Savitri Devi aged 20 and her book Gold in the Furnace
Born as Maximine Portas in 1905, Savitri Devi was the daughter of Julia Portas (née Nash) an Englishwoman, and Maxim Portas a Frenchman of Greek ancestry.
She was very well educated with two Masters Degrees and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Lyon.
In early 1949, Savitri Devi was arrested in western occupied Germany on a charge of distributing Nazi propaganda. She was tried by a British Military Court and sentenced to 3 years in Werl Prison. (She served 6 months after which she was deported and banned from returning to Germany for 5 years).
In early 1949, Savitri Devi was arrested in western occupied Germany on a charge of distributing Nazi propaganda. She was tried by a British Military Court and sentenced to 3 years in Werl Prison. (She served 6 months after which she was deported and banned from returning to Germany for 5 years).
Werl Prison, Westphalia
Left - Herthe Ehlert was sentenced to 15 years
Their account of how the SS guards at Belsen were treated by the British liberation force is retold by Savitri Devi in her book "Gold in the Furnace."
Female guards at Belsen were tricked into returning to the camp
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Werl prison in Westphalia was where the British Military Authorities had sent the Belsen camp guards who were found guilty of crimes against humanity at the Belsen Trials in 1945.
Until late 1944, the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen had been well fed. Brigadier Glyn Hughes was the first Allied Medical Officer to enter the camp. He was convinced that Belsen was not a place where atrocities were carried out. There had never been a deliberate policy to starve the prisoners. There were no gas chambers at Belsen.
From late 1944, allied bombing prevented adequate supplies of food, water and drugs reaching the camp. With a combination of overcrowding, this caused massive starvation and poor hygiene which resulted in a typhus epidemic which got out of control.
When the British arrived at the camp, instead of blaming themselves and the RAF and the war in general, they immediately threw the whole burden of responsibility upon the unfortunate German staff.
Until late 1944, the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen had been well fed. Brigadier Glyn Hughes was the first Allied Medical Officer to enter the camp. He was convinced that Belsen was not a place where atrocities were carried out. There had never been a deliberate policy to starve the prisoners. There were no gas chambers at Belsen.
From late 1944, allied bombing prevented adequate supplies of food, water and drugs reaching the camp. With a combination of overcrowding, this caused massive starvation and poor hygiene which resulted in a typhus epidemic which got out of control.
When the British arrived at the camp, instead of blaming themselves and the RAF and the war in general, they immediately threw the whole burden of responsibility upon the unfortunate German staff.
In Werl prison Savitri Devi made friends with Herthe Bothe and Herthe Ehlert. They had both served as SS guards at Belsen. Bothe had been sentenced to 10 years and Ehlert to 15 years.
Herthe Bothe at Belsen, she was sentenced to 10 years
Their account of how the SS guards at Belsen were treated by the British liberation force is retold by Savitri Devi in her book "Gold in the Furnace."
The following account is extracted from her book:-
I shudder when I recall the horror of the scene described to me by Frau Ehlert, one of the main persons sentenced to long terms of imprisonment by the British judge in that iniquitous “Belsen trial”—the scene of the arrest of the German staff of the camp.
Twenty-five of the women who, at first, had left the camp with one of the SS men in command and had gone to Neuengamme, were treacherously told by the Allied military authorities that they could safely come back to Belsen; moreover, that they were to resume their posts there, and to run the place under Allied supervision.
They came back in confidence, only to find themselves immediately surrounded by a crowd of yelling men, with drawn bayonets. Huddled against one another in terror, they saw the narrowing circle move towards them from all sides, nearer and nearer, until the cold, sharp points of steel touched them, scratched them, were thrust an inch or two into the flesh of some of them.
They saw the ugly, evil glee on the grinning faces of the Jews and degraded Aryans who accompanied them and helped them in this cowards’ enterprise. For along with the regular British soldiery, the Allied military authorities had sent and were still sending to Belsen, as to every other place in which prominent National Socialists were captured, motor-lorries full of frenzied Israelites. It was to these that Adolf Hitler’s unfortunate followers were to be specially delivered.
They saw the ugly, evil glee on the grinning faces of the Jews and degraded Aryans who accompanied them and helped them in this cowards’ enterprise. For along with the regular British soldiery, the Allied military authorities had sent and were still sending to Belsen, as to every other place in which prominent National Socialists were captured, motor-lorries full of frenzied Israelites. It was to these that Adolf Hitler’s unfortunate followers were to be specially delivered.
The women were completely stripped and, not only submitted to the most minute and insulting examination in the midst of coarse jeers, but threatened or wounded with bayonet thrusts without even the slightest pretext, or dragged aside by their hair and beaten on the head and on the body with the thick end of the military policemen’s guns, until some of them were unconscious.
Needless to say, everything they possessed—clothes, jewellery, money, books, family photographs, and other property—was taken away from them and never given back to this very day. (Frau Ehlert was thus robbed of 12,000 marks—the whole amount of her savings from several years of honest hard work—by the British Occupation authorities.)
The internees, now set free—and stuffed with white bread, butter, meat, eggs, and jam until half of them burst of indigestion—were given most of the valuables belonging to the German staff. The new masters of Germany, Jews and non-Jews, stole the rest.
Then, the women were hurled into the mortuary of the camp, a small, cold, and dark room, with a stone floor, and locked in. They were given nothing to lie upon, not even straw, and were not allowed more than one blanket for every four of them. The room contained nothing but an empty pail in one corner, and had no ventilation. The long day dragged on. No food and no water were brought to the prisoners.
Now and then, from outside, a sharp, thin shriek, or a loud howl—a distant or nearby cry of pain—reached their ears. They half guessed what was going on from one end of the camp to the other. But they were locked in. And had they not been, still they could have done nothing. (During the first night after liberation, a succession of hated Kapos were lynched by the camp inmates).
The whole place—nay, the whole of Germany—was now in the hands of the Jews and of their vile satellites. There was nothing one could do, save to suffer in silence, and hope that one day one’s comrades would be avenged.
A long sleepless night followed that atrocious day. And a new morning dawned. Still no one came to unlock the cell. Still no food and no water were brought to the helpless women. The day wore on, as slowly and as horribly as the one before. The same shrieks of pain were heard. Sometimes they seemed as though they came from very near; sometimes they seemed to come from far away. And still the door remained closed.
A long sleepless night followed that atrocious day. And a new morning dawned. Still no one came to unlock the cell. Still no food and no water were brought to the helpless women. The day wore on, as slowly and as horribly as the one before. The same shrieks of pain were heard. Sometimes they seemed as though they came from very near; sometimes they seemed to come from far away. And still the door remained closed.
And still not a scrap of bread to eat; not a drop of water to drink—or to wash in. The pail in the corner was now overflowing and useless. And the whole room was filled with its stench. The night came, and slowly passed also. The third day dawned. And still no one came to open the door; to remove the pail; and to bring food and water—water especially.
Weakened by hunger, their throats parched with thirst, sleepless, and more and more dirty—now sitting and lying in their own filth—the helpless women began to give way to despair. Were they all going to be left to die in that horrid room, that chamber of hell if ever there was one? Perhaps. One can expect anything from Jews newly come to power.
But the Jews—and their satellites—wanted a more long-drawn revenge; a revenge that would last years. Another night dragged on. Then came the morning of the fourth day, and a part of the fourth day itself. At last the door opened. The women were given some food and some water. But only because they had to be kept alive in order that their martyrdom might continue.
Through the famine conditions that had prevailed ever since the destruction of means of transport by the Allies themselves, as I have said, many of the internees were already in a hopeless state of health before the Allied forces set foot in the camp. Most of these died. Many more—who might have been saved, had they been fed gradually, at first on light food—were killed through sudden overeating, thanks to the senseless kindness of their “liberators.”
Plenty of dead bodies were lying about, without mentioning those of the SS warders, whom the British military policemen had tortured and done to death. The German women, hardly able to stand on their legs after their three days confinement—and several of them wounded by bayonet thrusts—were made to run, at the point of the bayonets, and ordered to bury the corpses; which they did all day, and the following days.
Plenty of dead bodies were lying about, without mentioning those of the SS warders, whom the British military policemen had tortured and done to death. The German women, hardly able to stand on their legs after their three days confinement—and several of them wounded by bayonet thrusts—were made to run, at the point of the bayonets, and ordered to bury the corpses; which they did all day, and the following days.
Male and female SS guards were forced to handle the dead without gloves.
As a result, 20 guards died from typhus.
As a result, 20 guards died from typhus.
Along with the dead bodies of internees, the women recognised those of a number of their own comrades, the warders of the camp, all bearing horrible wounds, some with entrails drawn out. The sharp shrieks and howlings of pain heard during those three days, became more and more understandable. Moreover, these were not the last victims of the invaders’ brutality within the camp area.
Frau Ehlert and Frau Bothe who both lived through all that I have just tried to describe from their accounts, were the actual eyewitnesses of further nightmare scenes. They saw men wearing the uniform of the British Military Police overwhelm more of the surviving SS warders in struggles of several against one. They saw them knock them down on the floor or upon the heaps of dead bodies, kick them in the face and beat them with the thick end of their rifles till their heads were battered in; or rip open their bellies with bayonets and draw out their intestines while the martyrs were still alive, howling with pain.
A German guard being attacked by former prisoners in Belsen
The ones in British uniform seemed to enjoy the cries, and the groans of agony. For who were those men, still in power but a few days before, now shrieking in pools of blood, disfigured, dismembered, torn to pieces—and mocked? Nazis.
In the eyes of the vile Jew, and of those degenerate Aryans—traitors to their own race and a disgrace to mankind—who had accepted to side with him, no torture was vile enough for them. Frau Ehlert could not retain her tears as she related to me those scenes of horror that haunt her to this day—that now haunt me, although I have not seen them myself; that will haunt me all my life.
After they had, under the brutal supervision of the Military Police, buried as many of the dead bodies as they could, the German women were sent back to the narrow room—the former mortuary—that they occupied as a common prison cell.
The place stank. The overflowing pail was still there. And for many days more the prisoners were neither allowed to empty it and put it back, nor given another one for the same use, nor given a drop of water. They could neither wash themselves nor wash their clothes. Their hands, reeking with the stench of corpses after each day’s servitude, they could wash, if they cared to, only in their own urine. And with those hands they had to eat!
When at last all the dead bodies were buried, the prisoners were made to clean the lavatories. It was pointed out to them—deliberately, so that they might feel the humiliation all the more—that these were used by the numerous Jews, now masters of the camp. Under the threat of bayonets—as always—the proud Nazi women were ordered to remove the filth with their own hands. Then, and then only, were they allowed to clean their own awful cell, which by this time had become a cesspool.
When at last all the dead bodies were buried, the prisoners were made to clean the lavatories. It was pointed out to them—deliberately, so that they might feel the humiliation all the more—that these were used by the numerous Jews, now masters of the camp. Under the threat of bayonets—as always—the proud Nazi women were ordered to remove the filth with their own hands. Then, and then only, were they allowed to clean their own awful cell, which by this time had become a cesspool.
Reference: Gold in the Furnace - Savitri Devi, published by the Historical Review Press (2nd edition) April 20, 2005
