ment. The overseers were a bunch of rotters, cruel-hearted, ignorant, taking pleasure in torturing the poor prisoners.

The cruelest of all was the chief superintendent, S.S. Oberaufseherin Dorothea Binz. She had a well-deserved reputation for bestiality, for which she paid the penalty on the gallows in 1947. Dorothea Binz was one of eleven supervisors and doctors at Ravensbrück who were sentenced to death by hanging at the Hamburg War Crimes Trials in the British Occupation Zone of Germany.

There were, however, one or two of the overseers in Ravensbrück who had a heart. I personally spoke to one who complained that she was forced to join the S.S., the Nazi elite corps, which committed the worst crimes.

There were many mothers with children in Ravensbrück. The little ones, of whom at one time there were perhaps 500, added a note of special horror and tragedy to the atmosphere of the camp. They looked like little skeletons wearing rags. Some had no hair on their heads. Nevertheless, they behaved like children, running around and begging things from their elders. They even played games. A popular one was Appel, modeled on the camp's daily roll calls.

Most of the children lived in the barracks along with their mothers. I remember one Hungarian Jewish women who had four, ranging in age from four to twelve. All fivemother and children-had to sleep in one bed. The children were beautiful, and their mother kept them very clean.

There were also pregnant women in Ravensbrück. Most of them were German nationals accused of Rassenschande. Babies were born in the Revier (infirmary). I used to hear the screams of the mothers in labor and the wails of the newborn, most of whom were to die very shortly. The callous camp nurses would put five or six infants into a single crib and inevitably they would smother one another.

Once I saw a Nazi guard carrying a bag slung over his shoulder.

"Know what I have here?" he asked cynically, pointing to the bag. "Dead babies."

But, miraculously, a few of the babies lived to leave Ravensbrück when their mothers were liberated.

In the multitude of women the Nazis had herded together in Ravensbrück there was a great variety of nationalities and social types, and many individuals whom I found very interesting. Their reactions to the inhuman conditions under which they lived were a fascinating study in human nature.

I discovered that true comradeship can develop among those subjected to such conditions. In that dreadful place we were all equals. There was no wealth, no titles, no envy to divide us. I came to know a great many people, but there were five or six women to whom I was particularly close and whom I shall always remember.

One was Mrs. Lotti Lehman (Silverman) who on a bitter winter morning did me an unforgettable act of kindness.

For some reason we never learned, the guards decided to hold morning roll call at four o'clock, instead of the usual hour of five. Chilled and benumbed, I stood in line with the others in the predawn blackness. The frost pierced me to the marrow.

Lotti noticed my shivering. "What's the matter with you, Mutti?" she asked.

"I haven't any underwear. I'm freezing." My voice quavered with cold and fear.

After the Appel, when we came back into the barracks, Lotti took off her underwear and handed it to me. At first I refused to accept it. It was too great a sacrifice. But she insisted, and eventually I took the garment.

Lotti came of a well-to-do family in Berlin. In Ravensbrück she worked in the dressmaking shop, which turned out beautiful clothes for the wives and sweethearts of Nazi officers. The finest fabrics-velvets, silks, brocades—were brought here from occupied France, together with skilled seamstresses and designers who had been arrested on the slightest pretexts.

Another who showed me unusual devotion and readiness to help was Annamarie Thiel, now Robertson, a charming, young blond German girl who had been in Ravensbrück since September, 1943. Annamarie had been sent to the concentration camp because she helped her Jewish neighbors in Berlin. She worked in the camp office, and one of her duties was to distribute the Nazi party newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, among the camp officials and overseers.

We prisoners were not permitted to read anything from outside, not even the official Nazi organ. This ban was very harshly enforced during the last period of the war when one could find, even in the Party newspaper, clear hints of the Nazi defeats on the war fronts. Annamarie used to risk her life to bring us not only the Völkischer Beobachter, but also provincial newspapers. These were more outspoken about the turn of events that spelled defeat for the Nazis.

Hilde Brook, a chemist from Danzig, had been arrested in 1942 because she was helping to hide people-Jews and non-Jews-wanted by the Gestapo. After many months in jail at Potsdam and in the infamous Moabit prison in Berlin, she was shipped to Ravensbrück in March, 1943. Hilde also worked in the camp office. She had charge of the so-called "lager" money.

On arrival at Ravensbrück every prisoner had to surrender all her possessions, including money. Once a month she was permitted to withdraw a certain sum paid out in scrip which was called Lagergelt. One could buy whatever was available in the canteen, but there was very little choice. Sometimes there was herring, or a piece of candy, or salt which was a great luxury. Usually, however, there were only trinkets and junk that was of no use.

I was never inside the canteen, because I had not brought any money to Ravensbrück and no Lagergelt was issued to me.

Both Annamarie and Hilde live in New York now, they visit me every year on my birthday.

There was also Odette Garoby, the wife of a French sea captain from Algiers. On my first day in our block when I was filled with misery and despair, I suddenly heard a beautiful voice singing "Swanee River." To hear this familiar song, with the English words rendered in a charming French accent, was very comforting to me. I stood enchanted, and then spontaneously joined the singer. "Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away . . .'

99

At the end of the song we introduced ourselves. From that first encounter emerged a friendship that has been deep and lasting, despite differences in our ages and dispositions. She was very chic and witty and could come up with a joke in the most dismal situation.

Odette had been arrested on the street in Paris during a routine roundup by the Nazis in the wake of a sabotage action by the underground. She was taken away and shipped to Ravensbrück without any opportunity to advise her husband and family of her whereabouts.

Among the inmates of Ravensbrück was a small, frail woman with a great heart whose conduct gave encouragement to us all. Everybody knew Dr. Gertrud Luckner and came to her seeking help and advice.

Even our Nazi overseers-the "ravens" of Ravensbrück, we called them, because of the black capes they wore-showed her respect, apparently in recognition of her status as an internationally known social worker. For years Dr. Luckner had been the heart and soul of a Catholic charitable institution, the Caritaszentrale, in Freiburg, and gave assistance to the victims of National Socialism. In the Ravensbrück concentration camp she used her privileges to bring aid and comfort to the neediest among us.

Gertrud Luckner was born in Liverpool, but she had lived in Germany from early childhood. She received her higher education in Germany and also attended the College for Religious and Social Work, operated by the Quakers at Woodbrooke in England. After receiving her doctorate Gertrud Luckner worked at the headquarters of the Deutscher Caritaszentrale (German Welfare Association) in Freiburg. Dr. Conrad Groeber, the Archbishop of Freiburg, who was responsible for the charitable activities of the German episcopate, entrusted her with the delicate task of administering whatever aid could legally be given to those who suffered under National Socialism, especially the Jews.

At the same time, as the Nazi terror fastened its grip on Germany, Dr. Luckner began on her own initiative to give its victims whatever assistance she could, whether or not it was within the law. Tirelessly and unobtrusively, she traveled through Germany and the occupied territories that

were incorporated into the Greater Reich. She was a frequent visitor to ghettos and concentration camps, bringing comfort and financial help to Jew and Christian alike.

Dr. Luckner maintained close contact with Dr. Leo Baeck, Chief Rabbi of Berlin, and with the Jewish communities all over Germany. On a visit to Cologne in August, 1941, she learned from the rabbi of its Jewish community, Dr. Caro, that it was possible to mail money orders in amounts up to ten marks into the ghetto of Litzmannstadt, as the Nazis had renamed the Polish city of Lodz. She began collecting money and, bit by bit, transmitted the money to the Jews penned up in the Litzmannstadt ghetto.

Thoroughly imbued with the ideal of the brotherhood of all mankind, Gertrud Luckner risked her life by continuing activities the Nazis had declared illegal. She was arrested in March, 1943, on a train while traveling on one of her missions of mercy. She was turned over to the Gestapo in Dusseldorf, and after nine weeks of questioning and several months in a Gestapo prison Dr. Luckner was sent to Ravensbrück. She was one of the first inmates with whom I became acquainted when I arrived there in the spring of 1944.

There was little Gertrud Luckner could do to alleviate the plight of the prisoners of Ravensbrück, but the mere presence of this noblest of women brought us courage in the darkest hours of our lives. To us she was a tower of strength in the midst of that sea of hatred and brutality.

It is gratifying to know that the years of persecution by the Nazis did not break her indomitable will. In the truest spirit of forgiveness, she returned to the Caritas in Freiburg to continue her charitable work among the German people and her untiring efforts to strengthen friendship between Christians and Jews.

There was in our block a pretty young girl who was a mystery to us. She kept to herself and hardly spoke a word. Yet every evening, after nine o'clock, when we were not allowed to talk and were supposed to be asleep, she would start to sing. Her voice was beautiful, and the tune was always the same: the Italian song “La Paloma.” One night a German officer came into the barracks. We all became panicky, expecting the worst, but to our astonishment the Nazi said to her: "I don't mind your singing but tell me why you sing the same song all the time?"

The girl broke her silence about her past long enough to tell the officer: "I promised my parents when I parted from them that this song would be my good-night kiss."

On Christmas Eve, 1944, we all assembled at our table and tried in vain to put ourselves in a holiday mood. Some of the women had brought along, as special delicacies, pieces of candy they had managed to get at the canteen and tiny sandwiches made of bread and marmalade they had carefully saved. But my heart was filled with sadness. Suddenly I could not stand being at the table any longer.

"Please don't be angry," I said," "but I'm going to bed. I cannot stop thinking of my family at this hour." I left the table.

The others followed me and sat around my bed. Then they presented me with Christmas gifts they had obtained by all kinds of personal sacrifices, even at the risk of their lives. One of the women gave me a great luxury for Ravensbrück, a pillow she had stolen somewhere in the camp. But the most precious of the presents I received was a little album. It was put together from sheets of paper smuggled out of the camp office and bound in a piece of cotton print taken from the dressmaking shop.

They presented their gifts to me and said: "Mutti, we beg you, come to the table with us. Let's celebrate Christmas." I was overwhelmed by their display of affection, but I mustered all my strength and went with them to the table. We sang songs that lifted our spirits.

The little album they had given me passed from hand to hand and everyone wrote in it something in her own language. The first entry was by one of the Russians, the young and charming Katya, who signed herself "Katya Sibiriatchka (Katya from Siberia).” In Russian she wrote:

Dear Gemma: Nothing in life is impossible or too difficult to achieve if the will is strong. Even from Siberia to America is not too far. If you will not come to me, I will come to you. At every opportunity in the months that followed women would make entries in my album, often expressing their affection for me.

Dr. Gertrud Luckner made an entry in my album that started with a quotation from Goethe in German, followed by an ironic note in English:

Under the "heaven" of R'bruck! Ships that pass in the night—and yet in loving memory. Gertrud Luckner, Freiburg Br. Caritasverband (via Society of Friends).

The album was always carefully concealed in my stocking and I never parted with it. I was aware how terrible it would be for these poor women if that little book fell into the hands of the overseers.

Many wrote in it quotations from famous poets or verses composed by themselves in their native tongues. Some of my students tried to write in English, which they mastered rather quickly. The Poles were particularly good at this. One girl from Poznan, Christina Janicka, wrote this entry in English:

Perhaps after many, many weeks you will take in your hands this album and you will remember “R. Sanatorium." Please, for a short moment look at my name and send me a few words. Let me know how you

are, dear Mrs. Gemma Gluck. I want to thank you for the lovely moments we spent together studying English and thinking of our homes, our loved ones, and mostly of the future.

In a similar vein was the entry of the witty Odette Garoby. Writing in French, she expressed the hope that someday, after liberation, she would see me together with my husband, my daughters Irene and Yolanda, my grandson Richard, and my brother Fiorello.

A Polish girl from Cracow wrote these thoughts:

The measure of greatness in nations as in individuals is their patience. Our country and our people gave undeniable proof of this. Maybe someday I will be privileged to meet you again and then we will be able to look back into our sad past. In these last days of struggle I am writing these few words as a remembrance of our meeting and the lessons you gave us. Even in slavery and on foreign soil one can have pleasant memories. To these belong the moments I lived through with you in Block 2. Danuta Tulmacka.

An entry that brought back memories of my childhood in New York and filled me with hope for a return to my native city was written by Mrs. C. Bosch from the Netherlands:

I wish you all the best and happiness for the future. Hoping you will see the Statue of Liberty very soon.

Among the prisoners in Ravensbrück were wives, mothers, and sisters of the most prominent families of Europe— women like Madame Sarussel, wife of the mayor of Tunis; Madame Winkelkompes, wife of the mayor of Cologne, whose husband had been poisoned at a dinner given by Hitler; Madame Renée Sintenis, a noted Berlin sculptress; Madame Birgit Nissen from Oslo, once a delegate from Norway at the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

Madame Sophie Henschel, a member of a noted Austrian aristocratic family of Wurmbrandt, attracted everybody's attention. She was pretty and well dressed, and worked as a designer in the dressmaking shop. She had visited America before the war and spoke English perfectly. After the liberation, when I lived for a while in Berlin, she came to visit me and offered her help.

There was the Austrian Countess Josephine Ptacikova, who had a castle at Brunn called Schloss Stürtz, and had possessed jewels valued at seven and a half million crowns. Her castle and jewels were all confiscated by the Gestapo, and the countess died in the gas chamber after she became blind from the bad nourishment.

Also there was Madame Lelong, wife of a French general of the Colonial Army, who was a fine violinist and with whom I often talked about music.

Countess Lilly de Raubuteau was a relative of the Danish queen. She, her husband, and their four sons had lived in a castle in the vicinity of Paris. One evening French people came to the castle to ask for help; when they received the assistance they had requested, they suddenly revealed themselves as the Gestapo in disguise. The family was scattered in different concentration camps. Madame Raubuteau was made to do very hard labor outdoors, loading cars. Then they put her on the sewing machines. She wasn't accustomed to work and she was sometimes whipped. The food was insufficient for her, and she was always hungry. Her husband was shot, but she and her four sons came out of this ordeal alive.

Madame Henry, the wife of the French ambassador to Ankara, was in Ravensbrück. So was Frau Wenzel, seventy years old, who owned fourteen estates and belonged to one of the richest families in Germany.

Frau Kantor was the wife of an Austrian banker, who had committed suicide in Vienna when Anschluss came to Austria. I was very fond of Mrs. Kantor, who worked very hard to create a bit of social life in that terrible atmosphere. She organized Sunday concerts among the prisoners. I always managed to go to her block on Sunday afternoons. Imagine what it meant to all of us to be in a filthy, crowded block instead of in a beautifully decorated theater, looking at an emaciated prisoner instead of a prima donna in an evening gown. To see the singer we had to stretch our necks to find her sitting on the top of a three-decker bed. But we listened attentively to the wonderful melodies of Gounod's "Ave Maria" or Puccini's "Madame Butterfly." Most of the singers were French.

I was told that at Christmastime in other years no celebrations had been allowed and no presents permitted for the children in the camp. But in 1944, when I was there, Frau Kantor worked especially hard and got permission to have a Christmas tree made for the children. All blocks were allowed to contribute. How thrilling it was to see what beautiful things were made out of rags-dolls, dresses, aprons. Sketches were drawn by artists. Our block made balls, and so on. What ingenuity worked with the heart to make these children happy.

There was a young Czechoslovakian architect at the camp. She was employed in the camp's printing office. I asked her to draw picture books for the younger children. I dictated to her the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" and the story of "Cinderella." She printed the letters and illustrated the little books. This was our grand gift to the children, who enjoyed them tremendously.

At the beginning of April, 1945, the energetic Mrs. Kantor was so happy that the end of the nightmare was approaching. She always kept saying to me: “Oh, Gemma, can you

believe that we all shall be soon out of these tortures and saved, each prisoner going to her home and country?" About a week later she was carried to the hospital-she had caught typhoid fever. I left her on the 15th of April, when her condition was very serious. Later I asked other prisoners what had become of Mrs. Kantor, or Franzi, as we all called her, and they told me that she had died. She, the woman who was counting the days until freedom, remained there forever.

Also at the camp were Frau Sigrid Sailand, a Norwegian recitalist; Countess Landskoronska, from Poland, and the Buchner family from Leipzig. The Buchners, a husband, wife, and daughter, had had a printing shop and turned out propaganda against fascism. All three were shot in the camp.

Another was Mlle. Geneviève de Gaulle, niece of General de Gaulle, a very young girl at that time. Another Frenchwoman of note was Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier, the widow of the French Communist leader and writer, Paul Vaillant-Couturier. She was active in the underground at Ravensbrück.

In Block 3 was Frau Rosa Thaelmann, wife of Ernst Thaelmann, chief of the Communist party in Germany, who was executed by the Nazis in the Buchenwald camp. Also in the same block was the wife of another German Communist leader, Rosa Sefarowsky. One day Frau Sefarowsky was taken to the Revier for a gall-bladder operation. The S.S. surgeon, Dr. Percy Treite, performed the surgery successfully and she recovered completely. A few weeks later, however, she was sent to the Oranienburg camp, where she was shot.

To the "famous" names of Block 3 in Ravensbrück can also be added Olga Himmler, the sister of the Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler. She was sent to Ravensbrück because she became involved in a love affair with a Polish officer in Warsaw. This was classified as Bett-Politiker. I was told that Olga Himmler enjoyed exceptional favors and received special food during her stay at Ravensbrück. Then one day a Mercedes limousine arrived at the camp and a Nazi officer picked up Olga and took her away.

A late arrival in my block in Ravensbrück was Frau Hoffner, the wife of the Reichswehr general, Hoffner, who was executed for his participation in the July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler. The plotters had made an attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler, with the aim of overthrowing the Nazi regime and opening peace negotiations with the Allies. More than twenty top German officers who took part in the coup that failed were executed. Their wives were sent to Ravensbrück and dispersed into different blocks.

Now I shall describe briefly the Bible Students in the camp. They belonged to a religious sect that believes in the words of the Bible as literal truth. I did not know of the existence of this sect before I came to Ravensbrück. I was told that it was founded by a certain Mr. Ford in North America and is known there under the name of Jehovah's

Witnesses. In Germany they were called Bible Forscher. I had twelve members of the sect at my table.

Most of the Bible Students in Ravensbrück were simple, honest wives and mothers, a very hard-working lot. In this camp they were generally employed as servants, doing the heaviest labor. They told me they had been among the first prisoners at Ravensbrück and had been used for all kinds of construction jobs when the Nazis began to build the camp.

I admired these women for their strength of character. They had a stanch will and faith. They had been in prison for eight, ten, or twelve years, right from the beginning of Hitler's regime in 1933, when members of their sect refused to answer or acknowledge the official Nazi greeting, "Heil Hitler."

Bible Students insisted on the right to remain neutral in political matters and not to be forced to salute a power that had been created by man, not God. "Render unto Caeser the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are His" was their credo. The authoritarian Nazi regime could not stand for such disobedience, and thousands of Bible Students were arrested and sent to the camps.

At one point the Gestapo had announced that any Bible Student who renounced his beliefs and signed a statement to that effect would be given his freedom and be persecuted no longer. It is difficult to believe, but it is true, that not one of them signed such a statement. They preferred to go on suffering and patiently waiting for the day of liberation.

In the early days at Ravensbrück the Bible Students had refused to stand at attention during roll call. They stated they would stand in the manner only before God and not before anyone else. For this they were confined to the Straf Block (punishment block). The next morning they were kicked out of the block and compelled by physical force to stand at attention for roll call.

The Bible Students constantly tried to convert other inmates of the camp to their faith. Even under the terrible conditions of life in Ravensbrück they showed themselves to be fanatics, having no tolerance for any religion other than their own. When Polish nuns arrived in Ravensbrück in 1944, the Bible Students showed open hostility to them. They wanted to burn the nuns' rosaries, which they called "tools of the devil."

Sachsenhausen

Odd Nansen: From Day to Day

The resistance movement in Norway began almost immediately after the German occupation in early April 1940, growing in strength and importance until Norway's liberation in May 1945. Nearly fifty thousand Norwegians were arrested by the Germans, of whom nine thousand resisters were sent to prisons and concentration camps in Germany. The largest

internment camp in Norway was Grini, located in the outskirts of Oslo; it also served as a transit camp for prisoners being sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

Odd Nansen, an architect, was a member of the Norwegian resistance movement. He was also the son of the famous Norwegian Arctic explorer and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), who created the "Nansen passport,” which assisted displaced persons from World War I in securing passage to new homes. Arrested by the Germans on 13 January 1942, Odd Nansen recorded his experiences from that date on in a diary. Initially sent to Lillehammer county jail, he was later transferred to Grini internment and transit camp. In the preface to his memoirs, Nansen explains how diaries, clandestine letters, and resistance news bulletins were hidden at Grini in “hundreds of hiding places that no German ever found." Nansen was moved from Grini to Kvenangen internment camp in northern Norway and then to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg near Berlin, where he was imprisoned from early October 1943 to April 1945.

Odd Nansen's Sachsenhausen diary was written on thin drawing paper of fine quality, "war booty" brought from Russia and appropriated by the prisoners; it was used as wrapping paper and toilet paper by the Germans. Hidden in drains and pipes, under stones, in specially hollowed-out table tops, table legs, and shelves with double bottoms, Nansen's diary survived. He proudly claimed that "none of the many searches carried out in my time led to the discovery of anything really vital. Not a single page of the diary ever fell into the wrong hands." The diary was originally published in Norwegian under the title Fra dag til dau in 1946. The sections excerpted below are from the very abridged English edition From Day to Day, trans. Katherine John (New York: Putnam, 1949), 362–4, 366–7, 378-80, 382-3, 390–1, 393-4, and 398-9.

January 1

Christmas week and New Year's Eve have gone by almost imperceptibly, and we're in 1944 without more ado! There was no celebration of New Year's Eve in our hut. Most people went to bed, though we were allowed to stay up until ten in honor of the day.

The day before yesterday I was sent for by the chief of this squad, Hauptsturmführer Steger. What did he want? Why, he'd found out that my name was Nansen and I was the son of — and so on. He'd read a lot about my father, he said, knew of his work for science and humanity, and was sorry I should be exposed to such treatment. Unfortunately he couldn't alter that, nor interfere in any way. I had been consigned to him as a prisoner, and he had to treat me as a prisoner. But he could and would do something to ease the conditions of my work out here. He would place me in a separate room, in a hut where I could be more comfortable,