CAMP RAVENSBRÜCK
HIDDEN STORIES OF RAVENSBRÜCK
Now, there were many concentration/labour camps we all hear about that were set up during the holocaust - each with their own horrifying stories about the brutal deaths from gas chambers or the shockingly harsh work conditions. The most famous of these places was Auschwitz. But one camp in particular is left forgotten in the modern world.
This camp was called ‘Ravensbrück’.
Why don’t we remember?
Maybe the fact that the camp was immediately sealed off from the modern world after its liberation meant any news of it that reached the outside world was sparse or rare. Or maybe it was the fact that it was specifically for female prisoners of the Holocaust and people of that time assumed that a woman’s camp was a softer, more merciful place- so didn’t feel it as worth talking about.
This, however, could not be further from the truth. There were over 130,000 prisoners locked away here- each with their own awful stories. There were also no professional photos taken during liberation- unlike camps such as Dachau where the situation was recorded to its full extent by professional photographers accompanying allied troops.
Despite all this, the truths told by survivors are still worth listening to.
“When they came back from the war, many of the women were so traumatized they didn’t want to talk about it”
130,000 Deviants
One thing to note down is that surprisingly, not many of the inmates were actually Jewish- the few remaining records show that only around 26,000 women were actually Jewish.
Some were people who openly protested against Nazi beliefs-supporting ideas such as socialism, making them a threat to Hitler’s government. The rest were people who were shunned from German society- simply because they weren’t the typical feminine German wife. By this I mean prostitutes, lesbians, disabled, or the mentally ill. There was no mercy for women holding onto their children desperately, no mercy for terrified pregnant women. To the Nazi’s, nothing mattered to them other than ridding the German population from these people. All came from different social and religious backgrounds, from all around Europe- but every single one of them was not to be a part of Germany’s future; all were marked as ‘deviants’. All 130,000 of them. They were unimportant and a danger to Hitler’s ideal world. The only solution in his eyes was to remove them from the equation.
“They had very atrocious regimes and were desperately overcrowded"
OVERCROWDING
Upon first opening, Ravensbrück seemed almost a blessing in disguise to the first prisoners. Conditions were relatively good, with perfectly mowed, scenic gardens lined with colourful flowerbeds. However, there was one devastating secret that Heinrich Himmler-the man who ordered the camp to be built- hid from public knowledge. The camp was far too small for the number of prisoners held there- the maximum capacity was 6,000. This may not seem significant to some but it led to some horrifying problems. At one point the camp held about 50,000 prisoners all at once.
It meant that barracks meant to hold a few hundred people at a time were holding a few thousand. Many slept without blankets, on the floor. For every three toilets, there were half a thousand women using them. The sanitary conditions deteriorated so much that it led to a life-threatening typhus epidemic that spread through the camp.
The situation also meant stupidly harsh manual labour. They woke before 4:00am every single day with long shifts to build roads and sew uniforms for prisoners and soldiers. Many collapsed because of starvation and exhaustion due to this. On top of this, prison guards regularly held ‘selections’ in which they chose prisoners who were deemed unfit to work or too unwell and killed them immediately. At first these selected prisoners were shot, until 1942 where they were sent to killing centres in Bernburg- specifically gas chambers. In total between 5,000 to 6,000 prisoners from Ravensbrück were gassed. Women were also killed by SS prison guards through lethal injections when being treated at the camp infirmary.
“Women were forced to undergo abortions even up to eight months."
THE RABBITS OF RAVENSBRÜCK
Possibly the most sadistic of the stories to emerge from these camps were about the prisoners subjected to medical experiments, or rather, medical torture. In an attempt to mimic soldiers’ combat injuries and develop more efficient ways of treating them, camp doctors purposefully cut into healthy tissue, inserting splinters of wood and glass and deadly bacteria into womens’ bodies, trying to treat them with specific drugs. They broke up and dissected bones, muscles and nerves in order to test transplantation from one person to another and the regeneration of nerves. Doctors also practised sterilisation on women who agreed to follow along as long as they would be released from the camp. The experiments were carried out but the women stayed locked up to be tortured further.
Around 80 inmates were subjected to these torturous medical experiments, and eventually became known as the ‘Rabbits of Ravensbrück’. Most of them died from the excruciating pain forced onto them, and those who survived did so with mutilating injuries.
Many women were raped by prison guards, in exchange for a little food and comfort. Prisoners were also forced into unsafe abortions, and endured beatings and whippings by unmerciful female guards.
The Strength of Ravensbrück
When the soviets liberated the camp, they found only 3,500 women barely surviving. In total 15,000 of the 130,000 women survived to tell their stories.
Those who survived told stories about their acts of resistance. They sabotaged soldiers uniforms by sewing them to fall apart, shared stories of hope, ran secret language and history classes to communicate.
They kept their comrades secrets, modifying records, and ran an underground newspaper to spread word of danger, new arrivals, and hopeful messages. They recorded secret information about the SS guards in the hopes they would escape.
Their small displays of defiance against undeserved acts of torture proves the strength of these incredibly brave women. Even in the most dire situations they didn’t lose hope- they fought back.