4.08 - Labour - Out of Oblivion

Labour

After the sub camp had been set up the female Bible Students were put to work at various duties. Sometimes their task remained unchanged. Ella Hempel, for example, was assigned the duty of cook and she held that position during all her time in the camp. She had to cook for all the inmates, both male and female,¹ between 120 to 130 persons in all. The day began at four o’clock in the morning for all kitchen personnel. Ella Hempel additionally had to waken the head housekeeper, Lore Kröll, every morning.

The bread was prepared in the kitchen for all inmates and for the civilian and security staff. Toos Berkers too was put to work in the kitchen at the beginning of her stay at St. Lambrecht. She remembers it as follows:

‘Each of us had her own work. I was assigned to the kitchen and had to cook for the inmates. We received tinned meat and out of a few tins we had to make something good for so many men, regardless of what was on hand. Furthermore, we had to bake bread in an oven that had to be stoked with wood. I was no baker, but I managed to learn how to do it. We got up at four a.m. and we returned to the camp at eight o’clock in the evening.’²

Berkers did not only work in the kitchen of the abbey. Later, she was put to work with officer Stadler’s family, where she cooked for the family and cared for the boys, Harold and Peter, as well as for the newborn baby. This family home was situated right by the convent garden along the road to Mariahof. There Toos managed in the first place to satisfy her own hunger by tasting liberally of the food she prepared. But she also smuggled leftovers for the other inmates into the camp.³

Removing rotten cabbage leaves was one of the first tasks a rather large group of women had to perform in the cellars of the abbey immediately upon arrival. During this work, that lasted for several days, the female Bible Students suffered terribly from the cold. The frozen cabbages they handled, froze their fingers.⁴ Occasionally, the women could warm their fingers over a small lamp. Moreover, in the convent cellars they had to clean potatoes and remove the rotten ones. This work was done by the German Jehovah’s Witnesses.⁵

The first tasks also included forestry activities that were performed together with a group of male inmates. The men had to dig holes for the young trees while the women had to place the trees and tamp down the surrounding dirt. The terrain was very steep. For the women who were not used to this, it was difficult to keep their balance on the incline because their shoes were far too big or didn’t fit. The female Bible Students were greatly aided at this work by the male inmates, who took over part of the women’s work. In addition, the inmates sabotaged this work by planting more than one little tree in one hole in order to finish earlier. Because of the size of the group the two SS guards could not prevent communication between the men and women.⁶ The women were guarded by the SS only while doing this work. The guarding was not intended for them but for the male inmates.

Haymaking too they did together with the men, the women mostly being called up on Sundays if more workers were needed. The female Bible Students were usually free on Sundays. This however was not the case for the Jehovah’s Witnesses who worked in the kitchen. They also had to work on Sundays and holidays.⁷

The former monastery had a very large convent garden, that was extensively cultivated under the new authorities. Male prisoners were assigned to take care of the garden. The female Bible Students were also put to work here. Froukje Volp, Anna Schädlich, Therese Schreiber and occasionally also Jans Hoogers-Elbertsen, all worked in the vegetable garden.⁸ The inmates had to grow food and vegetables that were preserved in the autumn. They hardly ever received anything from the great quantities of products they had helped cultivate. The women also worked in the garden in winter. For storage of the vegetables, they dug accessible pits in the garden which were covered with straw and closed off with earth.⁹ Male prisoners were also used for the gardening work.

Most of the female Bible Students were put to work in the forestry activities in the summer of 1943. Corstiaantje (Sjaan) Pronk too did this work along with the others. Thereafter she worked as a shepherdess until her liberation. She spent summer and winter without SS guards in the mountainous landscape of Upper Styria. In winter the camp leaders put male prisoners to work shoveling snow, thereby enabling Sjaan to reach her flock in de mountains. In a letter that she wrote to her family in March 1944 or 1945, she stated that she had become ‘steadily healthier’¹⁰ and was already sunburnt by working outdoors. Her work enabled her to supplement her diet with goat’s milk. Due to the nature of her work her colleagues gave her the nickname ‘Himmler’s shepherdess’.¹¹ To assist her in her work Sjaan Pronk was given a sheepdog called Stumpert¹² After liberation she took a batch of wool home as a keepsake from her work.

The work outside the SS estate also included heating the ‘staff dwellings’. Prisoners were assigned to this work when there was nobody present in the houses (the higher SS staff also worked during daytime). In this way all contact was avoided. Jans Hoogers-Elbertsen had to clean the house of architect Goschin and keep it heated with the tiled stove.¹³

Besides the kitchen work already described, a few inmates were also given various other duties within the SS property. It is impossible to reconstruct according to what criteria the work was distributed. However, it is striking that the youngest female Bible Students had to clean the guest rooms, the offices of the Verwalter and the rooms of the staff. Possibly it had to do with the youthful age of the head housekeeper, Lore Kröll. She was only a few years older than both Dutch Witnesses, Gerdina Huisman and Jans Hoogers. Maybe because work in the household required intensive contact with the head housekeeper, this work was entrusted to these youngest inmates in order to prevent conflicts of authority.

Until the arrival of the female inmates’ detail from Ravensbrück the guestrooms were cleaned by Margarete Messnarz-Günter.¹⁴ When the women’s concentration camp at St. Lambrecht was established, she was transferred to the kitchen and assigned to cook Anna as a kitchen help. The cleaning was then done by Gerdina Huisman and Jans Hoogers-Elbertsen, who also had the task of polishing the guests’ shoes.

Gerdina Huisman did this work only for a short time as she soon fell ill. The German Jehovah’s Witness, Franziska Herold, took her place. Both Bible Students also had to do cleaning work in the kitchen, such as cleaning the large pan in which the milk for breakfast was heated. They also had to make sure that all the kitchen planning was carried out according to schedule. For instance, they fetched potatoes from the cellar or cleaned the vegetables that were to be prepared for the staff meal.¹⁵

Antonia Kurzewski, a Polish woman, worked in the laundry and sewing room of the SS estate. This place of work still exists in the same room of the wing above the monastery gate.¹⁶ It is not quite clear how extensive her work was. Probably she had to wash and iron the clothes of the male inmates as well as those of the SS security staff.

As described earlier, the Bible Students had to wash their own clothes. The civilian staff was also responsible for keeping their own clothing clean. Now and again Margarete Messnarz-Günter asked the Polish Bible Student to wash and iron her working clothes. Antonia Kurzewski was rewarded for this ‘favour’ with food that was slipped to her on the sly.¹⁷

Chambermaid Jans Hoogers-Elbertsen did the ironing for the guests staying at the SS estate. She also ironed all laundry of head housekeeper Lore Kröll. Her clothes were therefore always ‘impeccably clean and neat’.¹⁸ Additionally, the so-called chambermaids had to stoke the many tiled stoves in the various rooms, a duty that was performed by the gatekeeper before the women’s concentration camp was set up.¹⁹

Cleaning the camp rooms of the female inmates, including the room of the female guard, and cleaning the tiled stoves was the duty of the Belgian Maria Floryn. The Bible Students also took up duties voluntarily. Maria Floryn knitted a jumper for camp commandant Schöller which he later wore. In a letter from Heinrich Himmler to Pohl and Müller from 1943 he too mentioned such voluntary efforts: ‘The women […] voluntarily take on […] work. In the evenings they knit, on Sundays they also keep busy in one way or another […] They are exceptionally fanatic, self-sacrificing and obliging people.’²⁰

The conversations with the formerly imprisoned Dutch women sketched a very different picture of camp commandant Schöller. He was, as Gerdina Huisman stated, ‘very nice to us. He never caused us trouble, didn’t lift a finger against us.’²¹

The description of Schöller’s personality by the interviewees seems to indicate that he even treated the women courteously. Schöller sympathised with the Bible Students and took a stand against the high-handedness of the female camp guards. However, the female inmates were aware of his cruel treatment of the male inmates and kept him at a distance. The image of a split personality of an SS henchman fits Schöller too. On the one hand the kind, even helpful way he treated the female Bible Students. On the other hand, he sent most of the men from the first inmates’ detail back to Mauthausen concentration camp, which for them almost certainly meant death.

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4.08 - Labour

Labour

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