CHELMNO EXTERMINATION CAMP PART 2

THE VICTIMS DURING THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE CAMP UP TO APRIL 1943

After the murder of the Jews of the counties Warthbrücken and Turek,  almost at the same time during the year arrived those Gypsies who had come in November of the previous  year as part of the resettlement  (Verschleppung) of 20 000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies into the Lodz(Litzmannstadt) ghetto. Since the beginning of December there was a raging typhus epidemic in the large hermetically sealed ghetto of the gypsy camp, so the rapid killing of infected individuals served as an alternative, a proven solution for their deaths. They were taken by truck directly to Chelmno. 4300-4400 people fell victim to this mass murder.
Between 16 January and 2 April 1942 over 44 000 Polish Jews were deported from the ghetto who had been forcibly picked by the Jewish self-government (Judenrat) at random. Then another 11 000 left in the period between May 4th to 15th who were predominantly German, Austrian, Czech and Luxembourgian Jews of the ghetto in the direction of Chelmno. This was more than half of the 20 000 people deported in fall of 1941. They were moved by a rail-way-spur system within the ghetto towards Warthbrücken, from there they went by a narrow gauge railway (Kleinbahn) to the terminus at Arnsdorf (Powiercie). The Jews then walked about half a mile away to an abandoned water mill of the hamlet Schöntal (Zawaki), where they spent in most cases  one night. The next morning they were picked up by trucks of the Sonderkommando, and counted in a way that the "human cargo"  fitted exactly into a gas-van.

Announcement from Chaim Rumkowski, the "Jewish Elder", on the imminent deportation of Jews to the West from the Litzmannstadt ghetto, 29 April 1942

CHAIM RUMKOWSKI
Rumkowski, the head of the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) Judenrat, was an insurance agent and was not part of the leading circles of the Jewish community.  He cooperated fully with the Germans and ran the ghetto in a dictatorial manner.  He has attracted more attention than any other Judenrat leader. In view of some historians, he was a traitor and collaborator. Others believe that his policies helped extend the life span of the Ghetto, which remained in existence when all other ghettos in Poland had been liquidated. Those who hold the latter opinion point out that the 5,000 to 7,000 survivors of the Lodz ghetto constituted, in relative terms, the largest among all the groups of Holocaust survivors in Poland.  Fate was not kind to Rumkowski. When the last of the Jews were to be deported from Lodz, he was the victim of a cruel hoax by his German friends. He was told by Hans Biebow, the head of the German administration in Lodz, that he would have to go to a labour camp, but that he would continue to be the head of the Jews, and Biebow gave him a letter to present to the labour camp authorities. Biebow sent him to Auschwitz in a private railroad car with great pomp and circumstance, while the other Jews were crowded into cattle cars. When he got to Auschwitz, he and his family went to the selection point with everyone else. He presented his letter to the Germans, and they made him stand at the side, and he was later driven away in a car straight to the crematorium, rather than going through the gas chambers.  [You can see him in the following video  LITZMANNSTADT,  the language is Polish.sic] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5FxA4bS-Yk


HANS BIEBOW
After working as a coffee importer in his hometown of Bremen, Biebow became the overseer of the Lódz (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto. He realised that the Lodz Ghetto could make a profit for the Germans if it were converted into essentially a slave labour complex.
Under his administration, the 164,000 Jews of Poland's second largest city were crammed into a small area of the city. Communication between the Ghetto inhabitants and the outside world was completely cut off and the supply of food was severely limited, ensuring that many of the inhabitants of the Ghetto would slowly starve. Over the course of its existence, the population of the Ghetto swelled to 204,000 with more Jews from Central Europe being sent there. The Ghetto Administration remained in operation from April 1940 until the summer of 1944, but there were transports out of the Ghetto to extermination camps (primarily Auschwitz and Chelmno) beginning at the end of 1941.
Biebow was a ruthless administrator, concerned with the ghetto's productivity and his own personal gain. He was directly responsible for starving the ghetto's population beyond limits of endurance, and he assisted the Gestapo in rounding up Jews during deportations. In the days just before the liberation of Lodz by the Red Army, Biebow ordered large burial pits to be dug in the local cemetery, intending that the Gestapo execute the remaining 877 Jews who served as a clean-up crew in the ghetto. This might have been an attempt by Biebow to eliminate witnesses to his role in the workings of the Ghetto.
Biebow exercised his control in partly through a Jewish administration headed by Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. Rumkowski believed that the Jews could survive if they produced cheap, essential goods for the Nazis. Biebow profited substantially from the sale of the products of Jewish labour as well as from the seized properties of Jews. He is also said to have provided less food to Ghetto inhabitants than was paid for, pocketing the difference. The Ghetto factories produced products such as boots for German Army and were profitable for the Germans because the Jews, cut off from all resources, worked for wages that consisted only of bread, soup, and other essentials. The German profits from the Jewish factories have been estimated at $14,000,000 and the productivity of the Ghetto was a factor in its comparatively long survival. The inhabitants endured four years of starvation, illness and overcrowding before being sent to the extermination camps of Chelmno and Auschwitz. Of the 204,000 inhabitants, approximately 10,000 survived.
Among the Nazi hierarchy, Biebow was an early exponent of using the Jews as cheap labour rather than killing them, but he readily adapted to the extermination policy. Survivors report his encouraging the last surviving Jews of the Ghetto in the summer of 1944 to board the trains to Auschwitz with a speech that began "My Jews...” and promised them work in the West.
Biebow was able to escape into hiding in Germany in 1945 after the unconditional surrender, but was recognised by a survivor of the ghetto and subsequently arrested in Bremen. After he was extradited by the Allies to Lódz, he stood trial from April 23 to April 30, 1947. He was found guilty on all counts and executed by hanging.




Around the same time in the spring of 1942, the so-called most open areas in the Jewish Regional Council Hohensalza were cleared. This required that the on-site mobile command was sent from Kulmdorf as reinforcement for the officers of the local police station. But only with the arrival of the clean-up squad of the urban ghetto of Lodz the necessary administrative personnel was at full strength. They worked quickly and systematicly: The Jews were forced to congregate in a central square, mainly at the Catholic Church. Subsequently the Ghetto Administration together with the Sonderkommando selected all persons who were classified as fit for work and  then transported them to Lodz. All people assessed as disabled or unfit for work were taken by truck or rail transport via Warthbrücken and deported to Chelmno. Afterwards, the Lodz Ghetto Administration took care of the removal of all recyclable and usable materials and entered debtors or creditors of the dissolved ghettos over to themselves as its Legal Successor. The entire household goods of the Jews that was still usable and auctioned off under the supervision of the local commissioners and mayors office. Any amounts of profit received was transferred to the Ghetto Administration of Lodz. How many people from the rural ghettos of the Government Praesidium Hohensalza were murdered, is difficult to determine. On that date and time, many Jews worked outside the ghetto in labour camps in various private and municipal facilities, such as country estates, water works operated by authorities or companies that were involved in the construction of the autobahn. According to statistical data, however, the Department of Jewish Self-Government in the Lodz ghetto, shows in April 1942, only eight Jewish people came from the Warthegau into the ghetto.
Immediately after the conclusion of transports of non-Polish Jews from Lodz to Chelmno,  began the deportations from the ghettos of the same county  administrative district. Government Statistics from President Frederick Uebelhoer show at the cut-off date May 1st 1942, altogether 36 211 Jews lived outside the greater ghetto Lodz, these were districts of Lask, Lentschütz, Schieratz and Welungen and the city of Kalisch (Kalsz). Between May and August 1942 all the ghettos of these counties were forcibly closed, although statistical figures were maintained, only 105 487 Jews are mentioned on the 1st September living in the metropolitan Ghetto. Between May and August 1942, there arrived 14 441 selected Jews  in the Lodz ghetto. Whether 21 770 Jewish people were murdered in Chelmno, is in question as well as those  in the case of Hohensalza, because here again was an unknown number of Jewish workers already confined in labour camps and living in barracks outside civil jurisdiction and not included in the count.

SS men stand over murdered Jews in Chelmno

Even if it is difficult to reconstruct the partially estimated, in part, highly detailed information, of the total of victims that perished in the extermination camp of Chelmno,  a very plausible number of murders can be almost accurately be established: On 28 April 1943 namely from the statistician Richard Korher who delivered to Himmler a 16-page report titled "the Final Solution of the Jewish question in Europe" . This indicated there was in total 1,274,166 Jews murdered in camps of "Aktion Reinhardt" within the General Government, which has been verified in the meantime, as well as the number of Jews residing in the Lodz Ghetto as at January 15, 1943, which also coincides exactly with other statical data , it shows clearly that this report can be considered as a valid source as to the murders in Chelmno. In this report, 145 301 Jews were counted that had been "sifted through the camps Warthehau". However, since Russian POWs, Polish nuns and probably the children of the Bohemian village of Lidice had also been murdered there, plus non-Jewish murder victim of an unknown number should be taken into account.
COMMAND AND RESPONSIBILITIES - ACCUMULATION OF WEALTH THROUGH MURDER -
Gauleiter Arthur Greiser made an approach to Himmler after the announcement of an imminent arrival of 20 000 Jews and 5000 Sinti and Roma from Burgenland[Austria,sic] that two of his senior officials in the Reich Government should be appointed and made responsible to organise all that was necessary prior to the onset of mass murder.  Although Wilhelm Koppe of the HSSPF still had personal jurisdiction over the Police of Kulmhof for safety and order, but the overall financial and organisational aspects of the regional "Final Solution" was held under the direction and conducted by SS-Oberführer Herbert Mehlhorn in Division I within the Reich Government. This is particularly evident on the basis of a memo, written by the local head of Göring's eavesdropping organisation, on 9 December 1941. He[Göring,sic] learned from a conversation that took place a few days earlier, between the Government President Uebelhoer and the Litzmannstadt Gestapo Leader Schefe, that the sick of the ghetto would be removed on the orders of the Gauleiter only, which is and was a civil administration.  As Schefe inquired whether Berlin knew about it, 'they answered evasively'. This discussion on December 5, 1941, shows that the Gestapo can not be considered to act as the dominant player in the planning of mass murder. Thus, these remarkable findings deepened with the restructuring of financial responsibility. An essential prerequisite for the permanent use of the death camp was the practice of mass murder by car/truck exhaust fumes and the development of a division of a labour force, the financing of property and recompense personnel costs.  This was no longer in the hands of HSSPF or the Security Police, but was solely controlled by Mehlhorn's Division I.
 The Head of Unit I/13 Budget and Accounting, was a quiet and efficient official of the Reich District of Sudetenland named Frederick Häusler, together with a colleague on February 5, 1942 they appeared at the office of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration: "Both men appeared on behalf of Oberführer(Full Colonel) Mehlhorn to get an overview of the financial situation of the ghetto. They tried to lead negotiations on the establishment of a special central bank account, which should meet all levels of costs concerning the Evacuation Measures taking place in the Warthegau".

Arthur Greiser

Fort Winiary where Greiser was executed

Greiser publicly hanged

On 28 February 1942 a Special Account No.: 12300 was set up at the Litzmannstadt City Savings Bank. The first recorded entry is made at that date. There is no balance shown, yet the first transaction was a cash payment to SS Sergeant Behm of the Sonderkommando,  and two days later an amount of RM(Reichsmark) 139,351.50 was deposited in cash. Between the first and last account entry of 15 February 1944, before being treated as re-opening of the extermination camp, consisted of 486 Bank Statements on which 1791 transaction are recorded. All these entries, including interest rate and reinvestment credits resulted from the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" by means of extermination and forced labour outside the ghetto boundaries of Litzmannstadt.
Following examples are intended to illustrate the typical operating method of financial accountability: All security and regularity police officers of the Sonderkommando received in addition to their normal pay on a daily basis a wage  envelope to the amount of 12 to 20 Reichsmark. There were other expenses for meals for the men, so that at the Kulmhof Administration always larger sums of cash adjustments were made. This money was picked up repeatedly by individual members of the Sonderkommando from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration. They obtained either mostly cash amounting to 50 000 RM or received a cashier's check, which was immediately drawn at the local town bank. In the course of 1942 the Ghetto Administration had paid out a total of 680 000 RM. Fourteen times appeared the names Behm, Bürstinger, Neumann, Otto and Plate in the accounting for amounts of RM 30 000, on one occasion to pick up 100 000 RM. The members of the Municipal Evacuation Staff were also paid in cash as an extra allowance in addition to their salary.
Also, all non-personnel costs for the operation of the extermination camp were financed from this Special Account. Cement, chloride of lime, disinfectant, or waste oil were repeatedly ordered on demand by Kulmhof from the Ghetto Administration and picked up by the Sonderkommando. Ultimately it also included the constant supply of liquor and cigarettes for the  murderers as a running cost.[It is not clear if inmates assisting in the disposal of the dead received alcohol and cigarettes,sic]
Cash deposits came of course directly from Chelmno, where the Jewish castle commando had to search through the clothes and bags of the victims. Between February 28 and 31 December 1942, a total of 21 entries totalling  1.9 million Reichsmarks were made, also deliveries of foreign exchange and gold currencies were made and then sent by the Ghetto Administration to the Reichsbank in Berlin. A little later the Reichsmark-Credit-System came into use for the special account.

Jews forced to sort confiscated goods

In view of ghetto closures, homes of the Jews were searched, ovens were taken apart and floorboards ripped out. Not that it made any difference to the Jews at assembly points shortly before their selection, they too were "relieved" of their money and valuables. In this way until the end of 1942 almost 460 000 RM were stolen, and from the Jews at Lask the amount of 71 748 RM was so high that it was mentioned in the monthly report of the Lodz(Litzmannstadt) Gestapo office. Individual receipts from the ravaged land of 19 village ghettos also show that some weeks and  months after the deportation of the Jews, money and jewellery was still found. The cash amounts were immediately credited to the Special Account, the jewellery went to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration and sold on the open market.
The lack of storage capacity on the castle grounds for luggage and textiles required in the spring of 1942, the first funded investment through the special account. Because they feared the self-ignition of clothing, the ghetto administration purchased a disused factory in the village of  Pabinice outside the city limits of  Litzmannstadt, as a branch warehouse. Here, the researching and recovery of garments were outsourced from the courtyard. The location was chosen because of its proximity to the large ghetto, where reusable material was transferred to. In addition, there was a greater disinfection plant used by Volksdeutsche(ethnic Germans) who would in turn send wearable clothing and bedding material to the appropriate NS-Wohlfat [a Nazi Welfare Organisation.sic]
The scope of this vast accumulation of "wealth" from deported and murdered Jews, with the amount of inventory work involved, can be seen from a letter written by a staff member of the Country's Economy Office in Poznań (Posen) barely two weeks after the opening of the camp on 18 May 1942. The Department was advised to expect 900 truckloads from Camp Chelmno (Kulmhof), which would require a higher allocation of diesel fuel. The financial transactions of reclaimed and found material from the victims at the camp, which an accounting staff member of the Ghetto Administration once dubbed and entered it mischievously  as "Factory-Kulmhof--Pabianice" was also huge. Between 22 May 1942 and February 1943, they made 67 entries for a total of 1,076,689.44 Reichsmark and 11,719.00 U.S. dollars into the accounts of the Ghetto Administration. The uncounted coins were sent in 93 bags in the summer of 1942.  Again,  gold currencies had been found: 4480 Rubles, 1525 Goldmark, 1451 Gold Dollars, which were handed over to the Reichsbank.
 It is clear that the control over such an important account, the responsibility of the regional planning for the Holocaust lies with the highest level of the NS-Leadership . Häusler and his superior Mehlhorn received duplicates of the bank statements, which was sent to them in Posen, so they were always informed about the current account balances. While the staff of the Reich Government could direct the Accounting Department of the Ghetto Administration to spend certain amounts, this was not possible for the staff of the Security Police. Some examples show very well that even the HSSPF Wilhelm Koppe could suggest payouts to the benefit of the Gestapo, but this was not automatic and he did not have direct excess. His requests to that effect had to be approved by Greiser.  When in the course of 1942,  the Inland Revenue Department came to the Litzmannstadt Gestapo office, because there was a Jewish person deported as a debtor, the clerk had to present management of the Ghetto Administration the complaint and then ordered the payment of the outstanding amount. Gauleiter Greise personally put his hand into the till. He requested on 17 February 1943 an amount of 4 million Reichsmarks[a considerable sum at that time.sic] to fund one of his reptile projects. With this transaction, (concealed) in favour of Greiser, the account balance temporarily had dwindled to RM 8000. But the special account was always replenished with the proceeds from the auctions of the Jewish households and the wage share of those Jews who were being exploited in the labour camps(Arbeitslager). In this way it retained even after the closure of Kulmhof a high positive balance.

SS-Obergruppenführer(SS-General) Wilhelm Koppe salutes SS and German police troops 

SS-OBERGRUPPENFÜHRER WILHELM KOPPE
He also held the position of state secretary on the issues of security (Staatssekretär für das Sicherheitswesen) in the General Government, and was involved in the operations of Chelmno extermination camp and Warsaw concentration camp as well as operations against the Polish resistance. He organised the execution of more than 30,000 Polish patients suffering from tuberculosis, and ordered that all male relatives of identified resistance fighters should be executed, and the rest of their family sent to concentration camps.
The Polish Secret State ordered his death, but an assassination attempt failed. He was wounded by the Kedyw unit - Batalion Parasol in "Operation Koppe" (Akcja Koppe) part of "Operation Heads" on 11 July 1944 in Kraków(Krakau).
With the Eastern Front approaching Poland, Koppe ordered all prisoners to be executed rather than freed by the Soviets.
In 1945 Koppe went underground and assumed an alias (Lohmann, his wife's surname) and became a director of a chocolate factory in Bonn, Germany. In 1960 he was arrested but released on bail on 19 April 1962. His trial opened in 1964 in Bonn. He was accused of being accessory to the mass murder of 145,000 people. The trial was adjourned due to Koppe's ill health and in 1966 the Bonn court decided not to prosecute and Koppe was released for medical reasons. The German government refused a Polish request for extradition. Koppe died in 1975 in Bonn.

Continued under part 3

KZ RAVENSBRÜCK WOMEN INCARCERATED PART 6

WHITE BUSES AND DEATH MARCHES

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler was clear in his own mind that since the summer of 1944 that the war for the German side was lost and could no longer be won, he sought - on his own initiative, against Hitler's wishes - in a separate peace with the Western powers. Himmler's hope: Perhaps the internationally recognised Red Cross could be an opener for negotiation with Britain.
 The situation in the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück in the final weeks before the liberation was full of contradictions and absurdities. While SS-Doctors had their last victims herded to the gas chamber, white buses of the Swedish Red Cross drove through the gate to accomplish in a unique action to take and save several thousand prisoners through occupied Denmark to Sweden.
In her diary-like records of the last days in the women's concentration camp Germaine Tillion describes on March 30, as desperate women who had gone into hiding to save their lives during the dramatic chase by the SS were
caught in a dilemma: "A few meters from where they were trapped,  they, to their amazement could observe the whole scene through the windows what was developing.  And at that very hour a white-painted Ford of the Geneva International Red Cross passes  the entrance to the camp. The Swiss doctor, who heads the mission begins his first attempt in the negotiations for the exchange of 300 French prisoners ".
Secret negotiations between the representatives of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Bernadotte, and the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had already been going on there for weeks. At least two of these meetings took place not far from Fürstenberg, at the SS clinic of Hohenlychen. Initially, the negotiations covered the liberation of the Danish and Norwegian prisoners from Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen, which were successfully completed in late March.  Thereafter Bernadotte submitted another offer, to include prisoners of Western European origin to be taken to Sweden. [Bernadotte spoke fluent German, without a trace of an accent, he first flew mid April to Berlin and gave Himmler a book of Germanic Runes, Bernadotte     obviously knew the mentality and sentiments of his opponent, the obsession in Germanic Methodology. After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1947–1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by the militant Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties. The decision to assassinate him had been taken by Natan Yellin-Mor, Yisrael Eldad and Yitzhak Shamir, who was later to become Prime Minister of Israel.sic] At the same time he launched his operation with a number of buses from their temporarily  headquarters at  Friedrichsruh near Hamburg in the direction of Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen with food parcels for the prisoners. Himmler was willing to make concessions, because he was hoping for a separate peace treaty with the Americans and wanted to save his own skin. In this strange atmosphere the Swedes were able to bring their negotiating skills to the fore  and also thanks to the courage of the officers of the Swedish Red Cross who took about 7,500 prisoners from Ravensbrück to Sweden, the exact number is unknown to this day.  Other records show: In total, around 31,000 people were taken to safety in the "White Buses" of the Bernadotte expedition, including between 6,500 and 11,000 Jews

 Swedish soldiers that accompanied or drove the Buses 

Besides the Scandinavian females it were French, Belgians, Luxembourg,  Dutch girls, and Polish women, among them were some Jewesses. On 21 April the representatives of the Swedish section of the World Jewish Congress, Norbert Masur, met together with Himmler. Masur was able to persuade Himmler to release 1,000 Jewish women. The Reichsführer SS,  however made one condition that the Jewesses would officially classified as Poles.[his pride was saved.sic] The action took place within a few days. In the transport, on 25 April which left the camp, there were also about 30 small children. On 26 April 3960 Polish women were finally able to be released from the camp. They were brought by train from Lübeck onto the Danish border. In essence, only women from Ravensbrück benefited by the efforts of the original action, of the"White Buses". To the instructions from Himmler, Suhren as commandant of the concentration camp strictly adhered to his orders which affected, apparently only female inmates, no males.

 Count Folke Bernadotte (left) who organised the "White Buses" Operation 

Parallel to these actions was that of the representative of the International Red Cross, Albert de Cocatrix, who tried in vain to convince Suhren as commandant to transfer the running of the camp to his  organisation until the arrival of Soviet troops. Suhren insisted on his orders and began with the evacuation of the Ravensbrück concentration camp on April 27 1945.  At this point of time there were about, 18000-30000 prisoners in the camp. The women were forced to march, made up into several columns, each consisting of 800 inmates  in a  north-westerly direction. Prior to that, each of them had received even a Red Cross package. The last contingent to guard the prisoners consisted of men and women of the camp SS, from war-veterans and old soldiers and conscripted(zwangsverpflichtete) prisoners. On 28 April around 1400 hours, the last column left the camp. What remained behind,  in total were 3000 sick, those unable to march, and some women inmate nurses and doctors.
The prisoners were forced to march on several routes towards Neustrelitz and Malchow. Apparently the camp personnel was still hoping to get through the increasingly narrow corridor between the front lines to reach Schleswig-Holstein. Often up into the night, the columns of the weakened and exhausted prisoners dragged forward on overcrowded roads which were already in chaos coming close to war's end. They met civilians who fled before the advancing front, retreating Wehrmacht Units and returning forced labourers. All of them were exposed to low flying aircraft attacks. At night the women camped in barns, haystacks or outdoors. Their ordeal only ended in early May, when the various advance columns of Soviet or Allied troops arrived, and their own guards were gone. How many of the exhausted and debilitated women were still able to move or broke down and were shot by the SS is impossible to reconstruct.
Some overseers and guards procured for themselves civilian clothes and in an unobserved moment left the column of prisoners, some others behaved neutrally towards the inmates. There were also SS-men in these closing days that continued with their murderous violence.  SS-Sergeant Albin Conrad was after the fifth Hamburg Trial sentenced to death, because he had caused a massacre during the death march. Conrad was on 28 April with a group of prisoners in the immediate vicinity of the main air-ammunitions plant at Neustrelitz-Fürstensee. Lisa Ullrcih who was then in this column of prisoners reported immediately after the liberation,  that at kilometre marker 12.3 the air was shattered by an explosions. "The forest on the right side was ablaze. There was a terrible confusion caused by the air pressure that  tossed prisoners back and forth, some on the left side of the forest scattered  and each ran for his life. The munitions factory was blown up, and among the prisoners as well as the guards this caused confusion and panic". Charlotte Müller and Vera Maneke testified at the fifth Hamburg Trial that Conrad still in this situation, followed a group of women fleeing into the woods and shot eight or ten of them,  others ran towards the lake and were able to hide there.
After most of the evacuation columns came upon American and British Troops in the vicinity of  Raben-Steinfeld near Schwerin many of the women survivors came back initially to Ravensbrück. The camps were occupied on April 30 1945 by the Russian  49th Army of the II Belorussian Front. Their doctors and nurses erected  a field hospital there for the returning prisoners. Fürstenberger women and girls were conscripted to care for the sick and weakened women and men and were made to bury the dead.


Any of the  survivors that were able to travel was waiting for the return journey to their homeland. After the departure of the last prisoners in the summer of 1945 the Red Army occupied the entire camp complex. Until their withdrawal in 1994, Russian soldiers were stationed on the grounds of the prison camp. The factories and farm buildings were subsequently used as workshops, garages and depots. The barracks were dismantled in the early years after the war, and almost all were sold to German refugees and displaced families from East Prussia and other parts of Germany annexed by other countries, most of them erected the barracks again on sites in that region and, built in clusters of land,called Behelfssiedlung,(makeshift settlements) made available by local authorities, and lived there for many more years, even decades. [The barracks must have been of durable material!sic.]


APPENDIX
"White Buses" refers to a program undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government in the spring of 1945 to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country. Although the program was initially targeted at saving citizens of Scandinavian countries, it rapidly expanded to include citizens of other countries.
All told, the program removed 15,345 prisoners from mortal peril in concentration camps; of these 7,795 were Scandinavian and 7,550 were non-Scandinavian (Polish, French, etc.). In particular, 423 Danish Jews were saved from the Theresienstadt concentration camp inside German occupied territory of Czechoslovakia, contributing significantly to the fact that the casualties among Danish Jews during the Holocaust were among the lowest of the occupied countries of Europe.
The term "white buses" originates from the buses having been painted white with red crosses to avoid confusion with military vehicles. The first section of the expedition departed Hässleholm on March 8 and boarded the ferry from Malmö to Copenhagen. Due to security, the Danish resistance movement was informed, but no problems were experienced - on the contrary, the expedition was very well received. On March 12, the first part of the expedition had reached its headquarters, Friedrichsruh castle, situated 30 km southeast of Hamburg. The castle was close to the Danish border and near the Neuengamme concentration camp, where the Scandinavian prisoners were to be assembled. Friedrichsruh castle was owned by Otto von     Bismarck,[Otto von Bismark is buried there,sic] a friend of Bernadotte and married to a Swede. The expedition staff were lodged in the castle and a nearby pub, while the men established a tented camp in the park surrounding the castle.
COMPOSITION OF THE EXPEDITION FORCE
308 personnel, among them about 20 doctors and nurses, the rest were volunteers from the supply regiments T1, T3 and T4; they were commanded by Colonel Gottfrid Björck as he was the inspector general for the Swedish supply forces
    36 ambulance buses
    19 trucks
    7 passenger cars
    7 motorcyles
    rescue and workshop trucks and a field kitchen
    all necessary equipment, including food, fuel and spare parts, as nothing could be had once in Germany
    The vessels Lillie Matthiessen sailing to Lübeck with 350 tons of fuel and 6,000 food parcels for the prisoners, later the Magdalena, both from the Salèn shipping line.
The force was divided into three bus platoons (each with 12 buses), one truck platoon (with 12 vehicles) and one supply platoon. Total transport capacity for the force was 1,000 persons for longer distances; 1,200 persons for shorter distances where the trucks could also be used. The buses used Motyl (a mixture of 50% gasoline and 50% alcohol) and had eight stretchers or seats for 30 passengers. They used 0.5 litres of fuel per kilometer (5.6 mpg); with full tanks they could cover 100 kilometers (62 mi). Each bus carried two drivers.
To avoid publicity in the newspapers the Swedish state information bureau distributed so-called "grey notices" where the editors were instructed to avoid stories about the expedition.
The Danish ambassador in Stockholm had offered a larger force (40 buses, 30 trucks, 18 ambulances and other vehicles). Bernadotte had considered a mixed Swedish-Danish expedition, this offer was turned down on February 23, due to the German requirement that the expedition force had to be Swedish. If not they could launch a full-scale attack on Denmark and Norway.

One of the remaining original White Buses

Another view of a White Bus

The interior

GESTAPO OFFICERS ESCORTING THE "WHITE BUSES"
The expedition had German liaison officers; the most prominent of them being Himmler's communications officer, SS Obersturmbannführer Karl Rennau, while Franz Göring was a liaison officer with the Gestapo. The expedition had around 40 German communication, SS and Gestapo officers. The Germans demanded that every second vehicle should have a German officer onboard. The "White Buses" expedition was totally dependent on cooperation with the Germans as the country under Nazi rule was a police state. Only with liaison personnel from the Gestapo and SS could the expedition move without restrictions.
Bernadotte had promised Schellenberg to have the expedition in Warnemünde on March 3, but it was delayed by more than a week. The main reason for this was the difficulty in obtaining guarantees from the Allied forces to ensure that the expedition would not be attacked. At this stage in the war, the Allies had total air superiority and regularly attacked transport on German roads. The "White Buses" expedition would move mainly within areas controlled by the Royal Air Force. On March 8, the British government informed the Swedish foreign department that it was informed about the expedition but that it could not give any guarantees against attacks; the Swedish expedition was on its own within Germany. Some of the vehicles were hit by Allied aircraft, strafing the roads, killing one Swedish driver and 25 concentration camp prisoners.
EVACUATION FROM RAVENSBRÜCK
 On April 8 some 100 Scandinavian female prisoners (including two French women) were collected from the camp and transported directly to Padborg in Denmark. At this stage Bernadotte had got permission to collect all sick prisoners. On April 22 a column with 15 Danish ambulances under the command of Captain Arnoldson departed from Friedrichsruh to collect the women from Ravensbrück.
Female prisoners in Ravensbrück, the white chalk marks shows they have been selected for transport

Female prisoners in Ravensbrück, the white chalk marks shows they have been selected for transport 

When the column arrived at the camp it was in chaos as it was to be evacuated due to the advancing Soviet forces. Arnoldson was told he could collect all French, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish women, a total of about 15,000. Arnoldson accepted, even though this was more than three times as many as the "white buses" could carry. The ambulances collected 112 sick women and on arriving in Lübeck, Arnoldson managed to inform Bernadotte that further transport was needed. He promised that all available resources would be mobilized.
Two new columns arrived in Ravensbrück; one departed on April 23 with 786 women, mostly French, who were transported directly to Padborg. The second column collected 360 French women. The last columns arrived in Ravensbrück on April 25. The situation within Germany was rapidly deteriorating, with frequent shooting on the transports as the Allied forces continued advancing. In the camp a total of 706 French, Belgian, Dutch, and Polish women were loaded onto a column with Danish ambulances and lorries from the International Red Cross. On the way to Padborg this transport was attacked by Allied fighter planes, at least 11 were killed and 26 severely injured; the final number of fatalities was estimated at 25.
The last column, led by Sub-lieutenant Svenson, had 934 women in 20 buses; mostly Polish but also French, American and English. The column rested during the night, was unsuccessfully attacked by fighter planes and arrived in Padborg on April 26, 1945. This was the last Swedish transport before Germany capitulated. The Swedes were fortunately able to use a train - 50 goods wagons with 80 female prisoners in each wagon. The train departed Ravensbrück on April 25 and arrived in Lübeck on April 29. After the passengers had been fed, the train moved on to Denmark.
A total of 3,989 female prisoners were rescued by this method. Within a few days around 7,000 female prisoners were evacuated from Ravensbrück to Denmark and then on to Sweden.According to the Swedish Red Cross a total of 15,345 prisoners were saved, of these 7,795 were Scandinavian and 7,550 from other countries. Around 1,500 German-Swedes were transported to Sweden. A total of 2,000 prisoners were transported from Neuengamme to other camps so that space was available for Scandinavian prisoners. Four hundred French prisoners were transported from Neuengamme or left in Theresienstadt as they could not be delivered to the camp in Flossenbürg.
RECEPTION AND ACCOUNTING
The main reception station in Denmark was in the city of Padborg, on the border with Germany; the prisoners received food and medical treatment before they were transported through Denmark to Copenhagen. Transport to Sweden was by ferry to Malmö where the prisoners were received by Länsstyrelsen, (the county administration) and Civilförsvaret, (civil defence). Everyone that arrived was placed in quarantine, due to the risk of spreading infection. In all there were 23 billeting areas, most of them in Malmöhuslän with about 11,000 beds. Ambulating health centres, mostly manned by Norwegian and Danish doctors and nurses (themselves being refugees), took care of the prisoners. For some of the prisoners it was too late; 110 died after arriving in Sweden, most of them Polish.
According to the Swedish Red Cross a total of 15,345 prisoners were saved, of these 7,795 were Scandinavian and 7,550 from other countries. Around 1,500 German-Swedes were transported to Sweden. A total of 2,000 prisoners were transported from Neuengamme to other camps so that space was available for Scandinavian prisoners. Four hundred French prisoners were transported from Neuengamme or left in Theresienstadt as they could not be delivered to the camp in Flossenbürg.
The "white buses" expedition was a Swedish triumph that earned the country much goodwill, the return transports through Denmark were met by ecstatic crowds. On May 17 Count Bernadotte of Wisborg was on the balcony of the Royal castle in Oslo with the Norwegian crown prince.


EPILOGUE-THE TRIALS
 Between 1946 and 1948 a British Military Court held in Hamburg  seven Trials, during which members of the SS administration staff, doctors, guards and prisoner functionaries were sentenced. Thus, among others, the last officer in charge Johann Schwarzhuber, the Head of the Political Department Ludwig Rahmdohr, the Head of the Tailoring Section Gustav Binder, the Doctors, Dr. Rolf Rosenthal, Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky, Dr Walter Sonntag and Dr. Percy Treite were sentenced to death and executed.[Dr. Treite although sentenced death in fact committed suicide in Prison April 1947, sic] In court in Hamburg were also the Oberaufseherin Dorathea Binz, the warden, Margarete Mewes and the Block Elder of the Tuberculosis Blocks, Carmen Mory. While Binz and Mory were sentenced to death, the court imposed a ten year imprisonment for Mewes.  Mewes was released on parole in 1952.
The first camp commandant of Ravensbrück Max Koegel , who had commanded in the end the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp, went 1946 into American captivity and committed suicide in prison.  Camp Commandant Fritz [Friedrich,sic]Suhren and Labor Service Director Hans Pflaum  managed first  to flee. They were re-captured in 1949, and by a French military court at Rastatt sentenced to death.[both were shot, the French normally would not hang soldiers, the request by the French Judge Advocate at the Nürnberg Trials to have Keitel and Jodl because they were soldiers shot was turned down by the others.sic] The former Oberaufseherin Maria Mandel, who had been transferred from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz, was sentenced in December 1947 by a Polish court in Krakow to death and executed.[With the Allies just a few miles from the Ravensbrück camp Suhren took Odette Sansom, an inmate at Ravensbruck whom he believed to be Winston Churchill's niece due in part to her using the assumed surname of Churchill in the camp, and drove with her to a United States base, hoping that her presence would save him.  Sansom had in fact been instructed to adopt the false name and to encourage the presumption of her relationship to the British Prime Minister as she was a spy in the camp and the British felt that if the Germans thought she was Churchill's relative they would want to keep her alive as a possible bargaining tool.sic]
In the Soviet occupation zone, before Soviet military tribunals several lawsuits took place during 1948 against guards of the concentration camp Ravensbrück. The defendants were convicted without any findings of individual guilt and sentenced to long prison terms, yet in the mid-fifties, they were either pardoned or released early. Other guards, who were immediately after the war interned in Soviet special camps had been handed over in 1950 to an East German court at Waldheim and there, in summary proceedings(Schnellverfahren), in disregard to the rule of law sentenced to long prison terms. Since 1948, East German courts proceeded within their states[Federal States,sic] of the Soviet zone of occupation their own investigations, mainly against former SS-personal that had been active in a number of satellite camps sub-ordinated to Ravensbrück. These judgements were considerably milder than that of the Soviet military tribunals or that of the judges at Waldheim.
In the context of a growing political instrumentalization of the Nazi past by the East German courts they imposed later, much harsher penalties, as in the case against Christel Jamkowsky in July 1954, for crimes against humanity by the District Court of Gera  and was sentenced to death, but in 1955 commuted to life imprisonment. The verdict was based solely on the confession of the accused. The allegations against Jankowsky was, that in  1943 during a target practice she shot about 60 detainees and participated in the killing of women and children with gas, but these accusation were not factually examined. Equally questionable was the last Ravensbrück Trial of the DDR, which took place 1965/66 before the District Court of Rostock. The former guards Ilse Göritz, Ulla Jürß and Frida Wötzel were sentenced to life imprisonment. There, too, the charges against them among other things, for participation in the killings with gas in 1943, although it had been shown, that a gas chamber at Ravensbrück concentration camp was not installed before 1945.

Literature Sources: 

THE END

KZ RAVENSBRÜCK WOMEN INCARCERATED PART 5

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

 Professor Dr. Karl Gebhardt, chief physician and director of the Sanatorium Hohenlychen and personal physician to Heinrich Himmler, between August 1942 and August 1943 led experiments on 74 Polish prisoners and twelve prisoners of other nationalities. Some were used by creating  artificial leg infections, and then refute the likelihood of a successful treatment with Sulfonamides. Gebhardt was trying with this brutal and deadly experiment on many women to restore his "honour" as a physician.  After the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich in Prague, he was responsible for his treatment and it was in this context that he rejected the use of Sulfonamide.  After Heydrich died of his injuries a few days later, Gebhardt wanted to "prove" the ineffectiveness  of Sulfonamide. [During WW II German Field Hospitals used Sulfonamides extensively in traumatic and infected wounds,sic]
In another, equally absurd series of experiments which came up at the Nürnberg Doctors' Trial that could not really be clarified as doubts were raised, was the operative removal from prisoners,  of parts of bones, muscles and nerve tissues, apparently in order to test the possibility of transplants after wounds [that is injuries sustained in combat, sic] and to explore the regenerative potential of the body.

Jadwiga Dzido shows her scarred leg to the court at the Doctors Trial, while expert witness Dr. Alexander explains the nature of the medical experiment performed on her.

The camp doctors from Ravensbruck, Dr. Gerhard Schiedlausky, Dr. Rolf Rosental and Dr. Herta Oberheuser conducted under the supervision of Gebhardt these experiments. Professor Gebhardt was convicted in 1946 for his activities and sentenced to death at Nuremberg, Herta Oberheuser received 20 years in prison and was paroled after eight years. Rosental and also Schiedlausky  during 1946 in the Hamburg-Ravensbrück Trials were sentenced to death and executed.
Unique in the history of Ravensbrück, is the protest campaign of the Polish women against medical experiments. The subjects were almost exclusively young women and girls from the Polish resistance, who were sentenced to death. In camp jargon they were called the"rabbits"(Kaninchen). When it was announced in March 1943 that trials were to begin again, despite assurances to the contrary, for a second series of experiments, the "rabbits", who themselves could by now only move on crutches, organised a protest march to Oberaufseherin(Superintendent) Langefeld, declaring that they would rather die than permit, that doctors commence operating on them again. Langefeld reacted helplessly. She had not known that the experiments would be resumed. According to Nina Iwanska who was a victim of the experiments and had organised the opposition, delivered a petition the following day signed by all the subjects to the camp commandant. In it, they asked the question "whether such experiments are provided in our judgements whose contents we do not know". The commander Suhren did not respond to this petition, curiously no attempts for further experiments did take place at that time.  But on 15 August another ten Polish women were ordered to the infirmary. They refused, however, and hid themselves in Block 15. Only when the camp leader threatened to execute all the residents of the Block,  the ten women came forward and were dragged into the bunker, five of them were immediately operated on. As punishment, Block 15 was cordoned off,  doors, windows and shutters were shut and locked, and the prisoners remained there for three days and four nights without food, no light and little fresh air.
Thereafter, there were no further operations that took place. Yet the SS in the fall of 1943 did shoot ten of the women that had been operated on. The rest were assigned to various work details, all enjoyed the protection and sympathy of the other prisoners. During this time some of them were able to  document the crimes of the doctors and sent secret messages in different ways outside. The "almost unanimous support"was best demonstrated in January and February 1945, when the forced re-operated women were threatened again with execution. Nina Iwanska  remembers that the "comrades of the Red Army"[the Russian women, sic] cut off the power supply for the entire camp to stop the morning roll call. As guards and camp police then surrounded Block 24, the column of morning-coffee collectors deliberately instigated a commotion which enabled the "rabbits" to escape. With the help of Blockätesten(Block-Elders) and the people engaged in the political department as writers, they replaced the numbers of dead prisoner comrades for those that got away. Nevertheless, the game of hiding inside the camp became more and more dangerous. "That's why we took the decision," said Nina Iwanska, "that eighteen of us should go with the various transports to relieve the daily problem, to enable to hide those in Ravensbruck, who could no longer walk.
[In March / April 1945, they succeeded apparently to send some of the "rabbit"women under the auspices of  "Action Bernadotte" to Sweden, another woman,  concentration camp commandant Suhren took with him during his escape as a hostage. Still others were freed on the death march. How many of them survived the war is not known. Dunja Martin writes of 51 women who were invited in the fifties to the United States there,  to receive medical attention. sic]

Drawing by France Andoul "Your Hour Has Come" 

DEATH TRANSPORTS AND MASS MURDER
 "In the winter of 1941/42", Margarete Buber Neumann writes, "appeared in Ravensbrück a medical commission. Even before they arrived we had listed all seriously ill in different barracks, the mentally inferior, crippled and  those that were unable to work. The prisoners on these lists were called up and unless they were bedridden had to march past the medical commission, which held its office in the bathroom of the camp. Officially it was stated that they would be transported to a rest camp.  In fact, however, these were the first selections from Ravensbrück within the frame work of the Murder Action code name "14  f 13 that took place. Dr. Fritz[Friedrich,sic] Mennecke, head of the psychiatric hospital of Eichberg, travelled on the 19 November 1941 to Ravensbrück in order to select approximately 1600 women and  300 male inmates that were on his lists, but not only mentally and physically disabled inmates, he also sent about 800 Jewish women prisoners and others suffering from tuberculosis, venereal diseases and asthmatics all with black triangles into the gas chamber".[Dr. Menneke died during his Trial in 1947, sic]
[These "medical reviews" are described in an excerpt from existing letters from Dr. Friedrich Mennecke. During a selection at Buchenwald, Mennecke wrote to his wife the following, which is almost beyond anyone's comprehension that these Doctors considered to send thousands  to their deaths by gassing as a routine task.sic]
Weimar, Nov. 25, '41 8:58 a.m.
 Elephant Hotel. First there were 40 forms to finish filling out from a 1st portion Aryan, on which my two other colleagues had already worked yesterday. Of these 40, I worked on about 15. Then came the "examination" of the pat.[ients], in other words, an introduction to the particulars & comparison with the notations in the files. We were not yet finished with these by noon because both my colleagues only worked in theory yesterday, so that I "post-examined" the ones who Schmalenbach (& I myself, this morning) had prepared & Müller, his. At 12:00 we first took a lunch break. [...] Then we examined some more until around 4:00 p.m., in fact, I had 105 pat[ients], Müller 78 pat[ients], so that at the end, as 1st instalment, 183 forms were done. As 2nd portion, now came a total of 1200 Jews, who will be entirely not first "examined", but rather with them, it's sufficient to pull from the files the reasons for arrest (often very extensive!) and transfer them to the forms. So, it's a purely theoretical job that takes us to Monday, certainly including benefit, perhaps even longer. Of this 2nd portion (Jews), today we did: I, 17; Müller 15. 5:00 sharp, we called it a day and went to dinner.[ ... ]The next few days will also go Just as I have described today, above – with exactly the same routine and the same work. After the Jews come about 300 Aryans as 3rd portion, who again will have to be "examined"...
They had all sworn the Hippocratic Oath: I will apply dietic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgement; I will keep them from harm and injustice. sic]

Hermann Göring's letter dated 13.7. 1941 to Heydrich outlining the Order for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, which initiated the Wannsee Conference code named "14f13"  

"Doco Drama  "The Conspiracy":  BBC films Conspiracy

According to statements of prisoners, the first transport left the camp on February 3, 1942. On the following day a truck returned with the clothes of the women that had been on that transport with prison numbers and tri-angles still attached. Bags(Beutel) with meagre belongings, crutches, prostheses and dentures were unloaded and sorted. "The ambulance therefore took them to their deaths". This terrible news ran through the camp to the hundreds who now expected the same fate. In February and March another ten so called"black" transports took prisoners into the Healing and Nursing Home at  Bernberg. The exact destination of the transports became known to the remaining  prisoner only through Olga Benario-Prestes, who was sent away with one of the last transports and had concealed a message in the hem of her dress. After the cessation of the murder-action "14 f 13" the sick and weak prisoners in the camp were killed with phenol and morphine injections.
Germaine Tillion reports of about 60 "black" transports with 50 to 70 female prisoners from Ravensbrück in 1943/44 that went and were killed at the Austrian Euthanasia Facilities at Hartheim near Linz. She based this figure on information provided by paramedics and doctors at the camp's Hospital Blocks. In the Day Books (Tagebücher) of Ravensbruck only one transport of 120 women in November 1944 is reported as taken to Hartheim. At the same time another group of sick and weak prisoners were deported to the concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz. When the Red Army was advancing on these camps in the east which had been gradually evacuated, the SS  sent the incapacitated men and women from Ravensbrück to Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen.

Schloss Hartheim

Schloss Hartheim was one of the Nazi "Euthanasia" killing centres where the physically and mentally disabled were killed by gassing and lethal injection as part of the T-4 Euthanasia Program. The "Euthanasia Institute" was located in the castle of Hartheim, Austria.
After the World War Two, the building was converted into apartments. The gas chamber was open to visitors, beginning in 1969. Hartheim Castle is now a Memorial Site dedicated to the thousands of physically and mentally handicapped persons who were murdered here. But there is another group of victims: in Schloss Hartheim over 8,000 prisoners of the Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camps were sent here to be gassed.


In the last phase of total congestion (Überfüllung) in Ravensbrück the SS set up themselves facilities for anticipated deaths in the camp which did eventually and deliberately or naturally occur . Sick and the old women had been given a few weeks earlier pink cards which were supposed to relieve them from hard work. In January 1945, the SS provided the barracks 27 to 32 for these affected people, which had been separated by barbed wire from the rest of the camp. From there, the women had to line up daily on the parade ground in columns and march on foot about a Kilometre away to Uckermark, which had until then served as a "youth camp"(Jugendschutzlager) for maladjusted(unangepasste) girls. One part of this camp was sealed off with barbed wire and at the beginning of 1945 was turned into a selection unit for an extermination camp(Vernichtungslager). There, disastrous conditions prevailed. The women received only half rations. The guards took away blankets, jackets and stockings, and they had to stand at attention on roll call almost all day. The Austrian Communist Irma Trksak who had been demoted as a room senior and sent there as punishment, said: "Then the women realised what they had actually in mind for them, to kill them in more than one way, if at all possible, by starving, they should freeze to death, they should become sick, so that they would have died of "natural"causes. Before she was able to return to the main camp, Irma Trksak could observe that women in the Uckermark camp infirmary were given a white powder that was administered after which they died in agony. Apparently, the camp administration had received instructions regarding a pending evacuation of the camp to kill all non-labour and those not capable of marching prisoners as quickly as possible. The original of this order, it is claimed that apparently had been seen by an inmate clerk in October 1944 on the desk of the protective custody camp leader, has not been found until now. [Stanislav Zamecnik was able to reconstruct, however, the existence of a corresponding command from Himmler for Flossenbürg and Dachau: "No prisoner must fall live into the hands of the enemy". [On the existence of this Himmler command, 14/18 April 1945, see Dachauer Hefte, pages 219-231, sic] However, there is no doubt that murder has been systematically committed in Ravensbrück since the beginning of 1945. Simone Erpel contradicts this analysis during her investigations of the last phase of the war in Ravensbrück, the claims by Bernd Weisbrod and Bernhard Strebel, suggesting that the women's concentration camp during this time took the character of an extermination camp. She argues that the last war year, certainly  represented a turning point in the history of the camp but that it could not be spoken of a change in its basic functions. Ravensbrück did, in spite of gas chambers and other forms of mass killings,  not become an extermination camp, the dominant character as a place of forced labour was preserved.

Otto Moll

At the beginning of 1945, together with Johann Schwarzhuber came SS Master Sergeant(SS-Hauptscharführer)Otto Moll and a detachment of a six-member commando from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück, [this statement is made by Strebel, KZ Ravensbrück page 476ff, sic]an experienced specialist in mass murder. Moll apparently performed previously mass shootings at camp Uckermark, but very little is known or could be proven. Apart from that, he organised the mass murder in a rapidly built gas chamber at Ravensbrück. Prisoners from the men's camp built in January 1945 near the crematorium a wooden hut for this purpose, and shielded it by a high fence from view. A commando of male prisoners had to burn the corpses. These inconvenient witnesses were killed on 25 April 1945 in the bunker. From calculated estimates at least 5000-6000 women and men died from early January to late April in the gas chambers. Germaine Tillion reported that since mid-January, women in groups of 50 to 60 people were trucked in from the camp of Uckermark and driven directly to the gas chamber, this figure increased between 150-180 prisoners daily as from March. The SS leadership made every ​ effort, to keep the existence of a gas chambers secret. Therefore, against the names of listed victims the note: "rest camp Mittwerda" was entered in the register. [Women prisoners working as scribes counted a total number of names on lists for "Mittwerda" as 3.660,  the codename for the Nazi gas chamber.sic] The rumours about the fate of the selected spread quickly, mainly because their clothes were already returned a short time after a transport to the camp. Admittedly, there is no certainty about the nature of the murder, as no prisoner from the main camp ever saw the gas chamber, but there was no doubt that a pink card meant death. In the selection process harrowing scenes were played out. Irma Trksak relates: "We made the old women blacken their grey hair with shoe polish and said: "You must try to make some steps, you must walk and  do everything so that you can show them you can manage on your own".  Germaine Tillion, characterises the selection as "true cross-hunt" that went through the entire camp, during which the SS would pick all women who like her, were not in a workplace for the gas chamber."I was warned in time, I could hide". Tillion, who was then very ill, did miss the selection on 16 March, because she was able to hide in a bed in the infirmary by Margarete Buber-Neumann. Her mother, however, was picked up on that day and killed.
PS.:Otto Moll was an SS-Hauptscharführer and part of the staff at Auschwitz. Born in Hohenschonberg, Germany on March 4, 1915 and was executed on May 28, 1946 in Landsberg am Lech. There is some doubt in my mind, that he actually was in Ravensbrück, as he was captured by American Troops in the vicinity of Dachau shortly after the liberation of that camp accompanying a death march.sic
Johann Schwarzhuber SS First Lieutenant. Even before the war was over Schwarzhuber was arrested by the British Army and during the first Ravensbrück Trial in the Hamburg Curio house on 3 February 1947 was sentenced to death. In spite of a request by him for a pardon the death sentence by hanging on 3 May 1947 was enforced.sic

 The Crematorium

That "Mittwerda" was the codename for the gas chamber has not been disputed in the Hamburg Ravensbrück Trials from 1946 to 1948 by any defendant. Nevertheless, on this subject there  remain some unresolved issues. It's not about the actual number of those that were killed or the poison that was used there. It is not yet known or any available evidence that mobile gas vans for exterminations were ever put into operation. Also on the time frame of the beginning and end of the executions, there are various different opinions. In some reports it is mentioned that the last action took place on March 30, 1945 and then the interior of the gas chamber was blown up by the SS. Erika Buchmann, who was then the block elder in the tuberculosis barrack reported, however, that even on 23 April 1945 18 TB patients were taken to the crematorium. The Frenchwoman Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier, wrote in her diary that until April 25 or 26 selections had take place and prisoners were murdered. The French survivor Ansie Postel-Vinay said therefore, one has to assume that it is very likely the blowing up of the building in early April was that of the modern brick gas chamber construction under the code name "New Laundry"(Neue Wäscherei) which was never put into operation and some evidence of this does exist.

THE PLANNED GAS CHAMBER "NEUE WÄSCHEREI" (NEW LAUNDRY)
The "Neue Wäscherei" Just outside of the northern camp wall is the site of the todays memorial. Near the former "Revier" there is a building that was most probably erected to serve as gas chamber (with two rooms). It is the socalled "Neue Wäscherei". The construction works started in October 1944 but were delayed, probably because of a lack of material. Because of the situation at the front in late January/early February 1945 the camp authorities had to find a temporary solution for gassing purposes. It is also possible that the prisoners who had to build the "Neue Wäscherei" gas chambers delayed the works intentionally so that this killing facility never went into operation.  One can assume that the former Auschwitz commander, Rudolf Höß (in his capacity as chief of the WVHA office DI), together with his superior Oswald Pohl and camp commander Fritz Suhren; inspected the construction works between end of February and mid March 1945. This was witnessed by Walter Jahn who had been imprisoned in the men’s camp since 1941. As an electrician he had to install cables in the "Neue Wäscherei", and testified against Pohl in Nürnberg. In addition he drew a sketch of the gas chambers for the court.
There are also testimonies from usually reliable witnesses about the use of mobile gas chambers or the installation of a gas chamber in an adapted Dutch railway wagon that was parked in a pine wood behind the so called "Siemenslager". However these statements are questioned by some researchers. It is notable that defendants of the Ravensbrück trials (altogether seven trials) freely mentioned a gas chamber in the "former barrack" but never mentioned another gas chamber (in the "Neue Wäscherei").

"Neue Wäscherei"

location of gas-chambeer

THE GAS CHAMBER IN THE BARRACK
 For the Gas Chamber Barrack no plans or remnants of the building are available. Therefore all facts about this real gas chamber of Ravensbrück are based on the testimonies from witnesses (SS men and former prisoners) who all agreed about the type and location of the gas chamber. This provides firm evidence to support the existence of the gas chamber. It was installed in the warehouse barrack of the Malerkommando (painter’s command) that was located directly beside the crematorium. The barrack was emptied and then sealed. The gas (Zyklon B) was poured into the gas chamber through an opening in the ceiling. Some witnesses stated that this has been done by prisoners but this can be doubted because the SS usually did it itself. According to witnesses one side of the gas chamber could be turned down to facilitate the removal of the corpses and the ventilation. Others talked about double doors. To hide the crime a two metre high fence was built around the barrack. A few metres away from the barrack a small shed was located. Here the victims had to undress before the SS drove them to the gas chamber. It is not clear if SS doctors were present at the gassings.

Crematory and Gas Chamber Barrack

In the night of the 23 April 1945 the barrack was blown up by the SS, according to some witnesses. Therefore no important traces remained after a few days when the camp was liberated by the Red Army. In contrary other witnesses stated that they still had seen the barrack shortly after the end of the war.
We don't know if the foundations of the barrack are still there: The site where the barrack was located, was converted into a DDR (East Germany) memorial after the war. It became a part of the graves field at the camp wall. An archaeological inspection to locate the exact site of the gas chamber would disrupt the today’s graves. A positive result would not be predictable anyway.

continued under part 6

KZ RAVENSBRÜCK-WOMEN INCARCERATED PART 4

CELL CONSTRUCTION AND EXECUTIONS
 Among the first buildings that were erected on the grounds of the women's concentration camp, was one of the cell blocks. Camp commandant Max Koegel had specifically made inquiries with  the Inspection of the Concentration Camps in order to proceed, for the need for a prison building: it is impossible to maintain order in the camp, he wrote, "when these hysterical women[he used the German expression "Weiber" not "Frauen' which is somewhat derogative,sic]  full of spite can not be broken by strict confinement because the women's camp has no other severe penalties that may be applied". Apparently Koegel played on the fact that officially at the beginning in Ravensbrück there was no corporal punishment allowed, this did not prevent  the overseers, however, to beat and harass women every day. But in January 1940, after a visit of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler to  Ravensbrück, was flogging (25 lashes or strokes as in men camps), allowed for female prisoners. Beatings took place twice a week in the cell block, where the women were strapped to a Block.

"The Punishment Block", where inmates were strapped into, to receive Lashes or Beatings with a Stick.

After another order (Erlass) since July 1942 from  Himmler, "stringent corporal punishment"could also be imposed on women, this meant blows to the naked buttocks. Wanda Kiedrzynska remembers that the beatings until July 1942, was done by the female wardens Hasse and Binz, after that there were prisoners who volunteered and carried out this task for an extra ration of bread. Then on 2 December 1942, a decree for all concentration camps was issued, which limited the use of corporal punishment considerably to some extent. Apart from the threat of confinement in the bunker, the stick or strapped to the block,  prisoners would receive other forms of penalties: Hour-long standing at attention in front of the office, in the worst case, from evening to morning roll call, hair being shorn with scissors, deprived of food for the entire block, detention in the prison or sentencing to the criminal block, where shortened food rations and increased harassment particularly heavy work had to be performed.
The arrest period into the Camp Bunker  was usually seven to 14 days. The women were given at this time only one Lunch (Mittagessen)  every three days, and a blanket. Margarete Buber-Neumann was in the spring of 1943 after the replacement of Ms.Langefeld in a dark arrest cell, among other reasons because she had suppressed as a writer of the Oberaufseherin reports of rule violations of other prisoners. When she was discharged after a total of 15 weeks, she was completely exhausted and hallucinating. "The light was hateful to me and the awful reality. I wanted to close my eyes and return to my fantasies," she wrote. Wanda Kiedrzynska reported that about 350 Jehovah's Witnesses after they had refused in December 1939 collectively to pack Christmas packages for German soldiers, were kept for three weeks in the Bunker, in unheated cells without jackets, hygienic pads, any garments, blankets or the usual straw-mattresses. When, on 9 January 1940 they returned to the barracks, many of them had frostbitten noses, ears, hands and on legs.

 Prison Cells and Bunker below

Punishment was arbitrary for any expression of life from "arm-in-arm walk" on the camp road, or the writing of poems, to be found in another block up to the theft of food or material  taken from the factory. For Sabotage in armament factories was punishable by death. In a secret circular to the commandants of all concentration camps on 11 April 1944, it was ordered to hang publicly those convicted of sabotage in he camp grounds. According to Wanda Kiedrzynska however, she found that in the women's camp at Ravensbrück no public executions took place on the gallows. Those women that were sentenced to death, were killed outside the camp wall with a shot to the neck  by small calibre weapons. Survivors among prisoners recalled a sand pit in a nearby wooded area as the execution site. Other executions have taken place in the immediate vicinity of the crematorium, because the prisoners in the camp heard shots from there. But if the narrow space between the wall of the cell building and the garages, which is now referred to, at the the memorial site with a plaque as a "shooting course"(Erschießungsgang), actually served this purpose is questioned in more recent investigations.
Bernhard Strebel indicates that 65 of the Russians women alone were accused of sabotage and shot in the period from 6 May 1944 to 11 March 1945. Germaine Tillion and Margarete Buber-Neumann reports of about 15 Jehovah's Witness, which were returned in the fall of 1942, from Auschwitz to be executed at Ravensbruck. The vast majority of the total of at least 260 women that were executed had been Polish resistance fighters. They were not killed for crimes committed in the camp, but had already received their Death Sentences by a special court imposed by the Gestapo and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp awaiting execution because they had participated in the resistance struggle against the German occupation. In the daily records special prisoners of the Gestapo and those sentenced for sabotage were not differentiated, so no exact figures are available. Wanda Kiedrzynska speaks of a minimum of 160 Polish women that had been shot. The same fate also suffered several English, French and some German parachutists, who were detained for months in Ravensbrück  before they were led to their deaths. Among them, Violette Szabo, Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, they had been secret service operators for the English (SOE) in France and had had built up a resistance network. Executed at Ravensbruck was the German Communist Käthe Niederkirchner, who was parachuted behind enemy[German, sic] lines, on Soviet orders and shortly thereafter fell into the hands of the Gestapo. During the rule in the East German Communist tradition, Käthe  Niederkirchner took a special place for the public to revere

Entrance to Execution Chamber. The memorial stone reads in parts which is still legible in German:"Wir waren Hunderte Frauen und Mädchen von der SS durch Genickschuss ermordet". (We were hundreds of women and girls murdered by the SS by a shot through the neck.)

Similar to the other main camps, the Cell Building (Zellbau) in Ravensbruck had several functions. It was the camp prison, interrogation and torture place for the feared head of the Political Department, Ludwig Ramdohr. It also served as a prison and execution site for prisoners who were deprived of the regular courts and were subject only to the RSHA jurisdiction. This affected the resistance fighters from occupied countries, who came under the Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) decree under strict secrecy to Ravensbrück. It also affected many other special prisoners of the Gestapo: Collaborators of enemy intelligence agencies, and prominent prisoners, family detainees who were held as hostages. Particularly noteworthy are the men and women of the resistance group of 20 July and their families. The "Special Commission Lange", which was involved in the investigation after the assassination attempt on Hitler resided in the Security Police School Drögen at the other end of the town of Fürstenberg. There, the prisoners were brought in for questioning, but in some ways still civilised as the relatives came to Drögen and were able to visit them.

LUDWIG RAMDOHR
Ramdohr was feared for its brutal methods of interrogation in the camp.
In the spring of 1945, Ramdohr because of the maltreatment of a female Polish prisoner, and the unauthorised contact with a prisoner was arrested on 20 April 1945 and sentenced by an SS and police court in Berlin to six years imprisonment. Ramdohr allegedly extorted from prisoners false confessions in order to pursue criminally members of the SS.  For his rehabilitation Ramdohr was transferred to a penal probation battalion and moved to the front.
On 3 May 1945 Ramdohr was arrested by the U.S. Army. In the first Ravensbrück Process in Hamburg's Curio House he was indicted for war crimes. During the trial, Ramdohr said about his methods of interrogation:
a) It is a fact that the food for prisoners on remand had been shortened.
b) It is certainly happened that prisoners had to stand for hours before they were interrogated by me [...]
c) I have beaten prisoners.
d) inmates were injected with a narcotic, the same that was used for an operation, and then, after they fell into a semi-sleep-like state, I started questioning. [...]
e) I tied the hands behind the back of prisoners, when she was on her stomach on a table, in a way that the head was sticking out of one end of the table. At that stage, I put a high chair with a bowl of water underneath. I then took the women by the hair and dipped her face into the water. [...] [water boarding is apparently now an accepted method by the CIA during interrogation of terrorist suspects, sic.]
f)I had a spy system. I had some prisoners who worked constantly for me, [...]
Ludwig Ramdohr was on 3 February 1947 sentenced to death. In spite of a request for clemency the death sentence by hanging on 3 May 1947 was enforced.

BIRTHS AND CHILDREN.
In the still available Ravensbrück admission lists 881 children aged up to 16 years are recorded from 18 countries that were brought in during the years 1939-1945 into the camp. Among them were 263 Jewish and 162 Roma children. From the lists it can also be ascertained that they were mostly accompanied by their mothers or a relative. There were also orphans admitted. They found in Ravensbrück mostly "new mothers", entire networks of helpers who cared for them. From memories of many surviving prisoners can be seen to what degree the concern for the needy and endangered little creature was for many women, especially if they themselves had been separated  for years from their own children, the care they provided and efforts meant not only additional sacrifices, but also a source of moral strength: "Many women and mothers were motivated by the awareness that they had to care for a child, when it [the child, sic] was taken away from them, they also took a piece of their life." so remembers a survivor. The children received, the same as adult prisoners, a number and the appropriate triangle markings.[Ordnung muss sein! sic]

An unidentified companion drew this portrait of the Daughter of the Czech inmate and Health Care Professional Zdenka Nedvedova,   she was only allowed for a few hours to keep the photo of her daughter which she had received.

 Already in June 1939, 14-16 year old boys and girls entered  the women's concentration encampment. These were Roma's from the Burgenland in Austria, who had been rounded up along with their mothers and later deported from  Ravensbrück to Auschwitz. Also, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish and German children were taken in, sporadically until 1942. During 1943, transports of children and their mothers with Turkish, Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese passports arrived. These were Jewish women with their daughters and younger sons, who had lived within the bounderies of the German Reich or from  occupied countries by German Forces and had the nationality of States, that were allied (verbündet) with Hitler-Germany. Once the scope of the National Socialist Jewish policy[Die Judenfrage,sic] could be extended to these persons, they were deported to Ravensbrück from the Germany, Belgium, the Dutch transit camp Westerbork and the city ghetto of Theresienstadt. Larger groups of men with children came after the defeat of the Warsaw uprising in late 1944 to Ravensbrück. Also  with the clearance of sub-camps around Auschwitz and the deportation of Hungarian and Slovak Jews from these countries in late 1944 early 1945, women with their children entered the camp.          
The children had, like all other prisoners, stand for hours every day on the parade ground. From 12 years on, they were used, along with the adults doing work shift in the Rüstungsbetriebe (armament factories). The boys were separated from their mothers and came into the men's camp where they had little chance of survival. About living conditions and accommodation for the smaller children, there is conflicting information. The Czech inmate physician, Dr. Zdenka Nedvedova-Nejedlá said in one of the Hamburg Trials, the children had slept in Revier (Hospital) area number I in a separate room. As their numbers grew, however, they were taken in January 1945 with their mothers into the block 32. Bernhard Strebel in an unspecified time frame an approved arrangement from headquarters that children were under 14 years were taken (apparently without their mothers) into a separate block, where they did receive daily one Liter of skimmed milk. The secret lessons so Strebel claims, where Polish Children who had participated in classes there, was then only possible in exceptional cases. However, the children were alone if the mothers had to work. Charlotte Müller remembers the days that the children could not leave the block, had to stay quietly in one corner of the day-room, toys were not allowed. They were at the mercy of the SS-Aufseherinnen(SS-Wardens). Rita Sprengel watched children playing in the camp street " roll call" or "gassing."

Standing at attention at Roll Call, drawing by prisoner Felicie Mertens 

The concentration camp was not set up for the births of children. In the first years of its existence, pregnant women were taken for their delivery to the Templin hospital. The fate of these children has not been explored. Presumably they were put into homes of the NS-People's Welfare (NS-Volkswohlfahrt), their mothers had then returned to Ravensbrück. According to statements of prisoners since 1942 children were born in the camp as well. Although a decree of the Chief of Security Police and SD, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, on 6 May 1943, forbade the acceptance of pregnant women into Ravensbrück, yet during this time more than often women, who were expecting a child,  arrived with transports from Auschwitz and Majdanek. The SS doctor Rolf Rosenthal and the prison nurde Gerda Quernheim got rid of the problem in another way: They performed abortions, often even in the ninth month, or they killed the new born. In 1943,  the gynaecologist Dr. Treite replaced Rosenthal, under im the new born were not systematically killed, but their chances of survival were still low. The number of births increased by  the end of 1944 after the Warsaw Uprising, many pregnant Polish women came to Ravensbrück. From September 1944 to April 1945 560 children were born in the camp. 104 of the entries in the register of births are not crossed out. But this means only that the infants did not die in the first few weeks. About half of them were sent along with their mothers in March 1945 with a transfer to Bergen-Belsen. According to the testimony of the former prison nurse Hidegard Brand  during the Hamburg Trial all the children lost their lives, many of them died already on the transport. In spring 1945 more transport of mothers with children were sent to certain death.

Register of Births, all except three have been crossed out, one has to assume that the other new born died or were killed.    

BORN IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP AND SAVED
During the hight of expecting births, inmate Lisa Ullrich  at the insistence of mothers became block leader in 1944 and furnished a "Mother and Child" barrack. Her "people"  were- a Czech Paediatrician, a Czech and a German woman doctor and a baby nurse - which she herself had selected. About 150 pregnant women of different nationalities, more than 100 mothers and 96 infants were there to care for at that time. "We vowed to do everything in our power to get the kids to a "save" place", Lisa Ullrich wrote later in her memoirs. Even so, in this environment the lack of necessities of life, for all the babies to survive was almost impossible.  In the second half of March of 1945 as part of "Operation Bernadotte"  the first "white buses" of the Swedish Red Cross arrived in Ravensbrück, for women from Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium and other Western countries to go to Sweden.  On 11 March 1945 The Frenchwoman Pienotte Poirot gave birth to a son. She cried bitterly that she could not go to Sweden with a new born: "With my mates, we discussed how we could help Madame Poirot and her young son[ ... ] I then told the mother that we would have to report that the child had died. [...]. The little guy, we would make ready, wrap him  into a blanket, folded and tied like a package that would look like the little bundles of other women. Once we learned the women went to the gate, I would bring the package to the gate[ ... ]We organised an observation post. But the evacuation was delayed by several days. We had a terrible fear and anxiety, the tension was almost unbearable. Then came the command for the French women to line up, names were called out and compared with the lists. Everything worked. The women went to the camp gate. Now the sign was given to us. I took the bundle in both hands and had only one thought: 'if only he did not cry!'. I reached the gate, called out to the guard that the woman had forgotten her luggage, handed it to the mother. 'Madame, the baggage' I said quickly. Soon she was out to the camp gate". - Guy Poirot is now a teacher in Paris. He visited Ravensbrück in 1975 with his family.
Source: Sigrid Jacobeit / Lieselotte Thom-Heinrich: Kreuzweg Ravensbrück, Lebensbilder antifaschistischer Widerstandskämpferinnen, Leipzig 1987
PS.:
Ullrich, Lisa. Born 1900 in Odessa - died 1986 in Berlin. Worker,  Communist Party functionary.  Arrested  in 1933 and kept in custody until 1935 convicted and kept in Jauer prison until March 1936, after "protective custody" in Moringen, Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, as prisoner No. 108 (1939) / 58 292 (at the end August 1944). Released in May 1939 in Berlin.  Re-arrested 22nd August 1944 and transferred to Ravensbrück, after liberation politically active again.
The Dutch women Anni Hendrik, whose husband was shot,  gave birth on 19 February 1945 to a son whom she named Behrend. Behrend was the first child to be born in the "Siemens Camp". Yvonne Useldinger from Luxenburg wrote on March 6 in her diary:"The child is in our barrack. Words are missing to express all the feelings, the people have become raw (sind roh geworden), the kid is too reminiscent of people who inspire pity, we keep the mother and the child. From my scarf with wire I knitted a jacket".   Few children born in Ravensbruck, who survived the camp, who had come into this world in the last weeks before the liberation  had the good fortune to be included with the transport of the Red Cross to Sweden. The son of Annie Hendriks died on Swedish soil, however, shortly after its evacuation.

continued under Part 5