2. Concentration Camp and Freedom
Eventually, the Germans gave up on trying to squeeze information out of Odette, and sent her first to a women’s prison in Germany, and thence to Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. There, the camp commandant, Fritz Suhren, upon being informed that she was a relative of Winston Churchill, marked Odette out for special treatment – and not the good kind of special treatment. She was kept on a starvation diet, and housed in a punishment block cell, from where she could hear other prisoners being tortured.
However, with German defeat drawing ever closer, Commandant Suhren reconsidered his treatment of Odette, and decided he would be better off after the war if he kept her alive. Accordingly, her conditions were improved, and she was moved to a normal cell, and given standard rations. On May 1st, 1945, Suhren loaded Odette into his Mercedes, and drove to American lines, where he handed her over, in a bid to lessen his inevitable sentence. It did not work: Suhren had committed too many war crimes and crimes against humanity. Odette testified against him and other Ravensbruck guards in a 1946 trial, and he was executed in 1950.