Chapter Thirteen - Ravensbruck
Summary
They traveled through Germany for two more days and nights without basic sanitary conditions and only black bread to eat. Furthermore, they had nothing to drink, and it became an obsession for all the women. Eventually the train stopped by a lake, and a thousand women crawled forward to drink. They only had two guards there for all those women, because the Germans knew they were too weak to resist. They were then marched off along the shore of the lake. They saw local people as they marched, but only the children could look at them. The adults lowered their eyes. Finally, they came to a camp with a smokestack emitting a gray vapor into the blue sky. The word went through the ranks that it was Ravensbruck, the women's extermination camp that had been infamous even back in Haarlem.
Just inside the wall of the camp, they rushed for a row of waist-high spigots trying to wash away the stench of the boxcar. But the guards beat them and forced them away from the water and marched them to a tent under which lay straw that looked comfortable and soft. The women sank down, and then immediately jumped to their feet again for the straw was crawling with lice. One of the women had smuggled in scissors, and now they all began to cut each other's hair. Corrie cried as she cut off Betsie's beautiful chestnut locks. They eventually settled down on Corrie's blanket and covered themselves with Betsie's. Betsie began to sing a hymn, and voices all around them picked it up. Later, a storm made the ground a mass of cinder mud and they were covered with it.
During the next day, the women were kept at rigid attention on the soggy ground
and even though it had stopped raining, conditions were still terrible.
Betsie soon began to cough and suffered through severe intestinal cramping.
She was very
ill. The third night as they were about to lie down, they were called
to the camp's processing center. There, they had to lay all of their belongings
in a pile, walk naked past the SS men, and go into the showers. Coming
out, no one had on more than a thin dress and a pair of shoes. Coming
out of..........
Notes
Although this chapter is a re-telling of the extreme misery of Ravensbruck, it is also Betsie's story. She brings compassion, understanding, and the word of God to barracks 28 and keeps humanity where it might have been lost. It is also the beginning of........
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The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom Free BookNotes Summary
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