We were transported in cattle cars for eleven days, without water or a place to lie down, breathing in the stench of urine and the despair of dozens of other women, reduced to the state of animals. Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian – all captured for minor offenses: hiding food, listening to a clandestine radio station, or helping the “wrong” side.
When we arrived at Ravensbrück, I still believed my medical training might save me, that the Germans might need qualified nurses. How naive I was! At dawn on August 12, 1942, two SS guards dragged me from my wooden bunk in Block 10. They said nothing; their silence was more terrifying than any threat.
They dragged me along damp corridors to a concrete staircase leading to the basement of the camp hospital—a place not marked on official Red Cross maps. The corridor was about 50 meters long, with low ceilings and dripping water. There were nine heavy metal doors. Through the first four, I glimpsed skeletal women with vacant stares. But it was the last door that terrified me. It bore a number scrawled in white chalk: 47.
The guard opened the door with two different keys. The metal creaked, then the nauseating stench hit me: a pestilential mixture of cheap disinfectant, old blood, excrement, and chemicals that burned my nostrils. I was a nurse; I knew the smell of death, but this was the smell of hell. Room 47 was about 25 square meters, lit by flickering bulbs. The walls were stained with blood that no one bothered to clean. In the center was a metal operating table, with thick leather straps and a groove in the floor for fluids, like in a slaughterhouse.
The doctor was waiting. He didn’t introduce himself. He simply lit a cigarette and gestured toward the table, as if I were a lab animal. At that moment, I understood that I wasn’t there to be healed; I was there to be dissected, studied, used, and then discarded. I tried to ask him what they were going to do to me. The doctor laughed a dry, humorless laugh. I was pushed onto the table. At that moment, the Katya I had been died.
They bound my wrists and ankles so tightly that my blood circulation stopped. I wasn’t screaming yet from physical pain, but from the horror of being treated like “raw material” to be recycled. The doctor noted in his notebook: Subject 47a, Soviet origin, estimated age between 25 and 30. Procedure: Experimental bone graft.
There was no real anesthesia. A cloth soaked in ether was briefly applied to my face, just enough to numb me without making me lose consciousness. The doctor wanted to observe my reactions to pain. When the scalpel cut into my flesh, I felt a searing pain. Ice water was splashed on my face to prevent me from fainting. The doctor worked slowly, cutting through the muscles and sawing down to the bone.
Leave a Comment