Bookworm Bean

In July 1944, the witness´ parents were arrested by the Nazis and the whole family was sent to the Pustków camp where many executions were carried out. After the camp had been evacuated, the prisoners were loaded onto cattle wagons, 60 prisoners to a wagon, and transported to Auschwitz. They were watched over by Ukrainians. The camp supervisors were totally unprepared for their arrival. One of the witness´ brothers did not feel well during the journey. The transport was sent to Sachsenhausen where the prisoners were unloaded and divided up: the men stayed behind and the women were sent to Ravensbrück. After arriving at Fürstenberg, they were met by SS men and female guards with dogs who escorted them to the camp. The newcomers were herded over to the baths. They were told to turn in all items in their possession, take a shower among a number of naked women - which was a traumatic experience especially for children – and change their clothes. When the whole procedure was completed, they were assigned to a quarantine barrack where they were isolated from the rest of the camp population. After finishing quarantine, they were assigned to a regular barrack. The witness joined the secret education programme for children. The prisoner functionaries protected children by exempting them from roll calls. In February 1944, a number of young and healthy women were rounded up and selected for labour transports. For six weeks, the witness was hiding in the camp avoiding selections. ..... At fourteen, Ewa Augustynowicz survived a Nazi concentration camp partly because other women were willing to hide her. She was imprisoned at Ravensbrück, a Nazi camp for women, where children faced deadly selections. Ewa spent more than six months finding ways to disappear whenever danger approached. Sometimes she hid in a toilet. Sometimes she crouched behind a stove. At other times she slipped into a different barrack, where she knew the women in charge would protect children. What happened inside that barrack was extraordinary. The youngest children were allowed to stay in the dining room, where there was heat. Older women helped keep them warm and sheltered them from being taken away. At night, they organized games. It was an astonishing gesture in a place where childhood itself had become dangerous. They tried to give children moments of ordinary life. Then came Christmas. Ewa later remembered that every child received a gift. Some were given a little bread, sugar and fat. Others received a sweater, an apron or a dress. In Ravensbrück, food and warm clothing were precious. Someone had to save those things for the children. The women also taught Ewa French. Education was forbidden, so lessons were held in secret. The women were not merely helping Ewa pass the hours. They were giving her something the camp was meant to take away: the chance to keep learning. The children were concealed on the upper bunks in case a guard suddenly entered. After the war, Ewa's testimony was preserved in Sweden. Her recollections preserved details that might otherwise have vanished: the hiding places, the heated room, the forbidden lessons and the Christmas gifts. She did not identify every woman who had helped her. Their names are not all preserved in this account. But the choices they made are. For more than six months, while Ewa evaded selection, women inside Ravensbrück helped create places where children could hide. They shared what little they had and risked punishment to keep young prisoners safe. In a camp where a child could be taken away at any moment, a warm room and a place behind a stove could become the difference between life and death. #archaeohistories