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7 Internment at Ravensbrück and Torgau AUGUST 22, 1944–OCTOBER 16, 1944 The next day, the seventh,1 saw us in Berlin. We only skirted the city and so couldn’t see much of the bomb damage. About forty kilometers north of the city we pulled into a station called Fürstenberg. It was nearly midday and a pitiless sun was beating down. A rumor was passing around: ‘‘This was our destination, the camp of Ravensbrück!’’ As our doors were pushed back, we saw extra guards, new ones, very severelooking , with the famous SS on their collars. Our old guards suddenly adopted the same swift brutal gestures, the same loud, raucous voices as the new ones. Those who had been lolling around in shorts, now were in immaculate tenue.2 The atmosphere had suddenly changed. I began to feel tense and unhappy. We were ordered down from our cars, lined up five by five in one long column, and marched along a dusty hot sandy road which bordered a small wood of massive pine trees. We crossed a highway and followed a cobble stone road, flanked on both sides by small comfortable looking homes, out of those windows hung children and adults watching our procession. We were so tortured by heat and thirst we could hardly walk. We were still heavily laden, though less so than before because we had eaten most of our food. We had deliberately saved some things, however, which we felt might be lacking at the camp, such as jam and sugar. We went up an incline, passed first in front of a small camp enclosed with barbed wire, then before some large, attractive, substantial -looking houses with broad cement terraces and green lawns, on which little children were running about. On making a right turn, we could see in the near distance, a lovely lake and great tall pines silhouetted against the sky. Our road descended now. We turned left, passing some large, rectangular buildings facing the lake, which could be compared to 1. The ‘‘seventh’’ refers to the seventh day of Virginia’s boxcar journey. 2. Tenue is French for dress or outfit. college dormitories and which I presumed must be rest homes for German workers. They were new and surrounded by grass plots, charmingly landscaped with bushes and flower beds; neat little walks wandered here and there. It was all so clean and progressive-looking. I was impressed by this atmosphere of healthy modern efficiency, side by side with the natural joys of home and children, and believed that we would find a camp that in its own way could be compared.3 Suddenly, there loomed up before us a broad green gate and we passed beneath its high portals. On our right were several SS on guard, who surveyed us intensely as we passed by. As we entered the camp, we saw long, narrow, bottle-green barracks, with window facings painted white; narrow plots of grass surrounding the buildings with, here and there, a few bushes or straggly trees; alleys between the ‘‘blocs,’’4 of black coal dust. Then we saw some of the inmates, strange, gnome-like looking women, with shaved heads, dressed in blue and grey-striped skirts and jackets, with heavy wooden-soled galoshes on their feet. Some were struggling under the weight of huge soup kettles; others went by pushing a cart piled high with long, narrow wooden boxes, followed by eight or ten others pulling and pushing an immense wagon full to overflowing with garbage. Then, a detachment of others dragged by, horrible-looking creatures , thin and haggard, with huge, open, festering sores on their stockingless legs. Prisoners were giving orders to prisoners. We were made to stand in the broad main street, awaiting we didn’t know what. I was horrified by what I saw. It was sinister, unreal, unbelievable! What contrast with what we had just seen. We were so exhausted after a week of sleepless nights. We stared at each other in dull incomprehension. A woman SS kept parading back and forth.5 We cried out to her for water. I had never known real thirst until now. But no water was brought. We were told that the water was dangerous; that there was typhoid in the camp. After an hour or so, we were given a keg of coffee, but there was so little to go around, and only a few of us had cups or glasses...

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