During the Second World War, there were many concentration camps where thousands of people
were executed and killed.
The SS guards were horifically violent and terrifying, a guards such as Irma Grese, Josef
Kramer and Elisabeth Volkenrath became infamous for their treatment of prisoners.
Many were trigger happy, and would shoot inmates without a seconds hesitation to just enforce
that they were in control, but reigns of terror were initiated at many camps.
Ravensbruck was an all female concentration camp, where during it’s time in operation
around 132,000 people were held behind the barbed wire fences.
There was one gas chamber which was in operation there, and around 2,200 would die within this
room.
But there were up to 50,000 who were also killed, but inside of Ravensbruck was one
nun and woman who sacrificed herself, and gave her own life to save others.
The story of Elise Rivet is one which deserves to be remembered.
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Elise Rivet was born on the 19th January 1890, and her father was a French naval officer.
Her father died in 1910, and she then moved with her mother to Lyon in France.
Whilst here, Elise worked inside of a hair salon for a number of years, before she then
joined the convent of the medical sisters of Notre Dame de Compassion inside the city
in 1912.
She would continue to study and live inside of the nunnery, and she became a well thought
of member of the religious order.
In 1933 she became known as Mere Marie Elisabeth de L’Eucharistie, the Mother Superior of
the convent where she was living.
With this she became the highest ranking nun inside of the order, and she was incredibly
well respected.
She remained as the Mother Superior for over a decade, however as the Second World War
broke out, her world would be turned upside down.
The German Army would invade France, and the Wehrmacht’s speed and might quickly overwhelmed
the French forces, and within 6 weeks the French had surrendered to the Germans.
The remaining members of the British Expeditionary Force, along with the remnants of the French
and Belgian armies were rescued from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo.
But then the country fell under German occupation, and the Wehrmacht would regularly deal with
elements of the resistance, and the civilians were forced to work for the German war effort.
Many were forced to work in factories and other industries that made munitions and vechicles
and aircraft for the enemy forces.
As the Germans flocked into France, Elise Rivet and her order began to hide people who
were fleeing from the Gestapo and the Nazis.
They also housed refugees who were being persecuted, and this in the German’s eyes was treason
and a crime which was punishable by death.
Eventually Elise’ nunnery went further, and they began to also store weapons and ammunition
for the French resistance, and her convent became a place where the resistance would
stockpile munitions.
However on the 24th March 1944, as the war was beginning to turn against the Germans
following their defeat on the Eastern Front at Stalingrad, the Gestapo began to investigate
Elise Rivet and her nunnery.
She along with her assistant were raided by the Gestapo, and she was then taken to the
Montluc Prison inside of Lyon.
Elise Rivet was interrogated inside of the prison, and she was then transported to Romainville,
before she was then deported to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp near to Berlin.
Ravensbruck as mentioned was an all female concentration camp, and life here was very
tough for the inmates and women who were imprisoned there.
Some detainees had their heads shaved, and one former inmate said of the camp, ‘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.’
There were many Nazi experiments that occurred there also, and the forced labour the women
were subjected to do was incredibly hardworking and brutal.
If a woman could not complete this well, then she was often killed, with guards armed with
their pistols shooting them straight away.
The bodies of those killed were cremated in a crematoria outside the camp, but then one
was built at Ravensbruck, such was the sheer amount of women who were killed there.
As mentioned up to 50,000 died inside the barbed wire fences, and there was a huge amount
of suffering.
Elise Rivet when she was at Ravesbruck was stripped of her religious clothing and her
nuns habit, and she was forced to wear the standard clothes for the inmates of the concentration
camp.
This must have led to her feeling like she lost her identity, however regular selections
were taking place at Ravensbruck for women who were not fit enough to work.
These were often done in the roll call yards, and then women were sent to the gas chamber
where they were killed within minutes of being selected.
During one selection, Elise Rivet was stood along with the other women on the 30th March
1945.
A woman who was a mother had been selected to die, and she was wailing as she knew that
this meant she would be killed and she would never see her children again.
But amazingly, Elise Rivet then spoke to the SS officials and guards, and she would then
volunteer to go to her death and the gas chambers in place of the mother who had been selected.
This was a miraculous act, as she knew she would be killed, but to save someone else
she offered to go to her death.
She was then taken to the gas chambers, and along with a number of other women, she was
forced into the gas chamber.
Whilst inside she would have comforted the other women as she faced death, as the gas
was turned on.
Elise Rivet was 55 years old when she was brutally killed inside of the concentration
camp where so many others lost their lives.
She was one of 50,000 inside of Ravensbruck that succumbed to their fate, and she would
die a matter of weeks before the Second World War in Europe would be over, as the Nazis
offered their unconditional surrender.
After the war, she was honoured with a portait of herself on a postage stamp, and many streets
were named after her.
Elise Rivet was a caring and compassionate woman, who was a very well thought of nun
inside of her convent, and she was a woman who would give everything to save other women.
Her compassion and honesty led to her being sent to the gas chambers, and she became one
of millions of victims of the Nazis.
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