If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (117 page)

None would have survived without luck, particularly with their health. None would have survived without friends, ad hoc families, which helped them keep their heads. Such families appear to have formed more readily in the women’s camp than in the men’s camps. Loulou’s ‘family’ was Block 10; sitting in her conservatory, I came to know many of them. Loulou could be very sombre: ‘I find it abominable that we still talk of war. I often think we have learned nothing at all.’ But then suddenly she would brighten as she remembered the courage of ‘her sick’ and ‘her dead’.

It helped, said Loulou, that she had a role. ‘As a doctor I was able to help people a little – to live and to die.’ She once gave a young Polish woman a
little morphine so she would not be taken away by Winkelmann. ‘I said she is going to die any minute, so he left her. She did die, but not until a few days later. And she died on her mattress with someone at her side. That was important. She wasn’t gassed.’

When she returned from the camp Loulou very nearly entered a convent. ‘One didn’t believe in the goodness of human nature any more. I had to learn it again. And I did.’ She paused. ‘But it took a long time.’

Many women broke down in tears as we talked. There was often laughter. Nobody was bitter. But nor – I think – did many forgive; certainly nobody would forget. At one memorial weekend I met Wanda Wojtasik again. I had first interviewed Wanda, one of the youngest Polish
Kaninchen
, at her apartment in Kraków. Now she was throwing roses onto the Ravensbrück lake. She told me that one of the SS doctors, Fritz Fischer, had recently contacted her asking for her forgiveness. ‘I told him there was nothing I could forgive him for. He would have to seek forgiveness from God.’

Aerial view of Fürstenberg and Ravensbrück in the late 1930s, showing the Schwedtsee and the site where the camp was built on the far side of the lake

The camp wall, photographed from outside shortly after liberation in 1945 by Hanka Housková, a Czech prisoner

View from the roof of the headquarters building across the camp. This picture, taken in 1940–1, was displayed in the ‘official’ SS photograph album of the camp, which was used for propaganda purposes

Himmler entering through the camp gates with his entourage on a visit to Ravensbrück in January 1940. Visible behind him is the camp headquarters building

Himmler inspects the women guards, accompanied by Max Koegel. Behind Koegel is SS General Karl Wolff, Himmler’s chief of staff. On the far right of the picture is Johanna Langefeld. To Himmler’s right is the wall of the bathhouse and kitchen block

Johanna Langefeld, chief woman guard May 1939–March 1943

Fritz Suhren, camp commandant July 1942–April 1945

Max Koegel, camp commandant May 1939–July 1942

Dorothea Binz, Ravensbrück guard and later chief woman guard. This photograph was taken in the 1930s, its origins unknown

A guard, Herta, with her dog Greif at the Grüneberg subcamp. On the back of the photograph, she wrote ‘In memory of my wonderful time working at Grüneberg, to my dear parents, your Herta, 24/03/1944. This is my faithful little Greif

Studio portrait of Franziska Buchinger, a woman guard, taken in May 1940 by the Fürstenberg photographer A. Rudolph

Camp identity card of the guard Hildegard Schatz