pregnancy, 98, 138, 162, 181, 205, 255 Prisoners of war, 19, 153, 192, 200, 230, 247 Professions, professionals, 63–4, 95, 98, 102, 114, 252–3 Quarantine, 102, 109, 166 Rape, 102, 176, 195, 210, 255 Rassenschande (racial disgrace), 19, 40, 54–5, 57, 65, 69 Ravensbrück committee, 2–4, Dutch, 223 French (Amicale), 22, 42, 126, 139–40 GDR, 77 Hungarian (Victims of Fascism Committee), 12 International, 11 Italian, 23 Reactions to meeting the victims of the Nazi concentration camps, 194–5 Red Army, 26, 41, 73–4, 82, 85–6, 96, 100, 107, 116, 229 Red Cross, 56 Danish, 17, 83, 178–81 German, 173–4 International, 30, 48, 141, 178, 181, 221, 230 Swedish, 10–11, 14–15, 52, 65, 77, 81, 83, 85, 87, 99, 105, 129, 137, 147, 169, 178–82, 186–7, 194, 206, 223, 245 Swiss, 145

Release of concentration camp prisoners, 14–5, 17, 25, 30, 47, 58, 63–4, 81, 87, 137, 163, 176, 179, 185, 207, 222–3 Rescue, 1, 10–11, 13, 15, 46, 50, 99, 137, 140, 178–9, 183–4, 186, 207–208, 261 Resistance, 12–13, 16, 19, 22, 24, 26, 36–7, 52–3, 75, 88, 140, 163, 201, 230–2, 245, 247, 249, 261 “Righteous of the nations”, 15, 222 Roll-calls, 9, 96, 102, 116, 152, 239, 249 Rosh Hashana, 162 Sabbath, 130 Sanitation, 10, 78, 101, 105, 108, 142, 170, 174 Schattenfrauen, 164 Schulung, 54, 57 SDG (Sanitätsdienstgrad), 202, 242 Sefer Hapalmach, 17 “Selection”, 9, 21, 36, 42, 50, 52, 54, 65, 76, 80, 89, 91, 95, 97, 103–4, 106, 110, 113–4, 116, 119–21, 136, 140, 142, 145, 149–50, 152, 158–9, 162, 171, 188, 191, 199–200, 202, 204, 209, 214, 228, 230, 239, 241–2, 246, 251, 257 Sephardim, 80–l, 233 Shilchim, 166 Sick, Sickness, 13, 34, 39, 43, 45, 47, 51, 60, 92–3, 96, 104, 107, 109, 113, 116, 132, 136, 140, 145, 152–4, 162, 177–8, 180, 182, 186, 190, 192, 194–5, 202–3, 214, 217, 223, 229–30, 246, 256, 261 Singing, Song, 98, 162, 173, 236, 244, 254 see also Poems Sinti and Roma (“gypsies”), 11–12, 19, 28, 59–60, 95, 106, 131, 202, 258 Slave Labor, Slave “market, 38, 89, 97, 128, 170, 217, 252 “Small groups” see “Camp families” Social Democrats, Socialists, 2, 4, 12, 24, 51, 54, 230, 242 Sondertransport, 44, 130–1 SS women, 20, 79, 98, 161, 254 St. Ottilien hospital, 170, 172, 175, 177–8, 192, 194, 206–7 Statistics, 7, 30, 58, 83, 149, 154, 196, 198, 211, 214 Stärkeliste, Stärkemeldungen, 25, 41, 59, 65 Starvation, see Hunger Sterilization, 101, 130 Strafblock (punishment block), 164, 228

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334 Index of Subjects Strickkommando, 44 Stubenälteste (room leader), 14, 35, 51, 71, 95, 98, 110, 228, 235 Suffocation, 10, 172, 174, 185, 219

Underground, 12, 223, 230, 236 United Nations, 15 University Hospital of Kaunas, 178 University of Odessa, 74, 85

Tel-Aviv University, 5, 41 Tent in Ravensbrück, 105–6, 108–10, 112, 145, 172, 235, 243, 245 Terror, 8, 50, 143, 158 Torture, 109, 254 Transportlisten, Transfer lists, 21, 27–9, 38–9, 41, 45, 66, 89–93, 98, 101–2, 104, 109, 112–15, 121, 127, 129, 131–2, 138, 146–7, 157, 200, 202, 204–5, 252 Tuberculosis, 10, 82, 92, 136, 152, 209, 223 Typhoid fever, 164, 184–5, 215, 253 Typhus, 116, 125, 148, 157, 163–4, 189–90, 212

Victims of Fascism Committee, 12 Violence, 46, 153, 246

Überstellungslisten, 27–8, 41, 129, 132, 141, 144, 205

Weizmann Institute, 205 White busses, Aktion Weisse Busse, 14–15, 99, 129, 191, 164–5, 181–3, 191, 207 World Jewish Congress, 15, 179, 207 Yiddish, 160, 162, 173–4, 195, 234 YomKippur, 162, 231 Zählappell, 128 Zellenbau, 11 Zionism, Zionist youth movements, 15, 46, 66, 81, 102, 162, 166, 231, 256, 258