Christmas Quotes: Second Christmas in Ravensbruck

As with yesterday's quote, this one is from A Train in Winter by Caroline Moorehead.

Towards Christmas, one of the transports brought a piano to Ravensbruck. Watching it being unloaded, a young Russian girl exclaimed, 'My God! If only I could be allowed to play?' The chief sorter that day, a German girl called Sophie, asked the SS guard in charge. He found the idea of a young Russian Jew able to play the piano absurd. But the piano was moved on to flat ground and the girl sat down. She was an accomplished pianist. All over the camp, as far as the notes reached, the women prisoners stopped what they were doing to listen.

This was the second Christmas the group of French women had spent in a German camp. Once again, they gave each other little presents that they had made, stolen or saved up. The news of the war, transmitted by the women working int he SS offices and translated into a dozen languages, was getting better all the time, and there were real hopes that it might be their last Christmas in captivity. A Christmas tree was brought from the forest and the women stole little bits of wire and thread and material from the factories with which to decorate it.