Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII (47 page)

Barkworth and Vera had by now uncovered a mass of new evidence about the Nazis' notorious “Night and Fog” order. Given that the whole purpose of this order was that nobody would be told where the prisoner had been sent and the prisoner would have no contact with the outside world, this was the perfect place. The idea of making people “disappear” had come from a decree issued by Hitler's chief of staff, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, on December 12, 1941. It was intended to deal with civilian resisters—either in Germany or in German-occupied countries. The aim was to deter others by treating N+N prisoners abominably and then killing them off so nobody would know anything about what had happened to them. Some SS chiefs chose to apply the decree to spies and foreign commandos. Some did not. But by the end of the war hundreds of thousands of N+N prisoners had indeed “disappeared” in specially designated secret camps. Natzweiler was one of the best-kept secrets of all.

Only hand-picked SS men who could be relied on not to talk were allowed to work at Natzweiler. And nobody was allowed to say anything about what happened inside the crematorium. If anyone was going to witness crimes committed here, it was only the other inmates. And from the evidence Vera had gathered so far, it seemed as if every single prisoner in the camp had witnessed something of the crime that happened on July 6, 1944.

As Vera stood beside das Tor, looking down over the barrack roofs, it was obvious to her why so many of the other inmates had witnessed what had happened: this was a place where everything could be hidden—and nothing at all could be hidden. The camp was laid out like a massive amphitheatre, with the low wooden barracks stepped up one behind the other on terraces, looking down towards a “stage” at the bottom of the camp: the Zellenbau, with its punishment cells, and the crematorium, both cradled by pine trees.

So when several of the camp's senior SS staff denied that the women were here on July 6, 1944, hundreds of pairs of eyes were able to say that they were. The commandant himself, Fritz Hartjenstein, told Vera that he knew nothing about the case at all. Yet Hartjenstein had personally collected the four women from the bottom of the hill in his car. A Belgian prisoner, Albert Guérisse, had seen the car arrive and watched as Hartjenstein took the car on a curious lap of honour around the camp.

Guérisse, a prisoner in Barrack 7, told Vera that Hartjenstein's car carrying the new prisoners drove in through the gates at about three-thirty p.m. The car drove along the inside of the perimeter, following three sides of the square, so that Guérisse, from his barrack at the bottom of the camp, had seen it pass. “In view of the fact that vehicles were rarely seen inside the wire, its presence caused a good deal of interest.”

So before anyone even knew that the car carried women—for nobody could see who was in the back—the camp's interest had been excited. And when female figures stepped from the car, gossip spread like wildfire from barrack to barrack. It was almost unheard of for women to enter the camp. The rumour that these women were English and French intensified the inmates' curiosity.

The women's first minutes in the camp were witnessed close-up by just a few members of the staff, who caught sight of them as they were ushered into the SS offices beside das Tor. A Luxembourger named Marcel Rauson who was passing by on an errand saw them standing outside the camp's political office, where the SS political officer, Magnus Wochner, was sitting. Rauson supposed they were there to fill in reception
papers. Under interrogation, Wochner told Vera that he had first seen the women in the office of his colleague Wolfgang Zeuss. Wochner too supposed that they were dealing with paperwork.

Then a man from the Karlsruhe Gestapo, who had accompanied the women, walked into Wochner's office and explained that there were orders from Berlin to execute the women immediately. Wochner disputed this “unorthodox” procedure, saying that such orders usually arrived in Zeuss s office by secret teleprint, or by letter direct from Berlin to the commandant of the camp. A carbon copy was always immediately made of such an order and sent to the commandant. But the Karlsruhe Gestapo man said the women's names should not be entered in any records at all. Wochner claimed he then said he wanted nothing to do with it. Other witnesses, however, suggested he was simply lying and that the camp executioner, Peter Straub, would never have been authorised to kill a prisoner without Wochner's order. In any event, the women's arrival had clearly caught the senior SS staff off guard. They were busy preparing for a big leaving party to be held that evening for the camp doctor, Dr. Plaza. Dr. Plaza was one of a large number of officers transferred to Natzweiler from Auschwitz, including his replacement, Dr. Werner Rohde.

While the procedural dispute was going on, others saw the women sitting waiting. They were “very quiet,” according to a Polish prisoner, Walter Schultz, who was working in the political office as an interpreter. “One was smoking a cigarette.” When the women eventually emerged into the open, escorted by four SS men, every inmate in the camp strained to look at them.

Among the prisoners were Danes, Norwegians, Frenchmen, Luxem-bourgers, Dutchmen, and Belgians—nearly all of them resisters. There were large numbers of Russians and a whole village of Poles who had infected the entire camp with typhus. There were a few Greek, Italian, and Yugoslav partisans too. There were priests, doctors, scientists, and ordinary criminals; and there were hundreds of Jews, although Natzweiler was not a camp for Jews. And there were the two English SOE agents: Brian Stonehouse and Robert Sheppard. Every man in the camp was labelled: a blue triangle for homosexuals, green for felons, black for work dodgers, violet for Jehovah's Witnesses, yellow for Jews, and so on. Those
designated to disappear as N+N prisoners wore over their heart a round yellow label with three concentric black circles. They were walking targets and could be shot at any time. They were not allowed any communication with other prisoners. Many of the resisters were designated N+N, and large letters were written on the backs of their jackets to confirm this.

But as Vera knew, the four women would have been quite unable to identify any individual in the camp by name or nationality. Had they looked around at the thousands of men now staring at them, they would have seen only a sea of identical emaciated faces, with identical shaved heads and skeletal bodies.

The evidence suggested, however, that the women did not look around. Stonehouse portrayed them in his descriptions and sketches stepping out, looking ahead, holding their heads high as they carried their little cases and packages down the Lagerstrasse, almost as if they had come to stay just for the night. The trail running down the centre of the camp was steep and very long.

The women had made their appearance at a time of day when the largest number of prisoners was certain to be present to watch. By four p.m. the work commandos were returning from the granite quarry, marching to the order of ranks of SS guards, dogs all around. Some prisoners were preparing for evening roll call outside the barracks. Others were carrying out tasks inside the fence. One of these was Stonehouse. He had been laying pipes just inside the wire on the east side of the fence when the women came past.

Descending the steps a little, Vera soon reached the point where Stonehouse must have first seen the women. She stopped momentarily and adjusted the diagram, based on Berg's description, that she had brought with her, altering a directional arrow here or the position of a watchtower there. Everyone who had noticed the girls pass by saw something slightly different. Some said there were three, and some said four. Some said they passed at three p.m. and some at five p.m. Some said one carried a rug, others that one had a coat. One said they were all carrying
boxes, another that they were suitcases. Some said June, some July. But every single witness Vera spoke to had, like Berg and Stonehouse before them, said that the women were well dressed.

“One could see from their appearance that they hadn't come from a camp,” wrote Roger Linet, a French prisoner who was working in the kitchens when they passed by. “They seemed young, they were fairly well groomed, the clothes were not rubbish, their hair was brushed, and each had a case in her hand.”

And yet although many remarked upon their clothes, no one was able to help Vera with a description of the women's faces. Stonehouse got closer than anyone else. Vera had had the chance to talk to him in person since he sent his sketches, and gradually he had remembered more. He now timed the arrival of the women by the news of the attempt on Hitler's life, which he remembered spread around the camp shortly after the women arrived. One of those accompanying the women was an SS NCO whom he and other prisoners had nicknamed Fernandel, because he looked like the French actor. Fernandel's real name was Ermenstraub.

“The whole party moved down the path on which I was working and passed me within a few feet, so that I was able to observe them closely,” Stonehouse said.

Along with their clothes, witnesses noticed the women's general bearing. There was no doubt they were “first class,” said Major Van Lan-schot, a Dutch resistance leader.

As the women moved down the path, rumours naturally spread about the real intentions of the SS guards. “The general opinion was they were too good to start a Puff [brothel] with,” said Major Van Lanschot. Walter Schultz, the Polish prisoner and camp interpreter, had been told that the women were to be “employed in the officers' mess.” And when a new rumour flashed around that beds were being prepared for them in a room in the crematorium, there was more talk of a brothel.

But by the time the women moved down the final flight of steps, all the prisoners knew the real intention of the SS: to kill the four women, right there that night. The only people in the whole concentration camp who did not know this were the women themselves. Was this why their story was so deeply scored into every witness's mind—prisoner and SS
alike? These four women, alone of all the people brought to Natzweiler, had no idea of the fate in store for them. They were not taken to their deaths already emaciated and half dead. They were healthy and smartly dressed and might have walked in off any London or Paris street. And nobody could warn them, still less help. The six thousand men imprisoned in the camp, many of the bravest resisters in Europe, could do nothing that afternoon but watch as these young women walked past on their way to certain and horrific death.

Even before the women had reached the bottom of the camp, a dispute had broken out among the senior SS staff, including the camp doctors, about how to kill them. Vera had heard differing accounts of this dispute. Dr. Rohde said he had been resting on his bed in the SS officers' mess when Dr. Plaza, Otto, and Straub rushed into his room to tell him about the arrival of the women “spies.” They were all as surprised as anyone.

According to Dr. Rohde, his three colleagues told him that the women had been condemned to death and were therefore to be hanged. Straub had objected, saying that to hang women—Englishwomen and Frenchwomen—would lead to a great “to-do.” “He said it would cause ‘ein grosses Theater,' and we would have to find another way,” said Dr. Rohde, who was surprised, as Straub usually enjoyed such spectacles. The other way proposed by the doctors was to inject the women with a lethal substance, but they were not sure if they had the necessary quantities in stock.

Emil Brüttel, a medical orderly with the junior rank of Unterschar-fiihrer, was in the dispensary, near the crematorium, at the time these discussions were taking place. Under interrogation, he recalled receiving a phone call in the early evening from Dr. Plaza, who was dining in the officers' mess, outside the perimeter fence. “He told me to look in medical stores and see how many capsules of Evipan there were. I told him there were just enough for the normal requirements of the operating theatre. Then Plaza rang down again. He said: ‘Look and see if we have any phenol and how much there is.' I reported back that we had about 80cc. Then he called and told me and Eugen Forster to be ready for duty and to bring the phenol and a 10cc syringe and one or two larger-gauge needles.”

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The evidence taken by both Vera and Barkworth suggested that a timetable for the killings had been drawn up by the time the women reached the bottom of the steps of the Lagerstrasse at about five p.m. The women were first led round the back of the prison block, entering from the rear entrance, which faced the forest and down the mountain. They were then locked in cells.

Since the women's arrival at the camp, Franz Berg had been busy making sure everyone knew as much as possible about them. It was he who passed the word right down to the barracks on the lower terraces that there were British women among the group. Hearing this, one prisoner, Georges Boogaerts, decided to try to get a word to the women when the guards were distracted, by calling across to them in their cells.

Boogaerts, like Albert Guérisse, was a Belgian doctor and had been placed in charge of the prisoners' hospital. The windows of the hospital block looked directly onto the prison block—a distance, as Vera could now see as she stepped down the last step, of about twenty-five yards. Choosing his moment carefully, Boogaerts made a first attempt to contact the girls. He managed to get the attention of two, who appeared to be in the same cell, by whistling and whispering as loudly as he dared.

The women then opened their window. A few hurried words were passed between Boogaerts and the girls, and he managed to get a glimpse of one of them and even a name. He told Vera: “I remember one of the women was dark and that she called herself Denise.” Then, miraculously, he was able to throw some cigarettes at her window. “In gratitude for this she sent me, through Franz Berg, a small tobacco pouch.” Boogaerts still had Andrée (Denise) Borrel's tobacco pouch in his possession when Vera saw him in Brussels in early April 1946.

Having found out that the girls were English and French, Boogaerts was determined to tell his friend Guérisse. Boogaerts knew that, given Guérisse's connections with the English, he would want to try to talk to them too. Guérisse, better known in resistance circles by his alias, Pat O'Leary, was already something of a resistance legend. Evacuated from Dunkirk, by 1941 he was back in France, where he ran one of the most
successful British escape lines, the Pat line, along which numerous British airmen travelled to get back home.