Voices from Ravensbrück Interview no. 189 (English translation) Polish Documentary Institute, Lund Lund, 16 February 1946 Helena Dziedzicka, Institute assistant taking the record RECORD OF WITNESS TESTIMONY no. 189 Witness: xxxxxxxxxxx Born: 17 February 1920 In: Warsaw Occupation: university student Faith: Roman Catholic Parents' names: Eugenja, Jerzy Last place of residence in Poland: Warsaw Current place of residence: Lund Having been informed of the importance of truthful testimony, the consequences of false testimony and her responsibility to tell the truth, she has made the following statement: I was in the concentration camp in Auschwitz as a political prisoner from 30 April 1943 until 18 January 1945, having the number 43 558 and wearing a red triangle with the letter "P" on it. Then I was in Ravensbrück from 28 January 1945 until 25 April 1945. Asked whether I have any specific information from my time or work in the concentration camp about how the concentration camp was organised, the camp regimen, inmates' working conditions, treatment of prisoners, medical and pastoral care, hygienic conditions, and also specific events in all areas of camp life, I can state the following: The testimony describes: 1. Time spent at the Gestapo [headquarters]. Torture of prisoners. 2. Pawiak. Executions of Jews on the streets. 3. Departure for Auschwitz. Attempts to escape by men during the journey. 4. Arrival at the camp. Baths. Confiscation of our belongings. Shaving of our hair. Changing into dirty, lousy underwear and dresses. The indescribable overcrowding, stench and filth in the block. Long roll calls. Work in the fields. Diseases. Horrible hygienic conditions in the hospital. No water. Work in the hospital. How patients were treated. Selections. Suicides of young Jewish women. Epidemics. Corpses in front of the blocks. De-lousing-two days spent on straw mattresses with no underwear or blankets. Women marching naked down the camp's street. Mass gassing of Jews. Crematoria did not suffice, corpses were
burnt in pits. "Organising" the things left behind by the Jews. Erotic relations in the camp. Women prisoners with [camp] positions were tortured for their fellow prisoners. Mixing of the intelligentsia and the worst kind of rabble. An entire block falls ill after having eaten sardines, distributed with the doctor's knowledge. 5. Social life. Singing and [theatrical] productions. 6. Evacuation of the camp. Intensive march without having eaten. Corpses along the way. The journey by train in open wagons. 7. Ravensbrück - Jugendlager [A section of Ravensbrück for German young people, which in 1944 was used as a death camp, known as "Uckermark"] Block with no beds. Terrible famine. Moving to the main camp. 8. Typical moments from life in Auschwitz. I was arrested on 24 February 1943 in a private flat and was brought to Pawiak after a night spent at the Gestapo [headquarters]. My interrogation took place without incident. When they led me to the "tram" for the night, I met the man at whose house I had been arrested. He had been severely beaten, his face was badly lacerated, his hands were handcuffed, and blood was streaming down them. At night, a German woman was put into that same cell. She was so scared that she did not want to talk to me. The Germans took away my gold watch during my interrogation. My whole time at the Gestapo, I was able to listen to dance music on the radio, this was done specially to unnerve us. Then a prisoner was brought to our cell who would take us out for little talks-he was a stool pigeon. In the morning, my girlfriend was brought, who had been badly beaten. She was six months pregnant. Pawiak I was in Pawiak for about 2 months. I heard the executions of Jews going on against the walls at Pawiak with my own ears. I saw through Pawiak's windows, as I was carrying the rubbish, young men with their teeth knocked out. On 28 April 1943, we were taken to Auschwitz - 107 women, mostly political [prisoners], and 500 men. We were transported with a machine gun escort. All the men's packages that they had been allowed to take from their cells with them were taken away. We had been allowed to take food and clothing with us. The journey did not pass without incident, men tried to escape several times. There were shots and corpses were brought back into the cattle trucks. The men were herded into two wagons that time, and it was so crowded that they had to stand up while travelling. We were not allowed out of the wagons during the stops and we had to relieve ourselves in the wagons. We drilled a hole in the wall of the wagon so that we could see where we were going. A dozen or more SS men with rifles stormed in and beat several women. When we arrived at Auschwitz, we were told that we could go ahead and sleep in the wagons until morning. In the meantime, a little while later, when we had already gone to bed, we were told to get out, and the doors were thrown open violently. We saw the men getting out, each one struck by an SS guard with a gun butt. For a group of 600 defenceless prisoners, there were 80 men in the SS detachment that was escorting us. The SS men were for the most part very young boys. One of them, pointing to the illuminated camp that was visible from a great distance, said, "that is your new homeland". The fact that we were walking over the bodies of men on the way attests to what condition the men were in.
Auschwitz We were taken to a makeshift block where we were allowed to lie on the packed earth floor. The German women prisoners who were present when the cugangi [from German, Zugänger, "those who arrive"] [arrived] would take all our things away from us. The night passed peacefully. In the morning, we were taken to the Zauna [German, Sauna: baths. At Auschwitz, this was the place used for the mass gassing of prisoners]. We were completely naked, our entire bodies were shaved. The SS men stood and watched us. All our things were taken away. The shower was cold, we were given dirty underwear that was stained and full of lice, and wet dresses that had supposedly been laundered, but were dirty. We were not given any sweaters. We were taken to the quarantine block, where there were 1500 people. There were about one thousand Jewish women from Greece. There were about 12 people to a bunk, we crouched all night. The stench, filth and din were indescribable. We did not work for several days, but the roll calls lasted six hours a day - 3 hours in the morning and 3 in the evening. After a few days, we were hurried off to work in the fields. There was a rainy spell at that time, and we returned from work wet, our dresses would not dry, our shoes were wet, our socks fell apart immediately. Five days later, I fell ill. Within a month, 60 women from our transport were sent to hospital. I fell ill with a bad sore throat. It is impossible to speak of hygienic conditions of any kind. We were put into beds that had previously been occupied by those sick with durchfall [German, diarrhoea], the blankets were crawling with lice and we drank our coffee from the same bowls we washed in. We were given 1 glass of coffee or herbal tea during the day, we were not allowed to drink water, the women were howling from thirst. There was no toilet in the block, there was no water, only one water pipe for the entire camp. There was no [electric] light, either. We returned to our blocks in the dark, orgies would be going on, women would be fighting, stealing bread and other people's belongings, they would be cursing at one another and screaming. When my fellow prisoners would get legal food packages and would take lunch with them out into the fields, the guards would take away the packages and beat them, and they would fall down into the mud. We were allowed to write our first letters home only after 6 weeks had passed. Until then, our families did not know where we were. After the sore throat, in order to save myself from having to go to work in the fields, I worked as a "putzerka" [from German, "Putzer", "cleaner"] in the rewir [German, Revier: infirmary, hospital block]. My main job was carrying out buckets of excrement to a special pit, from which the excrement would later be taken out again with a bucket and stick. A couple of days later, I had a fever of 40ºC and fell ill with diphtheria and durchwall [sic, German, Durchfall, diarrhoea]. I didn't eat anything for a month, and I drank only coffee. A Jewish woman doctor saved my life: she managed to get a couple of shots of serum for me. As a convalescent, I was moved to the "schonungs-blok" [German, Schonung: permission to stay in the block and not work for a period of 3-14 days, depending on the illness] - before the medical examination, I was laid down the stove with no clothes on, there was a draught, I got sores in my ears and inflammation of the kidneys. I weighed 43 kilos (and 170 cm tall). I was in hospital and was relatively healthy until October 1943. I worked in the camp as a torwacha [German, Torwache: SS guard at the main gate. Here, the prisoner guard posted at the main gate.] in the Waschraum. It was a good job, I hired a woman, whom I paid with packages, and I lay in the block.
Autumn was an especially difficult period in the camp. Selections were held constantly. Every day, up to 12 corpses of young Jewish women whose nerves had given out were carried away. They ran onto the wires and were shot in the process by the guards. Before I arrived, Aryans who were terminally ill, old or weak were also burnt. After March 1943, only Jews were burnt. Then I got malaria. I did not go to hospital, because I was afraid of the conditions there. In mid- December, I got fleck-tyfus [German, "blotchy typhus", i.e. typhus] and was forced to go to the rewir. It was during the height of the epidemic. In the course of a month, 3800 women died (this figure from the political [section]). The corpses were thrown in front of the blocks. At night, they were taken by truck to the crematorium. Selections took place very frequently. The Jewish women were taken, naked, by truck. They screamed and called for help. Not only the sick and weak were taken - it was just a question of luck. The selections took place both during the day and at night. In January 1944, we were deloused in the rewir, we were taken to a clean block. We were not given any blankets, we lay naked on straw mattresses for 2 nights. Many women fell ill and died. In spring, I was released from the rewir. In winter, I still had the first signs of pemphigus. I managed to cure myself thanks to medicine smuggled from the men's camp. Then I got dermatitis/inflammation of the skin. The whole time I was regularly receiving packages from home and it was thanks to those packages that I recovered from all those illnesses. In the spring of 1944, delousing was carried out several times. It was then that those parades of naked women down the lagerstrasse [German, camp street] took place. After delousing, our dresses and underwear were changed in that mess. People were generally of the opinion that the camp would turn into a sanatorium then. The lice infestation diminished, and there were already waschraums and toilets. And it was complete heaven when, in the summer, transports of Jews, mostly from Hungary, began to arrive. About 10,000 people would arrive every day. They did not enter the camp, but were sent immediately to the crematoria. We saw this through the barbed wire. They were often elegantly dressed, with cigarettes. They did not realise where they were going. The chimneys of the crematoria were bursting from the fire and smoke. The people were also burnt in pits, because the crematoria could not hold so many people. I cannot vouch for this myself, but the men who worked there said that the children were not burnt, but rather gassed alive. These transports lasted about 3 months. The situation of the häftlings [German, Häftling, prisoner] improved insomuch as some of the things left behind by the Jews made their way into the camp before they were taken away to the Reich, thanks to the cunning of the häftlings and the corruption of the SS men. The men in the camp did whatever they wanted. Some of the male work gangs would come to the camp. They had [sexual] relations with the women, children were born, men helped the women a great deal. The women who got pregnant while in the camp went to the sztrafblok [German, Strafblok: punishment block] afterwards. The children were in a special block. The children got a special diet. This was of course organised by the häftlings. When Auschwitz was a very large camp, it was difficult to manage such a mass [of people]. Germans assigned criminal elements, who knew how to beat and abuse people to their best advantage, to positions in the camp. Many Jewish women held positions, as did German prostitutes and [female] criminals. They determined the tone of camp life. The demoralisation was terrible. Lesbian love flourished, especially between the German women. The women degenerated. Even those who were
upstanding sometimes became demoralised. The Germans gave the prisoners with positions quite a lot of freedom because they helped the Germans. With time, this became our greatest torment. The Lagerälteste [German, Lagerältest: female prisoner, camp director] and the blokowe [German, die Blockältesten: prisoners who were the heads of blocks] tormented us more than the SS men did. The fact that members of the intelligentsia were mixed in with the rabble was a serious "plague" in the camp. In autumn, around October 1944, the selections in the camp stopped, and only enormous transports were taken to the factories in Germany. One day, about 400 Jewish women were taken from the death block to the Schonungsblock. They were in terrible shape, emaciated and dirty. At that time, the block got a zulaga [German, Zulage: supplement], each person got a tin of sardines. The starved women ate the entire tin immediately. The oil was effective. The doctor knew that the sick had gotten sardines. The next day at roll call, all the women had diarrhoea, it was running down their legs. The flegerka [German, Pflegerin: nurse] came to register the sick. They were afraid of being selected and they would all use their feet to cover their faeces with dirt. Only a few were taken, the rest returned to the block, all continued to be ill, they relieved themselves in their beds, the block was unbelievably dirty, the blokowa could not manage and beat people. This all made a terrible impression, it was far from human. In the autumn of 1944, all the weak, old, sick as well as children were moved to the "Gypsy camp". I worked as a nurse. We worked all the time, but it was clean in the blocks at that time. I had one thermometer for 50 patients. Despite the fact that this work was very difficult, it was very satisfying for me. We were saving the sick with our own hands, we cooked soup for them, bathed and combed them, deloused them. At that time, a communist cell was organised in the camp. A few Jewish, German and Russian women belonged to it. Their relations were good, they helped each other, met, sang songs, once they even had a banquet, to which I was invited, not knowing where I was going. It was interesting and even pleasant. During the "party", an SS man came, but he was drunk and didn't realize what was happening around him. Fortunately, it ended without incident. The Poles also organised themselves in the Gypsy camp. They met, sang songs, organised programs, played bridge. Life was tolerable then. This idyllic period lasted until 18 January 1945. The evacuation came unexpectedly. During the day, they were still putting the installations in a new block, and suddenly at night the evacuation began. For a long time, there was a complete black-out. An SS man came unexpectedly that night, turned on the light and ordered all the cards and files of the sick to be collected in a hurry and took them with him. We were told to get ready to leave the camp. The next day, each person was given ½ kilo of bread. Confusion, running about, people gathered on the road. Anyone who wanted to leave the camp could. The sick, if they could manage to get themselves some clothes, could also leave. One could take anything at all. There was a terrible mess. The general view was that the sick would be destroyed. Almost all the flegerki and doctors left. The Oberartzt [sic, German: Oberarzt, "head doctor"] said that he advised all those who could walk to leave. We were not allowed to take the children.
The gates of the camp were opened in the evening and we were taken out to the road. The men were walking in front of us. The SS men surrounded us on both sides, there were a great many of them, with rifles, there was no way to escape. The march was very intense. The first day we were allowed to rest for a couple of minutes on the snow. On the road we often found groups of corpses dressed in prison stripes, men. Many of their skulls were open, as if they had been cut with a knife, right across the top of their heads, their brains scooped out. I don't know how this was done, but we supposed that perhaps the SS did this with long sticks with some kind of wooden ball attached to the end. Those SS men who surrounded the march were armed with those sticks. We often heard shots behind us. We did not get any food at all, we ate snow. The journey lasted a couple of days. The locals sometimes gave us water, but that was rare. I didn't feel hungry despite the exhaustion. The lovely sunsets and sunrises gave me strength, because it was just like in a fairy tale, and it let me forget about the awful reality. We looked at the sky and not at the ground. We were loaded into the train only in Loslau (Wodzisław), in Silesia. We travelled on open platforms in the snow and wind. We did not get any food rations at all. The train went slowly. Stops at the stations sometimes lasted all day. The women were passive, there were no incidents with the SS. It was very crowded in the wagons. The journey to Ravensbrück by train lasted several days. Ravensbrück We were put in a completely new and unfurnished block in the Jugendlager, with no beds. We sat, hunched up, on the floor, because there was no place to lie down. There were no toilets in the block and we relieved ourselves under the trees. It was impossible to wash. Only the strongest women got the soup. We were terribly hungry. The first three days there was no bread, they only brought soup for some of the people, there was not enough for everyone. We washed ourselves in the snow, naked. These were the conditions for about a week. I was so weak from hunger that when I walked to the toilet, I had to hold onto the walls and trees. My head hurt at the back and I was terribly dizzy, I became completely apathetic. Then we were moved to the main camp. I had a fever for 3 months. I hid in the block because there were selections constantly, my friends helped me. ------------------- During the first period of my time at Auschwitz, there were happy marches played when we left the camp and when we were returning after work. At the same time, it was mostly men who mostly would carry, high up on stretchers, the corpses of their fellow prisoners who had been killed or who had died from exhaustion during work. During a speech to the flegerki during roll call, Oberartzt [sic] Mengele voiced the opinion that the häftlings who followed the camp rules could not live longer than 3 months, which meant that those of us who lived longer were thieves, who steal and "organise". There was a brothel at Auschwitz. Women volunteered for it. It was mostly the German women criminals who volunteered, who, when they fell ill in the puf [German, Puff: colloquial for "brothel"] were treated in the normal hospital and lay in the same wards with the other patients.
In the Auschwitz headquarters there was a muster lager [German, Musterlager, model camp] that was equipped in an exemplary fashion. There was a small group of prisoners who lived there, mostly old prisoners; they looked good, they were dressed well. It was a showcase camp for the delegations that ould come from Germany. ------------------- At Ravensbrück, I was ill constantly, I did not go to work and that is how I survived until the end of the camp. On the way to Sweden, while we were in Germany, we met German peasants. We were singing Polish songs and we hung little Polish flags up. The German civilian population and the young boys tried to rip down those flags and threatened us with their fists. On the way, we met German sanitary trains. The injured officers and soldiers asked us for cigarettes and chocolate. The Polish women gave them these. Read, signed, accepted: / - / xxxxxxxxxxx Comment of Helena Dziedzicka, the Institute assistant taking the record: The witness, xxxxxxxxxxx, is intelligent and observant, and does not exaggerate in her account, nor does she fantasize. Her testimony is wholly trustworthy. / - / Helena Dziedzicka