Non­fic­tion

Michelan­ge­lo in Ravens­bruck: One Wom­an’s War Against the Nazis

Count­ess Karoli­na Lanckoronska
  • Review
By – March 30, 2012
Count­ess Karoli­na Lanck­o­ron­s­ka, a wealthy landown­er and pro­fes­sor of art his­to­ry, watched the Sovi­et Army march into Poland. Although she was descend­ed from Ger­mans on her mother’s side, and the fam­i­ly had spent many years liv­ing in Aus­tria, she strong­ly iden­ti­fied as a Pole, and short­ly after the inva­sion of Poland, had joined the Resis­tance. This woman was a devout Catholic; her reli­gion helped great­ly to sus­tain her. After her arrest and impris­on­ment in Ravens­brück, where her treat­ment var­ied from priv­i­leged to pun­ish­ment, she taught art his­to­ry in the camp and com­fort­ed as many women as she could. Her obser­va­tions are extreme­ly inter­est­ing, stem­ming as they do, from a Pol­ish Chris­t­ian, not a Jew. In the begin­ning of the Occu­pa­tion, the Count­ess had much more to fear from the Russ­ian invaders who begrudged cap­i­tal­ists,” and espe­cial­ly from their Ukrain­ian pup­pets who hat­ed the Poles, than from the Ger­mans. Wor­ried about the fate of the miss­ing Pol­ish intel­li­gentsia, the Count­ess chal­lenged the Ger­man com­man­der as to their where­abouts and con­di­tion, soon to find her­self in a cell, as well. In the begin­ning, her quar­ters were quite good, but as she refused to coop­er­ate and chal­lenged her cap­tors, con­di­tions degrad­ed and the camp com­man­der, Hans Krüger, con­tin­ued to pres­sure her, sus­pect­ing that she was in the Resis­tance. Although this book is about the way Chris­t­ian Poles suf­fered, she notes that the Jews were just mur­dered whole­sale (and after the war offered to tes­ti­fy against Krüger, for­mer Chief of the Gestapo in Stanis­la­wow. Poland, charged with the mass mur­der of Jews). Even­tu­al­ly she was released to the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross and allowed to stay with her broth­er in Switzer­land. Of every­thing in her mem­oir that impressed me, I marked her mus­ings about Ger­man schol­ar­ship of the past, which fol­low: I thought about Ger­man schol­ar­ship, to which I myself owed so much…And now these same Ger­mans, by their very exis­tence were dis­grac­ing the human­i­ty to which they belonged. Who would be blamed for what was hap­pen­ing today? In this one camp, how many Krügers are there (men and women), not to men­tion the mis­sions of pas­sive Ger­mans who, by their indif­fer­ent atti­tude, not only make pos­si­ble but effec­tive­ly sup­port these unseen crimes?” Appen­dices, index of names, notes, photos.
Mar­cia W. Pos­ner, Ph.D., of the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Cen­ter of Nas­sau Coun­ty, is the library and pro­gram direc­tor. An author and play­wright her­self, she loves review­ing for JBW and read­ing all the oth­er reviews and arti­cles in this mar­velous periodical.

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