Today many stories of the prisoners of the concentration camps during the Second World
War have not been told. Millions of people who were forced into camps such as Bergen-Belsen
and Auschwitz never made it out alive, and succumbed to the evil conditions that they
were kept in. When the allies liberated sites such as Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen they came
across true hell on earth, with death lurking around every corner. But the stories from
the survivors later came out and many told of the evil and barbarism inflicted onto them.
It was clear at certain camps that the idea was for prisoners to be worked simply until
they died being given very little food and water, and if they did not work hard enough
they were executed. Many executions took place at sites across the Third Reich, and many
were performed in quiet. A number of female spies who worked for British SOE were executed
quietly, but following the war their stories were uncovered. There is one story which is
not very well known, and it is of a French Princess and member of the aristocracy who
joined the French Resistance to fight the Nazis and the Germans. But inside of Ravensbruck
Concentration Camp, Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay never made it out alive. Join us today as
we look at the BRUTAL Execution of the French Princess of Ravensbruck, remember to support
our channel, please make sure to subscribe.
Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay was born on the 1st April 1919 inside of Paris, and she
was the daughter of Pierre D’Alcantara de Bauffremonth, who was the Prince Duke de Bauffremont-Courtenay.
This was a presitgious French family which had a long history dating back centuries.
The Bauffremonts were members of the nobility, and many of them were involved in Key historical
events. For example Nicholas De Bauffremont and his son Claude were part of the estates
general, and they spoke out politically, and also on the 8th June 17657 Louis de Bauffremont
was made a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and this was a title recognised in France.
The title of the Prince de Courtenay is still given out to this day, and one of the descendants
Alexandre Bauffremont fled during the French Revolution and made his way to America, before
he returned and was made a Count of the French Empire by Napoleon and then was made a peer
of France and a duke in 1818. So the family had rich ties in the French nobility, but
Anne made history in a different way. Her mother was Therese Chevrier, and it’s likely
that as a child she was given some of the best forms of education that money could buy
in France as the family were very wealthy.
It’s also possible that her family would have imagined marrying her off to a wealthy
European prince in order to secure further wealth for the family and also status around
the world. However as the Second World War broke out, the Nazis started to round up many
important members of the French aristocracy when they occupied the country. The occupation
of France shocked the world with how fast the German war machine could push through
lands, and it took the Allies by surprise, to the point that they were pushed back to
Dunkirk, and the British Expeditionary Force along with other allies were rescued from
the beaches. France was the largest military power forced under occupation, and it was
occupied by the Wehrmacht. 100,000 German soldiers were sent to keep law and order,
and when the Wehrmacht were fighting on the Eastern Front German units were rotated to
go to France to keep order but also rest. The number of soldiers in France did increase
with the threat of an allied invasion on the horizon, but they were also kept quiet by
the security forces that were infamous within Germany. The Gestapo and SD both operated
inside of France, and they would round up members of the resistance and then many of
these were subject to horrific torture. Many were then executed or were sent to concentration
camps.
The French Resistance was rather effective in the land, and the Germans later launched
huge anti-partisan actions against the resistance. They viewed every frenchman and woman with
suspicion, and to keep people in check they carried out huge massacres of the French population,
for example at Orator Sur Glance, they reduced the whole village to a ghost town, killing
pretty much every person there. Resistance cells were made up of small groups of armed
men and women who took part in guerrilla activities, attacks on German soldiers and sabotage and
destructive operations. They provided first hand intelligence also to allied units, and
they also helped to free trapped Allied soldiers and airmen. The resistance was made up of
people from all walks of life, and they had the sole goal of freeing France from occupation.
They were important in the run up and following the Normandy Invasions, and they also attacked
the Naizs electrical power grids and transport facilities. This made them very feared and
also sought after by the Germans as they were considered dangerous, and also a threat to
the German war machine. Following the Normandy invasions, Resistance was more organised,
and the French Partisan forces fought heavily to try and free their nation from the Germans.
Members of the resistance were described as, ‘It was hard to tell what they had been
before German labour laws threw them all together in the depths of the wild woods. Some had
been shopkeepers, artisans, young sons of wealthy parents. Others were scrum of the
gutter and many were soldiers. Now, however, all were much the same. All wore the clothes,
and many still the wooden clogs, of peasants. Some lucky ones had scraps of uniforms and
British battledress, but predominantly their clothes consisted of drab colored shirts,
blue overall trousers and German field boots, whose owners no doubt had ceased to require
them for obvious reasons. They wore neither brassards nor regular uniform of any kind.
The only distinguishable difference between the men of the Maquis and the men of the
country from they had sprung was the pistol cocked aggressively from the trouser tops,
the rifle on the shoulder, the Sten on the back or the string of grenades depending on
the belt.’
But Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay joined the French resistance, and despite
her standing in society she saw helping to free her nation as the most important thing
that she could do. She had joined up before 1944, but it isn’t mostly known what sort
of activities she took part in. We know that she was based in Paris and would have been
part of the underground networks of resistance here, but a month after D-Day, Princess Anne
was arrested by the Gestapo on the 6th July 1944. Things inside of Paris were heating
up for the Gestapo, and they tried incredibly hard to round up as many resistors as possible,
and they also inflicted brutal torture onto their captives to extract information. Princess
Anne was then transported to the Fresnes Prison, which during World War 2 was used by the Germans
to capture enemy spies and members of the resistance. Inside here the conditions were
horrific, and as mentioned torture was administered so badly that a number of prisoners died.
As soon as the Allies broke through Normandy, the Gestapo then executed their prisoners
at the prison.
Princess Anne was held here for three weeks and was locked up and was tortured brutally,
but she never gave over any information regarding resistance activities. Because of this she
was deemed a lost cause, and was then deported on the last train on August 5th 1944 to Ravensbruck
Concentration Camp. Ravensbruck was an all female camp which was established in May 1939,
and it was where around 132,000 women found themselves imprisoned during the Second World
War. Many prisoners were sent from different parts of the world to Ravensbruck, but here
the conditions were terrible. It’s believed that around 50,000 people were killed who
were inmates of the camp, and most were killed by the conditions. One prisoner stated of
life at Ravensbruck that, ‘They didn't shoot the women. We were to die of misery, hunger
and exhaustion...when we arrived at Ravensbrück, it was the worst. The first thing I saw was
a cart with all the dead piled on it. Their arms and legs hanging out, and mouths and
eyes wide open. They reduced us to nothing.
We didn't even feel like we had the value of cattle. You worked and you died.’ Medical
experiments also took place there, but it was a place of great evil and cruelty. When
Princess Anne de Bauffremont Courtney was transported to Ravensbruck, it’s possible
that she believed she would have been executed straight away. But when she got off the train,
she would have been processed and allowed into the camp and was most probably forced
to conduct back-breaking work like the women of Ravensbruck were forced to do. However,
as conditions at Ravensbruck got worse and the camp’s infrastructure and systems broke
down, disease ran rampant across the site. Typhus, typhoid fever and other diseases killed
hundreds each week, and Princess Anne de Bauffremont Courtenay was killed by this. She contracted
dysentry which was very common, probably from eating contaminated food or drinking contaminated
water and because of this, she never recovered and succumbed to her death around February
and March 1945.
Princess Anne de Bauffremont Courtenay’s story is one which is incredibly tragic. Her
story is one which is familiar with many of the women who were sent to Ravensbruck, as
they succumbed to the evil and terrible conditions at the camp. Thousands died there in this
manner, but what is incredible is that the Princess saw her role in the war as fighting
along the every day man and woman to try and free France from occupation. Her story is
one which deserves to be more well known, and should not be left untold.
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