MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: It was the camp workshop, known as “Schneiderei
I.” Two hundred jackets or pairs of trousers were manufactured per day.
There were two shifts; a day and a night shift, both working 12 hours.
The night shift, when starting work at midnight, after the standard
amount of work had been reached—but only then—received a thin slice of
bread. Later on this practice was discontinued. Work was carried on at a
furious pace; the internees could not even take time off to go the
lavatories. Both day and night they were terribly beaten, both by the SS
women and men, if a needle broke owing to the poor quality of the
thread, if the machine stopped, or if these “ladies” and “gentlemen” did
not like their looks. Towards the end of the night one could see that
the workers were so exhausted, that every movement was an effort to
them. Beads of sweat stood out on their foreheads. They could not see
clearly. When the standard amount of work was not reached the foreman,
Binder, rushed up and beat up, with all his might, one woman after
another all along the line, with the result that the last in the row
waited their turn petrified with terror. If one wished to go to the
Revier one had to receive the authorization of the SS, who granted it
very rarely; and even then, if the doctor did give a woman a permit
authorizing her to stay away from work for a few days, the SS guards
would often come round and fetch her out of bed in order to put her back
at her machine. The atmosphere was frightful since, by reason of the
“black-out,” one could not open the windows at night. Six hundred women
therefore worked for 12 hours without any ventilation. All those who
worked at the Schneiderei became like living skeletons after a few
months. They began to cough, their eyesight failed, they developed a
nervous twitching of the face for fear of beatings to come.
I knew well the conditions of this workshop since my little friend,
Marie Rubiano, a little French girl who had just passed 3 years in the
prison of Kottbus, was sent, on her arrival at Ravensbrück, to the
Schneiderei; and every evening she would tell me about her martyrdom.
One day, when she was quite exhausted, she obtained permission to go to
the Revier; and as on that day the German Schwester (nursing sister),
Erica, was less evil-tempered than usual, she was X-rayed. Both lungs
were severely infected and she was sent to the horrible Block 10, the
block of the consumptives. This block was particularly terrifying, since
tubercular patients were not considered as “recuperable material”; they
received no treatment; and because of shortage of staff, they were not
even washed. We might even say that there were no medical supplies at
all.
Little Marie was placed in the ward housing patients with bacillary
infections, in other words, such patients as were considered incurable.
She spent some weeks there and had no courage left to put up a fight for
her life. I must say that the atmosphere of this room was particularly
depressing. There were many patients—several to one bed in three-tier
bunks—in an overheated atmosphere, lying between internees of various
nationalities, so that they could not even speak to one another. Then,
too, the silence in this antechamber of death was only broken by the
yells of the German asocial personnel on duty and, from time to time, by
the muffled sobs of a little French girl thinking of her mother and of
her country which she would never see again.
And yet, Marie Rubiano did not die fast enough to please the SS. So one
day Dr. Winkelmann, selection specialist at Ravensbrück, entered her
name in the black-list and on 9 February 1945, together with 72 other
consumptive women, 6 of whom were French, she was shoved on the truck
for the gas chamber.
During this period, in all the Revieren, selections were made and all
patients considered unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber. The
Ravensbrück gas chamber was situated just behind the wall of the camp,
next to the crematory. When the trucks came to fetch the patients we
heard the sound of the motor across the camp, and the noise ceased right
by the crematory whose chimney rose above the high wall of the camp.
At the time of the liberation I returned to these places. I visited the
gas chamber which was a hermetically sealed building made of boards, and
inside it one could still smell the disagreeable odor of gas. I know
that at Auschwitz the gases were the same as those which were used
against the lice, and the only traces they left were small, pale green
crystals which were swept out when the windows were opened. I know these
details, since the men employed in delousing the blocks were in contact
with the personnel who gassed the victims and they told them that one
and the same gas was used in both cases.
M. DUBOST: Was this the only way used to exterminate the internees in
Ravensbrück?
MME. VAILLANT-COUTURIER: In Block 10 they also experimented with a white
powder. One day the German Schwester, Martha, arrived in the block and
distributed a powder to some 20 patients. The patients subsequently fell
into a deep sleep. Four or five of them were seized with violent fits of
vomiting and this saved their lives. During the night the snores
gradually ceased and the patients died. This I know because I went every
day to visit the French women in the block. Two of the nurses were
French and Dr. Louise Le Porz, a native of Bordeaux who came back, can
likewise testify to this fact.