Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins & the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm

Author:Sarah Helm [Helm, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307487476
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-01T06:00:00+00:00

On March 11, 1946, Vera walked into her office in Bad Oeynhausen to be told by Somerhough that an SS man named Johann Schwarzhuber had been brought in and was being held at Tomato. Vera took a car out to the prison. She knew Schwarzhuber from the Ravensbrück lists: he was the camp overseer and was more likely than anyone, other than Suhren, to know the fate of her three girls.

When Vera arrived at Tomato, Schwarzhuber was marched into the small interview room and immediately declared he was ready to talk. Within minutes he had positively identified two of the three girls as Lilian Rolfe and Denise Bloch. He not only recognised the third girl from the photograph but also remembered that “she had the name of Violette.”

After just a few brief questions from Vera, he recalled all the details of the deaths of these three British agents. Vera had no cause whatsoever to doubt the SS man's evidence. He had been there when it happened, he said. “All three were taken to the crematorium building of the camp, and one by one they were shot.”

On returning to Bad Oeynhausen, Vera immediately wrote out a detailed report to Norman Mott in London.

Today I have heard the full story from one of the few eye witnesses, SS Obersturmbannführer J. Schwarzhuber, who held the post of Schutzhaftlagerführer [camp overseer] in Ravensbrück and who is now under arrest. I attach three copies of the translation of a statement which I took from him, which will enable you to obtain death certificates. In short, he states that the girls' names figured on a list drawn up by the Gestapo in Berlin of persons to be executed. They were recalled from the work camp to the main camp and shot one evening under arrangements made by the Camp Commandant Suhren. Their bodies were cremated.

Vera added, “No doubt you will take immediate casualty action,” and she listed precise file references containing details of next of kin for each of the dead girls.

With the Ravensbrück case closed, Vera knew she must turn back immediately to the question of the Karlsruhe women. By mid-March 1946, new letters had arrived from Hedwig Müller, the German nurse who had been imprisoned in Karlsruhe.

Müller's first letter, six pages of closely typed script, provided more details of daily life in Karlsruhe, which Vera scrutinised for new information. “On the first day I could not eat the prison food. It was impossible. Martine said: ‘You will eat when you are hungry.' Her prophecy became true. In the first days Martine was somewhat mistrustful of me. But as I explained to her why I was in prison she began to trust me. We knocked on the walls in conversation with the girls in the other cells. Other cell inmates watched in guard to make sure the warders did not come. We transferred letters. We were all a conspiratorial society.”

Martine became anaemic, said Müller, but got no medicine and became quite fat. “Dear kind lady, It would make me happy if I could receive a piece of news from you.

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