If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm Read Free Book Online Page B

thought of those rounded up in the Kristallnacht pogrom. * Yet paradoxically, precisely because they were Jewish, these women had more reason to hope at that moment than many others. The horror of Kristallnacht six months previously had traumatised German Jews and shocked the watching world, not into intervention, but into offering more visas to those now desperate to flee. The Nazis were encouraging Jewish flight so that they could snatch the property and assets of the leavers. Six months after the November pogroms more than 100,000 German Jews had emigrated, and many more were still waiting for papers to do the same.
    Jews in prisons and camps had learned that they could emigrate too as long as they had proof of a visa and funds for travel. Amongst those hoping to receive their papers soon was Olga Benario. Although her own mother was estranged, Olga’s Brazilian mother-in-law, Leocadia, as well as CarlosPrestes’s sister Ligia, had been working tirelessly on Olga’s case ever since securing the release of her baby Anita.
    Just before leaving Lichtenburg, Olga had written to Carlos in his Brazilian jail. ‘Spring has finally arrived and the light green tips of the trees are looking inquisitively over the tops of our prison yard. More than ever I wish for a little sun, for beauty and luck. Will the day come that brings us together with Anita-Leocadia, the three of us in happiness? Forgive those thoughts, I know I have to be patient.’
    As dawn broke over the Mecklenburg countryside, sunlight streamed through the slits in the tarpaulin, and the prisoners’ spirits rose. The Austrians sang. When the buses neared Ravensbrück it was midday and stifling hot. The women were gasping for air. The buses turned off the road and stopped. Doors swung open and those in front looked out on a shimmering lake. The scent of the pine forest filled the bus. A German communist, Lisa Ullrich, noticed ‘ a sparsely populated hamlet situated at a small idyllic sea surrounded by a crown of dark spruce forest’.
    The hearts of the women ‘leapt for joy’, Lisa recalled, but before all the coaches had drawn to a halt came screaming, yelling and a cracking of whips and barking of dogs. ‘A stream of orders and insults greeted us as we began to descend. Hordes of women appeared through the trees – guards in skirts, blouses and caps, holding whips, some with yelping dogs rushing at the buses through the trees.’
    As the prisoners stepped down several collapsed, and those that stooped to help them were knocked flat themselves by hounds or lashed with a whip. They didn’t know it yet, but it was a camp rule that helping another was an offence. ‘Bitches, dirty cow, get on your feet. Lazy bitch.’ Another rule was that prisoners always lined up in fives. ‘ Achtung, Achtung . Ranks of five. Hands by your sides.’
    Commands echoed through the trees as stragglers were kicked by jackboots. Stiff with terror, all eyes fixed on the sandy ground, the women did their utmost not to be noticed. They avoided each other’s gaze. Some were whimpering. Another crack of a whip and there was total silence.
    The well-rehearsed SS routine had served its purpose – causing maximum terror at the moment of arrival. Anyone who had thought of resisting was from now on subdued. The ritual had been performed hundreds of times at male concentration camps, and now it was being enacted for the first time on the banks of the Schwedtsee. It would be worse for those who arrived later, in the dead of night, or in the snow, understanding nothing of the language. But all Ravensbrück survivors would remember the trauma of their arrival; all would recall their own silence.
    *
    This first group stands silent in the heat for perhaps two hours. As the count begins, Maria Zeh, from Stuttgart, looks up and sees the colza rapeseed is in blossom. She is slapped across the face. ‘ Die Nase nach vorne! ’ shouts a guard – Nose to the front.
    The women are counted again and