Our last post talked about the rescue of women political prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp by the Swedish Red Cross, working in conjunction with Danish humanitarians. Several Dutch-Paris women benefited from that rescue mission.

But not all the women who had been arrested as part of Dutch-Paris and deported to concentration camps were in the main camp at Ravensbrück when the Red Cross arrived. They had been transferred to sub-camps. What happened to them? As we discussed in February, one of them was liberated by the Soviets in February 1945 but died a few days later from illness and the extreme weakness and malnutrition that all the concentration camp prisoners suffered from.

Another young woman had been transferred to a different sub-camp and was rounded up at gun point by the SS and told to march west. Apparently the SS thought that they were just making a strategic retreat before winning the war and that they would therefore need their slave labor to keep making their materiel.

One of the young Frenchwomen who had served Dutch-Paris as a guide and courier, let’s call her Marie, found herself on one of these notorious Death Marches. Many prisoners did not survive them. It’s actually surprising that any of them did considering how malnourished they were to begin with and that they were walking through a severe winter without even adequate boots or coats.
Marie survived by leaving the column, which was risky in itself. The SS shot anyone who strayed or fell behind. She had the good fortune to meet up with French POWs, who smuggled her into their camp. That gave her a roof to sleep under and something to eat, although the French POWs were in desperate straits themselves and didn’t have much to spare.

When the Germans evacuated the POWs’ camp, Marie decided not to join that forced march. Instead, she found some American GIs to turn herself over to. In that place at that time – Germany in late April, early May 1945 – the very most that anyone could hope for was to turn himself or herself over to Americans or Brits. As a victim of the Nazis, Marie was given medical care, food and shelter. Within a couple of weeks she was also given transportation back home to France.