Notes of RavensbruckLana West

The Background

Ravensbruck was a concentration camp for women. It was located about 50 miles north of Berlin. It opened on May 15, 1939. On May 18 the first group of 867 prisoners came from Lichtenburg. were mostly of German anti-fascists, either Social Democrats or Communists Some coincidentally Jewish A high wall with electrified barbed wire enclosed the women in the camp. Ravensbruck housed Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans and other

nationalities. It was designed to hold 6,000 prisoners. The number of inmates grew from 2,000 in 1939 to 10,800 in 1942. Between May 1939 and June 1944, an estimated 43,000 women were brought to

Ravensbruck. During the next nine months, an estimated 90,000 more came. The most serious overcrowding occurred after the evacuation of Auschwitz in January

1945. The maximum amount of women held in Ravensbruck was about 32,000.

Human Statistics

The prisoners were organized into categories. Color-coded triangles and nationality

Political prisoners wore red triangles. Including resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war

Jehovah's Witnesses wore purple triangles. “Asocial” wore black triangles

Including lesbians, prostitutes, and Gypsies Criminals wore green triangles.

Common criminals or those who broke Nazi imposed laws Jewish women wore yellow triangles.

If they were also political prisoners, they wore a red triangle and yellow triangle that formed a Star of David, or a yellow stripe on top of the red triangle.

A letter within the triangle signified the prisoner's nationality.

Nazis burned many records before they fled, so the exact number of occupants is impossible to find.

The camp memorial’s estimated about 132,000. There were 28,000 women from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and

Austria, nearly 8,000 French women, and thousands from other countries in Europe. There were even British and American women imprisoned at the camp. While no exact records are available, an estimated twenty percent of the total population

was Jewish — more than 20,000 women. Some of the Ravensbruck prisoners arrived at the camp with their children or gave birth

there. Most of the newborns only lived briefly and then were murdered by the Nazi doctors and

nurses. The ledgers suggest that 882 children were deported to Ravensbruck.

Camp Life

By the end of the war, conditions had deteriorated significantly. Barracks built for 250 women later housed 1,500 or 2,000, with three to four to a bed. Thousands of women did not even have part of a bed, and were lying on the floor, without

even a blanket. When 500 Jewish women arrived from Hungary in the fall of 1944, they were placed in a

huge tent with a straw floor and died in masses. A plague of lice and danger of disease from the water made life in the barracks even more

unbearable. The women were awakened for roll call by 4:00 a.m. Before roll call, as many as 500 women stood in the latrine around three “toilets” with no

doors. After standing outside until everyone was accounted for, they drank their imitation coffee

and went off to work. They returned to their assigned barracks for their noontime soup and again in the evening,

when the soup was repeated. On Sundays the women were not required to work, and socialized in the barracks or outside

to the limited extent possible. The regime was strict, punishment was inflicted, and harsh labor was required. Solitary confinement in the dark and airless prison cells of the “Bunker,” the usual

punishment for acts considered sabotage or resistance, was often accompanied by severe beatings or other torture.

Other routine torture methods included attacks by SS dogs.

In addition to the “Bunker,” there was a barrack separated from the camp by a fence, which served as a punishment block.

SS Reichsführer and Head of the German Police, Heinrich Himmler, ordered whippings beginning in April 1942.

A prisoner categorized as a criminal carried out the orders, and received extra rations. The camp doctor was required to be present at each punishment, to confirm it had been

carried out. Himmler later ordered whipping to be used only as a “last resort.”

Medical Experiments

Beginning in 1942, medical experiments were performed on the inmates; some women were infected with gas gangrene or bacterial inflammations, while others were forced to receive bone transplants and bone amputations.

Other experiments involved sulfonamide and sterilization techniques. Pregnant Jewish women were sent to the gas chambers, while abortions were performed

on non-Jews. Most of these women died or were murdered afterward, and those who survived were

crippled and disfigured.

Between 1942-1943, Ravensbruck served as a training camp for 3,500 female SS supervisors who went on to maltreat, torture, and murder women in other camps.

Prisoners that were sentenced to death in 1942 were sent to separate institutions or death camps.

Some women, including those incapable of work and Jewish political prisoners, were gassed at a euthanasia center set up in the psychiatric facility of Bernberg.

By 1943, a crematorium was built at Ravensbruck, near the camp for minors, which housed about 1,000 girls.

Gas Chambers

In February 1945, a gas chamber was constructed at Ravensbruck. By April 1945, between 2,200 and 2,300 were killed in the gas chamber. The majority of those killed by gas in the camp were Hungarian, mostly Jewish, then Polish,

then Russian. Women prisoners working as scribes counted a total number of 3,660 names on lists for

“Mittwerda;” the Nazi code name for the gas chamber. However, since some of the transports went directly from the satellite camps to the gas

chamber, the number of women murdered in the camp's gas chamber is estimated to be 5,000 to 6,000.

The so-called “youth concentration camp” Uckermark, less than a mile from Ravensbruck, was sometimes the conduit to the gas chamber.

The SS used this adjacent camp for old, sick, and weakened women who had been selected as “unable to work;” and were sometimes given poisonous “white powder.”

Women who were sentenced to death for acts such as espionage at times were shot in a special corridor between buildings, and other women received lethal injections.

In March 1945, an evacuation order was given to the inmates of Ravensbruck and 24,500 prisoners were sent to Mecklenburg.

In early April 1945, 500 prisoners were handed over to the Swedish and Danish Red Cross and 2,500 German prisoners were set free.