The first transports of women to KL Auschwitz

Transcription of the podcast

The Germans established the Auschwitz concentration camp in the spring of 1940 for man prisoners. The first women were deported to the camp in March 1942. In total, more than 130,000 women prisoners were registered there during the camp’s existence. The history of the first transports of women is discussed by Dr. Teresa Wontor-Cichy from the Research Center of the Auschwitz Museum. We have already discussed women prisoners of the Auschwitz camp in one of our previous podcasts. However, let us recall the beginnings of the women’s camp in Auschwitz, which was originally established as a camp for men. How did it happen that Auschwitz also became a camp for women?

Indeed, this is not so obvious or widely known when it comes to the early history of the camp. Often, when we speak about deportees, we give the total number and do not even distinguish between deported men and women. This distinction is frequently absent from the narrative. If we now look at concentration camps as institutions, it becomes clear that the creation and expansion of Auschwitz followed a very different course than the functioning of camps within the territory of the so-called Old Reich. As has already been mentioned, Auschwitz was established as a camp for men. In fact, throughout most of the initial period, only men were imprisoned there. It seemed that this situation would remain unchanged, as it ensured a certain organizational consistency, including in matters related to labor. However, the dynamic development of Auschwitz, the establishment of successive subcamps, its expansion, and the overall transformation of its role, from a concentration camp into a center of extermination, created an increasing demand for labor for all the tasks undertaken by the camp administration. It became clear that men alone were not sufficient. Moreover, the work was so varied that while some tasks could be assigned to men, others could be entrusted to different prisoners. Some of these tasks were less physically demanding, and such work could be performed by women. Camps for women were already being established within the Reich. The largest of these was the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The system functioned similarly to the prison system, meaning that women and men were held separately. Men were not placed in camps for women. Women appeared in Auschwitz due to several factors: the demand for labor, the overcrowding of prisons for women, and the already large number of female prisoners in the Ravensbrück camp. In older literature, it is often stated that the main reasons were the overcrowding of prisons and the large population of the Ravensbrück camp. However, more recent research and findings show that the demand for labor in Auschwitz was also a constant problem. Undoubtedly, this also contributed to the decision that female prisoners would ultimately be held in Auschwitz.

On 26 March 1942, the first women were brought to the Auschwitz camp, precisely from the Ravensbrück concentration camp. There were 999 women prisoners. What more can we say about this transport, and why this number, 999?

This number may seem surprising, as it is uneven. Why not one thousand, since it is so close? In fact, one thousand women were selected in the Ravensbrück camp. The selection was carried out by one of the camp supervisors, Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld. During the train journey, approximately in the area of Opole, it was discovered that one prisoner was missing. Reports were sent after the women had already arrived at Auschwitz. Telegrams were dispatched to Gestapo stations, and from these reports we learn that the prisoner who escaped was Elfriede Martens born in 1908 in Düsseldorf, imprisoned in Ravensbrück for political reasons. The telegram also included a description of her. It stated: height one hundred seventy centimetres, dark blonde hair, healthy oval face, high forehead, blue eyes, large narrow wavy nose, large protruding ears, small thin lips, full dentition, high broad chin, normal hands and feet, languages German, French, English, and Dutch. From further documentation and additional telegrams, we know that she was captured in Munich, where her family lived. She was apprehended at the end of March, on the thirty first, so only a few days later. She was handed over to the police, and it may be assumed that she was subsequently sent to Auschwitz, although no records of her camp number or further details have survived. This is not unusual in the context of the camp, as we know that much of the documentation was destroyed by members of the SS. This is therefore not the only case in which we have almost no documentation about a prisoner. We do know that she was in Auschwitz between 8 and 22 August 1944, although the circumstances are unclear. It is not known whether she was then a prisoner or whether she may have been assigned to work in the household of a member of the SS or in another place accessible to them. It is also known that in 1953, after the war, she contacted the International Tracing Service in Arolsen regarding documents about herself. As for the other prisoners, while we focus on one individual, it was in fact a large group. Camp photographs of many of them have survived, and these constitute the main source of information about this group. Unfortunately, a full list of names is not known, and the preserved documents are very fragmentary. This distinguishes this transport, especially when compared to the men’s camp. We know the names of the men brought in the first transport from Sachsenhausen, and we have an almost complete list of prisoners from the Tarnów transport. In contrast, the women from Ravensbrück are still waiting for a moment when more can be said about them. We do know that among those imprisoned there were many prisoners classified as criminal and so-called asocial. There were also eighteen prisoners marked with the symbol IBV, which referred to Jehovah’s Witnesses or Bible Students, and there were also several political prisoners. As for their age, based mainly on photographs, it can be concluded that these were women mostly in their thirties, some even older than fifty. Many of them had already spent years in concentration camps or prisons. They had been arrested for various reasons.

Did female guards arrive together with the women prisoners in that first transport? Was there anyone meant to supervise them and assist the members of the SS?

This was in fact a requirement for the functioning of the camp. The women’s camp differed from the men’s camp in that the direct supervision of female prisoners was also to be carried out by women, not by men, not by members of the SS, but by women. For this reason, a special system was developed for recruiting women who were to undergo training in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After successfully completing such a course, an agreement was signed between the prospective female guard and the administration of the concentration camps. In practice, this was a form of employment.
This role included certain military elements. For example, female guards wore uniform clothing, something resembling a uniform, although they did not hold ranks. The only distinction was between the Oberaufseherin , meaning the chief female guard, and the other guards. They received salaries, were permitted to carry weapons, and were also allowed to have a dog while on duty. Looking at the profiles of these guards, it becomes clear that they were women driven by very different motivations and life circumstances, which ultimately led them to work in concentration camps. Johanna Langefeld became the Oberaufseherin and was stationed in the camp, where the female guards were accommodated. She lived there with her son. She was a single mother, and her transfer to Auschwitz undoubtedly represented a promotion. Accounts from prisoners contain somewhat surprising descriptions of her. While most of the female guards, including those who arrived in the first group, displayed strong hostility toward Polish prisoners and were often extremely brutal, violence, beatings, and generally harsh treatment of prisoners being part of their daily routine, Johanna Langefeld did not demonstrate such overt hostility. However, she was very disciplined and carried out her duties correctly. In addition to Johanna Langefeld, eight other female guards arrived with that first transport. We can say somewhat more about Therese Brandt, who, after completing her training in Ravensbrück, served in Auschwitz until 1944. Among other duties, she supervised the work of women prisoners in the Rajsko subcamp, and was later transferred to Germany. After the war, she was arrested, brought before a court in Kraków , and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out in a prison in Kraków. Another guard, Gertrud Weniger, followed a similar path. She also completed training in Ravensbrück and served in Auschwitz until 1944. She was later transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp and subsequently worked in other subcamps. She was arrested by Soviet authorities, ended up in the Soviet occupation zone, and was sent to a special camp administered by the NKVD. Her later fate remains unknown.

You mentioned that we have very few documents concerning the first transport of women to Auschwitz. Can we say something more about individual women from that transport?

Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, this still remains a significant challenge. However, the passage of time has, in a way, begun to help us learn more about these prisoners. It turns out that the families of the prisoners, who were German women, have decided to donate memorabilia and various items they possess to archives. In 2024, we became familiar with a book published by the archives in Mannheim. The inspiration for this publication was a box containing various documents donated by the family of Sophie Stippel a resident of Mannheim and a prisoner of the Ravensbrück and Auschwitz camps. In Auschwitz, she was assigned the number 619. Archivists in Mannheim noticed that Sophie Stippel had, for a time, been in a sense a neighbour of Rudolf Höss the commandant of the camp. The Höss family had also lived in Mannheim for a period, and when one looks at the map and the addresses of the two families, it turns out that they lived in the same part of the city, at a relatively short distance from one another. Sophie Stippel became a Jehovah’s Witness in the interwar period, and it was her involvement in this religious movement that led to her arrest. She was first imprisoned, then sent to camps, and ultimately to Ravensbrück. When the first transport of women was formed, she was included in it. One of the prisoners, Stanisław Dubiel, wrote in his memoirs that Rudolf Höss, when inspecting this first transport, recognized Sophie Stippel among the prisoners. However, Höss himself did not mention this in his own memoirs. Sophie Stippel was assigned to work in the commandant's house together with another prisoner from the same transport, Emma Kübler who was assigned the number 339 and belonged to the same category, IBV, which stands for Internationale Bibelforschervereinigung, the International Bible Students Association. This indicates that Emma Kübler was also a Jehovah’s Witness. Rudolf Höss referred to these prisoners as “biblical bees,” and in his memoirs he described their work in the following way: “In my house two older women worked for three years. My wife often said that she could not have taken better care of everything herself than these two women did. They took particularly touching care of the children, both the older ones and the younger ones. Our children were attached to them as if they were members of the family. At first, we were concerned that they might try to convert the children to Jehovah. However, they did not do so, and they never spoke to the children about religious matters. Considering their fanaticism, this was somewhat surprising. Generally speaking, the Bible Students were satisfied with their fate.” Here it is worth adding a few words of explanation as to why these prisoners were assigned to work so close to members of the SS and their families. There was a shortage of lower-ranking SS personnel who could carry out various tasks for SS officers and their families. Therefore, in Berlin it was decided that prisoners of this category could be assigned to such auxiliary work. Another factor was the nature of their arrest. Their religious commitment and their belief that any work entrusted to them must be carried out properly meant that, as long as the work was not connected with military matters, they performed their duties very conscientiously. Furthermore, they regarded their imprisonment as the will of God and therefore did not seek opportunities to escape. Since their duties sometimes included going into town for errands, the authorities did not fear that they would attempt to flee.
For these reasons, a relatively large number of such prisoners were assigned to work in the homes of SS personnel, in offices, in hotels for staff members, and in other places accessible to SS members. Sophie Stippel was forty-eight years old at the time. Emma Kübler, the second prisoner, was fifty-seven years old and in fact a Swiss citizen. She had married a German man and lived in Germany, became a Jehovah’s Witness, and was arrested for possessing literature of Jehovah’s Witnesses. At the moment of her arrest, she lost her Swiss citizenship. Emma Kübler remained in the house of Commandant Höss until the evacuation. She was later transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of exhaustion.

Another prisoner in this transport, assigned the number 512, was Maria Cecylia Autsch, a nun from Austria who had been arrested for making critical remarks about Adolf Hitler. After an investigation in the prison in Innsbruck, she was imprisoned in Ravensbrück and, after being transferred to Auschwitz, was assigned to work in the camp kitchen. Later, probably due to her knowledge of languages, she worked in the kitchen of the hospital for the camp staff. Among prisoners she was remembered very warmly as a kind and cheerful person, even in such tragic circumstances. In December 1944, Sister Autsch was working in a newly built hospital for the SS staff in Birkenau. On 23 December, an Allied air raid took place, and several bombs were dropped on the camp area, including on the barracks of that hospital. Sister Autsch was wounded during the bombing and died a few days later as a result of her injuries.

On the very same day, 26 March, in the afternoon hours, a second transport of women was brought to Auschwitz, also numbering 999 prisoners. These were Jewish women from Poprad. What documents have survived? What can we say about these prisoners?

These prisoners received numbers from 1000 to 1998, and in their case a transport list has survived. We know 997 names. Here again a gap appears. While in the case of the earlier group we have their camp photographs, in the case of these prisoners only two photographs have survived. We know that these were very young prisoners. The largest group consisted of women between eighteen and thirty years of age. One hundred and eight of those imprisoned at that time were girls between fourteen and seventeen years old, and only eighteen women were over forty. The young age of these prisoners led to the creation of a special work detail called the Kinderkommando, which among other tasks worked in gardening in Rajsko and carried out various agricultural labor. This work detail existed only for a limited time, until the transfer of the prisoners to the Birkenau camp. In 2006, one of the prisoners from this transport, Berta Berkovitz, visited the Auschwitz Museum. She was sixteen years old when she was brought to the camp. As I mentioned, the organization of this transport was quite unusual. Jewish girls living in the Poprad region received orders to report to a designated point, a temporary camp. They were told that they would simply be sent to work. She was there with her relatives, and she recalled that their first encounter with the camp was extremely traumatic. The camp routine required them to undress, undergo disinfection, and then pass through all stages of registration. She said that firstly, they were very young, they were teenagers, and secondly, most of them came from religious and traditional families, so nudity and undressing in front of others was not something they were accustomed to. Suddenly, they were forced to undress, and moreover in front of men, in front of SS personnel, which was a profound shock for them. It was not only the SS. She also mentioned female overseers who commented loudly and with irony on their behaviour. She tried constantly to stay close to her relatives, her sister, and her friends from the transport . She recalled that although today this may sound incomprehensible, carrying bodies for such young girls was not something good, but in her experience it protected her and her friends many times from selection in the camp and significantly increased their chances of survival. In another transport from Slovakia, also consisting of Jewish women prisoners, Margita Schwalbova was brought to Auschwitz. She was a doctor who had completed her medical studies at the University in Bratislava. She recalled that in her group as well, the summons had concerned taking up work, which is why Jewish women were instructed to report to a gathering point in an old industrial facility near Bratislava, and then they were placed in another location in the town of Ivanka, from where, under SS escort, they were transported to Auschwitz. Due to her professional qualifications, Margita Schwalbova was immediately assigned to the camp hospital. She recalled that diseases began to spread very quickly. Among the most common she mentioned starvation diarrhea, pneumonia, and joint inflammation. After some time, an epidemic of meningitis broke out. Later, at the turn of July and August, cases of typhus began to appear. Each camp had its own medical personnel, and this also included SS personnel. The German doctor responsible for supervising medical matters was Franz Bodman but in reality his actions had nothing to do with treatment or medicine. Prisoners avoided being sent to the hospital. They even referred to it as “Baron von Bodman’s murder center.” Avoiding the hospital was not easy, because selections were carried out in the camp, and prisoners who were ill or weak were placed there. Those whose condition offered no hope of improvement were most often killed in various ways. Margita Schwalbova also mentioned phenol injections. In the camp hospital she met Sister Autsch, who had been brought in the earlier transport. These were two very different prisoners. Margita Schwalbova was Jewish and also sympathized with the communist party, while Sister Autsch belonged to a Roman Catholic religious order. Despite their differences, the two became close friends. Margita Schwalbova also recalled a tragic event when a young Jewish prisoner suddenly ran out in front of a column of prisoners going to work and shouted, “Do not work for the Germans, do not help them, all of us will die anyway, let them shoot us instead.” Her words were cut short by shots fired by SS men. She was wounded in the lungs and abdomen, taken to the camp hospital, and died there from blood loss. Another prisoner from this early period, brought from Bratislava, was Katja Singer , assigned number 2098. She was a Jewish prisoner who was assigned to work in camp offices as a report clerk, known as a Rapportschreiberin. This was a relatively important position within the camp hierarchy. Her camp photograph has survived and it stands out in a striking way. She is wearing a blouse with a white collar, her hair is carefully arranged, even styled in curls, which indicates that her position in the camp was very different compared to other prisoners. From survivors’ testimonies, including that of Berta Berkovitz, we know that her behaviour in the camp varied and was not always friendly toward her fellow prisoners. Berta Berkovitz recalled that she was beaten by Katja Singer. Others, however, remembered that she helped Slovak Jewish prisoners. Katja Singer is also remembered for her contacts with members of the camp staff. After the transfer of prisoners to Birkenau, she had a close relationship with the reporting officer Gerhard Palitzsch an SS man and member of the camp staff. Such a relationship was strictly forbidden. Palitzsch was arrested for maintaining intimate relations with a prisoner, especially a Jewish prisoner, expelled from the SS, and transferred to the Wehrmacht. Katja Singer was transferred to the Stutthof camp, where, according to accounts, she was to be executed. However, she was aware that there was an order for her execution in the documentation, and she managed to influence the situation in such a way that during her registration in Stutthof the document was overlooked. She survived the war and the camp and later returned to Prague.

The first transport of Polish women was brought to Auschwitz one month later, on 27 April 1942. Could you say something more about these women?

In the memorial book of Poles deported to the Auschwitz camp, the description of this transport is very extensive, and this is because there were many women who had been involved, already from the very beginning of the occupation, in the activities of underground organizations. I will mention only a few, because their activity in the camp is extremely important for us when we look at the camp documentation, which is so lacking. I am referring here to Antonina Piątkowska, brought from Kraków, who was arrested together with her husband and son. Her husband was shot, while her son was deported from Auschwitz and was killed in Sonnenstein in a euthanasia center. She knew about this, she learned about it in the camp, and despite such a great tragedy she retained a strong commitment not only to her fellow prisoners, but also, seeing that some of them worked in camp offices where records were kept and could be illegally copied, she encouraged them to do so. This was mainly carried out by Monika Galica who worked in the office of the camp hospital in Birkenau and who prepared lists of deceased Polish women on thin sheets of tissue paper. These documents were hidden by Antonina Piątkowska. In another place, Martyna Puzyna was employed, who, on the orders of the camp doctor Josef Mengele, conducted anthropometric research on prisoners, mainly twins. She also illegally copied such records. In addition, prisoners working in camp offices, in the Bauleitung offices, Wera Foltynowa and Waleria Valova as well as Krystyna Florczak copied plans of the crematoria and gas chambers. This collection of documents, already quite extensive at that point, was hidden by Antonina Piątkowska with great difficulty, and later, through another prisoner, Zofia Gawron, a resident of Brzeszcze, these documents were smuggled out of the camp and passed to members of the resistance movement from Brzeszcze. Fortunately, all of these documents were preserved. In particular, the lists of female prisoners who died in the camp are an extremely important source of information, sometimes the only document and the only information about a deceased prisoner. Antonina Piątkowska possessed great faith and determination. In her memoirs she wrote: quote “We were defenseless. The only way to survive was to try not to break down and to oppose violence with our will to endure. We will not let ourselves be destroyed. This was the first thought, the most important decision. To strive for the next day, and then for the next one. To convince weaker prisoners that it is worth fighting even for that one single day of life. It is worth fighting even if we see with our own eyes that the group determined to defend life is becoming smaller and smaller. That every day someone is being killed. Not to despair, not to look at those who have already added to the piles of corpses. To look for others who want to live. To try to help, even if only with a kind word, with encouragement.” End of quote. After the war, Antonina Piątkowska was very active in various veterans’ organizations. At first she lived in Warsaw, and later, after moving, she established a small café where, among others, former prisoners met. She died in 1985. On 30 May, that is a few days later, in another group of prisoners from Kraków, among those brought to the camp was Zofia Posmysz , arrested for her activity in underground organizations. In the camp she was first assigned to the penal company, that is the work detail performing the heaviest labor. Later she worked in the potato peeling room, and then in the bread storehouse and the food warehouse. After the war, Zofia Posmysz completed her studies at the Faculty of Polish Philology, began working in editorial offices of weekly magazines, and later in Polish Radio, where she wrote, among other things, reports and radio plays. She presented her camp experiences in several short stories. The most famous of these is “The Passenger,” which was adapted for the cinema, later became a novel, and eventually was turned into an opera. Zofia Posmysz died in 2022 in Oświęcim and is buried in the cemetery there. Also in this early period of the women’s camp, Stanisława Starostka was brought from Tarnów. She was an accountant by profession and was arrested for her involvement in underground activity. She spent almost two years in the prison in Tarnów. After being imprisoned in the camp, she became a functionary prisoner and held a relatively high position as a Lagerälteste, which in the camp hierarchy meant a prisoner representing the camp in contacts with SS personnel. Stanisława Starostka underwent a profound transformation in the camp. She became very brutal and ruthless, beating other prisoners. It was expected that she would show a more supportive attitude toward fellow prisoners, but she maintained this brutality until the end of her imprisonment. During the evacuation of the camp, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she was lib erated. In April 1945 she was arrested and brought before the court in the Bergen-Belsen trial. She was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment.

On 18 July 1942 an important event took place for the administration of the Auschwitz camp, namely the visit of Heinrich Himmler. Did this visit have any connection with the women’s camp and did it influence its functioning?

Himmler, together with Ernst Schmauser visited several locations in the camp, including the main camp, the kitchen, workshops, stables, storage facilities for looted property, the so-called “Canada” warehouses, yards where construction materials were stored, and, while still in Auschwitz, also the women’s camp. While in the camp, he ordered that the execution of a flogging punishment be demonstrated to him. A women prisoner was selected, a prisoner named Kapus, who was punished for the illegal possession of a few potatoes. Himmler emphasized that from then on, the carrying out of flogging punishments was to be undertaken only after consultation with his office, meaning that it was to be subject to his decision. This visit also brought several rather surprising developments. The first was a request by the Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld for the release of several female prisoners who had already spent a long time in the camp. Indeed, several names were included, among them Luise Maurer, who, however, did not leave the camp at that time, in the summer of 1942, but only at the end of 1943. Another prisoner whom we know was officially released at that time was Gertrud Stemmer. This prisoner had previously been unknown to us. Here again, contact with archivists from Mannheim proved important. They received photographs and other documents from the family of Gertrud Stemmer and contacted us to help identify her story and these materials. In this way, we learned about her. Gertrud Stemmer was assigned the number 615. She had been arrested for having a relationship with a Polish forced laborer. She was probably in the camp until January 1944. However, she could not leave the place earlier because it would have exposed her to re-arrest. So what did she do between July 1942 and January 1944? She worked in the household of the Lagerführer Johann Schwarzhuber as a civilian worker, most likely performing various domestic tasks. Historians intend to devote more attention to this story, and a separate publication is planned, so this will be another instance in which we learn more about a prisoner from the first transport. Returning to Himmler’s visit in July 1942, in addition to Johanna Langefeld’s request for the release of several prisoners, another important event took place. Rudolf Höss was very dissatisfied with the work of the Oberaufseherin. Not only Johanna Langefeld, but also the other overseers were criticized. He stated that although they had the required qualifications, they were unable to manage the camp properly. The number of prisoners during roll call did not match, there was disorder, and the overseers were running around, as he described it, like agitated hens, not knowing what to do. We read further that Himmler did not agree with Höss’s proposal to dismiss the Oberaufseherin. She remained in the camp, but not for long. A few months later, she was accused of appropriating property looted from Jews. She was brought before a court and, by its decision, transferred to Ravensbrück, thus effectively returning there. However, what happened to Johanna Langefeld later is quite surprising. As mentioned earlier, in the opinion of prisoners in Auschwitz, she was disciplined, but not as brutally inclined as other overseers. The same was observed in Ravensbrück when she was transferred there again in 1942. Prisoners, including many Polish women, also perceived a certain degree of kindness on her part. Ultimately, after the end of the war, Johanna Langefeld was arrested and imprisoned in Kraków. She escaped under rather exceptional circumstances. For some time she remained in hiding in Kraków, then made her way to Germany, and according to the information available to us, she died in 1974 in Augsburg. The individuals who enabled her escape and later helped her hide in Kraków were survivors of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz.

Did these accusations made by Rudolf Höss influence the liquidation of the women’s camp in Auschwitz I and its transfer to Birkenau in August 1942?

The transfer of women prisoners to the Birkenau camp had been planned. A separate section of the Birkenau complex had already been designed in such a way as to constitute a completely independently supervised camp with its own separate entrance. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before the prisoners would be placed there. Indeed, when the prisoners were transferred there at the beginning of August 1942, this camp, the so-called Frauenlager, was not yet completed, which shows that everything was carried out in great haste. It can be said that this decision partly accelerated the process and drew attention to the necessity of further expansion and intensification. At the moment when the prisoners were moved to a much larger camp, it meant that deportations could be increased further, and indeed in the following months more and more women prisoners were placed in the Birkenau camp. These included both Polish prisoners or non-Jewish prisoners, as well as Jewish prisoners who, during selection, were deemed fit for work.

Can we describe what this transfer looked like? We are speaking about seventeen thousand women in August 1942, correct?

Out of the approximately seventeen thousand women imprisoned in the Auschwitz camp, not all of the prisoners survived. This is also somewhat striking, because the conditions to which they were transferred in Birkenau were significantly worse than those in which they had been held in Auschwitz. However, the epidemics that spread, the treatment they received, and the selections that were carried out ultimately meant that the number of those transferred was much smaller. It is estimated that it was around thirteen thousand female prisoners. The camp in Birkenau was not prepared, which is why cases of typhus, mentioned by Margita Schwalbova, a doctor who had been in the main camp, began to spread there extremely rapidly, to such an extent that the camp had to be isolated for some time because of the disastrous sanitary situation. It is also worth paying attention to the fate of those prisoners who arrived in the camp first, both the prisoners from Ravensbrück and the Jewish prisoners from Poprad, and later from Bratislava. After that very difficult initial period in the camp, after the shock of the treatment, especially for Jewish prisoners, they gradually began to adapt to the camp reality. Those who were able and who had the necessary predispositions, over time took on various positions as functionary prisoners. This included not only administrative roles, as in the case of Katja Singer, but also supervising other prisoners at work. From the accounts of survivors, we know that very often in various places it was Slovak Jewish women deported during this initial period of the camp’s operation who were encountered in supervisory roles over other prisoners.