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| Death Camp Auschwitz. Naked Jewish women are on the way to gas chambers in Auschwitz while men from Sonderkomando are collecting their clothes. The photo was taken by the Polish resistance. |
The word submission is a synonym for subordination and submissiveness and can be described as “letting someone else decide over oneself; capitulation". Submission of the liberated women began after the liberation in Bergen-Belsen. Then the situation was chaotic, to say the least. To begin with, the liberators had to enter the barracks and distinguish between the living and the dead. The dead bodies were taken without clothes to the mass graves. The women who were alive had to take off all their clothes and were laid on stretchers, covered with blankets to be transferred to what was called in English a "human laundry" - a laundry for people. In Bergen-Belsen, the “laundry” was located in a former horse stable where there were rows of washbasins. Each washbasin had an assigned group of washers, with a doctor on site. The “laundry gang” consisted of men and women, usually Germans. In each group, there was at least one strong man, a former German soldier, able to lift the survivors from the stretcher to the washbasin. This procedure was applied to those who were alive but worst off,
The transfer from the Bergen-Belsen camp to the field hospital in the old Wehrmacht barracks took place continuously. When all the former prisoners were moved, all the barracks with everything inside were burned down to the ground.
The move to Sweden began at the end of June 1945. By then, three and a half months had passed since the liberation. The liberated were taken in groups by ambulance train to Lübeck. No contact between them and outsiders was permitted during transport.
After the initial treatment, most women considered themselves to have been already clear of pests. But apparently, the vermin followed and the repeated de-lice procedures would take place immediately after women’s arrival in Lübeck which was also just two to three days before their departure to Sweden on White Boats.
Upon arrival in Lübeck, the procedures from the barracks and the hospital in Bergen-Belsen were repeated: get rid of all clothes and naked on stretchers into the Swedish laundry. Again, it was young male Swedish soldiers from the bathing platoon who were responsible for the procedure. The laundry chain consisted of several steps and took place in a connected row of large white military tents.
The transfer from the Bergen-Belsen camp to the field hospital in the old Wehrmacht barracks took place continuously. When all the former prisoners were moved, all the barracks with everything inside were burned down to the ground.
The move to Sweden began at the end of June 1945. By then, three and a half months had passed since the liberation. The liberated were taken in groups by ambulance train to Lübeck. No contact between them and outsiders was permitted during transport.
After the initial treatment, most women considered themselves to have been already clear of pests. But apparently, the vermin followed and the repeated de-lice procedures would take place immediately after women’s arrival in Lübeck which was also just two to three days before their departure to Sweden on White Boats.
Upon arrival in Lübeck, the procedures from the barracks and the hospital in Bergen-Belsen were repeated: get rid of all clothes and naked on stretchers into the Swedish laundry. Again, it was young male Swedish soldiers from the bathing platoon who were responsible for the procedure. The laundry chain consisted of several steps and took place in a connected row of large white military tents.
However, it is likely that not all patients were disinfected prior to departure to Sweden. On the document below, the patient list of White Boat KP Ingrid we can find patients that were not disinfected prior to boarding of "KP Ingrid". It is possible that they were to ill to go through the disinfection procedure, this involving hot sauna or may be it was question of time as it was the last turn of the "KP Ingrid" from Lübeck to Sweden, leaving on July 24, 1945. Theses two categories of "lying patients" are marked with - L. Crossed L means that "lying" ill and uncrossed L means that the patient were not the subject to disinfection and should be kept separate. I found these special, not disinfected patients just once.
In a letter from the Royal Civil Defense Board from March 1945 (23/3 1945, ÖII: 2) one can read the following: Broadly speaking, this work is organized so that the refugees are brought together to gathering places, where a category division takes place with regard to each refugee nationality and his or her “motives”, etc. (e.g. if the refugee is a patriot, a collaborator, German military, German civilian, or a former prisoner of war). This is followed by a summary medical examination, in which those in need of care and obvious carriers of infection are separated, and children under the age of 16 are vaccinated against diphtheria. After sanitary treatment, the refugees are usually taken further into the country for quarantine treatment and continued care. This transport should, as a rule, take place via military care all the way to the unloading station.
All emergency hospitals in Sweden that accepted the survivors were considered quarantine facilities. At the quarantine facility, according to a statement from the National Board of Civil Defense, the responsible Chief of Civil Defense would take a prescribed series of measures to:
1. a) set up appropriations […] that access for unauthorized persons is prohibited and that refugees are not allowed to leave the accommodation area;
(b) arrange, to the extent deemed necessary, for simple containment devices […]
c) arrange guarding […] to have the opportunity to distinguish between persons suffering from a contagious disease - and is urged to stay away from the quarantine facility. (7/5 1945, ÖII: 2).
The emergency hospitals were surrounded by planks and also, as in Sigtuna, often by a barbed wire. Guards and police were posted in the emergency hospitals. This procedure was carried out despite the fact that there were letters advising that, to the extent that a barrier can be made secure, the use of barbed wire should be avoided because the barbed wire was linked with the image of concentration camps. And yet, this awareness was probably lacking in Europe's DP camps and also in British camps in Cyprus where the survivors who tried to reach Eretz Israel (the Mandate of Palestine) were taken and detained in the camps surrounded by the double barbed wire and towers armed with military guards.
Seeing the film, “The Testimony” by Nils Jerring, one is very badly affected by the scenes from the sanatorium. The treatment given to women was so degrading as to resemble a kind of rape. This applied to the sickest from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, those who looked like a living skeleton. It is curious to know how the large parts of the film were accepted by the Swedish audience? The film premiered on the same day as peace was celebrated in Kungsgatan in Stockholm. Scenes from the sanitary facility are strongly reminiscent of a similar treatment of women who came to Sweden on White Boats, literally several weeks later. Women from Ravensbrück that the film tells about came to Sweden directly from the camp on April 28, 1945. Women from Bergen-Belsen came two months later, thus three and a half months after Bergen-Belsen's takeover on April 15, 1945.
The medical treatment in Malmö and the one to which the Bergen-Belsen women were exposed were similar. It is described in the bathing platoon's regulations.
Pict.
Most of the Holocaust survivors who came to Sweden at the end of the war were subject to strict laws and regulations.
Pict.
The emergency hospitals were surrounded by planks and also, as in Sigtuna, by a barbed wire. Guards and police were in the emergency hospitals. Here is a guard at the Sigtuna high school where several student dormitories were used as emergency hospitals.
Pict.
The emergency hospitals were surrounded by planks and also, as in Sigtuna, by barbed wire. Guards and police were in the emergency hospitals. Here is a guard at the Sigtuna Foundation which was used as an emergency hospital.
Pict. 2,
Directly from Ravensbrück. Those who came to Sweden were taken directly from the quay in Malmö to the sanatorium. They had to undress and undergo a number of harsh treatments, including a hot sauna followed by a cold shower. In the picture, a woman who was carried on a stretcher from the hot sauna and placed in the cold of April is being “treated” with a cold shower. In the film “Testimony” (Vittnesbörd) by Nils Jerring, where the photo comes from, you see how shocked the woman is but, at the same time, she has no strength in her body to resist the harsh treatment.
The head of the hospital was the doctor, Major Hans Arnoldson. Arnoldson had previously served in the Swedish Red Cross detachment in Germany and was associated with the Action known as "White Buses”. Despite the fact that the Detachment was called “Swedish”, the Swedes were there in the minority. In fact, the staff was mainly German: 14 doctors and 105 nurses plus 367 male helpers. In addition, there was British personnel from the Royal Army Medical Corps, fifty-six men plus guards of twenty men. There were just over 1,400 beds in the three buildings around the exercise site, where the Swedish bathing platoon had set up two parallel treatment lines and equipment for disinfection and sauna baths.
Lübeck June-July 1945. Swedish Transit Hospital. Women are assisted by the Swedish bathing platoon as they proceed along two parallel bathing and disinfection lines. Those who could not walk themselves were carried between the stations from the sauna to the shower and to DDT treatment.
The “Carers” and "Bathers" are exclusively male even though women are completely naked. This would be considered highly inappropriate in today's world and was certainly insensitive even then. On the other hand, the personnel available consisted mostly of men in a military or medical capacity, and the circumstances did not permit attention to the sensibilities of both the survivors and the rescuers. These barely alive women had to be immediately unloaded and disinfected to give them a chance for life. While the care was provided promptly and efficiently, the pictures reveal both the distress of the victims as well as and a certain callousness of the “perpetrators”.
Pict.
Lübeck June-July 1945. Swedish Transit Hospital. Women along the bathing and disinfection lines are assisted by the Swedish bathing platoon. Those who could not walk themselves were carried between the stations, the sauna, the shower, and the DDT treatment.
This DDT treatment was particularly difficult to bear and, from the perspective of time, very dangerous. The DDT powder was applied with abundance to the hair and the body, including the intimate parts, underarms, and between the legs. The excessive use of DDT on humans is known to have had deleterious effects on the reproductive, neurological and mental abilities and, undoubtedly some of the women suffered the long-term consequences of this treatment. And yet it was considered reasonable and necessary by the responsible personnel.
Text
The transfer from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden began at the end of June 1945, three and a half months after the liberation. The liberated were taken in groups by ambulance train to Lübeck. No contact between them and the outsiders was permitted during the transport.
After the initial treatment, most women considered themselves to have been already clear of pests. But apparently, the vermin followed and the repeated de-lice procedures would take place immediately after women’s arrival in Lübeck which was also just two to three days before their departure to Sweden on White Boats.
Thus, upon arrival in Lübeck, the procedure from the barracks in Bergen-Belsen was repeated: getting rid of all clothes and transport of often naked bodies on stretchers straight into the “Swedish Laundry”, as in the see above-reproduced schedule. Again, it was young male Swedish soldiers from the bathing platoon who were placed in charge of the procedure. The laundry chain consisted of several steps and took place in a connected row of large white military tents.
All emergency hospitals in Sweden that accepted the survivors were considered quarantine facilities. At the quarantine facility, according to a statement from the National Board of Civil Defense, the responsible Chief of Civil Defense would take a prescribed series of measures to:
1. a) set up appropriations […] that access for unauthorized persons is prohibited and that refugees are not allowed to leave the accommodation area;
(b) arrange, to the extent deemed necessary, for simple containment devices […]
c) arrange guarding […] to have the opportunity to distinguish between persons suffering from a contagious disease - and is urged to stay away from the quarantine facility. (7/5 1945, ÖII: 2).
The emergency hospitals were surrounded by planks and also, as in Sigtuna, often by a barbed wire. Guards and police were posted in the emergency hospitals. This procedure was carried out despite the fact that there were letters advising that, to the extent that a barrier can be made secure, the use of barbed wire should be avoided because the barbed wire was linked with the image of concentration camps. And yet, this awareness was probably lacking in Europe's DP camps and also in British camps in Cyprus where the survivors who tried to reach Eretz Israel (the Mandate of Palestine) were taken and detained in the camps surrounded by the double barbed wire and towers armed with military guards.
Seeing the film, “The Testimony” by Nils Jerring, one is very badly affected by the scenes from the sanatorium. The treatment given to women was so degrading as to resemble a kind of rape. This applied to the sickest from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, those who looked like a living skeleton. It is curious to know how the large parts of the film were accepted by the Swedish audience? The film premiered on the same day as peace was celebrated in Kungsgatan in Stockholm. Scenes from the sanitary facility are strongly reminiscent of a similar treatment of women who came to Sweden on White Boats, literally several weeks later. Women from Ravensbrück that the film tells about came to Sweden directly from the camp on April 28, 1945. Women from Bergen-Belsen came two months later, thus three and a half months after Bergen-Belsen's takeover on April 15, 1945.
The medical treatment in Malmö and the one to which the Bergen-Belsen women were exposed were similar. It is described in the bathing platoon's regulations.
Kungl. Mail Proposition No. 259. Page 95-96
In terms Eagle applicability of the special law points out civilför-
response to the Board, that the law is not applicable to such detention measures,
which relate to refugees disposal in quarantine or similar advantages
installations. Such intervention against an alien can take place on the basis of section 14 of the
Epidemic Act of 19 June 1919 (No. 443). However, it has, as civil
defense board leads, of the civil defense centers, occurred, the Ka
rantänsliden extended in and for holding the police investigation with the conversion
happens taken. In connection with this, the Board states the following.
Civil Defense Board presupposes that the necessary provisions for the rights
hetsberövande measures of this kind in connection with refugees omhänder
taking in quarantine and similar centers could be issued in
strategic way with the support of fullmaktsstadgandet in § 56 of the draft foreigners
stroke, notwithstanding the extensions to the existing legal text, prompted by the draft
the law regarding the disposal of foreigners in institutions or centers.
The Board does not consider that the latter law can be applied to the
execution of such police investigations.
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| Sweden, Malmö. The survivors who came to Sweden directly from Ravensbrückat at the end of the war were taken directly from the quay in Malmö to the “Bathhouse”. They had to undress and undergo a number of harsh treatments, including a hot sauna bath followed by a cold shower- steps 1, 2, and 3 of the procedure. In the picture, a woman is placed on a stretcher in the April cold, her emaciated body still steaming from the heat of the sauna. She recoils from fear as she is just about to be hosed down with a cold shower. |
Most of the Holocaust survivors who came to Sweden at the end of the war were subject to strict laws and regulations.
The emergency hospitals were surrounded by planks and also, as in Sigtuna, by a barbed wire. Guards and police were in the emergency hospitals. Here is a guard at the Sigtuna high school where several student dormitories were used as emergency hospitals.
Pict.
The emergency hospitals were surrounded by planks and also, as in Sigtuna, by barbed wire. Guards and police were in the emergency hospitals. Here is a guard at the Sigtuna Foundation which was used as an emergency hospital.
Pict.
Above, one of the 3,000 signs that the Civil Defense printed in May 1945 and sent to the emergency hospital in Sweden. The one above is from Sigtuna Emergency Hospital.
Pict. 1.
Directly from Ravensbrück. Those who came to Sweden were taken directly from the quay in Malmö to the sanatorium. They had to undress and undergo a number of harsh treatments, including a hot sauna followed by a cold shower. In the picture, a woman who was carried on a stretcher from the hot sauna and placed in the cold of April is being “treated” with a cold shower. In the film “Testimony” (Vittnesbörd) by Nils Jerring, where the photo comes from, you see how shocked the woman is but, at the same time, she has no strength in her body to resist the harsh treatment.
Pict. Cambrai Lübeck
Lübeck June-July 1945. Transfer from the Bergen-Belsen hospital to the Swedish Transit Hospital, the so-called Lübeck Detachment in the Cambrai barracks at Schwartauer Allée, at that time on the outskirts of Lübeck. Nowadays almost the entire former area of the Detachment, including all of the buildings, remains untouched by the passage of time. Behind the gymnasium (the building across the street) which was the enrollment center for those who came by train from Bergen-Belsen, there is today an Astrid Lindgren preschool.The head of the hospital was the doctor, Major Hans Arnoldson. Arnoldson had previously served in the Swedish Red Cross detachment in Germany and was associated with the Action known as "White Buses”. Despite the fact that the Detachment was called “Swedish”, the Swedes were there in the minority. In fact, the staff was mainly German: 14 doctors and 105 nurses plus 367 male helpers. In addition, there was British personnel from the Royal Army Medical Corps, fifty-six men plus guards of twenty men. There were just over 1,400 beds in the three buildings around the exercise site, where the Swedish bathing platoon had set up two parallel treatment lines and equipment for disinfection and sauna baths.
Lübeck June-July 1945. Swedish Transit Hospital. Women are assisted by the Swedish bathing platoon as they proceed along two parallel bathing and disinfection lines. Those who could not walk themselves were carried between the stations from the sauna to the shower and to DDT treatment.
The “Carers” and "Bathers" are exclusively male even though women are completely naked. This would be considered highly inappropriate in today's world and was certainly insensitive even then. On the other hand, the personnel available consisted mostly of men in a military or medical capacity, and the circumstances did not permit attention to the sensibilities of both the survivors and the rescuers. These barely alive women had to be immediately unloaded and disinfected to give them a chance for life. While the care was provided promptly and efficiently, the pictures reveal both the distress of the victims as well as and a certain callousness of the “perpetrators”.
Pict.
Lübeck June-July 1945. Swedish Transit Hospital. Women along the bathing and disinfection lines are assisted by the Swedish bathing platoon. Those who could not walk themselves were carried between the stations, the sauna, the shower, and the DDT treatment.
This DDT treatment was particularly difficult to bear and, from the perspective of time, very dangerous. The DDT powder was applied with abundance to the hair and the body, including the intimate parts, underarms, and between the legs. The excessive use of DDT on humans is known to have had deleterious effects on the reproductive, neurological and mental abilities and, undoubtedly some of the women suffered the long-term consequences of this treatment. And yet it was considered reasonable and necessary by the responsible personnel.
Text
The transfer from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden began at the end of June 1945, three and a half months after the liberation. The liberated were taken in groups by ambulance train to Lübeck. No contact between them and the outsiders was permitted during the transport.
After the initial treatment, most women considered themselves to have been already clear of pests. But apparently, the vermin followed and the repeated de-lice procedures would take place immediately after women’s arrival in Lübeck which was also just two to three days before their departure to Sweden on White Boats.
Thus, upon arrival in Lübeck, the procedure from the barracks in Bergen-Belsen was repeated: getting rid of all clothes and transport of often naked bodies on stretchers straight into the “Swedish Laundry”, as in the see above-reproduced schedule. Again, it was young male Swedish soldiers from the bathing platoon who were placed in charge of the procedure. The laundry chain consisted of several steps and took place in a connected row of large white military tents.
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| All emergency hospitals in Sweden that accepted the survivors were considered quarantine facilities. Here at Sigtuna beredskapssjukhus. |
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| All emergency hospitals in Sweden that accepted the survivors were considered quarantine facilities. Here at Sigtuna beredskapssjukhus. |
