After a short drive, we came to a gate. The woman in charge handed a list to the guard, who counted us, and then the gate was swung back and we were hustled through into concentration camp Ravensbrück.

SS photo of Ravensbrück (1940-1)

Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstandes, courtesy of Lydia Chagoll

We lined up in fives in front of a newly painted wooden hut before which was a neat garden plot. A woman guard […] stood watching us, shouting from time to time: “Quiet! Hands by the side. Stand to attention!”. I was astonished at what I saw: neat plots of grass with beds in which flowers were blooming. […]

From outside everything looked beautiful – more like a neat holiday camp than a concentration camp. But behind the aviary we could see part of the barbed-wire fencing which surrounded the camp and served to remind us where we were. […]

My heart fell as I realised that this was how I was going to live

But whilst we were waiting a column of prisoners came by and I saw German camp inmates for the first time. They marched in orderly ranks. Each woman wore a clean white kerchief bound round her head and fastened at the back, a broad-striped dress and a dark-blue apron. […] Their faces were impassive as they passed. One looked just like the other. My heart fell as I realised that this was how I was going to live: regimented, drilled and shouted at day in, day out, for year after year: “Left, right. Left, right. Heads up. Arms by the side. Line up!”. […]

We were marched up to an office and then taken in one after the other to have our particulars registered. A woman official assisted by two prisoners made out a card for each of us. Later it would have a photo attached and be filed away in the “Political Section”. […]

Everything at Ravensbrück was done with typical Prussian thoroughness. A prisoner was passed from hand to hand until every detail was complete and she had become a permanent inmate, registered, photographed, listed and uniformed.[…]

After our clothing had been taken away, the long-feared procedure of looking for head lice began.[…] At least there was hot water and soap and a towel for each woman.[…] When it was all over we were left sitting around the room on benches, naked and shivering with cold, waiting for the next procedure. It was the medical examination, and a pitiful travesty it was.