Thursday, August 2, 2018

Ravensbrueck: Life And Death In Hitler's Concentration Camp For Women, Sarah Helm, c. 2014

Ravensbrueck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women, Sarah Helm, c. 2014.

How she researched this story is incredible. Had it not been for her, the story would have likely been lost.

The book:
  • prologue: 8 pages
  • the book itself: 658 pages with a 26-page epilogue
  • six pages of acknowledgements
  • twenty-two pages of notes.
  • bibliography: 13 pages
  • index: 20 pages
Prologue: the setting. How this "quest" began. Her first visit to Ravensbrueck, about an hour's drive from Berlin's Tegel airport.

Part One

Chapter 1: Langefeld (chief female guard)
  • history of Johanna Langefeld, a chief guard at Ravensbrueck; single mom with one son; what she saw of returning German soldiers after WWI reminds me of the second half of the movie, Lawrence of Arabia -- and right, wrong, indifferent, explains a lot; apparently drifted away after the liberation (not sure about this) and suddenly, mysteriously reappeared at the door of a former prisoner, Grete Bber-Neumann, 1957, Frankfurt to tell her (Langefeld's) story
  • history of Heinrich Himmler -- makes me think of the movie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
  • the history of the camps -- not what most folks think
  • first camp: Dachau
  • Appellplatz: camp square
  • how German women became infatuated with Adolf Hitler -- fascinating
  • camps were not originally meant for Jews
  • began with Hitler's determination to round up and crush all opposition, mostly Communists
  • SS: Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary squad first formed as Hitler's personal bodyguard; by the time Hitler came to power in 1933, Himmler had transformed the SS into an elite force; one of its tasks was to run the new concentration camps
  • Hitler's model for these concentration camps: concentration camps used for mass internment by the British during the South African War of 1899 - 1902. Dachau was the prototype -- designed by Himmler himself
  • first commandant of Dachau: Theodor Eicke -- a monster, if there ever was one
  • one of Theordor Eicke's recruits was Max Koegel, the future commandant of Ravensbrueck
  • the story of the women of Jehovah's Witnesses-- fascinating
Chapter 2: Sandgrube (the sandpit)
  • appell: roll call
  • Effektenkammer; storage room for personal belongings of all prisoners
  • Konzentrationslager: concentration camp, of course -- note "lager"
Chapter 3: Blockovas
  • Dorothea Binz: a particularly monstrous guard
  • history of the word "Kapo" ('trusty', inmate forman)
  • kapo as a term not used as often in Ravensbrueck, but every much the same as that at Buchenwald, Dachau, or Sachsenhausen
  • official titles of the kapo:
  • Blockova; block chief
  • Stubova: room chief
  • in their posts to assist the SS
  • new Kapo hierarchy began in 1939
  • new job introduced -- Lagerlaeuferin -- camp runner
  • Lageraelteste: 'head prisoner,' camp senior, prisoners called her (Margot Kaiser, Lagershreck  -- camp terror
  • Scheisskompanie -- the latrine gang
Chapter 4: Himmler Visits
  • January 4, 1940
  • headed towards Mecklenburg Forest and on to Ravensbrueck
  • Hitler never visited a concentration camp; never interested
  • camps were part of Himmler's life
Chapter 5: Stalin's Gift
  • Russian Jews sent to Germany, and then to Ravensbrueck
  • Chapter 6: Else Krug
  • groups and individuals were being referred to as the color triangles they wore
  • the story of the asocials -- had it the hardest after the war
  • red light district in Cologne; police files recovered after the war and stored in nearby Duesseldorf, wherethey have remained unread for nearly 70 years
  • Else Krug: one of the very few prostitutes at Ravensbrueck to be given a name -- because of her kindness to other prisoners
Chapter 7: Doctor Sonntag
  • Himmler made a second visit; this time overnight, January 14, 1941
  • his small forest estate called Brueckenthin; installed his mistress, Hedwig Potthast
  • Himmler: had introduced Lebensborn ("Source of Life") homes -- institutions where SS officers could procreate outside marriage with selected Aryan women in order to produce a constant supply of perfect Aryan children -- said it was okay to do this opening, to improve the gene pool
  • Walter Sonntag, the senior SS doctor
  • a new concentration camp in Poland had been established, Osciecim -- in German, Auschwitz; southern Poland, to hold Polish resisters
  • as of yet, no official solution has been proposed, except perhaps in private, as to what to do next wiht the Jews
  • mass sterilization now being considered
  • prisoner labor now being considered; war lasting longer than expected
  • Hitler's T4 "euthanasia" program had been launched a year earlier
  • CO poisoning on 35,000 German men, women, and children seen as a drain on the German economy
  • I was completely unaware of this program; it was outside of Himmler's purview; Grafeneck Castle; 
  • Himmler took notice; mass murders near where Germans lived would cause local unrest
  • Himmler would move the killing centers; and he would co-opt the gassing methods
  • Sonntag had carried out mustard-gas experimentation  at Sachsenhausen; now instructed to carry out syphilis and gonorrhea experiments 
  • the story of Dr Sonntag (a dentist)
  • Dr Sonntag another incredible monster
  • 1941: Sonntag marries Gerda Weyand; a female physician who subsequently arrived at the camp
  • sometime in the middle of 1941, Dr Sonntag started killing -- cold-blooded killing
  • much information comes from Olga
Chapter 8: Doctor Mennecke
  • by the summer of 1941, Milena Jesenska was probably the most charismatic woman in the camp
  • close friend Greta Buber-Neumann
  • the story of Milena; relationship with Franz Kafka -- it seems I vaguely remember this name (Milena) when I was in my Franz Kafka stage
  • Dr Sonntag's list; 250 names
  • Emmy Handke, a secretary in the Revier, learned a psychiatrist has been booked into a nearby hotel
  • question raised whether "T4" program could be used for concentration camps; series of gassings
  • Reichsfuehrer gave go-ahead
  • to be directed out of Himmler's own Concentration Camp Inspectorate, located at Oranienburg, northern edge of Berlin
  • a new cover name for the killings: Sonderbehandlung 14f13 -- Sonderbehandlung -- "special treatment" was thte SS and police euphemism for killing
  • at the camp inspectorate the code "14f' was used to denote prisoners who died at the camps
  • 14f14: executions
  • 14f8: suicides
  • 14f13: a new designation -- killings by gassing
  • Friedrich Mennecke, a T4 psychiatrist, wrote each day to his wife Eva, telling her about his work at Sachsenhausen -- where a trial run of the 14f13 program began
  • another turning poit in the escalating Nazi murder programme: the first time prisoners from a concentration camp were killed with gas; a satisfied Himmler directed his 14f13 staff and colleagues at T4 to start selecting prisoners at other camps for transport to gassing centers
  • urns
  • the protests across Germany
  • attempt to keep gassings confidential bungled by Nazis
  • Minsk, August 15, 1941: mass shooting of Jewish women and children; trenches; Hitler witnessed it personally
  • if Himmler had any reservations about gassing women it all changed after Minsk
  • children: poisoned or starved
  • then the story of Mennecke

I honestly cannot finish reading the book.

I will scan through, noting the titles of each chapter:

Chapter 9: Bernburg

Part Two

Chapter 10: Lublin

Chapter 11: Auschwitz

Chapter 12: Sewing

Chapter 13: Rabbits

Chapter 14: Special Experiments

Chapter 15: Healing

Part Three

Chapter 16: Red Army

Chapter 17: Yevgenia Klemm

Chapter 18: Doctor Treite

Chapter 19: Breaking The Circle

Chapter 20: Black Transport

Part Four

Chapter 21: Vingt-sept Mille

Chapter 22: Falling

Chapter 23: Hanging On

Chapter 24: Reaching Out

Part Five

Chapter 25: Paris and Warsaw

Chapter 26: Kinderzimmer

Chapter 27: Protest

Chapter 28: Overtures

Chapter 29: Doctor Loulou

Chapter 30: Hungarians

Chapter 31: A Children's Party

Chapter 32: Death March

Chapter 33: Youth Camp

Chapter 34: Hiding

Chapter 35: Koenigsberg

Chapter 36: Bernadotte

Chapter 37: Emilie

Chapter 38: Nelly

Chapter 39: Masur

Chapter 40: White Buses

Chapter 41: Liberation

Epilogue

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