MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: We were in quarantine for 10 months, from the
15th of July 1943, yes, until May 1944. And after that we returned to
the camp for 2 months. Then we went to Ravensbrück.
M. DUBOST: These were all French women from your convoy, who had
survived?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: Yes, all the surviving French women of our
convoy. We had heard from Jewesses who had arrived from France, in July
1944, that an intensive campaign had been carried out by the British
Broadcasting Corporation in London, in connection with our convoy,
mentioning Maï Politzer, Danielle Casanova, Hélène Solomon-Langevin, and
myself. As a result of this broadcast we knew that orders had been
issued, from Berlin to the effect that French women should be
transported under better conditions.
So we were placed in quarantine. This was a block situated opposite the
camp and outside the barbed wire. I must say that it is to this
quarantine that the 49 survivors owed their lives, because at the end of
4 months there were only 52 of us. Therefore it is certain that we could
not have survived 18 months of this regime had we not had these 10
months of quarantine.
This quarantine was imposed because exanthematic typhus was raging at
Auschwitz. One could leave the camp only to be freed or to be
transferred to another camp or to be summoned before the court after
spending 15 days in quarantine, these 15 days being the incubation
period for exanthematic typhus. Consequently, as soon as the papers
arrived announcing that the internee would probably be liberated, she
was placed in quarantine until the order for her liberation was signed.
This sometimes took several months and 15 days was the minimum.
Now a policy existed for freeing German women common-law criminals and
asocial elements in order to employ them as workers in the German
factories. It is therefore impossible to imagine that the whole of
Germany was unaware of the existence of the concentration camps and of
what was going on there, since these women had been released from the
camps and it is difficult to believe that they never mentioned them.
Besides, in the factories where the former internees were employed, the
Vorarbeiterinnen (the forewomen) were German civilians in contact with
the internees and able to speak to them. The forewomen from Auschwitz,
who subsequently came to Siemens at Ravensbrück as Aufseherinnen, had
been former workers at Siemens in Berlin. They met forewomen they had
known in Berlin, and, in our presence, they told them what they had seen
at Auschwitz. It is therefore incredible that this was not known in
Germany.
We could not believe our eyes when we left Auschwitz and our hearts were
sore when we saw the small group of 49 women; all that was left of the
230 who had entered the camp 18 months earlier. But to us it seemed that
we were leaving hell itself, and for the first time hopes of survival,
of seeing the world again, were vouchsafed to us.