Quotes from Sarah Helm

I wish I could be built so that stupidity and dullness wouldn't bother me as much, but I just can't help it. It may sound paradoxical, but with time one wishes to be a hermit instead of always being around people. - Doctor Doris Maza

Most are pious, but with a peculiar sort of piety. They seem to me to be hiding behind God in disgust at their own meanness.

Did nobody see where we were heading? Did nobody see through the shameless demagogy of the articles of Goebbels? I could see it even through the thick walls of the prison; yet more and more people outside were toeing the line.

When the first women started work in the barracks on 25 August 1942, Siemens & Halske joined three other major German manufacturers- IG Farbe at Auschwitz, Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG at Mauthausen and Heinkel at Sachsenhausen-in using concertation-camp slave labour. So pleased was the company with its new Ravensbruck factory that Rudolf Dingel...wrote to the Reichsfuhrer SS thanking him warmly. Himmler's kindness towards Siemens inspired him with 'particular joy.

The entire time I was in the camp it was as if I had a double personality. My real self seemed to be observing what was happening to my physical self.

Rokossovsky's Second Belorussian Front had taken Prenzlau, fifty miles to the east. The German army now blew up fuel depots and military bases around Fürstenberg, ready for the final retreat.

In broken English, Suhren told the American soldier: 'This is Frau Churchill. She is related to Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England.' Odette said she then stepped out of the car and added: 'And this is Fritz Suhren, commandant of Ravenbruck concentration camp. Please take him as your prisoner.