Ravensbrück had from the start been used as something of a dumping ground – a place to send any women the Germans wanted out of the way. It was from Ravensbrück that the SS ‘hired’ prostitutes, and forced them to work in brothels in other concentration camps, and those who survived told horrific tales of rape and abuse which sometimes lasted sixteen hours a day. After all, Heinrich Himmler reasoned, the women in those camps were already ‘degenerate’. In 1944 he set up three new brothels in Ravensbrück itself but was struggling to find women to work there when his eye fell on the new French arrivals, some of whom had been working as prostitutes.
But the French women prisoners were different. According to one of the Polish women, the influx of young French political prisoners ‘coming from a nation that had not known captivity, often, very audaciously, though unwisely, opposed the authorities’ orders and with a great deal of bravura’. This opposition took a variety of forms, but by 1944 the intense overcrowding at Ravensbrück meant that rules could sometimes be broken. The Parisian girls learned survival tactics such as lingering in the infirmary queue to avoid work or finding cherished items in the clothing store – which they dubbed ‘Galeries Lafayette’ – then hiding them under their bunks, now so closely packed together that guards could rarely penetrate to inspect. These treasures included medicines, underwear and – especially valuable – shoes, which were taken from prisoners on arrival. But a potato or a pencil would be preciously guarded too. The French ‘organized’ themselves and had lectures from Emilie Tillion, for example, on French art and culture. On 11 November about 250 French prisoners at a sub-camp observed one minute of silence as a protest: ‘What hope that minute gave us; six machines ceased simultaneously.’
Often it was the countesses who took the lead in mobilizing protests. Jacqueline d’Alincourt was one of those who had arrived with what she believed was an entire brothel from Rouen, uneducated women who suffered especially because they had no idea why they were there. ‘They had nothing to hold on to, no religion, no values … we in the resistance, we knew why we were there. We had a superiority of spirit, you understand,’ she explained. D’Alincourt and her friends helped these women – not always successfully – to resist the brothel work. Yet the bewildered French prostitutes in some ways suffered a double punishment. They never wrote memoirs, were not part of the resistance, and so, in spite of being responsible for several courageous acts during the Occupation, such as sheltering evading airmen in brothels as well as undertaking individual acts of great kindness in the camp, have largely been forgotten by history.
In spite of attempts at solidarity as the biting winds and winter snows hit, several women regularly lost consciousness when forced to stand for hours for roll call, and died on the spot. Others were often too weak by now to be helped to stand. Virginia d’Albert-Lake gradually became seriously ill and emaciated – like almost all the women at Ravensbrück she no longer menstruated, while those who did suffered the humiliation of blood running down their legs as there was no sanitary protection – but said later that she survived the ordeal thanks to an attitude of mind. ‘It was a matter of morale. You couldn’t let them see you weep. The women who wept at night were usually dead by morning. You couldn’t give in.’