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Wikipedia _ “Ravensbrück concentration camp”

Last update: 10/26/20
Access date: 11/16/20

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Ravensbrück ( pronounced [ʁaːvənsˈbʁʏk]) was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 20,000 of the total were Jewish. More than 80 percent were political prisoners. Many slave labor prisoners were employed by Siemens & Halske. From 1942 to 1945, medical experiments to test the effectiveness of sulfonamides were undertaken.

In the spring of 1941, the SS established a small adjacent camp for male inmates, who built and managed the camp's gas chambers in 1944. Of some 130,000 female prisoners who passed through the Ravensbrück camp, about 50,000 of them perished, some 2,200 were killed in the gas chambers.

Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by the order of the leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that it was intended exclusively to hold female inmates. Ravensbrück first housed prisoners in May 1939, when the SS moved 900 women from the Lichtenburg concentration camp in Saxony. Eight months after the start of World War II the camp's maximum capacity was already exceeded. It underwent major expansion following the invasion of Poland. By the summer of 1941 with the launch of Operation Barbarossa an estimated total of 5,000 women were imprisoned, who were fed gradually decreasing hunger rations. By the end of 1942, the inmate population of Ravensbrück had grown to about 10,000. The greatest number of prisoners at one time in Ravensbrück was probably about 45,000.

Between 1939 and 1945, some 130,000 to 132,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, about 50,000 of them perished from disease, starvation, overwork and despair; some 2,200 were killed in the gas chambers. on 29-30 April 1945 some 3,500 prisoners were still alive in the main camp. During the first year of their stay in the camp, from August 1940 to August 1941, roughly 47 women per day died. During the last year of the camp's existence, about 80 inmates died each day from disease or famine-related causes.

Although the inmates came from every country in German-occupied Europe, the largest single national group in the camp were Polish. In the spring of 1941, the SS authorities established a small men's camp adjacent to the main camp. The male inmates built and managed the gas chambers for the camp in 1944.

There were children in the camp as well. At first, they arrived with mothers who were Romani or Jews incarcerated in the camp or were born to imprisoned women. There were few children early on, including a few Czech children from Lidice in July 1942. Later the children in the camp represented almost all nations of Europe occupied by Germany. Between April and October 1944 their number increased considerably, consisting of two groups. One group was composed of Romani children with their mothers or sisters brought into the camp after the Romani camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau was closed. The other group included mostly children who were brought with Polish mothers sent to Ravensbrück after the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Most of these children died of starvation.

Ravensbrück had 70 sub-camps used for slave labour that were spread across an area from the Baltic Sea to Bavaria.

Among the thousands executed at Ravensbrück were four members of the British World War II organization Special Operations Executive (SOE): Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, Lilian Rolfe and Violette Szabo. Other victims included the Roman Catholic nun Élise Rivet, Elisabeth de Rothschild (the only member of the Rothschild family to die in the Holocaust), Russian Orthodox nun St. Maria Skobtsova, the 25-year-old French Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay, Milena Jesenská, lover of Franz Kafka, and Olga Benário, wife of the Brazilian Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes. The largest single group of women executed at the camp were 200 young Polish members of the Home Army.

Among the survivors of Ravensbrück was author Corrie ten Boom, arrested with her family for harbouring Jews in their home in Haarlem, the Netherlands. She documented her ordeal alongside her sister Betsie ten Boom in her book The Hiding Place, which was eventually produced as a motion picture. Polish Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, an art historian and author of Michelangelo in Ravensbrück, was imprisoned there from 1943 until 1945. SOE agents who survived were Yvonne Baseden and Eileen Nearne, who was a prisoner in 1944 before being transferred to another work camp and escaping. Englishwoman Mary Lindell and American Virginia d'Albert-Lake, both leaders of escape and evasion lines in France, survived.

Ravensbrück survivors who wrote memoirs about their experiences include Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, as well as Germaine Tillion, a Ravensbrück survivor from France who published her own eyewitness account of the camp in 1975.

In 2005, Ravensbrück survivor Judith Sherman published a book of prose and poetry titled Say the Name. Sherman recounts of her childhood home in Kurima, Czechoslovakia, and of several deportations, hiding in homes and in the forest, undergoing torture, and witnessing murder in Ravensbrück before her final liberation. Approximately 500 women from Ravensbrück were transferred to Dachau, where they were assigned as labourers to the Agfa-Commando; the women assembled ignition timing devices for bombs, artillery ammunition, and V-1 and V-2 rockets.

A male political prisoner, Gustav Noske, stayed in Ravensbrück concentration camp after his arrest by the Gestapo in 1944. Later Noske was freed by advancing Allied troops from a Gestapo prison in Berlin.

Camp commandants included SS-Standartenführer Günther Tamaschke from May 1939 to August 1939, SS-Hauptsturmführer Max Koegel from January 1940 till August 1942, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Suhren from August 1942 until the camp's liberation at the end of April 1945.

Besides the male Nazi administrators, the camp staff included over 150 female SS guards assigned to oversee the prisoners at some point during the camp's operational period. Ravensbrück also served as a training camp for over 4,000 female overseers. The technical term for a female guard in a Nazi camp was an Aufseherin. The women either stayed in the camp or eventually served in other camps.

Some of these women went on to serve as chief wardresses in other camps. Several dozen block overseers (Blockführerinnen), accompanied by dogs, SS men and whips oversaw the prisoners in their living quarters in Ravensbrück, at roll call and during food distribution. At any single time, a report overseer (Rapportführerin) handled the roll calls and general discipline of the internees. Rosel Laurenzen originally served as head of the labour pool at the camp (Arbeitdienstführerin) along with her assistant Gertrud Schoeber. In 1944 Greta Bösel took over this command. Other high ranking SS women included Christel Jankowsky, Ilse Goeritz, Margot Dreschel and Elisabeth Kammer. Head wardress at the Uckermark death complex of Ravensbrück was Ruth Neudeck (January 1945 - March 1945). Regular Aufseherinnen were not usually granted access to the internees' compound unless they supervised inside work details. Most of the 'SS' women met their prisoner work gangs at the gate each morning and returned them later in the day. The treatment by the SS women in Ravensbrück was normally brutal. Elfriede Muller, an SS Aufseherin in the camp was so harsh that the prisoners nicknamed her "The Beast of Ravensbrück". Other guards in the camp included Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner, Luise Danz, Irma Grese, and Margarethe de Hueber.

The female chief overseers ( Lagerfuehrerinnen and Oberaufseherinnen) in Ravensbrück were:

1. May 1939 - March 1942: Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld and her assistant Emma Zimmer

2. March-October 1942: Oberaufseherin Maria Mandel and assistant Margarete Gallinat

3. October 1942 - August 1943 Johanna Langefeld who returned from Auschwitz

4. August 1943 - September 1944 Chef Oberaufseherin Anna Klein (née Plaubel), with deputy wardress Dorothea Binz

5. September 1944 - April 1945 Chef Oberaufseherin Luise Brunner, Lagerfuehrerin Lotte Toberentz (January 1945 - April), with deputy wardress (Stellvertrende Oberaufseherin) Dorothea Binz; in 1945 nurse Vera Salvequart used to poison the sick to avoid having to carry them to the gas chambers

In 1973, the United States government extradited Hermine Braunsteiner for trial in Germany for war crimes. In 2006, the United States government expelled Elfriede Rinkel, an 84-year-old woman who had resided in San Francisco since 1959. It was discovered that she had been a guard at Ravensbrück from 1944 to 1945.

When a new prisoner arrived at Ravensbrück she was required to wear a colour-coded triangle (a winkel) that identified her by category, with a letter sewn within the triangle indicating the prisoner's nationality. For example, Polish women wore red triangles, denoting a political prisoner, with a letter "P" (by 1942, Polish women became the largest national component at the camp). Soviet prisoners of war, and German and Austrian Communists wore red triangles; common criminals wore green triangles; and Jehovah's Witnesses were labelled with lavender triangles. Prostitutes, Romani, homosexuals, and women who refused to marry were lumped together, with black triangles. Jewish women wore yellow triangles but sometimes, unlike the other prisoners, they wore a second triangle for the other categories. For example, quite often it was for rassenschande ("racial pollution").

Some detainees had their hair shaved, such as those from Czechoslovakia and Poland, but other transports did not. In 1943, for instance, a group of Norwegian women came to the camp (Norwegians/Scandinavians were ranked by the Nazis as the purest of all Aryans). None of them had their hair shaved.

Between 1942 and 1943, almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp were sent to Auschwitz in several transports, following Nazi policy to make Germany Judenrein (cleansed of Jews). Based on the Nazis' incomplete transport list Zugangsliste, documenting 25,028 names of women sent by Nazis to the camp, it is estimated that the Ravensbrück prisoner population's ethnic structure comprised: Poles 24.9%, Germans 19.9%, Jews 15.1%, Soviets 15.0%, French 7.3%, Romani 5.4%, other 12.4%. The Gestapo further categorised the inmates as: political 83.54%, anti-social 12.35%, criminal 2.02%, Jehovah's Witnesses 1.11%, rassenschande (racial defilement) 0.78%, other 0.20%. The list is one of the most important documents, preserved in the last moments of the camp operation by members of the Polish underground girl guides unit " Mury" (The Walls). The rest of the camp documents were burned by escaping SS overseers in pits or in the crematorium.

One form of resistance was the secret education programmes organised by prisoners for their fellow inmates. All national groups had some sort of programme. The most extensive were among Polish women, wherein various high school-level classes were taught by experienced teachers.

In 1939 and 1940, camp living conditions were acceptable: laundry and bed linen were changed regularly and the food was adequate, although in the first winter of 1939/40, limitations began to be noticeable. The German Communist, Margarete Buber-Neumann, came to Ravensbrück as an inmate after nearly two years in a Russian Soviet Gulag. She described her first impressions of Ravensbrück in comparison to the Soviet camp in Karaganda:

I looked across the great square, and could not believe my eyes. It was surrounded by manicured lawns, covered by flower beds on which bloomed bright red flowers. A wide street, which led to a large open area, was flanked by two rows of wooden barracks, on both sides stood rows of young trees and along the roadside ran straight flower beds as far as the eye could see. The square and the streets seemed freshly raked. To the left towards the watchtower, I saw a white wooden barrack and beside it a large cage, the size of a birdhouse the like you see at a zoo. Within it paraded peacocks ( stolzierten) and on a climbing tree dangled monkeys and a parrot which always screamed the same word, "Mama". I wondered, "this is a concentration camp"?

Buber-Nuemann wrote how her first meal in Ravensbrück exceeded her expectations, when she was served sweet porridge with dried fruit ( backobst), plus a generous portion of bread, margarine, and sausage.

Conditions quickly deteriorated. Elsie Maréchal, a young Belgian who worked with the Comet Line, was a prisoner at Ravensbrück from 1943 to 1945. She described the conditions:

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.

Nazi medical experiments

Starting in the summer of 1942, medical experiments were conducted without consent on 86 women; 74 of them were Polish inmates. Two types of experiments were conducted on the Polish political prisoners. The first type tested the efficacy of sulfonamide drugs. These experiments involved deliberate cutting into and infecting of leg bones and muscles with virulent bacteria, cutting nerves, introducing substances like pieces of wood or glass into tissues, and fracturing bones.

The second set of experiments studied bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, and the possibility of transplanting bones from one person to another. Out of the 74 Polish victims, called Kaninchen, Króliki, Lapins, or Rabbits by the experimenters, five died as a result of the experiments, six with unhealed wounds were executed, and (with assistance from other inmates) the rest survived with permanent physical damage. Four such survivors- Jadwiga Dzido, Maria Broel-Plater, Władysława Karolewska, and Maria Kuśmierczuk-testified against Nazi doctors at the Doctors' Trial in 1946.

Between 120 and 140 Romani women were sterilised in the camp in January 1945. All had been deceived into signing the consent form, having been told by the camp overseers that the German authorities would release them if they complied.

Forced labor

All inmates were required to do heavy labor ranging from strenuous outdoor jobs to building the V-2 rocket parts for Siemens. The SS also built several factories near Ravensbrück for the production of textiles and electrical components.

The women forced to work at Ravensbrück concentration camp's industries used their skills in sewing and their access to the factory to make soldiers' socks. They purposely adjusted the machines to make the fabric thin at the heel and the toes, causing the socks to wear prematurely at those places when the German soldiers marched. This gave the soldiers sore feet.

For the women in the camp, it was important to retain some of their dignity and sense of humanity. Therefore, they made necklaces, bracelets, and other personal items, like small dolls and books, as keepsakes. These personal effects were of great importance to the women and many of them risked their lives to keep these possessions. Some of these types of effects can be seen at the exhibition "Voices from Ravensbrück" (hosted by Lund University Library, Sweden).

The bodies of those killed in the camp were cremated in the nearby Fürstenberg crematorium until 1943, when SS authorities constructed a crematorium at a site near the camp prison.

In January 1945 the SS also transformed a hut near the crematorium into a gas chamber where the Germans gassed several thousand prisoners before the camp's liberation in April 1945; in particular they killed some 3600 prisoners from the Uckermark police camp for "deviant" girls and women, which was taken under the control of the Ravensbrück SS at the start of 1945.

In January 1945, prior to the liberation of the remaining camp survivors, an estimated 45,000 female prisoners and over 5,000 male prisoners remained at Ravensbrück, including children and those transported from satellite camps only for gassing, which was being performed in haste.

With the Soviet Red Army's rapid approach in the spring of 1945, the SS leadership decided to remove as many prisoners as they could, in order to avoid leaving live witnesses behind who could testify as to what had occurred in the camp. At the end of March, the SS ordered all physically capable women to form a column and exit the camp in the direction of northern Mecklenburg, forcing over 24,500 prisoners on a death march. Some 2,500 ethnic German prisoners remaining were released, and 500 women were handed over to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross shortly after the evacuation. On 30 April 1945, fewer than 3,500 malnourished and sickly prisoners were discovered alive at the camp when it was liberated by the Red Army. The survivors of the death march were liberated in the following hours by a Soviet scout unit.

Ravensbrück trials

The SS guards, female Aufseherinnen guards and former prisoner-functionaries with administrative positions at the camp were arrested at the end of the war by the Allies and tried at the Hamburg Ravensbrück trials from 1946 to 1948. 16 of the accused were found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.

On the site of the former concentration camp there is a memorial today. In 1954, the sculptor Will Lammert was commissioned to design the memorial site between the crematorium, the camp wall, and Schwedtsee Lake. Up to his death in 1957, the artist created a large number of sculpted models of women.

For the inaugural opening of the National Memorial site a scaled-up version of Tragende ( Woman with Burden) was created (under the supervision of Fritz Cremer) and exhibited. This central symbolic figure, also known as the " of Ravensbrück", stands atop a stele on the peninsula in Lake Schwedtsee. The Zwei Stehende ( Two Women Standing) monument also has its origins in Lammert's models. Other statues, which were also originally created for Ravensbrück, have been on display at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Berlin Mitte since 1985, in commemoration of the Jewish victims of fascism.

Since 1984, the former SS headquarters have housed the Museum des antifaschistischen Widerstandskampfes (Museum of Anti-fascist Resistance). After the withdrawal from Germany of the Soviet Army, which up to 1993 had been using parts of the former camp for military purposes, it became possible to incorporate more areas of the camp into the memorial site.

Today, the former accommodation blocks for the female guards are a youth hostel and youth meeting centre. In the course of reorganisation, which took place in the early 1990s, the Museum des antifaschistischen Widerstandskampfes was replaced by two new permanent exhibitions: "Women of Ravensbrück", which displays the biographies of 27 former prisoners, and "Ravensbrück. Topography and History of the Women's Concentration Camp", which provides information about the origins of the camp, describes daily life in the camp, and explains the principle of Vernichtung durch Arbeit (extermination through work). Since 2004 there has also been an exhibition about the female guards at the Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp, housed in another of their former accommodation blocks. Additionally, temporary exhibitions of special interest are held regularly at the memorial.

On 16 and 17 April 2005, a ceremony was held to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation. Among those invited were approximately 600 survivors from all over the world, mostly eastern Europe. At the same time a new, permanent outdoor exhibition was opened, on the theme of the train transports to Ravensbrück. Its central exhibit is a refurbished goods wagon. The exhibition's information boards describe the origins of the transports and how they developed over time, and explain the different types of trains, where they arrived, and the part played by the local residents. It is probably the only exhibition so far at a German memorial which is dedicated solely to the subject of the transports to the camp.

1. ^ Saidel 2006, p. 24 "Between the camp's initiation of 18 May 1939 and the day of liberation, an estimated 117,000 of the 132,000 women who passed through the camp had been murdered".

2. "History and Overview of Ravensbruck," ^ Jewish Virtual Library, [1], accessed 31 Jan 2020

3. ^ Helm, Sarah (2015-03-14). "The hidden horrors of Ravensbrück, a concentration camp for women". The Toronto Star. ISSN 0319-0781.

4. ^ Michael Berenbaum (2015), Ravensbrück, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 26 January 2015.

5. ^ La Guardia Gluck, Gemma (2007). Fiorello's Sister: La Guardia's Gluck's Story (New Expanded, originally published as My Story (1961) ed.). Syracuse University Press.

6. ^ Germaine Tillion, Ravensbrück: An eyewitness account of a women's concentration camp. Transl. by Gerald Satterwhite. Anchor Press, 1975. 256 pages. OCLC 694486

7. Sherman, Judith, & Carrasco, Davíd. (2005). ^ Say the Name. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 9780826334329

8. ^ Biografie Gustav Noske (German)". Deutsches Historisches Museum. Retrieved 12 June 2013.

9. ^ Richard A. Serrano (September 21, 2006). "Sweet lady surprise: Nazi prison-guard past". Los Angeles Times.

10. Shute, Joe (14 Mar 2013), "The Secrets of the Second World War Comet Line are revealed," ^ The Telegraph, [2], accessed 12 Oct 2019

11. ^ Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). Kl: a history of the Nazi concentration camps (Kindle ed. by Farrar, Straus and Giroux ed.). New York City: Macmillan. p. 568. ISBN 978-142994372-7.

12. ^ Margarete Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators. Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler, Pimlico, 2008. ISBN 9781845951023. "SS had no fabric for the production of new prison clothing. Instead they drove truckloads of coats, dresses, underwear and shoes that had once belonged to those gassed in the east, to Ravensbrück. / ... / The clothes of the people were sorted, and at first crosses were cut out, and fabric of another colour sewn underneath. The prisoners walked around like sheep marked for slaughter. The crosses would impede escape. Later they spared themselves this cumbersome procedure and painted with oil paint broad, white crosses on the coats." (translated from the Swedish edition: Margarete Buber-Neumann Fånge hos Hitler och Stalin, Stockholm, Natur & Kultur, 1948. p. 176.)

13. ^ Jewish Virtual Library (2014). "Ravensbrück Concentration Camp: History & Overview". Cyber encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture. Sources: Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies; Holocaust. Kogon, Eugen. The Theory And Practice Of Hell. NY: Berkley Publishing Group, 1998; Encyclopædia Britannica; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust; Simon Wiesenthal Center Online.

14. ^ Jewish Virtual Library (2014). "Ravensbrück Trial (1946-1947)". Cyber encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture.

Brown, Daniel Patrick. The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Concentration Camp System, ISBN 0-7643-1444-0. This is where the information on female guards with the exceptions of Suze Arts and Elisabeth Lupka was obtained from.

Helm, Sarah (2015). If This Is A Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women. London: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-1-4087-0107-2.

Marlies Lammert: Will Lammert - Ravensbrück, Akademie der Künste, Berlin 1968. In German

Sherman, Judith, & Carrasco, Davíd. (2005). Say the Name. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 9780826334329

Saidel, Rochelle G. (2006). The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-19864-0.

Karolin Steinke: Trains to Ravensbrück. Transports by the Reichsbahn 1939-1945, Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-940938-27-5.

Delia Müller, Madlen Lepschies: Tage der Angst und der Hoffnung. Erinnerungen an die Todesmärsche aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück Ende April 1945. Dr. Hildegard Hansche Stiftung Berlin.. ISBN 3-910159-49-4.

Snyder, Timothy D. (2015). Black Earth. The Holocaust As History and Warning. ISBN 978-1-101-90346-9.

See Carola Sachse: Jewish forced labor and non-Jewish women and men at Siemens from 1940 to 1945, in: International Scientific Correspondence, No. 1/1991, pp. 12-24; Karl-Heinz Roth: forced labor in the Siemens Group (1938-1945). Facts, controversies, problems, in: Hermann Kaienburg (ed.): concentration camps and the German Economy 1939-1945 (Social studies, H. 34), Opladen 1996, pp. 149-168; Wilfried Feldenkirchen: 1918-1945 Siemens, Munich 1995, Ulrike fire, Claus Füllberg-Stolberg, Sylvia Kempe: work at Ravensbrück concentration camp, in: Women in concentration camps. Bergen-Belsen. Ravensbrück, Bremen, 1994, pp. 55-69; Ursula Krause-Schmitt: The path to the Siemens stock led past the crematorium, in: Information. German Resistance Study Group, Frankfurt / Main, 18 Jg, No. 37/38, Nov. 1993, pp. 38-46; Sigrid Jacobeit: working at Siemens in Ravensbrück, in: Dietrich Eichholz (eds) War and economy. Studies on German economic history 1939-1945, Berlin 1999.

Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19, No. 968, Communication on the creation of the barracks for the Siemens & Halske, the planned production and the planned expansion for 2,500 prisoners "after direct discussions with this company": Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS ( WVHA), Oswald Pohl, secretly, to Reichsführer SS (RFSS), Heinrich Himmler, dated 20.10.1942.

Karl-Heinz Roth: forced labor in the Siemens Group, with a summary table, page 157 See also Ursula Krause-Schmitt: "The road to Siemens stock led past the crematorium," pp. 36f, where, according to the catalogs of the International Tracing Service Arolsen and Martin Weinmann (eds.). The Nazi camp system, Frankfurt / Main 1990 and Feldkirchen: Siemens 1918-1945, pp. 198-214, and in particular the associated annotations 91-187.

Wanda Kiedrzy'nska, in: National Library of Poland, Warsaw, Manuscript Division, Sygn. akc 12013/1 and archive of the memorial I/6-7-139 RA: see also: Woman Ravensbruck concentration camp. An overall presentation, State Justice Administration in Ludwigsburg, IV ART 409-Z 39/59, April 1972, pp. 129ff.

Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2012). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945. in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35599-7.

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Ravensbrück ( pronounced [ʁaːvənsˈbʁʏk]) was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel).

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“Ravensbruck was a concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany.”

Source #1

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“The camp memorial’s estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 20,000 of the total were Jewish. More than 80 percent were political prisoners.”

Source #1

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Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
Holocaust Encyclopedia _ “Ravensbrück”

Publish date: Unknown
Access date: 11/16/20

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Main Camp

The Ravensbrück concentration camp was the largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich. In the concentration camp system, Ravensbrück was second in size only to the women's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the closure of the Lichtenburg camp in 1939, Ravensbrück was also the only main concentration camp, as opposed to subcamp, designated almost exclusively for women.

German authorities began construction of the camp in November 1938, at a site near the village of Ravensbrück in northern Germany. It was about 50 miles north of Berlin. In April 1941, the SS authorities established a small men's camp adjacent to the main camp.

In November 1938, SS authorities transported about 500 male prisoners from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to the proposed site to construct the Ravensbrück camp.

Prisoners in the Camp

The first prisoners interned at Ravensbrück were approximately 900 women whom the SS had transferred from the Lichtenburg women's concentration camp in Saxony in May 1939. By the end of 1942, the female inmate population of Ravensbrück had grown to about 10,000. In January 1945, the camp had more than 50,000 prisoners, mostly women.

The inmates came from over 30 countries. The greatest numbers came from Poland (36%), Soviet Union (21%), the German Reich (18%, includes Austria), Hungary (8%), France (6%), Czechoslovakia (3%), the Benelux countries (2%), and Yugoslavia (2%).

SS authorities interned various types of prisoners in Ravensbrück, including

political prisoners

"asocials"-among the prisoners deemed to fit this category were many Roma (Gypsies)

Jews

Jehovah's Witnesses

"criminals"

"work-shy"

"race defilers"

The numbers of prisoners in each of the above groupings varied greatly throughout the camp's existence.

Camp Administration

The camp leadership was divided into five departments: the commandant's office, political department, "protective custody" camp, administration and camp doctor. SS Colonel Günther Tamaschke served as the commandant of Ravensbrück from December 1938 until April 31, 1939. SS Captain Max Koegel officially replaced Tamaschke as camp commandant on January 1, 1940. On August 20, 1942, SS Captain Fritz Suhren took over as camp commandant and held the position until the end of April 1945.

Aside from the male SS administrators, the camp staff included only female guards assigned to oversee the prisoners. These female guards were not members of the SS, but were members of the so-called "female civilian employees of the SS" ( weiblichen SS-Gefolges). Beginning in 1942, Ravensbrück also served as one of the main training camps for female SS guards.

Conditions in the Camp and Mistreatment of Prisoners

The main camp contained 18 barracks. Two of these barracks served as a prisoners' sickbay, two served as warehouses, one served as a penal block, and one functioned as the camp prison until 1939 when a separate prison was built. The remaining 12 barracks served as the prisoners' housing, in which prisoners slept in three-tiered wooden bunks. Each barrack had one washroom and toilets, but the sanitary conditions were poor and greatly deteriorated after 1943. Food rations for prisoners were meager at the outset, and the amount and quality of food the camp authorities allotted each prisoner decreased further after 1941. By January 1945 the barracks were horribly overcrowded. This overcrowding, aggravated by abominable sanitary conditions, resulted in a typhus epidemic that spread throughout the camp.

Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to "selections" in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them. At first, "selected" prisoners were shot. Beginning in 1942, in accordance with "Operation 14f 13," the SS transferred them to the sanitarium at Bernburg, which, equipped with gas chambers, had served as a killing center for people with physical and intellectual disabilities within the framework of the so-called "Euthanasia" Program of the Nazi regime. The SS sent around 1,600 female prisoners and 300 male prisoners to their deaths at Bernberg in the spring of 1942; around half of these prisoners were Jewish, at least 25 were Roma (Gypsies), and at least 13 were Jehovah's Witnesses.

Camp authorities initiated a second round of killings at such "euthanasia" killing centers later in 1942, continuing until 1944. During this phase, around sixty transports left Ravensbrück for the "euthanasia" killing center at Hartheim, near Linz, Austria with between 60 and 1,000 prisoners each. The SS staff also murdered prisoners in the camp infirmary by lethal injection or by transferring them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. In early 1945, the SS constructed a gas chamber in Ravensbrück near the camp crematorium. The Germans gassed between 5,000 and 6,000 prisoners at Ravensbrück before Soviet troops liberated the camp in April 1945.

Starting in the summer of 1942, SS medical doctors subjected prisoners at Ravensbrück to unethical medical experiments. SS doctors experimented with treating wounds with various chemical substances (such as sulfanilamide) to prevent infections. They also tested various methods of setting and transplanting bones; such experiments included amputations. The SS selected nearly 80 women, mostly Polish, for these experiments. Many of the women died as a result. The survivors often suffered permanent physical damage. SS doctors also carried out sterilization experiments on women and children, many of them Roma (Gypsies), in an attempt to develop an efficient method of sterilization.

In 1942 the SS began opening brothels in some of the concentration camps. Camp authorities sought to exploit the women forced to work in these brothels to reward male prisoners for meeting or surpassing production quotas. Most of the women forced to work in the brothels were prisoners from the Ravensbrück camp; their numbers are estimated at least 100. The camp authorities forced some prisoners to work in the brothel, while other prisoners "volunteered" after the camp authorities promised them preferential treatment or release from the concentration camp after six months. None of the women were released early from the camp as promised.

Subcamps

The SS required Ravensbrück prisoners to perform forced labor, primarily in agricultural projects and local industry. By 1944, Germany increasingly relied on forced labor for the production of armaments. Ravensbrück became the administrative center of a system of over 40 subcamps with over 70,000 predominantly female prisoners.

These subcamps, many of which were established adjacent to armaments factories, were located throughout the so-called Greater German Reich, from Austria in the south to the Baltic Sea in the north. Several subcamps also provided prisoner labor for construction projects or clearing rubble in cities damaged by Allied air attacks. The SS also built several factories near Ravensbrück for the production of textiles and electrical components.

The largest subcamps, which held over 1,000 prisoners, included Rechlin/Retzow, Malchow, Grüneberg, Neubrandenburg, Karlshagen I, Barth, Leipzig-Schönefeld, Magdeburg, Altenburg and Neustadt-Glewe.

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The Ravensbrück concentration camp was the largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich. In the concentration camp system, Ravensbrück was second in size only to the women's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the closure of the Lichtenburg camp in 1939, Ravensbrück was also the only main concentration camp, as opposed to subcamp, designated almost exclusively for women.

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“The Ravensbrück concentration camp was the largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich. In the concentration camp system, Ravensbrück was second in size only to the women's camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the closure of the Lichtenburg camp in 1939, Ravensbrück was also the only main concentration camp, as opposed to subcamp, designated almost exclusively for women.”

Source #2

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Author: Michael Berenbaum
Encyclopedia Britannica _ “Ravensbrück”

Publish date: 12/20/18
Access date: 11/18/20

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Ravensbrück, Nazi German concentration camp for women ( Frauenlager) located in a swamp near the village of Ravensbrück, 50 miles (80 km) north of Berlin. Ravensbrück served as a training base for some 3,500 female SS (Nazi paramilitary corps) supervisors who staffed it and other concentration camps. There were 34 satellite camps attached to Ravensbrück, many of them at military industrial plants.

Ravensbrück concentration camp German Federal Archives (Bundesarchive), Bild 183-1985-0417-15; photograph, o.Ang.

Set up in 1938, it was designed to accommodate 6,000 inmates, but by the end of World War II it housed more than 36,000. About 50,000 women died at Ravensbrück from disease, starvation, overwork, and despair. Some inmates were used in medical experiments. For example, in 1942 and 1943 selected inmates were infected with gas gangrene or other bacteria and given a series of "cures" that often resulted in death or crippling. In 1944 inmates were subjected to experimental bone transplants and amputations.

Killing techniques at Ravensbrück evolved over time. At first, prisoners were shot in the back. Later, women were transported to a T4 Program killing centre or to Auschwitz for gassing. Prisoners at Ravensbrück were also killed by lethal injection and cremated in the nearby resort town of Fürstenberg. In late January or early February 1945, some 2,200 women were killed in gas chambers constructed next to Fürstenberg's crematorium.

In early April 1945, the camp was evacuated and about 24,500 prisoners began a death march. As Allied troops approached, German prisoners were set free, and 500 women were handed over to the Red Cross. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army on April 29-30. Some 3,500 female prisoners were still alive.

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Michael Berenbaum

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Nazi Party, political party of the mass movement known as National Socialism. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the party came to power in Germany in 1933 and governed by totalitarian methods until 1945....

SS, the black-uniformed elite corps and self-described "political soldiers" of the Nazi Party. Founded by Adolf Hitler in April 1925 as a small personal bodyguard, the SS grew with the success of the Nazi movement and, gathering immense police and military powers, became virtually...

Concentration camp, internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment, usually by executive decree or military order. Persons are placed in such camps often on the basis of identification with a particular ethnic or political...

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Ravensbrück | concentration camp, Germany

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Ravensbrück, Nazi German concentration camp for women (Frauenlager) located in a swamp near the village of Ravensbrück, 50 miles (80 km) north of Berlin. Ravensbrück served as a training base for some 3,500 female SS (Nazi paramilitary corps) supervisors who staffed it and other concentration

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“About 50,000 women died at Ravensbrück from disease, starvation, overwork, and despair. Some inmates were used in medical experiments.”

Source #3

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ALL SHOULD BE IN YOUR NOTECARDS COLUMN

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rough draft WHERE IS IT-UPLOAD HERE FROM YOUR DESKTOP

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rough draft WHERE IS IT-UPLOAD HERE FROM YOUR DESKTOP

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Works Cited PAGE (all of sources are on this page) see tab 

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Works Cited PAGE (all of sources are on this page) see tab 

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video                               flipgrid.com

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video                               flipgrid.com

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RAVENABRÜCK INMATES WAITING RELEASE IN 1945.

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RAVENABRÜCK INMATES WAITING RELEASE IN 1945.

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Photograph documenting medical experiments on a Polish prisoner in Ravensbrück

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Photograph documenting medical experiments on a Polish prisoner in Ravensbrück

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LINK SYMBOL BELOW BETWEEN ARROW AND GOOGLE SEARCH SYMBOL-

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Author: Mary McGill
Vice _ “The forgotten Horror of Ravensbruck, the Nazi Concentration Camp for Women”

Publish date: 12/01/16
Access date: 11/18/20

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Ravensbrück inmates waiting release in 1945. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

**Read more: Can't Shake It Off: How Taylor Swift Became a *Nazi* Idol**

The Nazis created a system whereby you were encouraged to be the most horrific human being imaginable.

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The Forgotten Horror of Ravensbrück, the Nazi Concentration Camp for Women

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Ravensbrück inmates waiting release in 1945. Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images **Read more: Can't Shake It Off: How Taylor Swift Became a *Nazi* Idol** The Nazis created a system whereby you were encouraged to be the most horrific human being imaginable.

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Ravensbruck located in northern Germany, 56 miles north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp’s construction began in November 1938 by the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler, just exclusively for female inmates.

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Ravensbruck located in northern Germany, 56 miles north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp’s construction began in November 1938 by the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler, just exclusively for female inmates.

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Ravensbruck was intended exclusively to hold female inmates, especially female political prisoners. Around 130,000 to 132,000 prisoners were hold in Ravensbrück.

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Ravensbruck had 3 commandants throughout periods. The first one was Gunther Tamaschke from May 1939 to August 1939. Max Koegel from January 1940 to August 1942. Fritz Suhren from August 1942 to April 1945.

Pharaphrase #3
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Ravensbruck was intended exclusively to hold female inmates, especially female political prisoners. Around 130,000 to 132,000 prisoners were hold in Ravensbrück.

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Aside from the male administrators, Ravensbrucks staff included only female guards, they were not members of the SS, but were members of the “female civilian employees of the SS”. Ravensbruck also served as one of the main training camps for female SS guards.

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Ravensbruck had 3 commandants throughout periods. The first one was Gunther Tamaschke from May 1939 to August 1939. Max Koegel from January 1940 to August 1942. Fritz Suhren from August 1942 to April 1945.

Pharaphrase #3
Source #1

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Aside from the male administrators, Ravensbrucks staff included only female guards, they were not members of the SS, but were members of the “female civilian employees of the SS”. Ravensbruck also served as one of the main training camps for female SS guards.

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Source #2

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Conditions in the Camp and Mistreatment            2-2

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Conditions in the Camp and Mistreatment            2-2

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Ravensbruck was a women’s concentration camp after the Lichtenburg women’s concentration camp. Prisoners slept in three-tiered wooden bunks. The sanitary conditions of barracks were poor. By January 1945 the barracks were horribly overcrowded. This overcrowding, aggravated by abominable sanitary conditions, resulted in a typhus epidemic that spread throughout the camp. The amount of food and quality decreased over time. Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to "selections" in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them.

Paraphrase card #5
Source #2

# data[].attributes.headline
Conditions in the Camp and Mistreatment            2-2

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Conditions in the Camp and Mistreatment            2-2

# data[].attributes.body
Ravensbruck was a women’s concentration camp after the Lichtenburg women’s concentration camp. Prisoners slept in three-tiered wooden bunks. The sanitary conditions of barracks were poor. By January 1945 the barracks were horribly overcrowded. This overcrowding, aggravated by abominable sanitary conditions, resulted in a typhus epidemic that spread throughout the camp. The amount of food and quality decreased over time. Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to "selections" in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them.

Paraphrase card #5
Source #2

# data[].attributes.body
In Ravensbrück, killing techniques evolved over time. At first, prisoners were shot in the back. Later, women were transported to a T4 Program centre or to Auschwitz for gassing. Prisoners at Ravensbrück were also killed by lethal injection and cremated in the nearby resort town of Fürstenberg. In late 01/1945 or early 02/1945, around 2,200 women were killed bin gas chambers constructed next to Fürstenberg’s crematorium.

Paraphrase card #6
Source #3

# data[].attributes.body
In the Third Reich, women not just being killed by abuse physically, shooting, gassing women, in Ravensbruck prisoners could get psychological abuse until dead. The administrators of the camp were Nazi female guards, known as Aufseherinnen, got trained to abuse prisoners. In early April 1945, the camp was evacuated and about 24,500 prisoners began a death match. About 50,000 women died at Ravensbrück from disease, starvation, overwork, and despair. In 1942 and 1943 selected inmates were infected with gas gangrene or other bacteria and given a series of “cures” that often resulted in death or crippling. In 1944 inmates were subjected to experimental bone transplants and amputations.

Paraphrase card #7
Source #3

# data[].attributes.body
In Ravensbrück, killing techniques evolved over time. At first, prisoners were shot in the back. Later, women were transported to a T4 Program centre or to Auschwitz for gassing. Prisoners at Ravensbrück were also killed by lethal injection and cremated in the nearby resort town of Fürstenberg. In late 01/1945 or early 02/1945, around 2,200 women were killed bin gas chambers constructed next to Fürstenberg’s crematorium.

Paraphrase card #6
Source #3

# data[].attributes.body
In the Third Reich, women not just being killed by abuse physically, shooting, gassing women, in Ravensbruck prisoners could get psychological abuse until dead. The administrators of the camp were Nazi female guards, known as Aufseherinnen, got trained to abuse prisoners. In early April 1945, the camp was evacuated and about 24,500 prisoners began a death match. About 50,000 women died at Ravensbrück from disease, starvation, overwork, and despair. In 1942 and 1943 selected inmates were infected with gas gangrene or other bacteria and given a series of “cures” that often resulted in death or crippling. In 1944 inmates were subjected to experimental bone transplants and amputations.

Paraphrase card #7
Source #3

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Construction of Ravensbruck began in November 1938 by the the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler. And was liberated by the Soviet army on April 1945. Some 3,500 female prisoners were still alive at the time.

Summary #1
Source #1

# data[].attributes.body
Construction of Ravensbruck began in November 1938 by the the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler. And was liberated by the Soviet army on April 1945. Some 3,500 female prisoners were still alive at the time.

Summary #1
Source #1

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Ravensbruck concentration camp located in  northern Germany, 56 miles north of Berlin. Ravensbruck was the largest concentration camp for women in the German Reich. After the Lichtenburg camp,  Ravensbruck was the only main camp designated almost exclusively for women.

Summary #2
Source #1

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Prisoners in Ravensbruck were almost women. Mostly were female political prisoners, 48,500 Polish; 28,000 Soviet Union; 20,000 plus Jewish; and more. Ravensbruck had 130,000 to 132,000 inmates. Number of prisoners were killed is unknown, 30,000 to 90,000 died or were killed.

Summary #3
Source #1

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Ravensbruck had 3 commandants throughout the times. The first was Gunther Tamaschke, from 5/1939 to 8/1939. The second one was Max Koegel from 1/1940 to 8/1942/ And the last was Fritz Suhren, from 8/1942 to 4/1945.

Summary #4
Source #1

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The camp leadership was divided into 5 departments. Aside from the male SS administrators, the camp staff also have only female guards, called Aufseherinnen. Those female guards were not SS members. They got trained to psychological abuse prisoners, other than just physical abuse.

Summary #5
Source #2

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The conditions of the camp decreased as prisoners got crowned overtime. Conditions were horribly poor, from barracks, bunks, to washrooms, and toilets. Amount and quality of food decreased further after 1941. Prisoners got mistreatment.

Summary #6
Source #2

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Ravensbruck was cruel just like other camps. They had many ways of killing prisoners, and its envolved overtime. From shot in the back to killing by gassing. Prisoners at Ravensbruck were also killed by lethal injection, used at medical experiments, abuse psychologically… About 50,000 women died at Ravensbrück from disease, starvation, overwork, and despair.

Summary #7
Source #3

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Looking good- any questions?

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I have some questions.
Do I suppose to do a powerpoint about the topic?  YES AND SHARE IT ON FLIPGRID.COM
What is the topic outline about? SEE "TOPIC OUTLINE" IN RESEARCH TOPIC TAB IT IS THE ORGANIZTIONAL STEP BEFORE YOU WRITE YOUR 3-5 PAGE RESEARCH PAPER ROUGH DRAFT
Do I have to make a flipgrid video? What is it supposed to be? IT IS A SHARING OF YOUR POWERPOINT / AND RESEARCH PAPER TOPIC
Can I not present in front of the class (if we have to)? I can present to you privately.IT IS SHARED WITH THE CLASS
Do I have to write an essay about the topic? IT IS A 3-5 PAGE RESEARCH PAPER
How does the rough draft have to be? And the final draft also? THEY ARE THE SAME PAPER IN DIFFERENT STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT  THE "FINAL" HAS ALL OF THE CORRECTIONS AND IS READY TO BE TURNED IN FOR THE FINAL GRADE
Thank you, I will ask more if have any questions.

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The Crematorium at Ravensbruck in present day.

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The Crematorium at Ravensbruck in present day.

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https://tracyusd-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/10347808_student_tusd_net/EcxSYZe7U-NDnMPO8vWMiIABZW4XAEyt3OBVXpNGWclbjA?e=eNNwzn