Early October 1944
My last glimpse of Eva as I was taken away with the other women who had been selected, was of her standing there naked, in tears, with Franzi’s arms around her. As armed guards led us away I felt that I had just forsaken my daughter at the moment when she needed me most. I had never ever felt so desperate.
We were taken to a barrack in the middle of a walled courtyard. I knew that the building had been used to house prisoners suffering from ‘Kraetze’, a highly infectious skin disease. I also realized that it was now used to house those prisoners who had been selected to be gassed. The guards slammed and locked the doors behind them as they left.
We were now in the hands of several young Kappos who handed us blankets to cover our naked, shivering bodies. Nobody spoke, and though I sensed the pity that the girls felt for us, we all knew it was no use consoling one another. There must have been about thirty of us locked in together. We were given nothing to eat or drink. The only amenities were the two buckets at each end of the barrack.
We were completely exhausted and fell down on the straw palliasses which were shared by all of us.
Throughout that night I slept fitfully, thinking about my life up to this point and longing to be together with Erich and my children. I wished so desperately that they could live to enjoy all that life had to offer, and that Eva could be allowed to experience the joys of love and motherhood. If I thought that when I died my strength could go into her it would be easier to accept my death.
Dear God, I prayed, give her that chance.
During the night some women sobbed quietly, others screamed hysterically for hours, going completely out of their minds, banging their fists against the doors until they collapsed from exhaustion. We had no water, no food, no clothes, nothing. I thought that they must have completely forgotten us. We had been locked in to die slowly and some women lay stiff on their bunks, as if they were dead already.
The next morning a Kappo appeared and told us that we could go out into the courtyard if we wanted, but most of the women preferred to remain inside.
I recognized a woman from the Dutch group who, I knew, was very religious. She tried to assemble some of the unhappy creatures around her to pray but only a few joined her. I went outside into the courtyard and heard voices and marching from the other side of the wall, but it seemed to me that those noises were part of another world. When I returned inside I tried to talk to some of the women but none responded. The hours went by very slowly and when it got dark we tried to sleep again, to forget our thirst and hunger and misery. During the night we were joined by approximately a hundred more women who were destined to share our fate.
Around noon of the second day, the doors were unlocked and we were assembled in the courtyard where we were offered some watery soup.
Why are they doing this? I remember thinking. We’re all about to die. Why bother to feed us?
It occurred to some of the women that the soup might be poisoned so they started to cry.
‘Well, I’ll have some anyway,’ I said loudly. ‘What difference will it make?’ And I stepped forward for my share.
Others started to follow my example and stood in line for the soup. There did not seem to be anything wrong with it and we drank thirstily, passing the mugs from hand to hand.
Immediately after the soup, clothes were brought in and distributed. Nobody cared what they put on, and I found a dark flannel dress with white dots which was very wide and hung down to my feet.
Appel was ordered and we waited to be counted. Some women were so weak that they fell to their knees while a Kappo screamed at them to get up. We waited silently, some barely breathing.
Eventually, two SS officers walked briskly into the courtyard and spoke to the Kappo. One took a small piece of paper from his top pocket and handed it to her. The Kappo walked along the lines of emaciated, lice-infected women, calling out two numbers from the paper. To my astonishment I realized that one was mine. I stepped forward and held out my tattooed arm. So did another woman.
‘You two come along with us to Dr Mengele,’ said one of the SS men.
Mengele’s reputation was well-known in the camp. The Kappos, eager to spare no one’s feelings, had reported to us every evil thing that he did. They told us these things mainly to terrify and intimidate us, but also, I suspected, to relieve themselves of their own feelings of complicity and guilt.
I knew Mengele conducted gruesome experiments on females without anaesthetics and that he had a particular interest in using twins in his pseudo-scientific research.
‘If you’re a twin, watch out, Mengele will be after you!’ the Kappos had sneered, adding, ‘It is they who are doing this to you, not us. We only obey orders.’
I was quite bewildered. I’m not a twin, I thought. Why would he want me?
The Kappo roughly pushed me and the other prisoner forward and we were marched out by the SS to a nearby building. I was immediately escorted into a room where I recognized Dr Mengele sitting at a desk. He glanced up at me.
‘You. Undress!’ he ordered.
I slipped off my dress obediently and stood naked before him.
He got up and spent some time scrutinizing my body, walking slowly around me and eyeing me from all sides.
‘You have family in this camp?’ he said slowly.
‘Yes, my husband and my children,’ I replied.
‘Nobody else?’ he prompted me.
I suddenly realized that it must have been at Minni’s intervention that I had been called out and he was referring to her.
‘Oh yes! My cousin Minni is here too,’ I exclaimed.
He nodded. ‘Get dressed,’ he said crisply and ordered me outside.
I waited in disbelief until the other prisoner – a little, thin woman about my age who later told me she was French – came out. Together we were taken, stumbling, towards another barrack and delivered to the Kappo in charge.
The Kappo handed us bread and black substitute coffee, after which the two of us were allowed to lie down on a bunk, which was empty as all the women had gone out to work. My companion, Loretta, and I clung to each other, talking over our luck and wondering what was next for us. My hope was that Minni would come to take me to the hospital.
But that same evening, during Appel, the Kappo from the Death Block appeared, shouting out that she was two short for her ‘consignment’. Perhaps because I was a few inches taller than the others the Kappo spotted me.
‘You!’ the Kappo came over and poked me with her finger. ‘You big horse! Come, and that one next to you,’ she said. ‘I will take you both!’
I could not believe it. I had just been spared and now, once more, I was being sentenced to death. It was the worst kind of cruelty.
Loretta and I were soon imprisoned in the Death Block again. We lay together in a corner, waiting with the other doomed women who had been starved and weakened into submission.
At about midnight we heard lorries pulling up outside. Then the sound of boots and dogs barking.
‘Sau Juden – get up and move out!’ the Kappos ordered, and we all knew that this was the end for us.
The doors were flung open and several young soldiers, some with rifles pointed at us, formed a passageway to the tail end of the lorries.
When we emerged from the barrack I was struck by the brilliance of the full moon. It shone down out of a vast empty sky and bathed our pale flesh in a pure white light. The beauty of the night was in stark contrast to the ugly scene ahead of me. I was in a line moving silently and without protest towards a female SS officer who sat at a small table with a list in front of her. As each woman stepped up to the table, the SS woman checked the number of her tattoo against the list. Behind her, lorries waited to take us to the gas chambers. First, however, it was necessary to check that the cargo was correct. In the allocation of death, as in all things, the Germans were very precise.
Resigned to their fate, the line of women moved with dignity towards the lorries until suddenly one prisoner called out feebly, ‘Frau Obersturmfuhrerin, I am the daughter of a German officer who fell in the First World War.’
The officer shrugged.
‘I am only sixteen,’ pleaded another girl. ‘Please spare me. Please let me live.’
But there was no emotion on the face of the officer, who continued to check her lists.
‘This is really the end for me,’ I thought, ‘and Minni won’t even know what happened. No one can save me now!’
In front of me was Loretta and as she came to the table she said boldly, ‘Frau Obersturmfuhrerin, we two do not belong here. They have taken us from another block.’
‘Is that so?’ the officer looked up. ‘What are your numbers?’ ‘A/6893.’
‘And I am A/5271,’ I said.
‘Indeed?’ The pencil was moving down the paper. I felt sick with apprehension as numbers were checked. The officer frowned and turned on the Kappo.
‘Have these two women been brought here separately?’ She was furious at the contravention of orders.
The Kappo started to whine, ‘I had to make up my numbers. I had to have a full consignment.’
The SS woman sprang up and grabbed hold of her, hitting her so violently that she fell grovelling onto the ground. Then, as Loretta and I looked on, the lorry doors were slammed and the driver was ordered to pull away. As the lorry drove off, we were taken to another barrack.
During the night the crematorium burned for many hours and flames shot from the chimneys high into the clear dark sky.