Robert Richardt Villiam Hansen - his time in German concentration camps

Robert Richardt Villiam Hansen

Dear Oddgeir, Ida og Hjalmar These days where lies, prejudice and intolerance appear to become part of our daily lives and where false and simplified messages are spread by cynical leaders as the truth, I wish to remind you that peace and freedom are not givens. Your freedom to say and believe what you want, your freedom to pursue your dreams in the conviction that it is your right and your freedom to move about in your daily lives without fear of violence and persecution. These are freedoms which you take for granted but which can easily be lost unless you value and appreciate them and take active part in safeguarding them.

It is not long ago that these freedoms, values, common decency and respect for fellow human beings were brutally destroyed and only won back after tremendous human suffering and sacrifice.

Indeed, even today, in many parts of the world - Syria, South Sudan, Eastern Congo to name a few – human suffering continues and millions flee their homes, many looking for sanctity among us, only to face walls, suspicion and barriers as leaders in our part of the world pamper to the ignorant and tell us that we should fear the refugees and shut ourselves in.

With these things in mind, and to remind you of what it might cost to preserve your freedom, dignity and humanity, I would like to share with you the story of a period in the life of your greatgrandfather, Robert.

Robert was born near Odense 7th December (also Oddgeir’s birthday) 1902 and died of a heartattack 2nd July 1972, 69 years old. For the last 25 years of his life he suffered poor health, was fragile and tired. I was only eight when he passed away, so obviously my memories of him are seen through a child’s perspective. But I do remember clearly his kind eyes and sort of mischievous turn to his smile. He had a comical side to him as he displayed one Christmas eve when we were all gathered in Odense at our Grandparents’ house. Jens and I were about to burst with excitement over the prospect of Christmas presents and dinner was just something to be done with. So when after dinner there was a firm knock on the door our excitement knew no bounds as there, coming out of the rain, sleet and wind stood Santa Claus, resplendent in his red coat and great white beard and, most importantly, carrying a heavy sack. Jens and I had absolutely no doubt that this was the real deal and had completely missed the sudden absence of Grandad.

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Santa Claus, having asked us two small boys the usual questions and we in turn given our assurances that we had indeed been good boys, opened his sack and one by one passed each of us a present, gloriously wrapped in glittery paper – and importantly – not soft.

A few moments later, Santa bid his farewell and disappeared into the cold dark winter evening, presumably to visit the family next door, and a further few moments later, as Grandmother brought in the sweets, Granddad slipped quietly into the living room and with a content sigh sat down into his comfy chair to enjoy the rest of the evening, surrounded by loved ones.

His full name was Robert Richardt Villiam Hansen. He was married to your great-grandmother, Ida Sofie Olson who was of Swedish parents who had emigrated to Denmark in the early 1900’s.

Together they had two children, Ole, the eldest and Myrna, your Grandmother, born in 1937.

Robert was employed as an unskilled labourer at the Holmegaards Glassworks in Odense. Being tall, strong and hard-working one can imagine that he was a valued, if poorly paid employee during the austere times of the 30’s. He had also during some periods sought work in Germany during the 30’s when Hitler’s ambitious building programmes required extra labour and attracted young men from other parts of Europe.

Sometime during the latter part of the 30’s, probably on encouragement from fellow workers at the Glassworks, Robert joined the Danish Communist Party and would probably have had to consider going off with the International Brigade to fight in Spanish Civil War against the Fascists of Franco. It is likely that with two small children and a young wife to support he decided that he was more needed at home.

On the morning of 9th April 1940, Germany invaded and occupied Denmark. Over the next five years life for ordinary Danes would get increasingly harsh and opposition to the Nazi rule increasingly determined. The Danish Communist Party, or DKP, was one of the first main organisations to begin active resistance, especially as the party was outlawed in the autumn of 1941. The Danish Police had kept registers of Danish communists and handed these over to the Nazis so, when in June 1941 the Nazis insisted on the arrest of “prominent” communists (including elected members of Parliament), the Police were ready and cooperated, even arrested many times more communists than the Nazis had demanded (the demand was for 66 named arrests; the Police arrested 295 !). The banning order passed by all parties in Parliament (except of course by the communist party, the DKP !) two months later (!) had retroactive effect, thus making the earlier arrests legal. It also grossly violated the Danish Constitution.

Robert was probably too junior a member to warrant much interest at this stage but the arrests, which disgusted the general public will also have acted as final confirmation that the oppression of fundamental rights was only going to get worse and that the elected Government and institutions were no longer to be trusted to stand up to the Nazis.

Robert probably joined the underground work of DKP sometime late that year 1941 or early 1942.

His function seems to have been distribution of illegal papers, like the communist monthly publications “The People’s Struggle” (Folkets Kamp) or “Political Monthly” (Politiske Maanedsbreve).

It was increasingly dangerous work, especially after the summer of 1943 when the Danish Parliament finally gauged the public mood correctly, resigned and the official Denmark ceased any further co-operation with the German occupation. The Gestapo went all-out against the resistance movement and any civilised inhibitions the German occupiers might have shown before were now illusions from the past three years.

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The illegal press was the voice of the various resistance groupings and reported both from the international war fronts as well as domestic Danish news like sabotage, German counter-sabotage and naming of Danish collaborators.

The penalty for sabotage was death but the Danish resistance after the summer of 1943 escalated its activities including bombings, railway sabotage and liquidation of collaborators. The Gestapo intelligence apparatus with its network of collaborators was one of the most sophisticated systems the world had seen and despite massive efforts by resistance groups to kill the informers, the Gestapo was gaining ground by the day. Like in the rest of occupied Europe, the war in Denmark was brutal and merciless.

Late in the evening, only a short week before Christmas, Monday 13th December 1943, there was angry knocking on the front door of the neat little house on Baumgartensvej no. 34 in Odense where the Hansen family lived and where we would spend Christmases to come many years later. Some of the men on the front steps spoke Danish, but at least one was a native German speaker. It is likely that a couple of the men were Danish Police, commandeered or volunteering to participate in the operation to crush another part of the illegal resistance movement. My Grandmother told us that she had learnt that a colleague of Robert’s had been arrested a few days previously and under torture revealed names of other members of the group. This is how the Gestapo often managed to crack entire cells of the Resistance.

In any case, Robert was given just a few minutes to hug his young wife and two small children before being manhandled into the vehicle idling at the kerbside.

It was to be 18 months before Robert saw his family again but it could very easily have been the last time.

The following is Grandfather Robert’s own story as written in his neat handwriting on yellow paper some months after the war in connection with his application for special pension for former concentration camp prisoners :

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Robert Richardt Villiam Hansen, factory worker, date of birth, 7/12/02, address Baumgartensvej 34, Odense and arrested at the same.

Arrested for illegal press-activity 13/12/1943 and there is only admission relating to activities which an earlier arrested comrade had revealed.

The 17th December together with several other prisoners, I was loaded on to a cattle wagon and taken to Staldgaarden (a prison) in Kolding and stayed here till the following morning when we were taken to the railway station and with other prisoners from Kolding boarded an Italian passenger coach. There were already many other good Danes from Randers and Aarhus on board. A sad journey now began, the coach was rotten and full of holes. The toilet was a hole in the floor and there was no water; soon an unbearable stink pervaded the entire coach.

It took four full days before we reached Oranienburg near Berlin. All male prisoners were ordered out and we marched on foot to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Here we quickly experienced the master-mentality of the SS. While we stood and waited with our faces against the wall some of us dared to sneak a look around at what was going on behind us. A large column of prisoners in strange uniforms marched into the grounds, all wearing back-packs. Their coats were covered in paint and on their backs were painted a large cross. At times they started singing songs we had all heard German soldiers sing when they marched through towns in Denmark. However, this was the Penal Company or Punishment Battalion of the camp.

We also saw 15-20 men pulling some very large wagons, loaded with all kinds of things [probably confiscated personal belongings].

Finally we were led to be deloused which meant having all hair removed both from the head and all the rest of the body followed by a warm shower and then being dosed in some liquid which stung badly. From there we were led to the Quarantine-block and I was now Häftling Nr 74299 (Prisoner no 74299). The following days were awful but we Danes managed to keep our spirits up.

I remained in Sachsenhausen until 25th December 1944, but conditions got better or we felt they improved because Red Cross ensured we received food parcels and warm clothes.

The work-commando I was assigned to was disbanded because the production was to be changed. I was wiring small alternating current motors but now the camp management had to find new assignments for us, who were regarded as “specialists”. A new work-commando was found for us in another camp in Slecia called Gross Rosen near Liegnits On Boxing Day, the day after Christmas 1944, we were loaded onto a closed wagon at Oranienburg and the next evening we arrived at the new camp. It quickly became apparent that this camp was worse than the previous one. The usual delousing was pure torture. It wasn’t enough to remove all hair growth, no here they shaved us with blunt knives all over our bodies. The result was that I suffered several nasty cuts especially around my genitalia and rectum which caused severe pain.

We were housed in Block 5. The block-elder was a young Pole who quickly turned out to be a thug of the worst kind. Night after night there were beatings of the most bestial and despicable nature. For us Scandinavians it was another realization that the worst thugs we encountered in the prisons were Poles and we all agreed that they were worse and more brutal than even the Germans. Among the thousands of Poles I encountered in the prison camps, I did not find a single sympathetic one.

Our new work-commando was part of Blaupunkt Radio manufacturers in Berlin. The workshop was situated in the basement under the sick-bay. This is where we were put to work assembling different 4

radio-condensators. The work was specialised, the pace was blistering and we worked for 12 hours a day and 7 hours on Sundays. The Manager and the Officer in charge with his swastika on his tunic were zealous that the pace be maintained at all costs. They demanded the same production rate from us as for their employed women in their Berlin factory who were well fed and housed, experienced and dexterous.

Our daily ration comprised 300g of bread and a litre of foul turnip soup. No potatoes or fats of any kind (our Red Cross parcels were being confiscated). We slept 3-4 men to a bunk bed, about 27� wide.

There was not the slightest leniency or consideration of us being constantly hungry and exhausted.

The production targets for each of us must be met or we were sent to work in the camp quarry which was the same as a death sentence in a very short time.

Thus passed three weeks when the Russians began their great offensive on the Eastern Front. This was soon felt as the camp was overcrowded with prisoners from camps further to the East, especially from Auschwitz. It was a sad sight to see these starved and freezing prisoners march into the camp.

They had been on the march for 8-10 days with hardly any food and had slept in the open. After a few days in the camp they were marched on towards Buchenwald. Those too weak to continue were to be housed in a sick-block but before that they were subjected to delousing. From the delousing they had to walk 3-400m to the sick block but to say they walked is an exaggeration. Most had suffered terrible frostbite during the long march; arms and legs were black and about to fall off, so most of them crawled or rolled themselves through the snow, screaming in agony. Many collapsed and died and were without fuzz loaded on to wheelbarrows 3-4 on each. We saw several, however, who were still breathing weakly but lying beneath heaps of dead By the end of January 1945 the Front had come so close that we could hear the big guns like distant thunder. The workshops for our work-commando were emptied and we had nothing to do which of course suited us very well, although it was hard to remain outdoors all day in the freezing temperatures.

In the morning 8th February we were all sent out to dig trenches and it was soon obvious to us that something unusual was afoot. The guards seemed less concerned with us and were constantly looking East, apparently expecting the Russians to appear at any moment.

At 12 noon we were marched into the centre of the camp, lined up in the assembly square, counted and registered God knows how many times. We were then each given 3-400g of bread and 50g of raw, horse mincemeat and then marched at speed towards the railway station. We were not even allowed to gather our few belongings from the block such as socks and underwear.

A sad journey now began.

It was only about 3km to the railway station, but several could not keep up. They were mercilessly gunned down. On arrival at the railway station there were 60 open coal-wagons and about 100 men were loaded onto each, subjected to beatings and shouted abuse and screams. The journey which now began, cannot be adequately described.

More than four days and nights without water or bread, in snow and freezing weather. The train would go for a few kilometres and then suddenly stop, wait and then continue another few kilometres. At some time we crossed into Czechoslovakia and northwards up into Thuringia.

Hundreds of comrades lost their life during this journey; with no food or liquid or warm clothes they were condemned to death.

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We finally arrived in a town called Nordhausen. Those who could stand on their own feet were ordered off the train but many were left on the waggons, too weak to move. We were a sorry sight as we shuffled through the streets. Many collapsed and gave up any final hope of survival. Some foreign workers who witnessed our sorry procession through the streets cried openly at the sight of us, at the inhuman debasement into which the Germans had subjected us to.

We arrived at a military barracks and were herded into a large garage. You might think our worst suffering was over, but no; there was no end. We were yet again to be deloused and this took place in a freezing room where we were ordered out of our rags and under a freezing shower after which we were each given a pair of thin underwear, a shirt and a blanket and told to lie down on the concrete floor. Only two days later were we given some additional rags to wear.

The room was very crowded when we arrived but as people continued to die, this improved. Food was of the same poor quality as could now be expected. In the mornings, five people shared a rusty tin of hot coffee and in the afternoons the same tin contained a half litre of turnip-soup with threefour potatoes, often rotten. This was what we were fed for the next four weeks.

To add to this, we were continuously treated to savage beatings by the Polish guards and many suffered terrible injuries and succumbed. After my experiences in Germany, I avoid Poles; they proved to be by and large bad people.

Dysentery spread fast in these conditions and we were all sick. As toilets there were two large steel tubs for 800-900 prisoners and we squatted around and on these, the sick, the infected and those still not infected. Every day a truck came to collect the dead and take the bodies to the crematorium. It was loaded to the brim every day.

The first of March [1945] we Danes and Norwegians were ordered shaved and the following morning we were then marched to the office-block where we waited for six hours before an SS officer informed us that we were being sent to another camp and from there we were to be sent to a quarantine-camp before possibly being sent home. We didn’t much trust what the Germans told us but were glad to get away from this place because it surely could not get any worse elsewhere. In the morning one of my best friends was dead and we all knew that under these conditions the rest of us did not have long to live The trip, through a terrible snow storm, to the other camp 8-9km away was difficult as one could barely walk in the heavy snow. The dysentery was constant, but there was nothing to do about it but to soil oneself.

We finally arrived at the new camp “Dora” with the official name Sangerhausen but from there we continued to Neuengamme concentration camp where we arrived 7th March 1945. We were put into the same prison block as the Norwegian students and some Danish police.

Conditions now improved greatly for us as the Swedish Red Cross were granted daily access to the camp and we soon started recovering and could eat the good food sent to us by the Red Cross.

20th April was the day when we were driven by buses back to Denmark and via Mogelkaer transferred to Sweden. On the 11th May we were finally sent home to Denmark and freedom.

I hope that in my short report you will find something of interest. Perhaps I have not been able to express myself as well as one might wish, but I can assure you that I have not added to the telling of it. It was worse than I am able to express but perhaps those of my friends who were with me can do it better.

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But the 9 Norwegian and Danish friends who died out of the 15 men who left Sachsenhausen 26th December 1944 are testament that I have not exaggerated my reporting.

With greetings Robert Hansen Baumgartensvej 34, Odense

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Post-script The following might give an impression of the kind of conditions experienced by Robert in the various camps: Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a concentration camp built in 1938, originally intended for political prisoners but during the war used for prisoners of war. More than 30,000 prisoners died in the camp as a result of disease, starvation, medical experiments or execution. During the last month of the war alone, more than 10,000 Russian prisoners of war were executed in the camp.

Gross-Rosen was an enormous complex of camps in the southwest of Poland. Apart from the infamous quarry which Robert mentions, the camps also contained large workshops, where among others Blaupunkt and Siemens made use of thousands of prisoners as labour. The average life expectancy in the camp was less than two months. Those sent to work in the quarry did not survive more than a few weeks.

Nordhausen was a sub-camp of the concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau. It was established by the SS for prisoners too sick or weak to work in the underground factories where the V1 and V2 rockets were built (the chief Engineer was a certain Herr Werhner von Braun. After the war he was taken to USA where he became head of the American space-rocket programme. He was one of the senior engineers behind the first lunar landing in 1969) Nordhausen was what the Nazis called a ”Vernichtungslager”, an extermination camp, for the sick and the weak prisoners, although the method of extermination in Nordhausen simply consisted of starving the prisoners to death.

Surviving prisoners reported that conditions in Nordhausen were so awful that “if Dora was the extermination camp of Buchenwald, then Nordhausen was the hell of Dora” Neuengamme was a large complex of concentration camps, not far from Hamburg. During the course of the war it contained 106,000 prisoners of which 43,000 died due to ill treatment, exhaustion, starvation or execution. During the final few weeks prior to the collapse of Germany in 1945, over 16,000 prisoners from Neuengamme died during forced marches in the freezing winter conditions.

Neuengamme contained prisoners of several nationalities : Around 34,500 Russians, 16,900 Poles, 9,200 Germans, 4,800 Belgians, 4,800 Danes as well as untold numbers of jews, homosexuals, Jehova’s Witnesses and other Allied prisoners of war.

Dora – Sangerhausen was part of the large industrial Dora complex where the Germans built rockets (see above). During the last months of the war there was probably not much left of the industrial facilities as the site was heavily bombed, so the remaining prisoners were probably meant for execution or transfer before the advancing Russian army arrived.

The story of how the rescue operation involving the white buses was planned and led by the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte has been told in several books. An abridged version can be found on Wikipedia (https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_hvide_busser ) The transports were complicated and very dangerous. Just to get fuel for the buses was a logistical nightmare. Most of the prisoners could not sit up but had to lie down. Drivers and nurses on the transports were most often Swedish volunteers. For reasons never fully understood some of the 8

transports (despite being painted white with large red crosses emblazoned on the roof) were strafed

by RAF fighters. Robert’s fortune was that his transport was not attacked but managed to drive to Denmark. Thousands of other prisoners had been taken by the buses to three large ships in the port of Lubeck from where they were waiting to be taken to Sweden when the RAF attacked the ships (again painted with large red crosses) in the port. Almost 7,500 prisoners were killed, among them Norwegians, Danes, Belgians, French and Dutch. A few weeks short of German surrender.

To summarise Grandfather’s imprisonment in the various camps : 13-12-1943: Arrested From 21-12-1943 to 26-12-1944: Sachsenhausen From 27-12-1944 to 08-02-1945: Gross-Rosen From 12-02-1945 to 02-03-1945: Nordhausen From 06-03-1945 to 20-04-1945: Neuengamme From 02-03-1945 to 05-03-1945: Dora - Sangerhausen 20-04-1945: Møgelkær (in transit to Sweden)

Experiences of other Danish prisoners As mentioned by Granddad Robert, there were many other Danish and Norwegian prisoners in the camps, and they tried to stay together as they were aware of the efforts by the Red Cross to sustain them and later on by the efforts of the Swedish rescue operations of Folke Bernadotte.

Some of the Danish prisoners had been incarcerated much longer while others came later. Some of their stories are similarly harrowing and it is right to give voice to some of these also although, out of respect for their families, I will not reveal any names.

Their experiences vary but a few quotes give an indication of some of the general treatment: “How many were you to share a bed ?” “Two to Three, maximum 3” “I experienced 4-5 suicides” “1st day of Lent 1942 in the morning we were forced to witness a public execution by hanging” Many of those who survived their time in German concentration camps suffered from what today is called post-traumatic stress syndrome, but in those days after the war, there was no organised professional treatment available for the survivors and suicide was a common cause of death for many.

Sources: http://www.besaettelse-befrielse.dk/leksikon_s.html http://modstand.natmus.dk/Person.aspx?104374 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenhausen_concentration_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross-Rosen_concentration_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuengamme_concentration_camp

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The journey of Grandfather’s imprisonment illustrated on a map :

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