raced together across the sky. We stood there, hand in hand, until the darkness came. I do not think that anyone outside such a place could know how much that meant to me, to spend such a quiet moment together.
Our home, Block Eleven, held almost four hundred women. In front of each barracks was a cinder path where roll call was held twice a day, at 5:30 a.m., and in the evening after work. The women from each barracks stood in squares of one hundred women each—ten women in ten rows. The squares would stretch so far to the right and left of ours, we could often not see the end of them in the fog.
Our beds were on wooden shelves, built in platforms of three. There were pallets of straw to sleep upon, sour smelling and alive with fleas and lice. There were large yellow rats which ran over our feet at night. This was a good thing, for the overseers hated the rats and stench, so we would have freedom from them in the late nights.
Then, Elizabeth told me about your island of Guernsey and your book society. These things seemed like Heaven to me. In the bunks, the air we breathed was weighted with sickness and filth, but when Elizabeth spoke, I could imagine the good, fresh sea air and the smell of fruit in the hot sun. Though it cannot be true, I do not remember the sun shining one day on Ravensbruck.
I loved to hear, too, about how your book society came to be. I almost laughed when she told of the roasted pig, but I didn’t. Laughter made trouble in the barracks.
There were several standpipes with cold water for us to wash in. Once a week we were taken for showers and given a piece of soap. This was necessary for us, for the thing we feared most was to be dirty, to fester. We dared not become ill, for then we could not work. We would be of no further use to the Germans and they would have us put to death.
Elizabeth and I walked with our group each morning at 6:00, to reach the Siemens factory where we worked. It was outside the walls of the prison. Once there, we pushed handcarts to the railroad siding and unloaded heavy metal plates onto the carts. We were given wheat paste and peas at noon, and returned to camp for roll call at 6:00 p.m. and a supper of turnip soup.
Our duties changed according to need, and one day we were ordered to dig a trench to store potatoes in for winter. Our friend Alina stole a potato but dropped it on the ground. All digging stopped until the overseer could discover the thief.
Alina had ulcerated corneas, and it was necessary that the overseers not notice this—for they might think her to be going blind. Elizabeth said quickly she had taken the potato, and was sent to the punishment bunker for one week.
The cells in this bunker were very small. One day, while Elizabeth was there, a guard opened the door to each cell and turned high-pressure water hoses on the prisoners. The force of the water pushed Elizabeth to the floor, but she was fortunate that the water never reached her folded blanket. She was eventually able to rise and lie under her blanket until the shivering stopped. But a young pregnant girl in the next cell was not so fortunate or so strong as to get up. She died that night, frozen to the floor.
I am perhaps saying too much, things you do not wish to hear. But I must do this to tell you how Elizabeth lived—and how she held on hard to her kindness and her courage. I would like her daughter to know this also.
Now I must tell you the cause of her death. Often, within months of being in camp, most women stopped menstruation. But some did not. The camp doctors had made no provision for the prisoners’ hygiene during this time—no rags, no sanitary towels, no soap. The women who were menstruating just had to let the blood run down their legs.
The overseers liked this, this oh so unsightly blood, it gave them the excuse to scream, to hit. A woman named Binta was the overseer for our evening roll call and she began to rage at a bleeding girl. Rage at her, and threaten her with her upraised rod. Then she began to beat the girl.
Elizabeth broke out of our line fast—so fast. She grabbed the rod from Binta’s hand and turned it upon her, hitting her over and over. Guards came running and two of them struck Elizabeth to the ground with their rifles. They threw her into a truck and took her again to the punishment bunker.
One of the guards told me that on the next morning soldiers formed a guard around Elizabeth and took her from her cell.
Outside the camp walls there was a grove of poplar trees. The branches of the trees formed an allee and Elizabeth walked down this by herself, unaided. She knelt on the ground and they shot her in the back of her head.
I will stop now. I know that I often felt my friend beside me when I was ill after the camp. I had fevers, and I imagined that Elizabeth and I were sailing to Guernsey in a little boat. We had planned this in Ravensbruck—how we would live together in her cottage with her baby, Kit. It helped me to sleep.
I hope you will come to feel Elizabeth by your side as I do. Her strength did not fail her, nor her mind, not ever—she just saw one cruelty too many.
Please accept my best wishes,
Sister Cecile Touvier, Nurse, writing to you. I have made Remy go to rest now. I do not approve of this long letter. But she insisted on writing it.
She will not tell you how sick she has been, but I will. In the few days before the Russians arrived at Ravensbruck, those filthy Nazis ordered anyone who could walk to leave. Opened the gates and turned them loose upon the devastated countryside. “Go,” they ordered. “Go—find any Allied troops that you can.”
They left those exhausted, starving women to walk miles and miles without any food or water. There were not even any gleanings left in the fields they walked past. Was it any wonder their walk became a death march? Hundreds of the women died on the road.
After several days, Remy’s legs and body were so swollen with famine edema, she could not continue to walk. So she just laid herself down in the road to die. Fortunately, a company of American soldiers found her. They tried to give her something to eat, but her body would not receive it. They carried her to a field hospital, where she was given a bed and quarts of water were drained from her body. After many months in hospital, she was well enough to be sent to this hospice in Louviers. I will tell you she weighed less than sixty pounds when she arrived here.
Otherwise, she would have written you sooner. It is my belief that she will get her strength back properly once she has written this letter and she can set about laying her friend to rest. You may, of course, write to her, but please do not ask her questions about Ravensbruck. It will be best for her to forget.
Yours truly,
16th June, 1946
Mlle. Remy Giraud
Hospice La Foret
Louviers
France
Dear Mlle. Giraud,
How good you were to write to us—how good and how kind. It could not have been an easy task to call up your own terrible memories in order to tell us of Elizabeth’s death. We had been praying that she would return to us, but it is better to know the truth than to live in uncertainty. We were grateful to learn of your friendship with Elizabeth and to think of the comfort you gave to one another.
May Dawsey Adams and I come visit you in Louviers? We would like to, very much, but not if you would find our visit too disturbing. We want to know you and we have an idea to propose. But again, if you’d prefer that we didn’t, we will not come.
Always, our blessings for your kindness and courage.
Sincerely,
