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Info / context to the poem
Excerpt from Käthe Leichter's only surviving poem from Ravensbrück.
The socialist journalist and resistance fighter Käthe Leichter was deported to the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück in early 1940. She wrote numerous poems there, which she recited to her fellow prisoners but did not write down for security reasons. In January 1942, she was deported to Bernburg together with many other, mainly Jewish women and murdered there by gas.
Rosa Jochmann, who survived Ravensbrück, reports: "We were not allowed to speak or meet with Jews, but we did so anyway. Käthe Leichter organized literary afternoons on Sundays in Block 11, the Jewish block. Taking the greatest precautions, Käthe gave us unforgettable hours with old freedom poems and songs that took us away from hell. The poem 'To My Brothers', which was memorized by the young comrade Viktoria Fila and thus has been preserved, was authored by Käthe Leichter." (Source: Mauthausen Committee Austria)
Dr. phil. Constanze Jaiser
Literature scholar and theologian
Publications on the subject, include:
Poetische Zeugnisse. Gedichte aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück. Stuttgart/Weimar 2000
Europa im Kampf 1939-1944. Internationale Poesie aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück. Berlin 2009
Ein Schmuggelfund aus dem KZ – Erinnerung, Kunst und Menschenwürde. Berlin 2012