Ravensbrück (concentration camp) was designed for women. In its scale, it is considered the largest Nazi concentration camp for female prisoners. Over the entire period of its existence, it contained about 130 thousand prisoners. This number is not final, since many were not registered, and part of the documentation was destroyed by SS representatives.
It is also impossible to calculate the death toll in Ravensbrück. Scary figures are called: from 50 to 92 thousand people.
Camp location
Ravensbrück (concentration camp) is located in the north of Germany, 90 kilometers from Berlin. Its name is associated with a nearby village. The literal translation of the German name is “raven bridge”. Today this territory belongs to the city of Furstenberg.
Creature
The Ravensbrück concentration camp began its existence with the decision of Heinrich Himmler in 1938. Work on its construction was carried out by prisoners from other camps. By 1939, he received the first prisoners. They were 867 women who continued its expansion.
Since 1940, enterprises began to appear on the camp:
- textile and leather production;
- electrical concern "Siemens";
- military industrial.
The Ravensbrück concentration camp had many sub-camps, which were located in different settlements.
Prisoners
Initially, representatives of Germany were stationed in the camp, who, through their behavior and lifestyle, “dishonored the nation”. Among the prisoners were active resistance fighters, representatives of the sect, Jehovah's Witnesses, and women who were immoral.
Over the entire period of its existence, Ravensbrück (a concentration camp, photos of which are presented in our material) has seen representatives of many nationalities (more than 40). Among them were Germans, Polish women, gypsies, French women, Jews, Belgians, Romanians and others. Among the prisoners and Soviet prisoners of war.
According to the registration lists of the camp, there were more than 132 thousand women (including children), 20 thousand men.
List of some prisoners:
- Dina Babbitt - Czech artist and sculptor.
- Maya Berezovskaya is a Polish artist.
- Paul Bernard - Frenchwoman, Red Cross Nurse.
- Galina Birenbaum - a Jew from Poland, writer, poet.
- Genevieve de Gaulle-Antonios - Frenchwoman, representative of the Resistance movement, niece of the President of the Fifth Republic in France.
- Juliette Greco - French singer and actress.
- Maria Filomena Dolanská - Czech, teacher and nun.
- Milena Yesenskaya is a Czechoslovak journalist.
- Philippines Rothschild Sereis - Baroness, owner of the famous vineyard Chateau Mouton Rothschild.
- Wanda Yakubovskaya - Polish, film director.
These are just a few of the tens of thousands who have learned what the Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp is.
Camp routine
Immediately upon arrival at the camp, all women underwent the same procedures, regardless of the time of year. They were stripped naked on the street, cut their hair, took all personal belongings, documents. So they waited their turn in the bathhouse, after which they received clothes, rooms, winkels and were distributed among the barracks.
All women were given a striped dress and wooden slippers. In this vestment they walked in any weather. The Ravensbrück concentration camp, stories of which are found in various memoirs, was particularly cruel. Many prisoners were forced to walk barefoot all the time, because of which they got frostbite on their limbs.
The camp used a system of rooms and winkels. The prisoners did not have names; they existed under numbers that were sewn to dresses. Above such an identification code was a triangular sign, which was called a winkel. The category was determined by its color:
- red - member of the Resistance, political prisoner;
- yellow is a Jew;
- green - criminal offender;
- purple - Jehovah's Witness (Protestant);
- black - gypsy, a woman of antisocial behavior.
In the center of the winkel was a letter that indicated nationality.
Every day, women got up at four in the morning, received the half-mug of coffee substitute laid by him and lined up on the street for roll call, which lasted 2-3 hours. Then they went to workplaces for 12-14 hours.
Workers in the afternoon had the opportunity to get a half-hour break and lunch in the form of half a liter of water with potato peelings or rutabaga. For those who worked at night, such a break was not provided.
The evening check was the same as the morning check. After it, the prisoners received 200 grams of bread from flour and sawdust and the same coffee substitute.
Prisoners were allowed to send letters, but no more than once a month and under strict censorship. At the slightest discrepancy, a letter or postcard was not sent to the addressee.
Killing Methods
According to various estimates, between 50 and 92 thousand people were killed in Ravensbrück. The main causes of death were malnutrition, exhausting work, inadequate sanitary and hygienic conditions, and gross bullying.
Once every two weeks, camp staff selected prisoners to be destroyed. First of all, these were those who were not able to work. They were shot in the back of the head. Up to 50 people died daily.
For mass extermination, prisoners were sent to Auschwitz and other similar camps. Later, in 1943, women began to be massacred in the concentration camp. For this, lethal injections and a crematorium were used.
In 1944, Ravensbrück (concentration camp) visited Himmler, who ordered that all old and weak prisoners be disposed of. To this end, “destruction experts” from Auschwitz, Birkenau were invited.
Women were checked at special parades and those who were given pink cards with Latin letters “V.V.” ("Death camp, destroy") was transferred to Ukkermark. There they waited for their death, although according to official documents they were transported to a health center located in Silesia. At first, the owners of pink cards were executed by a bullet in the back of the head, but this process was too slow, so it was decided to build gas chambers. In them, in 2-3 minutes 150 women died immediately.
Medical experiments
The first experiments on prisoners in the camp began on 08/01/1942. It is proved that over the entire period of the existence of Ravensbrück 86 prisoners underwent medical experiments.
The purpose of the first experiments was to identify the effectiveness of new drugs for the treatment of deep lacerations, including gunshot wounds. Women were made on the upper part of the thigh a deep, to the bone, incision and staphylococci was introduced there along with other types of bacteria. This provoked the rapid appearance of gangrene and tetanus.
In order for the wound to be similar to a gunshot, particles of glass, wood, and metal were often added to it. All actions taken, as well as their consequences, were carefully recorded. The slightest changes in the body of prisoners were noted - from the appearance of temperature to death. The results of these studies were presented in the form of a report at the military academy in 1943. The Ravensbrück concentration camp, in which not all the prisoners were tortured, was famous not only for this.
The purpose of the second experiment was to establish the possibility of bone transplantation. To do this, healthy women were broken limbs and cast. To see the process of the experiment, subjects were cut out pieces of living tissue to expose the bones. A healthy limb or shoulder blade was amputated for some women and taken to surgeons in another camp, where they sewed these parts of the body to other people.
This is only part of the experiment. The most cruel experiments were the killing of healthy children by injection and termination of pregnancy in the last trimester with immediate burning of the fetus.
Camp guard
Guenther Tamaschke, Max Kegel, Fritz Zuner were the commandants of the camp at different times. The staff was not only men, but also more than 150 women. About 4 thousand overseers went through the training in it. They, as a rule, were distinguished by excessive cruelty and a penchant for sadism.
Death March
With the retreat of the German troops, evacuation also began in the camp. 04/27/1945 prisoners were driven west. Their number reached more than 20 thousand people, about 3 thousand were abandoned in a concentration camp.
Two days later, the SS guards left the prisoners in the locked barracks of Malhovo, and the next morning the Red Army released them.
Release of prisoners
The date of liberation is considered 04/30/1945, when the forces of the 2nd Belorussian Front were saved. After a couple of days, Ravensbrück (concentration camp), memories of which will not disappear for centuries, was filled with doctors who created a temporary hospital.
Until 1993, Soviet troops used this territory as a place to deploy their units.
War Criminal Trials
The first trials of the concentration camp personnel took place in 1946-1948. Their result was 16 death sentences.
Some SS employees fled to the United States, but even decades later they were calculated and deported to Germany for trial. People who tracked down the Nazis for their crimes as part of the SS were called "Nazi hunters."
The historical memory of the prisoners of the camp
In 1959, the GDR government ordered that the Ravensbrück National Memorial Complex be established on the territory where Ravensbrück (concentration camp) was located. The following objects were left as genuine objects:
- commandant's office;
- crematorium;
- building with cameras;
- underground road leading to the lake;
- fragment of the camp wall.
The stela “Carrier”, created by the project of Villa Lammerta, became the central element on the lake. So Ravensbrück (concentration camp), a monument to which was erected in Germany, for many forever became a symbol of a monstrous crime against humanity.
In 1996, a documentary was released in which five former prisoners from different countries give interviews - Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and Russia. The Dutch directors and screenwriters were Anet van Barneveld and Annemarie Streibos. The painting “The Past Is” is called.
In 2005, the creation of the director from the Federal Republic of Germany Lorett Waltz, which collected interviews of former prisoners for 25 years, was released. The documentary consists of the stories of more than 200 prisoners and is called The Women of Ravensbrück.
The Ravensbrück concentration camp (World War II 1939-1945) lasted six years, destroying tens of thousands of women and children who did not want this war.