After three weeks, the quarantine was ended, we were lined up on the camp’s main street, and each woman supervising the work chose her workers. I had the impression that a market in non-slaves was taking place. And so work began within the camp.
Sad experiences beyond imagination.
There were roll calls twice a day, in the morning and evening, and we had to stand for several hours. The lunch break lasted 20–30 minutes; we ran to the block like madwomen.
In December 1941, they began making large straw shoes for the soldiers who were at the Eastern Front. Work continued day and night. As a reward for night work, the prisoners were given bread.
On 1 February 1942, while I was loading straw waste onto a large truck, a German woman standing on the truck threw an iron pitchfork, which fell on my head and injured me; to this day, that spot is painful. Straw shoes were made until April 1942. Then I began making socks and stockings, working only at night for seven weeks, in very poor light.
In the summer of 1942, there was a very severe famine in the camp, so severe that some prisoners swelled from hunger. Some prisoners worked on German farms and brought back a little food, risking danger, since bringing anything in was forbidden. These women kept weaker prisoners alive.
Only in the autumn of 1942 did our lot improve. The SS command allowed us to receive packages from home. It was a truly joyful moment when one received a piece of bread from freedom. Then tears of joy came to one’s eyes; it seemed that one was free, among one’s own people. This joy lasted until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. As punishment, Poles were forbidden to send packages. Once again, one was condemned to a piece of bread made from sawdust and chestnuts, or rotten, foul-smelling swede and rotten potatoes.
I remained in Ravensbrueck until the end of September 1943. During that time, an order was issued to send as many Polish prisoners as possible to ammunition and aircraft factories, in order to spare German women. These factories were bombed by the Allies, so let the foreigners die.
I was sent to the Bohemia porcelain factory in Neu-Rohlau near Karlsbad. Because of my age, I could have resisted and refused to go, but I decided to go with the tide of fate—wherever fate led, I would go.
At this factory, a little porcelain was made pro forma, but aircraft parts were produced mainly. I was fortunate enough to actually work with porcelain rather than aircraft. It was very hard work. I severely damaged my health there, and unfortunately I still feel the effects strongly today.
I remained at this factory until mid-April 1945. As the armies advanced in the east and west, we were evacuated to Dachau to be finished off. It was a terrible evacuation—we covered more than forty kilometres in a single night.
I was exhausted from work, hungry, there were no packages, yet we had to march. If anyone fell behind, the SS men killed them. They led us while keeping themselves concealed. They could not take us to Dachau because the Allied armies were advancing rapidly.
Hunger became increasingly unbearable, and the SS men intended to leave us in one village to work for German peasants. When the villagers asked who we were, the SS men replied, "dass sind polnische Banditinnen"—they are Polish bandits. The Germans were frightened by this answer and declined to take us on as workers. So the SS men led us onward, constantly in circles, while the food situation grew worse. They distributed the bread they had only to German women. Hunger tormented us more severely with each day. The camp commandant consulted with the SS men about what to do with the prisoners. By eavesdropping on the conversation, I learned about the situation in the world. The commandant ordered the German women to go to the Czech Protectorate, but he did not want to release prisoners of other nationalities.
The prisoners therefore began escaping. Some SS men pretended not to see it, while others fired. One Polish woman was shot and died a few days later. She is buried in a town in the Sudetes. This made a terribly depressing impression on the prisoners. But it did not last long, and the escapes began again.
Five of us prisoners gathered and set off toward the forest. Fortunately, we reached the forest, unable to believe that one could be alive, free, and rid of the SS men’s supervision. We had to survive by our own efforts. We went from house to house asking for a piece of bread and some potatoes.