1940
Fritz was late picking me up at Fürstenberg Station, a fine way for me to start my first day as a camp doctor at Ravensbrück. Would he recognize me? This was doubtful. At university, he’d always had some pretty nursing student on his arm.
The compact train station was built in the Bavarian style, and I had ample time to admire it, left standing on the platform for five minutes. Would I receive important assignments? Make good friends? It was warm for fall, and my wool dress irritated my skin. I couldn’t wait to slip into a lighter dress and a cool, smooth lab coat.
Fritz finally came along in a Kübelwagen-82, top down, a green bathtub for four, the Ravensbrück utility vehicle. He stopped, one arm slung over the passenger seatback.
“You’re late,” I said. “I meet the commandant at quarter past ten.”
He came to the platform and took my bag. “No handshake, Herta? I’ve gone a whole year without seeing you.”
He remembered me.
I stole a glance at him as we drove. He still had the good looks every female at the university had noted. Tall, with well-behaved black hair and Prussian blue eyes. Refined features that reflected his aristocratic parentage. He looked tired, though, especially around the eyes. How stressful could it be to work at a women’s reeducation camp?
The wind in my short hair felt good as we set off down Fritz-Reuter-Strasse, through the small town of Fürstenberg, where sod-roofed cottages flanked the street. Very old Germany. Like a scene from a Black Forest box.
“Sometimes Himmler stays here in Fürstenberg when he’s in town, which is often. He sold the Reich the land on which they built Ravensbrück, you know. Made a fortune. Can you see the camp over there across Lake Schwedt? It’s brand-new— Are you crying, Herta?”
“Just the wind in my eyes,” I said, though he was perceptive. It was hard not to become emotional driving through Fürstenberg, for I’d visited a similar town with my parents as a child, for fishing. This was the essence of Germany, so beautiful and unspoiled. What we were fighting for.
“What time is it, Fritz?” I said, drying my eyes. Just what I needed, the commandant pegging me as a crier. “I can’t be late.”
Fritz accelerated and raised his voice over the engine. “Koegel is not a bad sort. He owned a souvenir shop in Munich before this.”
A dust cloud followed the Kübelwagen as we raced down the road, along the lake toward camp. As we rounded the bend, I looked back across the lake and admired the distant silhouette of the town of Fürstenberg where we’d just come from, with its tall church spire.
“You’ll have your pick of the doctors here,” Fritz said. “Dr. Rosenthal loves blondes.”
“I am not blond,” I said, though I was happy he thought so. My mood improved riding with Fritz, about to embark on a new adventure.
“Close enough. A clean German girl is a rare thing here. They’ve had their fill of Slavs.”
“I love my men with syphilis.”
“Just doing my part to repopulate Germany,” Fritz said with a smile.
“Is this how you woo the girls?”
He cast a glance at me and lingered a second too long, betraying his carefree tone. How lucky I was to be one of the few female doctors under Hitler. It put me in a whole different class. Fritz Fischer would never flirt like this with a Düsseldorf Hausfrau. Maybe I’d grow my hair long again. No doubt he would be impressed once I became the most accomplished doctor there.
We sped by a crew of gaunt women in striped dresses, in the advanced stages of muscular atrophy, leaning their full weight against the metal harness of a massive concrete roller like sick oxen. A female guard in a gray wool uniform restrained a lunging Alsatian. Fritz waved to the guard and she scowled as we passed.
“They love me here,” Fritz said.
“Looks like it,” I said.
We stopped in a cloud of dust at the brick administration building, the first thing one saw of the camp, at the end of the road. I exited the Wagen, brushed the dust off my dress, and examined the surroundings. My first impression was of quality. The lawn grew lush and green, and red flowers rose up along the base of the building. To the left, high on a ridge overlooking the camp, sat four leader houses built in Heimatschutzstil, homeland-preserving style, with natural stone columns and half-timbered balconies. A mix of Nordic and German styles, pleasing to the eye. This was a place of superior value—high-class, one might even call it.
“Up on the ridge, the one overlooking the camp is the commandant’s house,” Fritz said.
If not for the glimpse of high stone walls topped with barbed wire behind the administration building, one might have mistaken the camp for a convalescent home, not a reeducation camp for prisoners. I was determined to like Commandant Koegel. Those of superior rank can always tell if a subordinate does not like them, and this can be fatal to a career.
Just inside the camp gates, a caged aviary, which held monkeys and parrots and other exotic birds, stood off to the side of the road, the only incongruous element. Animals reduce stress, certainly, but what was the purpose of such a collection?
“You waiting for the butler, Herta?” Fritz called to me from the doorway.
A secretary ushered me across parqueted floors, upstairs and into the commandant’s office, where Koegel sat at his desk, under a rectangular mirror, which reflected the man-sized potted plant in the corner. It was hard not to be intimidated by the grandeur of his office. The wall-to-wall carpeting, the expensive-looking draperies, and the chandelier. He even had his own porcelain sink. All at once I wished I’d shined my shoes.
Koegel stood, and we exchanged the German salute.
“You’re late, Dr. Oberheuser,” he said.
The Black Forest clock on his wall chimed the half hour. Dirndled and lederhosened dancers twirled out of their arched doorways to “Der fröhliche Wanderer,” celebrating my tardiness.
“Dr. Fischer—” I began.
“Do you always blame others for your mistakes?”
“I am sorry to be late, Herr Commandant.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “How was your trip?” He was a fleshy sort, something I ordinarily dislike in a person, but I forced a smile.
Koegel’s second-floor view offered a wide expanse of the camp and overlooked a vast yard where women prisoners stood at attention, five abreast. A road bisected the camp, covered with black slag, which glittered in the sun. Neat rows of barracks stood perpendicular to this road and extended into the distance. How nice to see immature linden trees, the hallowed “tree of lovers” in German folklore, planted at regular intervals along the road.
“It was a comfortable trip, Commandant,” I said, doing my best to lose my Rhineland accent. “Thank you for the first-class ticket.”
“Comfort is important to you?” Koegel asked.
The commandant was a stern man with stumpy legs and a sour disposition. Perhaps his unpleasant demeanor was due in part to his regulation brown shirt collar and tie, so tight they squeezed the adipose tissue up around his neck, making it look like a lardy muffler. The friction had produced a bumper crop of skin tags, which hung flaccid along the edges of his collar. He wore a cluster of medals at his chest. At least he was a patriot.
“Not really, Commandant. I—”
“I am afraid there has been a mix-up,” he said with a wave of his hand. “We cannot accommodate you here.”
“But I received a letter from Berlin—”
“You will be the only woman doctor here. That presents problems.”
“I didn’t think—”
“This is a work camp, Doctor. No fancy beauty salons, no coffee klatches. How will men feel about you eating in the officers’ canteen? One woman among so many men spells trouble.”
I felt the salary floating away as he spoke. Would Fritz take me to the next train back to Berlin? Mutti would have to work full-time again.
“I am used to living simply, Herr Commandant.”
I released my clenched fists and saw I’d dug my fingernails into my palms. They left a row of little red smiles, mocking me. I deserved this. When would I learn not to be overconfident? “I assure you I will be fine in any living situation. The Führer himself says simple living is best.”
Koegel took in my short haircut. Was he weakening?
“They sent me a dermatologist? That is no use to us here.”
“And infectious diseases, Commandant.” He mulled that over, one hand on his belly.
“I see,” he said. He turned to the window and surveyed the camp. “Well, we do sensitive work here, Doctor.”
As he spoke, the sound of a whip drew my attention to the square below. A female guard lashed one of several prisoners gathered there with a horsewhip.
“We require complete confidentiality here, Doctor. Are you willing to sign a statement? You can confide in no one. Not even your mother or girlfriends.”
Nothing to worry about there. I had no girlfriends.
“Any breach of security, and you’ll face your family’s imprisonment and a possible death penalty for you.”
“I keep to myself, Herr Commandant.”
“This work is, well, not for the squeamish. Our medical setup is adequate at best—in a terrible state.”
Koegel ignored the spectacle below his window. As the prisoner fell to the ground, her hands folded across the top of her head, the guard intensified the punishment. A second guard held back a leashed Alsatian as it sprang forward, teeth bared.
“Well, it would make Berlin happy,” Koegel said.
“What will my role in reeducation be, Herr Commandant?”
The guard in the courtyard kicked the woman in the midsection with her boot, the woman’s screams hard to ignore. This was a violent form of reeducation.
“You are joining an elite group. You’ll work with some of the best doctors in Germany to accommodate the medical needs of the camp staff and their families and of the women who have been resettled here to do the Führer’s work. Dr. Gebhardt has several projects as well.”
In the courtyard, the guard rewound her whip and two prisoners dragged their bloodied companion off as the rest stood at attention. “After your three-month training period, a resignation will not be accepted under any circumstances.”
“I understand, Commandant.”
Koegel walked back to his desk. “You will share a house with Dorothea Binz, our head of female security personnel. Our hair salon is not fancy but quite good. Right downstairs. The Bible girls operate it. Jehovah’s Witnesses. They’ve dedicated themselves to making my life a living hell, but you can trust them with scissors.”
“I will keep it in mind, Herr Commandant,” I said and excused myself with a German salute.
I left Koegel’s office happy he’d relented but unsure I wanted to stay at Ravensbrück. A vague unsettled feeling came over me. What if I just got back on the train for home? I could work three jobs if I had to.
I WAS ASTOUNDED TO SEE my room in the newly built high-ranking wardresses’ cottage just steps from the entry gate. It was bigger than our whole apartment at home, outfitted with a shared bath complete with shower and tub, a comfortable bed with white eiderdown, and a vanity table. I wore no makeup, per regulations, but the table would make a nice desk. Best of all, the cottage was centrally heated. Such clean, elegant quarters with my own balcony. Mutti would just shake her head in wonder to see me in such a place.
I walked into the main camp for lunch, through the personnel entrance, and found the officers’ dining hall. The noise level was high, for the small building was packed with SS doctors and guards, including many of the fifty SS doctors assigned to Ravensbrück, all male and all enjoying a lunch of pork roast, buttered potatoes, and various cuts of beef. I hoped to become acquainted with the top-flight doctors Koegel had promised. Though I was in no hurry, the male-female physician ratio was a promising forty-nine to one.
As I stepped closer to the table where Fritz held court, groups of men stopped their conversations and stared as I passed. I was used to being among men from medical school, but one woman colleague would have been nice. I found Fritz and his three companions sitting, bellies extended, sharing what seemed like postcoital cigarettes.
“Ah, Herta,” Fritz said. “Care for lunch?” He motioned to a plate piled with fatty pork chops, and I stemmed a wave of nausea.
“I am vegetarian,” I said.
The man next to him stifled a laugh.
Fritz stood. “Where are my manners? Let me introduce you. At the end of the table there, we have Dr. Martin Hellinger, toast of the SS dental world.”
Dr. Hellinger was a beetle-browed fellow, with wire-rimmed glasses and an endomorphic body type whose blood sugar had apparently dipped so low he could barely acknowledge me. He penciled in answers to a crossword puzzle from a newspaper.
“Next, Dr. Adolf Winkelmann, visiting from Auschwitz.”
Winkelmann sat in his chair as if poured there. He was rotund, with skin like wormholed wood.
“And this is the famous Rolf Rosenthal,” Fritz said, indicating the weaselly, dark-haired fellow sprawled out in the chair at his left. “Former navy surgeon and our gynecological wunderkind.” Rosenthal leaned forward into his cigarette and looked at me as a cow merchant considers a purchase.
The slam of a screen door caused the doctors to turn, and the blond guard I’d seen from Koegel’s window stepped into the dining hall. She was taller than she’d appeared from above. Finally, a fellow female.
She ambled over to our table, her steps heavy on the wooden floor, riding crop tucked in one boot, cap off, hair rolled up off her forehead per the fashion of the time. Though a young woman, nineteen years old or so, her complexion already hosted a colony of sunspots and freckles. Perhaps the result of farm labor?
Fritz draped one arm over the back of his chair.
“If it isn’t the lovely Fräulein Binz. Pride of the Ravensbrück charm school.”
Fritz did not stand to greet her and the other doctors shifted in their chairs as if suffering a cold wind.
“Hello, Fritz,” Binz said.
“Don’t you know you’re not allowed in the officers’ canteen without permission?” Fritz said. He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter, his hands white and almost incandescent, as if dipped in milk. Hands you might expect to see on a famous pianist. Hands that had never touched a spade.
“Koegel wants me to get your medical staff and my girls together.”
“Not another picnic,” Rosenthal said.
“He suggested a dance…” Binz said.
A dance? A great fan of dancing, I was interested in that.
Rosenthal groaned.
“Only if Koegel throws in a case of French claret,” Fritz said. “And only if you staff it with some attractive Poles. Those Bible girls barely speak.”
“And only bring the Aufseherinnen under one hundred kilos,” Rosenthal said.
“You will come, Fritz?” Binz lit a cigarette.
Fritz waved one hand in my direction. “Binz, say hello to your new roommate. Dr. Herta Oberheuser, may I present Dorothea Binz, head of the punishment bunker. Also trains most of the Aufseherinnen for the entire Reich right here.”
“Woman doctor?” Binz said. She sucked her cigarette and looked me over. “That’s a new one. Happy to meet you, Doctor. Good luck with this group.”
She addressed me informally, using the word du instead of Sie, which struck me as inappropriate, but no one else noted this.
“Thank you, Fräulein Binz,” I said, walking her to the canteen door.
“Never thank an Aufseherin, Doctor,” Fritz said. “Bad precedent.”
Binz let the door slam behind her and strode out onto the platz. She discarded her cigarette, not even half-smoked, flicking it onto the cobblestones with her thumb and forefinger. It was clear Binz was not the friend I was seeking.
After lunch, I walked with Fritz and Dr. Hellinger toward the utility block, where new prisoners were processed. On the way I saw every Häftling in uniform wore a colorful triangle on her sleeve, just below her number.
“What do the colored badges mean, Fritz?” I asked.
“Green triangle is a convicted criminal—mostly from Berlin, rough sorts, though some are here for breaking insignificant rules. Many Blockovas wear this. Purple is Bible girl—Jehovah’s Witness. All they have to do is sign a paper saying they put Hitler above all else, and they can walk free, but they won’t—crazy. Red triangle is political prisoner. Mostly Poles. Black is asocials: Prostitutes. Alcoholics. Pacifists. The letter sewn inside the triangle indicates nationality. Jews get two triangles put together to make a star. Himmler’s idea.”
We walked to the utility block, along a line of naked women waiting outside. The women all appeared to be Slavs of some sort, of all ages and body types. Some were visibly pregnant. When they saw the male doctors, some shrieked, and all tried to cover themselves.
“These women need clothes, Fritz,” I said.
Once inside, we stood in a quiet corner to talk. “Here’s how we do our selections,” Fritz said. “First, Hellinger looks for and records all silver or gold fillings and bridgework. Then we choose those least fit to work. If those two things line up, the prisoner is chosen. A prisoner too sick to work with a mouthful of metal goes on this list. We tell them anything but the truth.”
“And the truth is?” I asked.
“Express bus to heaven, either the gas van or Evipan. Gasoline if we run out. After that, Hellinger extracts the Reich’s payment. We’ll do Evipan today.”
I hugged my waist. “I thought the prisoners needed to work.”
“Old ladies can’t pull a concrete roller, Herta.”
“Few of them are that old and the ones that are can be put to work knitting. And the pregnant ones need to be off their feet.”
“It’s German law. No child can be born at a camp. And a certain percentage needs special handling. Otherwise this place will be too crowded, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about typhus. And besides, some of them are Jews.”
The reeducation-camp label was a front. How could I have been so naïve? My nausea returned.
“I need to go to my room and unpack,” I said.
“You were fine with the cadaver lab at school.”
“They weren’t breathing, Fritz. I’d rather not be involved.”
“Rather not? You won’t be here long with that attitude.”
“I’m just not comfortable with all this. It’s so, well, personal.”
The thought of administering a lethal injection was too abhorrent to dwell on. Would we inject into the arm? Lethal injections were barbaric and bound to be psychologically damaging for those administering them.
I touched Fritz’s hand. “But cyanide is quick and quiet. Mixed with orange juice—”
“You think I like this?” Fritz asked, drawing me closer. “You do what you have to here. The alternative for them is Vernichtung durch Arbeit.”
Death by labor. Planned starvation.
“It’s orders. Direct from Himmler. They all get just enough calories to keep them alive to work for three months. Slow extermination.”
“I can’t…”
He shrugged. “They’ll die anyway. Just don’t think about it.”
Fritz approached the line of naked women and clapped his hands, and they huddled together like horses in a barn.
“Good day, ladies. Any of you who are over fifty years old, have a temperature above forty degrees, or are pregnant, step to the side, and we’ll make sure you get a rest, after your typhus inoculations. I can only take sixty-five, so step up now.”
The women talked among themselves, some translating Fritz’s instructions into other languages, and soon volunteers emerged. “Here, this is my mother,” said one young woman as she prodded an older woman forward. “She has been coughing so hard she cannot work.”
“Of course,” Fritz said.
One obviously pregnant, dark-skinned girl with brown, heavily lashed eyes like those of a dairy cow came forward and smiled at Fritz, her arms crossed, resting on her swollen belly. In minutes Fritz had his sixty-five candidates, and he instructed a guard to accompany them to the Revier. At least they went along calmly.
“Since when is there a vaccine for typhus?” I asked, keeping my voice low, in case some of the prisoners understood German.
“Of course it doesn’t exist. On average sick Häftlings only live fourteen days, so we’re simply hastening the process. It’s far more humane than other methods.”
Fritz led us to my new workplace, the Revier, the prisoner medical clinic, housed in a low-slung block identical to the rest. The front reception area opened onto a large room filled with cots and bunk beds, crowded with patients, some lying on the bare floor, some in advanced stages of disease. One Häftling hosted such an abundance of adult lice, her short hair was white with them, and she had scratched great patches of her skin raw. Not a quality operation.
A young prisoner-nurse named Gerda Quernheim greeted us. Gerda, a pretty, chestnut-haired girl from Düsseldorf, had attended the School of Midwifery there. She was an excellent nurse, but even Gerda couldn’t handle the Revier.
Fritz led us down the hall, past a large meat locker, not unlike Heinz’s.
“What is this?” I asked, touching the door, cold and damp with condensation. I brushed away a flash of Onkel Heinz’s face.
“Cold storage,” Fritz said. “Gebhardt’s.”
Fritz led me to a back room, painted a soothing, pale green, two stools and a tall lab table the only furniture. The light caught the silver barrel of a syringe, one of three laid out on the table, certainly not sterile. A gray rubber apron hung on a wall hook swayed with the breeze as we entered. The windows in that part of the building were painted white, like cloudy cataract eyes. It felt claustrophobic, as if we were snowed in.
“Why are these windows painted over?” I asked.
“Gebhardt is a freak for privacy,” Fritz said.
“Honestly, Fritz, I am tired from the train today.”
“Take half a pethidine if you have to,” Fritz said, his brow creased. “Would you rather take last call? Shooting-wall duty.”
“Shooting wall?” I said. “Perhaps this is better.”
“Much tidier. The first is the hardest; trust me. Like jumping in a cold lake.”
Two Aufseherinnen brought in the first prisoner from Fritz’s selection, a surprisingly spry older woman wearing only wooden clogs and a blanket over her shoulders. She tried to speak to Fritz in Polish through a jumble of confused teeth.
Fritz smiled. “Yes, yes, come in. We’re just preparing the inoculations.”
He tied on the rubber apron.
“Kill them with kindness,” Fritz said. “Makes it easier for all.”
The Aufseherinnen led the old woman to the stool. Over my shoulder I watched Gerda load a 20-cc hypodermic syringe, drawing enough yellowish-pink Evipan into the barrel to kill an ox.
“We painted this room pale green since it soothes patients,” Fritz said.
The Aufseherinnen removed the blanket, wrapped a towel around the woman’s face, and held her left arm out as if preparing for a venous injection.
“Injections were not my forte in medical school,” I said.
One of the Aufseherinnen pressed her knee into the old woman’s back to thrust her chest forward.
Fritz pressed the heavy syringe into my palm.
“Look, you are doing them a favor,” Fritz said. “Think of them as sick dogs needing to be put down. Do this well, and they won’t suffer.”
The woman must have seen the needle, for she began to fight the guards and flailed her freed arm. That would be all I needed—Fritz telling Koegel I couldn’t handle a syringe.
I backed away, a milky drop at the tip of the needle. “I’ll try it tomorrow.”
“Here,” Fritz said, wrapping his arms around me from behind. “We’ll do it together.”
He covered my hand that was holding the syringe with his and placed the fingers of my other hand on the woman’s skin, above the rib cage. The guards used her arms like a straitjacket, and Fritz slid my fingers down the torso, to the fifth rib space.
“Close your eyes,” Fritz said. “Feel it? Just below the left breast.”
I pressed my fingers deep into the warm, crepey skin.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good. Almost done.”
Fritz placed his thumb over mine on the plunger, guided my hand to the spot, then helped me plunge the needle in. I felt the pop as it punctured the rib space.
“Stay with me now,” Fritz said, his lips soft against my ear. “Breathe.”
Fritz pressed our thumbs against the smooth knob with steady force, sending the Evipan straight to the heart. The woman reared back, but the guards held her in place.
“Steady, now,” Fritz said, his mouth close to my ear. “Just fourteen seconds. Count backward.”
“Fourteen, thirteen, twelve…”
I opened my eyes and saw the towel fall from the woman’s face, her lower lip pulled down in a hideous grimace.
“Eleven, ten, nine…”
The woman struggled, and I took deep breaths to fight a wave of nausea.
“Eight, seven, six…”
She reared up as if in cardiac distress, then fell limp and unresponsive.
Fritz released me.
“She was a quick one,” he said. “You’re drenched.”
One of the Aufseherinnen dragged the old woman off to the side of the room. Gerda left to fetch the next subject.
“Gerda is Rosenthal’s girlfriend,” Fritz said, as he made notes on a clipboard. “He did a termination on her. Keeps it in a jar in Gebhardt’s refrigerator. She picks pet Häftlings to treat with a warm bath, complete with flowers. Combs their hair and tells them sweet stories before she brings them here.”
I walked toward the door for air. “How do you do this, Fritz? It’s so—”
“It’s no glamour job, but if you leave, there will be a replacement here tomorrow. We handle a certain quota every month. Orders from Berlin. It can’t be helped.”
“Of course it can be helped. We can refuse to do it.”
Fritz refilled the syringe. “Good luck with Koegel on that one.”
“Well, I can’t do this.” How could I have ended up in such a place?
Hellinger entered the room with his leather roll of tools. I tried not to listen as he removed the woman’s dental metals. He stamped the cheek with a star to mark her as completed.
“You’ll be fine, Herta,” Fritz said. “Once you get used to it.”
“I’m not staying. I didn’t go to medical school to do this—”
“That’s what I said too,” said Hellinger, with a laugh. He tucked the cotton sack of gold into his coat pocket.
“Me too,” Fritz said. “And then, before I knew it, three months passed. After that, you’re here to stay, so make up your mind soon.”
There was no question. I would be gone by sunrise.