Ravensbrück concentration camp

Hortense Daman Clews was a Wartime resistance heroine and concentration camp survivor of Ravensbrück concentration camp. Hortense Daman was born on 12 August 1926. She worked as a courier in the Belgian resistance. She was taken prison by the Gestapo. The Gestapo wanted her to confess the names of other resistance fighters. Hortense kept her mouth shut. In the prison she met up with her mother again. Hortense was appalled to see that all of her mother’s teeth had been knocked out. On 15 May 1944, Hortense, her mother and a group of other Belgian women were escorted from the prison and put in trucks and train to set off for Germany, the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Medical experiments took place in Ravensbrück. Hortense had been sterilized with a high dose of X-rays in the camp. Sha also got an injection with gangrene. Dr Rosenthal was using prisoners as human guinea pigs. He would be executed for war crimes after the war. Hortense survived. On April 1945 the Soviet Army arrived. They found over 2,000 sick women and children in the camp. Eventually, on 29 June 1945 she arrived in Belgium. She saw her father gain. He had been transported to Buchenwald concentration camp where his son François had found him after its liberation. In Leuven, Hortense met the man who would become her husband. Sydney Clews of the British Army. Hortense and Sydney married on 23 February 1946. They moved to the UK and settled in Staffordshire. Despite being told she could never have children after her enforced sterilization in Ravensbrück, in April 1961 Hortense gave birth to a daughter, Julia. In 1968 their son Christopher was born. Hortense Daman Clews was given numerous honors for her bravery and sacrifice during World War Two. Hortense Daman Clews died on 18 December 2006, at the age of eighty.

Discovering Belgium