The letter Sabine received from Gebele this Monday, in reply to her letter to him the previous evening, was, by his standards, very short, and must have been a shock for Sabine:
Seelchen, something very different for now. You will all be sent to the Wiener Graben barracks. Tomorrow the beds will arrive. I will try and do my utmost best to help you in any way I can. I will not abandon you.
Today I should have joined the SS, but because of you I have managed to avoid doing so in order to keep supporting you and work in the general interest of others. I find it impossible to leave you in adversity by yourself.
I also ask your permission to collect your lock of hair and my Easter present in person. To be more precise the last one I will receive personally, the lock of hair you can enclose in your next letter please. As always dirty washing to me. And please reply to my last question regarding your provisional “yes” to my marriage proposal. Can I look on you as my little bride until you return home and will you in return consider me your faithful bridegroom (until we are reunited)? Please give me a reply along with all your love. Give me your heart, your future. I will also keep my word to you, in faithful affection and loyalty.
With best wishes and a big kiss, your Franz
According to Gebele, around 1,600 women were to be taken down to the barracks in the Wiener Graben, of whom Sabine was one. The barracks turned out to be several big open sheds with straw on the floor. In order to stop any revolt by the prisoners, the SS operated a divide-and-rule system and appointed prisoners, such as prostitutes and Roma women, as the people in charge. To make sure they did not to lose this privilege, the women were more than prepared to hand out harsh punishments to their fellow prisoners. They ran a cruel regime, making the miserable lives of their charges even more unbearable. The Roma and prostitutes were likely hardened due to their lowly place in society, and this was a chance for them to take revenge on the very women who had always treated them as outcasts. The Germans knew they would run a brutal regime and offer little sympathy to the prisoners.
I have long been wondering what the Easter present to be “collected in person” that Gebele refers to could have been. What or how could she organize any present for him?
Could he be referring to his much desired intimacy that Sabine vaguely had promised in the future? Or was it just her promise to marry him that he wanted to hear in person? It seemed impossible for her to keep him at a distance for much longer.
She did write him a letter in which she finally professed her love for him. Gebele was beside himself with happiness. “Sabine, Seelchen, I am so happy. Seelchen, you tell me you love me. You have no idea how happy your big boy now feels.”
Liberation was so near, and yet the following day, Sabine, with the other women, were be moved down to the Wiener Graben, the hellhole down below the camp.
I can imagine she must have felt almost paralyzed with fear that Gebele, her only hope for survival, was in danger of being sent to the Front. The situation in the camp had become so desperate that all civilian personnel, police and soldiers were forced to enter the SS, the organization that had been ordered by Himmler himself to run and guard the camps and commit murder on a grand scale. Nine hundred German nationals in the camp were forced to sign up, but Gebele managed to avoid being recruited. “I love you, I will not leave your side, because it is safer if I am close to you in case you need help.”
Mauthausen was one of the last camps to be liberated. Camp Commandant Ziereis was determined to leave as little evidence as possible for the Allies to find about the terrible treatment of his prisoners. As the Front approached, he forced prisoners to leave the camp on foot to no one knew where in order not to fall into the hands of the liberators. Those unable to walk, in fact anyone who stayed behind, would be murdered. Although, all the time, behind Hitler’s back, Himmler was still negotiating with the Red Cross to evacuate groups of prisoners and cooperate with the Allies to save himself, knowing that Germany was losing the war.
By now many concentration camps, including many of the subcamps around Mauthausen, had already been liberated by the Allies, causing the numbers in Mauthausen to swell by thousands of prisoners sent on from other camps, especially from Eastern Europe. The surplus prisoners were packed in wherever there was a space, in the quarry, in improvised tents or just anywhere. Their suffering was unimaginable.