Life in a Punishment Camp

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 44, 21 February 1945, Page 3

Life in a Punishment Camp

EXPERIENCES OF ELIZABETH ARDEN’S SISTER Mrs. Elizabeth Manners, Elizabeth Arden's personal representative, who is visiting Palmerston North, has recently received a bulletin from her Londou office which contains an account of .Mme. de Maublane's internment in the German prison at Vittel. Mme. de Maublane, who is Miss Arden's sister, is over 50 years of age and had for many years been in charge of the firm's French business. About eighteen months ago she was arrested by the Gestapo and charged with having assisted Allied airmen on French soil. For months nothing was heard of her and everyone began to think that she had been shot. Then the news came that she" had been released and was at last safe in Paris. An American journal published an article on Mme. de Maublanc's imprisonment and final release, and stated that she had been very well treated. Miss Arden then decided to have the true account of her detention published, and although she was unable to communicate directly with her sister, she got in touch through a friend (Mrs. Settle), from whom the report was forwarded. It was bravely admitted by Mme. de Maublane that the accusation of assisting Allied airmen was true. She was gaoled in Fresnes prison and two or throe times taken to Paris for interrogation, where she fearlessly asserted that, given the opportunity sho would do it again as they (the Germans) were backing the wrong horse. The interrogating officer shouted at Mme. de Maublane: "Do you mean to say that you don't believe in a German victory?" to which she replied: "No; and neither do you in your heart of hearts." He shouted again that she could be shot for making such a statement, to which she answered: "Do so, then. I have had a full life and an interesting one, and am not afraid of death." The officer replied in a fury that they would make it "so hot for her that" sho would wish for death and not get it in a hurry." Mme. de Maublanc often thought of those words in the long months to come. The Germans packed their female prisoners into cattle trucks (60 in each) giving them a hunk of brown bread and no drink at all, holes only at either end of the cattle trucks; and so they travelled, unable to lie down, or even sit unless in turns, the others packed close to allow for this, for four days and nights in mid-winter, up to the Ravenstruck Punishment Camp in Germany. It was a nightmare journey of utter discomfort, pain and dirt; no sanitary arrangements w r ere possible. The Germans turned out their victims to suffer many indignities. There were 600 women to a room, each with one blanket f'w a bed. The prisoners had to get up at ?°0 each morning and stand ir he open .or two hours, for no reason t.. all except that this was a punishment camp. They were given a cup of so-called soup and worked from six to 6 o'clock with an hour's break for midday. The work was quarrying stone, piling the stones into railway trucks and -pulling the trucks by hand for miles to the marshes, where they unloaded them to fill up the marshes. If women broke down on the ghastly work, they were given "light work." This consisted of packing coffins (two dead bodies to a coffin) into trucks and pulling them by hand to the incinerator, which was near the camp. Mme. de Maublane herself was too frail, they found, for work and she was usually allowed to 'stay around the camp. The sight of patients being made to stand stripped waiting for the doctor caused her to give- an hysterical laugh. At this strange and unknown sound, the Polish woman doctor came up to her. Then suddenly she recognised her: she had been a client in Paris! At that she seemed almost appalled. For one thing, they were still fairly nervous of Americans, even of the British, as if retribution would overcome them; whereas with the French, Dutch, above all with the Russians, they cared less than nothing at all. So this doctor almost apologetically said there were no medicines available, but. she could order that Mme. de Maublane be allowed to stay In the Camp Hospital for three weeks. And that was so: She was able even to sit on a chair at a table and rest her head on her arms on the table. Time passed. More and more ■women died. Those who were allowed, like Mme. do Maublane, to stay around the camp, prepared the meals of the unfortunate, exhausted workers, who got thinner and thinner. All they got was

the aforementioned soup. Imt this the non-workers held out so that the workers, running from the quarry or marsh, could just have time to swallow before they got back to work. Women of the German forces armed with whips and revolvers, saw to it that no one was late twice. Then one day when on medical parade, one of these bestial wofiicn camo np to Mme. de Maublane, handed her a chit and said, "You are freed. Get out within live minutes. Speak to no one." She could not go even to get her own clothes, but was given some garments of the dead. Eventually she reached ) ittcl, which was shortly afterwards liberated by American forces. Subsequently the American Red Cross took charge of her and she was for two months on a milk diet: for she could hardly, after this, take food. Now she is back in Paris, working.