THE GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMP WAS NO PLACE FOR WOMEN.

THE GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMP WAS NO PLACE FOR WOMEN.

 A German concentration camp was no place for women – but the Germans thought otherwise, and designed KL Ravensbrück precisely as a place for women.

The camp, for years hidden behind the Iron Curtain and overshadowed by places like Auschwitz, received only cursory mentions in the literature on the German Nazi terror. However, to quote author Sarah Helm, “Just as Auschwitz was the capital of the crime against Jews, so Ravensbrück was the capital of the crime against women.” 

Over 100,000 of them went through Ravensbrück, and between 30,000 and 92,000 died there. They came from 20 countries, but the largest group were 40,000 Poles. In the six years of its existence, the camp and the population of the inmates grew severalfold, spawning nearly forty sub-camps, to great satisfaction of Heinrich Himmler, the camp founder.

The women were worked to death, beaten, shot, hanged, gassed and experimented on, and most of the dozens of Polish “Beinoperierte” who had their leg muscles cut or bones splintered – the wounds then infected to test treatment methods – either died as a result or were crippled for life. That was the work of Karl Gebhardt, the personal doctor to Heinrich Himmler, the camp founder.

As for children and babies – this wasn’t a place for them either, and those who were unfortunate enough to end up or be born here, disappeared quickly. Girls were sterilised, and newborns either drowned or starved to death. Ten kilometres away, in Brückentin, happy Fräulein Potthast raised the son she’d borne to Heinrich Himmler, the camp founder. 

Finally, on 30 April 1945, KL Ravensbrück was liberated by the Soviets, who found here fewer than 3,000 completely emaciated inmates – the rest removed on death marches in previous days. Only then did the six years of atrocities, abuse, humiliation, hunger, cold, despair, hopelessness and heartbreak finally end.  

Don’t be fooled by KL Ravensbrück’s idyllic location on the Lake Schwedt: the only contact the inmates had with it was when their ashes were dumped in the water.

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