(Author: Don Krausz, Vol. 66, No. 1, Pesach 2011)
Recently, I lost a close relative, an event that brought back memories of watching the demise of a woman in the Ravensbruck concentration camp (KZ).
Ravensbruck, located some 80 km north of Berlin, was established as a KZ for women in 1939. 132 000 women were incarcerated there during its existence. Of these, an estimated 50 000 to 92 000 perished, the latter figure giving a death rate of three out of every four women. There was no gas chamber until early 1945, which means that these women died of starvation, disease, exposure, brutality and despair. Anyone too weak or sick to work was sent to another camp that had a gas chamber. Executions of captured Allied agents also took place in that camp.
I was part of a group of eighty Hungarian Jews captured in Holland. Being thirteen years old, I was sent with my mother and younger sister to this camp, while the men and older boys were sent to the Buchenwald KZ.
There was a medical condition in those camps called camp fever, which involved getting a high fever and dysentery together with a complete loss of appetite. Delirium was not uncommon. In two of the camps where I was held, treatment consisted of being put into a hospital with bed rest and nothing else. I contracted this disease in several camps.
In Ravensbruck, I was hospitalised for about three weeks, spending most of that time in the top bunk of a two-story bed. This was a welcome change from the three-story variety which one had to share with five other people in two beds, each of which was about 70 cm. wide. That hospital bed I had to myself. My lack of food and accompanying dysentery had made me very weak and resulted in exits and reentries to that top bunk being very difficult.
Toilets were another matter. When I tell you that most patients in my ward suffered from dysentery, there is no need for me to elaborate on the condition of the toilets. One preferred not to sit on them and I made a loop out of a strip of material which I fixed to the handle of the toilet door, wound my hands through it and thus was able to suspend myself above the toilet seat. I don’t remember there being any toilet paper or what we substituted for it.
From my top bunk I was able to watch the SS doctors in their black leather boots and the nurses going about their duties. I was never examined or attended to, except for receiving food that I could not eat.
Then one day my mother came to visit me and brought me chocolate, which I was also unable to eat. I remember wondering how my mother had been able to acquire this delicacy, something that I had not seen in years. She must have gone to great trouble in obtaining it and I clearly remember how she was almost reduced to tears when I would not eat it.
After the war, I discussed this episode with her. She denied the whole story and I had to conclude that in my fever and possible delirium I may well have imagined it.
At a later stage I was removed from my general ward and placed in a tiny room with just one double-decker bed. A woman of about thirty years lay dying in the bottom bunk, breathing stertorously. I was told that as soon as she had died, I could have her bed. There were a number of young women sitting in that room, all talking or shouting loudly and joking with each other. The dying person was completely naked and I assumed that the other women had stripped her of all her clothing while she lay there unconscious.
I sat there watching this young, dying woman and feeling terribly sorry for her. Then suddenly her tortured breathing stopped and the room became very quiet. After a moment the other women jumped up and ran screaming out of the room, leaving me, a thirteen year old, with the body.
I was not upset by corpses and had no desire to follow the others. My overwhelming reaction was one of sorrow and pity.
I may well have been that young woman’s only mourner.
About one week later a woman came into my room to scrub the floor. She told me that she had also had camp fever with my symptoms. She, however, had succeeded in obtaining medication, called Tanalbin, and that cured her. I asked her to get me some, which she did. My dysentery stopped and I was soon discharged in order to return to my old barrack.
The first person from my Hungarian group that saw me covered her mouth and screamed.
Don Krausz is chairman of the Association of Holocaust Survivors in Johannesburg. He has lectured extensively on his experiences during the Holocaust to a wide variety of audiences over many years.
