RAVENSBRUCK CAMP HORRORS RELATED

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5281, 18 December 1946, Page 5

RAVENSBRUCK CAMP HORRORS RELATED

(Press Ass'i

WOMEN'S ORDEALS EVIDENCE IN COURT BY GEORGE CROSS WINNER

n. — Rec. 9.30 p.m.)

HAMBURG, Dec. 17. Mrs. Odette Sangom, holder of the George Cross for her work in Europe as a British agent during the war, who was imprisoned by the Germans for nearly a year in the Ravensbruck womeiTs camp, gave evidence in the court trying the camp staff. Mrs. Sansom said that when she was arrested in France the Germans told her and other women that they were being taken to Germany to work and would afterwards be killed. Mrs. Sansom said she allowed the Gestapo to believe she was a relative of Mr. Churchill. The name of her scnior officer for operations in France was Churchill, and for the purposes of their work they posed as man and wife. She therefore told the Gestapo that her name was Mrs. Churchill. "That seemed to impress them," -•he said. "It eertainly had something to do- with my treatment, because although the Gestapo wanted me roughly handled, the commandant, Suhren (who escaped before the trial) regaixled me as a valuable hostage." Mrs. Sansom described how smells from the crematorium penetrated her eell, while ashes from the chimney drifted down. She said her eell was next to the punishment eell, and almost every night she heard blowj and screams. Women were given 15 or more lashes — as many as they could stand — and when they fainted water was thrown over them and Ihe Uogging renewed. From her eell she could also hear the noise of the crematorium doors opening and shutting and the victims screaming. Mrs. Sansom described seeing hundreds of naked women standing outside thet hospital, many covered with sores or suffering from dreadful diseases. She herself was taken to hospital after being kept for a week without food. All the women of the staff had savage dogs which always aceompanied them. When Mrs. Sansom described how she saw women being dragged s.reaming tp the crematorium the leputy-judge-advocate aslced . her: "Are you saying or suggesting that people were being put into the furnace?" Mrs. Sansom: Yes, eertainly. The judge-advocate: Being put in alive ? Mrs. Sansom: Yes, eertainly.

The judge-advocate: Can you say you. saw them put in alive ? Mrs. Sansom: I cannot swear to seeing them put in. During the last days of the war I saw people, screaming and struggling, being dragged to the crematorium, and I heard the crematorium doors opening and shutting. I never saw them again, but I heard them screaming. Mrs. Sansom and Captain Peter Churchill are to be married when Mrs. Sansom returns to London from Germany.