Jewish Prisoners in the Woman´s Satellite Camps of Neuengamme

Madeleine Schulps was born Madja Kochaner in 1927 in the Polish city of Łódź. Shortly after the German invasion of Poland, she was forced into the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in Łódź with her family. In the ghetto, she had to work in a tailor's workshop. Her father volunteered for a work transport to Posen, where he died. Her mother fell gravely ill and died in the ghetto in 1942. In August 1944, Madeleine Schulps was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, judged "fit to work" in the selection and deported on to the Dessauer Ufer satellite camp of Neuengamme for slave labour. At Dessauer Ufer, she was forced to clear rubble. Shortly afterwards, Schulps was transferred to the Hamburg-Sasel satellite camp, where she had to perform hard labour transporting parts for temporary housing units together with 500 other women, most of them from Poland. In early April 1945, Schulps, by then severely ill and weakened, was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she was liberated at age 18 on 15 April by British troops. She initially stayed on at the Bergen-Belsen DP Camp, where she worked at the emigration office. In 1949, she was able to leave Germany for the US. Schulps married in 1952, had two children and worked as a school librarian after attending University. She died in 2013

1996, 42 Min.

Esther Fisher, née Feuerstein, was born in 1926 in Munkács in Czechoslovakia. Following her father's untimely death, her mother and grandmother took over his fruit business in 1933. In Munkács, Jews and gentiles lived in more or less peaceful coexistence until the area was annexed by Hungary in 1938, after which Jews began to face increasing anti-Semitism. The situation was exacerbated for the Jews when the Hungarians began to collaborate with the Germans. The "German style" increasingly became the norm in Munkács, too: ghettoes were set up, Jews were arrested and deportations began. In 1944, the Jewish inhabitants of the town were assembled at a nearby brickworks and deported to Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Birkenau, Esther Fisher was judged "fit for work" and deported to the Boizenburg satellite camp of Neuengamme, where she was forced to make and check parts for airplanes and ships. The work was hard and rations were small. Just before the end of the war, the prisoners were forced on a march from Boizenburg in the direction of Neustadt-Glewe. On 2 May 1945, Esther Fisher was liberated by US troops. Fisher initially returned to Czechoslovakia, then emigrated to Israel in 1947 and from there to the US ten years later. For a long time, Fisher suffered from the aftereffects of her imprisonment in the concentration camps.

2000/2003, 40 Min.

Karla Raveh, geborene Frenkel, wurde 1927 in Lemgo geboren und verlebte dort zunächst eine unbeschwerte Kindheit, bis sich mit der Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten ab 1933 der Antisemitismus in Form von Einschränkungen und Verboten bemerkbar machte. Karla musste die Schule verlassen, ihre Eltern brachten sie 1939 in die - von jüdischen Familien selbstorganisierte - jüdische Schule in Detmold. Im Juli 1942 erfolgte die Deportation der ganzen Familie in das Ghetto Theresienstadt, wo Karlas Großmutter schon kurz nach der Ankunft starb. Karla Raveh kam in Theresienstadt in ein Jugendheim und wurde zur landwirtschaftlichen Arbeit eingesetzt. Im Oktober 1944 wurden ihre Eltern und ihre drei Geschwister in das KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau deportiert und dort ermordet. Karla Raveh kam mit einem späteren Transport ebenfalls nach Auschwitz- Birkenau, wurde jedoch als arbeitsfähig in das KZ Bergen-Belsen und Ende 1944 in das Außenlager Salzwedel des KZ Neuengamme überstellt. Hier musste sie bis zu ihrer Befreiung im April 1945 in einer Munitionsfabrik arbeiten. Aufgrund einer Lungenerkrankung kam sie 1946 in ein Schweizer Sanatorium, machte nach ihrer Genesung in Basel eine Ausbildung zur Laborantin und kehrte 1949 nach Lemgo zurück. Nach der Heirat mit Szmuel Raveh, der ebenfalls als einziger seiner jüdischen Familie überlebt hatte, wanderten sie im November 1949 nach Israel aus.

1997, 68 Min.