Photo: Gullers, KW Nordiska Museet
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Preface
Late 2014, I received an enquiry from a Dutchman concerning an incident during the evacuation of approximately 7100 women from the concentration camp Ravensbrück. Henny Blok was trying to find out what happened to his his aunt Neeltje Blok during the war. She had died in a fatal accident on her way from Ravensbrück to Sweden April 1945. Allied fighter planes had attacked the Red Cross vehicles in Northern Germany. He contacted me because in March 2014, I had published an article in a magazine of the Dutch Vriendenkring Neuengamme, an association founded by former political prisoners of that concentration camp. My article described Dutch women in concentration camps at Horneburg and Reichenbach. Neeltje Blok had been in Horneburg before she returned to Ravensbrück. I optimistically started my investigation, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find out the details – after all, I live in northern Germany, I have good contacts with the Ravensbrück memorial site, my wife is Swedish and we lived eight years in Denmark, so I speak the languages. However, I didn’t find out what exactly happened to Neeltje Blok. It is not known during which incident she died, and we can only assume that she was buried in Lübeck. I did however find out where a number of the other women had died and where they were buried. The investigation revealed a lot of information about the evacuation of Ravensbrück and in its wake, about an additional transport of approximately 2900 women from Hamburg to Sweden and about the tragedy in the bay of Lübeck. The account of the evacuation from Ravensbrück to Sweden is not just of what became known as the story “The White Buses”. This report describes the tragic air attacks on the Red Cross vehicles that carried the women from Ravensbrück on their way to Sweden and it revaluates the role of the different parties involved with the rescue operation. The positive outcome of the rescue operation was very much the result of the right people being in the right place at the right time. It is less the result of preceding negotiations between Folke Bernadotte and Heinrich Himmler. The Nazis never stuck to their promises and hadn’t made noticeable concessions until there was no way out. In the case of Ravensbrück, this was when the Soviet Forces reached Berlin.
Content
Preface
Which prisoners should be rescued?
Jewish prisoners
The rescue
The leather coat men
The situation in Northern Germany at the end of the war
The condition of the women
Arrival in Denmark
The heaven of Skatås
The dilemma
The rescuers
The Swedes
Erik Ringman and Gösta Hallquist
The Danes
The Norwegians
The International Red Cross
The Christian community
The Germans
The air attacks
The attack at Schwerin
The attack at Wismar
The victims of Wismar
The attack at Plön
Summary of the Dutch and related victims
Friendly Fire
The transports from Ravensbrück
The research
French women via Switzerland to France
Scandinavian women to Sweden
Ambulance transport of French women by Arnoldsson
The 1st tour of lieutenant Svenson and captain Folke
The transports of lieutenant Hallquist and Pontoppidan Sørensen
De various routes of the survivors from the convoy of Hallquist
Women from the satellite concentration camp AL Malchow
The 2nd tour by lieutenant Svenson
Summary
Train transport from Ravensbrück
With captain Ankarcrona from Neubrandenburg
With the vessels SS Lillie Mathiessen en SS Magdalena to Trelleborg
A ship-owner remembers
The disaster in the bay of Lübeck
At the hospital in Denmark
Those who were left behind in Ravensbrück
The transport from Hamburg to Sweden
Going home
Those who stayed in Sweden
References
Books
Archives and acknowledgements
The internet