One of the police files belonged to Anna Sölzer.
These plaques commemorating those who died in the Concentration Camps can be found on pavements all over Germany.
Anna Sölzer was twenty years old when her police photograph was taken in 1941. The photo shows a pretty girl wearing a dark felt hat. Found living in a single room, she was arrested on suspicion of spreading venereal disease. She had no papers because they'd been destroyed when a house she was living in was bombed. The arresting officer found her alone in her room, 'but we know men had been there,' he noted. 'At first she refused to get out of bed and go to the police station saying she didn't want to.'
Anna was five months pregnant. She said she didn't know the father. As pregnant women could not be imprisoned, she was put under curfew until the baby was born and then rearrested.
The file contains a statement Anna made as part of a report into the 'genetic history' of her family. She never knew her father. Her mother died when she was six. 'I was in an orphanage until I was eight years old. I went to a house where I learned how to work in a family as a domestic help, but the money was so bad I went to work in a factory.' Even there she only earned twenty marks a week, so she started to work as a prostitute. The police report found that Anna came from a 'genetically worthless' family and that she showed disgusting, arrogant behaviour.
Anna told police she wanted to continue working as a prostitute until she had the baby. 'I will work for the sake of the child, I know the police are watching me. If I do something else bad I will go to the Konzentrationslager.' While she was pregnant she fell ill and went to the baby's father for help. 'But he was married and had a family.' When the baby - Bodo - was born he was taken to a Cologne orphanage.
Soon afterwards she was taken to Ravensbrück where she was categorised as an 'asocial.' This group included beggars, murderers, gypsies, alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, pacifists, the work-shy, draft dodgers and Aryans who engaged in sexual relations with Jews. They were forced to wear black triangles on their sleeves. Some black triangle prisoners were mentally disabled or mentally ill. In the Concentration Camps the black triangle prisoners were considered to be the dregs of humanity.
The SS used political prisoners as block leaders. The block leader was responsible for administration and discipline of an entire barracks. Political prisoner Nanda Habermann was a block leader of an asocial block. She found characters there 'from Sodom and Gomorrah.' The filth there repelled her: 'They took their dishes into the bunks at night and relieved themselves of their greater and smaller needs in them.' The moral 'filth' horrified her more, especially the lesbianism. Nanda had lived a sheltered life working for the bishop of Münster. She had been sent to Ravensbrück for editing an anti-Nazi Catholic newspaper. 'Their fate had also made them hard and egotistical,' she said.
"A number of them were true monsters, and I was always afraid of them; morally they were completely ruined, and in addition they were sly and deceitful and therefore dangerous."More than 80 per cent of asocials had venereal disease as well as TB.
Also on Anna Sölzer's file is a telegram from the authorities at Ravensbrück to the Cologne Gestapo saying that at 16.00 on 28 December 1944 Anna died of Tuberculosis. The Cologne Gestapo received the standard letter issued in such cases: 'Please inform her family of the death. They are not allowed to see the body and it is not possible to have the ashes for reasons of hygiene.' The Cologne Gestapo replied to KZ Ravensbrück saying that Anna's only family was her son Bodo, who was now three. 'The child will inherit. He is now living in an orphanage. Please send her possessions to him via the Cologne Youth Department.'
Reference:
If This Is A Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm. Published by Abacus, 7 January, 2016.
