Ravensbrueck's Secret Letters

Never underestimate human ingenuity.
"Nazi death camp prisoners used their urine as invisible ink to write letters detailing the horrific medical experiments they were subjected to, it has emerged.
Secret messages written by female Polish inmates reveal their treatment at the hands of Nazi doctors at the Ravensbrueck camp 60 miles north of Berlin in Germany.
The 27 notes, which informed the world about the deadly experiments made on 74 women at the camp in 1943-1944, were apparently normal letters to families but with invisible messages between the lines and in the margins.

They reveal the shocking experiments that were carried out at the death camp, which included being injected with gangrene to test new drugs.
Donated by the family of Krystyna Czyz-Wilgat, who wrote several of them, some letters are in poor condition and it is not clear if the 'Under the Clock' Martyr Museum in Lublin, in eastern Poland, will put them on public display."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4242730/Ravensbrueck-letters-written-urine-gifted-Polish-museum.html#ixzz4ZQeN4J14

 

Chilling to think what's all written in that collection. Were they all published at the time? I remember visiting a patient in hospital that came to the clinic I used to work at, dying from gangrene of the stomach. Never smelt anything like it before or since. May they all rest in peace.

 

What a story.

 

Don't now if they were published at the time, but the information was certainly disseminated.

 

I'm afraid the article is mostly sensationalism, this the text from that piece of paper:

No. 10
Since the last year the life in our camp has improved greatly. Punishments are more diversified, earlier they sent [us] to the bunker for anything, today many things have no consequences at all. We can deal with many problems "unofficially" anyway.
The German nation is easily corruptible, earlier when there was a scarcity of food, you could get a lot for a piece of bread, today for something better.
The female guards are constantly replaced with less quality ones (many can't use their guns). [Female] prisoners can influence them [easily], for example the leader of a [working] column, so called "anweisung", can prevail on guards with ease. Many of the guards are dissatisfied with their work and with their food. They open up about it to us, but simultaneously they are terrified of their female colleagues, they feel safe with the prisoners the most.
Anyway the female guards like to work with the Polish women the most, because they are calm and hardworking.
You can't imagine how the female guards flatter the cooks to get a little more sugar for their coffee. But the cooks in the kitchen are almost all Polish!.
in the camp theft happens all the time. That the female prisoners are steeling from, for example, the kitchen is nothing unusual. But the female guards are stealing at every opportunity, for example asparaguses from a pit at the estate, in an apple column they are stealing apples by the basket.