During the winter of 1944, the Russian army made great advances. The Front was pushed back further west towards northern Germany, and Ravensbrück was in their sight line. In June, the invasion in Normandy had landed, and the net tightened around the Germany army and Berlin.
The concentration camps on the routes of the Red Army started emptying and sending their prisoners to camps not yet liberated. In Ravensbrück, they arrived in their thousands from the camps in the east. Ravensbrück was already full to bursting and had no room to house them. The new arrivals were therefore kept outside the walls, without shelter, food, bedding or any sort of sanitation. The camp inmates were thrown into even further despair seeing the deprivations of the newcomers, which were even worse than their own. Many had traveled for days on end, in midwinter, in open coal cars, barely clothed and without any food or water. Only after a few days, some tents were erected and a few receptacles were put around for toilets.
The resident Dutch prisoner group took immediate action to try and get at least some clothing for these poor souls, and Sabine, together with her friend Truus, stole quantities of clothes from the warehouse depots to hand to the new arrivals. There was already a great sense that the war could not last much longer. The Germans obviously felt the same. Discipline began to relax.
The sense of losing the war affected the Germans strongly, and they started to think of their own future and the importance of being able to show the liberators how well they had looked after their prisoners. Suddenly buildings were improved and “hospitals” built, and the women were allowed to wear extra clothing. Headscarves were no longer obligatory.
Sabine, to her delight, even found her old honey-colored cord trousers back in the clothing storage. Although food and conditions generally deteriorated, hope had revived, and the urgency to survive until the end of the war was everywhere.
As the Red Army got nearer, the authorities in Ravensbrück began to panic and decided to try and empty the camp and leave as little evidence as possible. Since they could not kill enough people fast enough, a second gas chamber was built in Ravensbrück, opening in March 1945. Both crematorium and gas chambers were working day and night in the last three months of the war. At least 5,000 women and children were gassed in those last few weeks, but even two gas chambers and a crematorium were not enough to deal with the numbers being sent to their death. Many were killed and burnt in the nearby woods.
This terrible month was Sabine’s last one in Ravensbrück. The killing was not going fast enough, and the decision was made to start sending prisoners to other camps further south, some on death marches, during which thousands died, and some by cattle trains, including 2,000 women and children to Mauthausen, of whom only thirty-seven, including Sabine, were Dutch.
On March 1, 1945, the order came for all Nacht und Nebel prisoners to go immediately to the punishment block, where they were joined by Roma and Jewish women and children. Two thousand of them were jammed into the cell blocks, all windows and doors were closed and locked, and they were left in total darkness, surrounded by heavy security. No water, food or sanitation was provided. No room to lie or sit down, which led to bloody fights and endless piercing screaming. Mass hysteria took hold, as the women knew that the punishment block was always the prelude to the gas chambers. The fact that there were Jewish and Roma women among them made it a certainty.
But it was not the end. The following morning, after a horrendous night, the women were marched to the trains and taken south.
Sabine spent from November 1, 1943, until March 2, 1945, in Ravensbrück. Now another hell awaited her.