Ravensbrück concentration camp

Map showing the Ravensbrück concentration camp

The Ravensbrück concentration camp (also called Ravensbrück women's concentration camp ) was the largest concentration camp for women in the so-called German Altreich at the time of National Socialism . It was built in 1938/1939 by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the municipality of Ravensbrück (today the city of Fürstenberg / Havel ) in the north of the province of Brandenburg .

Together with the men's camp in the immediate vicinity, industrial companies, the Uckermark concentration camp for girls and young women and the Siemens camp Ravensbrück , the only industrial area located in a concentration camp, the Ravensbrück concentration camp formed a camp complex. In addition, there were a large number of satellite camps , see the list of satellite camps of the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

The concentration camp was dissolved and the remaining prisoners were liberated by the Red Army in April 1945. A total of around 132,000 women and children, 20,000 men and 1,000 young women from 40 nations and ethnic groups were interned in the Ravensbrück and Uckermark concentration camps. It is believed that 28,000 prisoners died in Ravensbrück.

The former main camp served as barracks for the group of the Soviet armed forces in Germany from 1945 to 1993 . In 1959 the Ravensbrück memorial was opened and later expanded several times.

structure

View of the former commandant's office, which now houses an exhibition, 2015

During the Second World War 45 satellite camps were set up throughout the German Reich, of which at least 31 were for female and nine for male prisoners. There prisoners had to do Nazi forced labor, especially for war production. Among other things, there were the subcamps Barth , Bad Belzig , Drögen , Eberswalde , Grüneberg , Neustadt-Glewe , Sankt Lambrecht and Velten .

Plan of the Ravensbrück concentration camp

Exterior view of the former camp gate, today the Ravensbrück Memorial (2005)

Forced Laborers in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp (1939)

Barracks on the site of the former camp, 2005

2006 set up sculpture group Figures Against Oblivion by Stuart Wolfe

The precursors of the Ravensbrück concentration camp were women's camps in the Moringen and Lichtenburg concentration camps . On the orders of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , the Ravensbrück concentration camp was built from December 1938 to April 1939 on the Schwedtsee in the Ravensbrück community by inmates of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as an initially purely women's camp. The distance to the center of Berlin was about 86 km via Reichsstrasse 96 . From November 11, 1938, female prisoners also had to set up the concentration camp according to the first access list.

In April 1941 a small men's camp was added, initially for 350 prisoners.

In June 1942, the Uckermark youth concentration camp was completed in the immediate vicinity, initially for 400 girls and young women ( youth concentration camp ).

In 1945, the Ravensbrück concentration camp covered an area of ​​around 170 hectares.

See also : List of the subcamps of the Ravensbrück concentration camp

development

1939 the first female prisoners

On May 18, the first 900 female prisoners were transferred from the Lichtenburg concentration camp to the new Ravensbrück concentration camp. They first had to help with the further expansion of the camp and with the construction of the housing estate for the SS guards. As early as the end of June, 440 Sinti and Roma and their children were deported here from the Austrian Burgenland for the first time . With the beginning of the Second World War , women first came from occupied Poland , and later also from the other countries occupied by the German Reich.

1940 Society for textile and leather utilization mbH founded

In January, Himmler inspected the concentration camp and ordered the introduction of corporal punishment for female prisoners. In the course of the total conversion to the war economy , the SS-Betrieb Gesellschaft für Textil- und Lederverwertung mbH (Texled) was founded in Ravensbrück on June 21 . An industrial yard with production facilities was set up in the concentration camp , in which the prisoners had to do “typical woman” work. In December there were already 4,200 prisoners registered in Ravensbrück, who were housed in 16 concentration camp barracks .

Every third prisoner newly admitted was Polish. Very often these were members of the Polski Związek Zachodni or members of the paramilitary youth organization Przysposobienie Wojskowe Kobiet .

In 1941 prisoner women were rented out as farm workers

The number of prisoners increased by a further 3,500 by April 1941. In the same month 1,000 women from Ravensbrück were transported to Auschwitz to set up the extermination camp there . From this year on, shootings took place again and again, of which a total of 143 Polish women and girls fell victim to without any warning. There were later executions of Soviet, French, British and other prisoners. From 1939 to 1941 prisoners were deliberately killed by senseless hard labor. From 1941 the SS began to rent out inmates to the surrounding Mecklenburg estates as farm workers, others were loaned to gardeners and for road construction; little by little they became a factor in the war economy. Although the prisoners were then drawn into deliberately unproductive activities, they were used in the war economy from 1942 onwards.

In November, as part of the first part of an action, under the code name Action 14f13 , at least 330 women were “singled out” from the concentration camp, according to letters from the SS doctor Friedrich Mennecke involved . In the guidelines of the campaign, the so-called “ ballast existences ” - prisoners who could no longer be used - were initially to be recorded in lists and presented to the medical committees for assessment. A total of more than 1,200 people in the concentration camp were murdered in connection with this in the Nazi killing center in Bernburg . From March 1942, the action was restricted more and more because the armaments industry needed more prisoners.

1942 Siemens & Halske move production barracks to the Ravensbrück concentration camp

The supply of the concentration camp could not keep pace with the increase in prisoners. By order of Himmler, parcels were allowed to be received from October. From 1942 the clothing was supplemented by sweaters, dresses and jackets. Since Ravensbrück did not have its own gas chamber at the time, more than 1,600 women, around half of them Jewish, were gassed in the Nazi killing center in Bernburg after the selection . After the destruction of the Czech village Lidice by German task forces , 182 surviving women from the village were deported here in June.

On July 20, Himmler's personal physician Karl Gebhardt , who ran his Hohenlychen clinic twelve kilometers away, began experiments on concentration camp inmates with sulfonamides (antibiotics) in Ravensbrück . The Nazi idol Reinhard Heydrich had died of gas fire under his supervision and Gebhardt was in great distress, as he was criticized by Hitler's personal doctor Theo Morell for saying that Heydrich could still live if other sulfonamides had been administered. In a first series of experiments, Gebhardt had injuries inflicted on 15 male and 42 Polish female prisoners in order to simulate war injuries. To trigger infections, he had fabrics, glass splinters, clay, cellulose or the like inserted into the wounds. The effectiveness of various sulfonamides was tested on the festering wounds.

In the course of the increased use of inmates of all concentration camps in the war economy and in the armaments industry , Siemens & Halske had production barracks built in the immediate vicinity of the Ravensbrück concentration camp from June onwards. The Werner factory for telephones (WWFG), radio (WWR) and measuring devices (WWM) was built in the Siemens warehouse in Ravensbrück . SS-Hauptscharführer Grabow headed this camp. Work was carried out in two shifts, except on weekends, because the company also employed civilian workers. These civil workers from the Siemens-Halske company were subordinate to the operations manager and engineer degree as employees.

The SS-Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (WVHA) was now the body responsible for the SS administration of the concentration camp and the deployment of prisoners, acting as an employment office, so to speak, for the placement of concentration camp prisoners with the armaments companies. There are lists of the “usability” and working capacity of these prisoners, in which an average working capacity of these prisoners was set at three months; afterwards they were considered exhausted and were killed. In order to increase the prisoners' ability to work, a concentration camp sub-camp was built right next to many factories in order to save commuting.

On August 1, SS doctors began further medical tests on healthy women. After the order of the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin to make the Ravensbrück concentration camp “ Jew-free ”, over 600 women, almost all of them Jews, were deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp on October 6th . According to the documents of the concentration camp, there are no indications that Ravensbrück ever fulfilled the condition “free of Jews” desired by Himmler; transports of Jewish women continued to reach the concentration camp. In December of the same year the camp was filled with 10,800 prisoners from all over Europe .

On September 3, Reichsarzt SS and Police Ernst-Robert Grawitz inspected the concentration camp and ordered that the inmates be shot wounds. He rated the injuries inflicted so far as "mosquito bites". Gebhardt now began a new series of experiments on 24 Polish prisoners. He did not let them inflict gunshot wounds, but inoculated inflicted wounds with gas-burn germs. Three women died of gas fire infections. A total of five women died as a result of Gebhardt's sulfonamide test series, and many became disabled. The relatively low death rate was attributed to the effectiveness of the sulfonamides.

In 1943 Red Army soldiers came to Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück concentration camp crematorium

At the end of February captured Red Army soldiers also came to Ravensbrück. Because of the increased use of concentration camp prisoners in the war economy, satellite camps were set up from March onwards. Since the SS could no longer cope with the large number of dead, a separate crematorium was built for the concentration camp in autumn. The ashes of the dead were at least partially poured into the neighboring Schwedtsee . In December, around 15,100 prisoners were registered in the concentration camp and its satellite camps.

1944 Tent erection in the overcrowded concentration camp, over 70,000 women for forced labor in foreign industrial companies

In the course of 1944, thousands of prisoners from evacuated detention centers in occupied France and the evacuated concentration camps from the east of the German Reich and the areas occupied by the Wehrmacht to the east, for example from the Majdanek concentration camp, were added. The barracks were so overcrowded that from the second half of November the commandant's quarters ordered a tent to be set up in which several thousand women were “crammed”. The tent was between blocks 24 and 26 and was estimated to be 50 meters long. Despite the season, there was only some straw on the ground. In February 1945 it is said to have been given three-story beds. Many of the women and children housed there did not survive the winter of 1944/1945. The situation deteriorated dramatically after the Warsaw Uprising was suppressed when 12,000 Polish and Jewish women and children were deported here in October. In 1944 a total of 70,000 Ravensbrück prisoners were transferred to other camps for forced labor, in May a total of 2,500 women were transported to the armaments factories Ernst Heinkel Flugzeugwerke AG Rostock  - Schwarzenpfost branch  - and Siemens - Zwodau , and over 10,000 Polish women and women to Auschwitz-Birkenau .

On February 11, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke , Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff and others who had been arrested by the Gestapo a few weeks earlier in connection with the discovery of the opposition Solf circle were transferred here. Moltke, who until then had been treated comparatively well as a protective prisoner , was taken into more stringent solitary confinement after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , until he was transferred to Tegel prison on September 27 to await his trial before the People's Court . Accused who had been arrested in connection with the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, but who could not be proven to be directly involved, were relocated here from the Lehrter Strasse cell prison , such as Otto Schniewind , Hjalmar Schacht , Tilo von Wilmowsky and Peter Bielenberg . Furthermore, from August 22nd , as part of the Grid Action , critics of the regime who had been blacklisted as a precautionary measure were also brought in here, including Professors Adolf Lampe , Constantin von Dietze and Gerhard Ritter from Freiburg .

The Industrial Yard in the camp included an administration, several tailors, a weaving, spinning, Rohrmattenflechterei, a shoemaker's workshop, auxiliary equipment as well as a 1944 Skinning and was extended more and more. In October, camp commandant Suhren is said to have received the order from Himmler that "2,000 people a month had to die retroactively for six months".

At Christmas 1944, with the permission of the camp commandant, the inmates held a Christmas party for the approximately 400 children. This celebration represented one of the biggest solidarity actions of the inmates in the camp.

1945 around 25,000 women in the concentration camp and 46,000 women in satellite camps

In mid-January, almost 46,100 female and over 7,800 male prisoners were registered in the concentration camp with its satellite camps. It can be assumed that there was an occupancy rate of 25,000 women in January, in an area of ​​barely half a square kilometer, the diameter of which had to be covered in five minutes. At the beginning of February the number rose by 11,000 prisoners from other - evacuated - concentration camps and satellite camps. The last transport from Auschwitz consisted of over 2,000 women who were evacuated there at the end of January. The transport went from Auschwitz to the Groß-Rosen concentration camp , from where it was sent to Ravensbrück and then to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp due to overcrowding . The transport was not started there and so it was returned to Ravensbrück for reception by January 27th. The women and children had to cover the distance of about 300 km on foot within two weeks in the severe frost. In the last months of the war, the number of prisoners expanded to such an extent that up to six women were forced into one bed. The youth concentration camp Uckermark, in the immediate vicinity of Ravensbrück and from January 1945 death and selection camp for women of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, was also cleared. Protective custody camp leader Johann Schwarzhuber later stated that he and Richard Trommer had been called to see camp commandant Suhren at the end of February 1945. "Suhren told us that he had received the kingdom Himmler a command that all women who are ill or march unable to be killed ..." In February 1945, were in Ravensbruck place of execution and a provisional gas chamber built at the end of March 2300 to 2400 prisoners were killed. Rudolf Höß , who had been in the concentration camp since November 1944 , the former camp commandant of Auschwitz, coordinated the mass killings with the gas chamber.

As the front approached closer and closer from April 27th, the concentration camp was evacuated by the SS and the inmates were driven on a death march . Seriously ill prisoners remained: 2,000 women and 300 men as well as prisoner care staff, a total of around 3,000 people. On April 30th, Soviet troops reached Fürstenberg and liberated the remaining inmates of the concentration camp, who, according to the British journalist and writer Sarah Helm, also raped prisoners. The prisoners on the death march were overtaken by Soviet units by May 3, 1945 and also liberated. In the weeks and months that followed, countless former inmates died as a result of their imprisonment in the concentration camp.

Himmler's confirmation for the white buses

White buses rescue operation

→ Main article : White Buses rescue operation

In February 1945 negotiations took place between Folke Bernadotte from the Swedish Red Cross and Himmler to collect Scandinavian prisoners from concentration camps in the Neuengamme camp and have them looked after by the Swedish staff. In March, 4,500 Norwegian and Danish prisoners were transported to Neuengamme and taken to Denmark in a convoy of 36 white Red Cross buses for quarantine in the Frøslev internment camp and then transported to Sweden. In April, Himmler and Norbert Masur met in secret and all Scandinavian women from the Ravensbrück women's camp were released. During this second rescue operation by the White Buses, 7,500 women were evacuated from Ravensbrück to Switzerland and Sweden from April 22nd.

Prisoners

Casualty numbers

Between 1939 and 1945, a total of around 132,000 women and children, 20,000 men and 1,000 female youths from 40 nations and ethnic groups were registered in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and the Uckermark youth concentration camp (particularly affected: 15 to 25 year olds - up to 40 year olds in the following). They were guarded by around 1,000 SS men and just under 550 female guards. It is assumed that 28,000 prisoners perished in this concentration camp. Sixty years after the liberation of the women's concentration camp, the memorial book names the names of 13,161 women, men and children.

With the rapid approach of the Red Army in the spring of 1945, the SS decided to kill as many prisoners as possible in order to remove witnesses to the events. Tens of thousands were murdered before the liberation. A rough, methodologically very questionable British estimate from 1946 gave about 92,000 women who died, murdered and gassed in Ravensbrück, which turned out to be excessive. Based on improved sources, the research assumes a minimum of 25,000 and a maximum of 40,000 victims; new publications from 2008 name 28,000. This figure does not include the undocumented victims of the death marches.

Survivors of the Ravensbrück concentration camp have come together in national prisoner associations . The International Ravensbrück Committee was founded as the umbrella organization of these associations .

origin

Former Ravensbrück concentration camp, Wall of Nations

Sculpture carrying woman by Will Lammert in the Ravensbrück memorial, with Olga Benario as a model

Olga Benario was transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1939, where the prisoner camp management appointed block elder in the Jewish block. In 1942 she was gassed together with other Jewish prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp as part of “ Aktion 14f13 ” in the Bernburg Nazi killing center . The sculpture supporting by Will Lammert on the grounds of the memorial Ravensbrück has Benario Olga as a model.

195 women from Lidice were housed. On January 18, 1945, the non-Jewish members of the Auschwitz Girls' Orchestra came here.

Among the prisoners in the concentration camp were four female members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE): Denise Bloch , Cecily Lefort , Lilian Rolfe and Violette Szabo , as well as Niet Elise and the 25-year-old French Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay . Also Corrie ten Boom , founder of a Dutch underground organization for the rescue of Jews was a prisoner here.

After the failed assassination attempt on 20 July 1944 on Adolf Hitler was Johanna Tesch on 22 August 1944 in the framework of the Action grid arrested at the age of 69 years by the Nazis and taken on September 18, 1944 to Ravensbrück, where she March 13 1945 died of the consequences of imprisonment (probably malnutrition ). She regularly wrote to her family in postcards and letters that had been censored by the SS in order to reassure them.

On April 11, 1942, Änne Meier was transferred to the women's concentration camp as a political prisoner. After the liberation of the concentration camp on April 28, 1945, Meier managed to get to her home town of Baltersweiler until mid-July. From October Meier worked again in her original job as a welfare worker (later known as a social worker ) in the district office of the St. Wendel district. The experiences during their stay in the concentration camp led to post-traumatic stress disorders for most of the inmates, probably also for Meier. Together with former inmates, she founded the Ravensbrück camp community , which tried to process what had happened and to give each other support.

Germaine Tillion wrote the French operetta Le Available aux Enfers as a prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp . The work premiered in Paris in 2007.

For 25 years, the director Loretta Walz asked women from Western and Eastern Europe not only about their experiences in Ravensbrück, but also about their entire lives. Her film Die Frauen von Ravensbrück was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize in 2006.

See also : Category prisoner in the Ravensbrück concentration camp

Situation of the prisoners

Ravensbrück National Memorial and Memorial: The imprisoned women who set up the camp themselves had to pull the stone roller across the site to compact the soil. The largest roller was as high as a man.

Authentic doll in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, made by Austrian women for their children, some of whom were also imprisoned.

Prisoner mail March 1944, according to the concentration camp censorship regulations

When new prisoners arrived in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, they were each given a number and an identification by means of a colored triangle to be worn on their clothing. Its color denoted a category, and a letter within the triangle denoted nationality. Criminals wore green triangles, female resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war wore red triangles, and members of the Bible Students and Jehovah's Witnesses were marked purple. With black triangles, inmates categorized as "antisocial" were classified separately. Jewish women wore the so-called Star of David instead of a triangle .

In the industrial courtyard, the prisoners had to work in shifts of up to twelve hours in the tailoring shop to produce concentration camp inmate clothing, later mainly military and civilian equipment and utensils were mainly made of textiles and leather. The number of inmates employed there rose from 141 in July 1940 to a high of around 5,000 in September 1942 and then fell again. Some of these women were instructed in how to work with sewing machines and other equipment and were therefore not easily interchangeable, but they too received insufficient food rations and were subjected to abuse and harassment, especially if they did not achieve the almost impossible production target. The Texled was one of the few owned enterprises worked in the SS balance sheet, "profitable".

Siemens built its own factory halls in the immediate vicinity of the concentration camp, in which the inmates had to manufacture precision parts such as finely wound coils. At the end of 1944, the company relocated the entire production of military telephones to this so-called "Siemens warehouse", in which up to 2,400 women worked. The conditions here were so bad that in May 1945 dozens of corpses were piled up in front of the barracks in this part of the camp.

From 1942, ten men’s concentration camps were opened to which women from Ravensbrück were also transferred. The camp brothels served as a “reward system” and performance incentive for docile prison functionaries in these concentration camps . Several hundred women were forced to do so; most of them came from Germany, some from Poland, at least six from the Soviet Union. Many volunteered - they probably hoped to get a better chance of being released. But there was no such thing. Only the hunger was less in the brothels known as “special buildings”. The women were often sent back to the camp with the stamp "worn out" in order to be murdered there.

Maria W. - she already had four years of forced labor behind her when the camp doctor and the SS commandant from Buchenwald were looking for women on the roll call area - later reports: “They walked our row, looked at each one individually. That and that and the number step forward. And then I heard Schildlauski, the SS doctor, say: 'You want to take that skeleton with you too?' That was me! And then I heard this commandant say, 'It's well built, we'll feed it back to our feet'. "

When the number of prisoners in the concentration camp rose rapidly in 1943 and the SS had to put up a 50-meter tent between the barracks in the late summer of 1944 as temporary accommodation - especially for the large numbers of women arriving from Auschwitz, Warsaw and Hungary up to 4,000 prisoners live in the tent. In addition, this resulted in the death of dozens of women each day. Kató Gyulai, driven to Ravensbrück as a young Hungarian of Jewish origin, remembers:

“The tent had a brick floor. We stood or crouched on it, there was no question of sitting down or lying down. At night we literally sat on the heads or backs of others. "

The inmates suffered from total emaciation, muscle wasting and psychological changes such as indifference, apathy and drowsiness. The physical reactions and activities were slower and then often interpreted and punished by the guards as passive resistance. Here in the largest women's concentration camp in the Reich, it became clear that women behave differently from men, even and especially under extreme conditions, such as the murderous struggle for survival in Nazi detention centers. "Supervisors", the male "protective custody camp leaders" even had to advise "on female issues". The doctor and former inmate Heidi Hautval reports that prisoners put make-up on their lips in order to avoid the frequent selections in which the Ravensbrück concentration camp regularly “sorted out” those who were no longer able to work. To look too pale could be death.

The women were shot outside the concentration camp in the neighboring forest areas. From 1942 onwards, only the so-called firing tunnel was used. A doctor and a dentist were also present at the shootings. After the doctor, usually Treite, had determined the death of the victim, the dentist broke out the victim's gold teeth. Even the corpses were exploited to the last. Their ashes were used as fertilizer for the fields, soap was made from the bones and many other things.

The special features of this women's concentration camp lay in the structure of the prisoner society. Here real “camp families” emerged: older women took care of younger ones and helped others based on their national or politically similar orientation. Women within such camp families tried to give each other gifts, no matter how small they were. In March 1944, Soviet women carved a tiny basket from the cherry pit of one of their Czech inmates. Some of the women captured began to express their feelings and thoughts through poetry and prayers. Whole novels were told to each other, journeys once undertaken were described; imaginary cooking and exchanging recipes was a grotesque and popular reality. The Cologne Jew Eva Hesse collected over 100 cooking recipes on smuggled papers, which were published in 1988 by the journalist Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand in the book "I die from Hunger!" Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

Others managed to draw with secretly organized materials. Illegal choirs emerged. Professors, artists and teachers secretly held lectures. Above all, the Polish women began to secretly teach the younger ones, in classes with three, four or five children who - regardless of whether they would ever return home - prepare for graduation during roll call or in the evening on cot beds were. The director of the concentration camp memorial, Insa Eschebach, emphasizes that the reports from survivors differ greatly because the character of the concentration camp changed from 1939 to 1945. The Jewish woman Rosi Forsberg, who came here at the end of 1944 at the age of 16 and was forcibly sterilized, wrote: "I have never experienced friendship or solidarity."

The children, especially the youngest, had no chance of survival here unless they found a so-called camp mother who would take care of them. The camp headquarters often separated the children from their biological parents by means of transports, external detachments or gassings. The children then usually died quickly of a "natural" death.

All inmates, including young children, were subjected to heavy labor that, under such conditions, resulted in physical exhaustion and often death.

“What frightens me most of all here are the horrific noises you can hear: the screaming of the beaten, the sound of the swaying belt, the screeching and hoarse screams and snouts of the evil people. All of that makes Ravensbrück hell. "

- Corrie ten boom

Postal regulations

The postal regulations changed frequently and were shaped by the arbitrariness of the SS. Therefore, from time to time there were different card and letter forms on which the text could also be changed at will.

“Every prisoner in protective custody is allowed to send or receive a letter or a card per month.

The lines must be written in ink, clearly laid out and legible. Letters may not exceed four normal pages with 15 lines each and cards 10 lines. Only one 12 Rpf. Postage stamps are attached, others are forfeited for confiscation in favor of destitute prisoners. Photos may not be sent. All mail items must be provided with prisoner number and block number. Packets of any content may not be received. Everything can be bought in the warehouse. Sending money is permitted, but must be made by postal order. National Socialist newspapers are permitted, but must be ordered by the prisoner himself via the post censorship office of the women's concentration camp.

Requests for release from protective custody to the camp management are pointless. "

- Excerpt from the camp regulations of the Ravensbrück concentration camp

staff

composition

Former housing estate of the SS guards in front of the camp (2005)

8: Hertha Ehlert , 9: Irma Grese , 10: Ilse Lothe , Bergen-Belsen Trial (1945)

The concentration camp was headed as camp commandant :

• SS-Standartenführer Günther Tamaschke : December 1, 1938 - August 30, 1939
• SS-Hauptsturmführer Max Koegel : January 1, 1940 - August 1942
• SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Suhren : August 1942 - April 1945

The men's camp was under SS-Hauptsturmführer Johann Schwarzhuber . The commanders carried the title of "warehouse director". In January 1945 Albert Sauer took over the post as representative of the camp commandant Suhren.

In Ravensbruck much female staff was as nurses or guards used or adapted. Between 1939 and 1945 more than 3,500 female guards were trained in the concentration camp. Women from all walks of life, many of them just over 20 years old. They were conscripted or volunteered. This group of people included: Erika Bergmann (Koch), Dorothea Binz , Luise Brunner , Grete Boesel , Hermine Braunsteiner-Ryan , Hertha Ehlert , Irma Grese , Christine Holthöwer , Anna Klein-Plaubel , Johanna Langefeld , Elfriede Mohneke , Carmen Mory , Ruth Neudeck , Margarete Rabe , Vera Salvequart , Ida Schreiter , Eugenia von Skene , Ilse Vettermann , Erna Wallisch and Emma Zimmer .

For the selections and medical experiments there were a number of SS doctors and the doctor Herta Oberheuser , under the direction of the two on-site doctors , SS Untersturmführer / Hauptsturmführer Walter Sonntag (May 2, 1940 to December 1941 or, according to other sources, July 1941 / February 1942) and SS-Hauptsturmführer Gerhard Schiedlausky . The following camp doctors and medical personnel reported to them: Gerda Ganzer , Martha Haake , Martin Hellinger , Liesbeth Krzok , Elisabeth Marschall , Benno Orendi , Rolf Rosenthal , Walter Sonntag , Percy Treite , Richard Trommer , Gerda Weyand and Adolf Winkelmann .

See also : Category Personnel in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp

Deeds of the staff

The SS assistants took their work very carefully. In the morning they let the inmates line up on the camp grounds. “During the roll call,” reports a former inmate, “the women were divided into the work columns. And when they stood in the cold at the roll call for two hours, they fell over from weakness. Then the guards set the dogs on them. And when the women were tired, they were beaten with sticks. "

One detainee remembers: “Every detachment had a guard. I met Irma Grese in the herbal detachment. We picked nettles and our hands were bleeding. Because we didn't get gloves. She gave us such high baskets and stepped into the basket with her boot. Baskets that weren't full were slapped left and right. Irma Grese was very pretty. And it was exceptionally bad. "

There was a complex camp regime that the inmates inevitably had to violate. So dirty shoes or pants could be considered a violation. Such minor "offenses" - sometimes just the whim of a guard - could result in draconian punishments: flogging, i.e. 25 or 50 lashes on the bare buttocks, bunker imprisonment, ie imprisonment in the camp, additionally combined with deprivation of food or dark imprisonment, as well as transfer in the punishment block, a kind of punishment company within the camp system, were part of it.

A system of systematic humiliation began as soon as the camp was taken. The SS personnel acted according to the system they represented, with military precision and discipline paired with arbitrariness and violence. Their behavior was used to intimidate: insults, screams and curses, kicks and blows were part of it. The external disfigurement of the prisoners by shaving their head and pubic hair, as well as the prisoner uniforms, was a next step in depriving the women of their social and cultural identity. At the same time, this procedure aimed at disembodiment and dehumanization. Colored symbols and letters on this clothing, always dominated by the race criterion, decided how much a prisoner was "worth". Right at the top of the “value” were the German-speaking “political” and “criminals”, in the middle those belonging to the so-called Slavic race, further down, behind the “anti-social”, the Jews and Sinti and Roma women. There were personnel files on which only two question marks were entered under the headings “Cause of the arrest”, “Referring authority” and which prove that the arbitrariness did not only begin here for the prisoners.

In addition to arbitrary punishment and violence, roll call standing was a major torture method . The women had to line up several times a day. They had to stand in the open in wind and weather without moving or talking, were counted and from there divided into work detachments. The SS also used standing roll calls for hours with withdrawal of food as a collective punishment.

Former inmates like Irmgard Konrad on the question of why the women on duty were so cruel: “Look, I was observing, for example, young guards, you looked good, you looked nice, you had good faces, you were well dressed and you felt that they must come from a middle-class family. And yet they treated us prisoners with a cruelty that absolutely cannot be described. They just enjoyed it, they enjoyed killing people, torturing people. How could people become like that? "

Only some of the concentration camp staff had to answer in court. “What should we have done?” Asked many of the former guards when asked about their guilt. However, letters of resignation from former guards show that it was possible to evade service in the concentration camp.

Medical experiments

On December 20, 1946, Leo Alexander explains some experiments to Maria Broel Plater , who was a prisoner in Ravensbrück, during the Nuremberg medical trial

Medical experiments in the Ravensbrück concentration camp mostly served to research the vital functions under extreme conditions, often with a view to military use for the treatment of frostbite or injuries to soldiers after combat operations. The corresponding injuries were inflicted on the concentration camp test persons, statistics were drawn up and cures were experimented with. After previous experiments in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , experiments with sulfonamides , among other things, were now being undertaken here, and great hopes were placed on them as antibiotics in the treatment of the wounded. Bacteria, putrefactive germs, wood splinters and glass were placed in specially made wounds for the victims of the experiments, imitating injuries caused by bomb splinters. The course of the wound and the effects of the drugs tested were documented and analyzed. Many victims died during the experiments, others years later from the sequelae.

Karl Gebhardt was named as the responsible doctor in Ravensbrück for all of these operations ; his assistants were Fritz Fischer and Ludwig Stumpfegger . Since they could no longer withstand the test conditions nervously over time, the doctor Herta Oberheuser took over more and more of the functions of her colleagues, thereby ensuring that the tests were carried out. One of her tasks was to select the female prisoners for the experiments and to ensure the “follow-up care”, which mostly consisted of a specific non-care or a specific deterioration of the healing process in order to achieve the highest level of infection. Oberheuser primarily selected young Polish women who were imprisoned in the concentration camp for political reasons. After the treatment, numerous women were murdered by her through injections, which she later tried to portray as a humanitarian act. In contrast to her colleagues, who also specifically killed patients with injections, Oberheuser chose gasoline injections, the effect of which only set in after three to five minutes and when the trial victims were fully conscious. Oberheuser's statements clearly show her attitude towards the patients, whom she perceived as rabbits and not as humans.

The camp doctor Rolf Rosenthal also testified that he might have been involved in the selection of so literally “guinea pigs” without knowing what it was. However, he admitted to having participated in some experimental operations as an assistant in the summer of 1942 .

Oberheuser was not only involved in medical experiments, but also in forced abortions and other medical interventions. For the doctors, the forced abortions were not about killing, but about the possibility of developing a medical routine during the interventions. The rule in advanced pregnancy, however, was to let the women give birth. Most of the newborns were then murdered immediately afterwards, the inmate nurse Gerda Quernheim was known for. Forced abortions have even been performed on women seven or eight months pregnant. Gerhard Schiedlausky confirmed this, but he only acted on orders. Oberheuser and Rosenthal initially assisted him, but later carried out the interventions independently. Sterilization experiments also took place in the concentration camp. So a faster method of mass sterilization should be developed. There was a high mortality rate in these trials. In addition to the abortion by medical intervention, there were also abortions by beatings and the killing of newborns. Himmler ordered attempts at mass sterilization or castration in order to control or prevent so-called unworthy and undesirable life forever. The aim was to secretly sterilize people, and thus also against their will, in order to determine which women could bear children and which men they were allowed to father. Witnesses report experiments on the Clauberg method, named after the concentration camp doctor Carl Clauberg , in September 1943. In the winter of 1944/45, sterilization using this method on "gypsy women" began in Ravensbrück on a larger scale. In the Ravensbrück trial, a camp inmate testified: “... 120 to 140 children were treated from January 4 to 7, 1945. Result: four deaths, partly due to peritonitis as a result of (too much) fallopian tube filling, partly as a result of poor general condition. The children were left lying there without any further treatment. ”In a document in the museum of the Ravensbrück concentration camp there is a testimony that from January 4th to 7th, 1945 over 100 women, girls, Jews and“ Gypsies ”were sterilized. After the sterilization, which was mostly carried out without anesthesia, the women and girls suffered from severe pain. The preliminary and follow-up examinations with the help of contrast media for the X-ray were partially omitted and were therefore not always part of the experiments. Due to the advance of the Red Army, Carl Clauberg continued his various attempts from Auschwitz to Ravensbrück concentration camp on at least 35 women. His brutal approach was known to the camp in Auschwitz - once SS guards came to see what he was doing with the women whose cries echoed through the camp. In total, Clauberg performed approximately 550 to 700 forced sterilizations. Also Horst Schumann continued after his transfer here of a new series of experiments with "Gypsy children."

The doctor Oberheuser was verifiably confronted with at least 60 victims during her working hours in Ravensbrück. Unlike her male colleagues, Oberheuser did not use the results of her work in the women's concentration camp for her further career after the end of the war. She saw her task in supporting her male superiors, but in doing so contributed significantly to the realization of the human experiments.

Ludwig Stumpfegger participated under the leadership of Gebhardt, Fischer and Oberheuser in Hohenlychen to human experiments (War surgical experiments in the field of transplant surgery ), mainly Polish women from the concentration camp. Stumpfegger personally transplanted bones and muscles and used these attempts for his habilitation in autumn 1944 at the Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin . The title of his habilitation thesis was: Free autoplastic bone grafting in limb reconstructive surgery . The attempts should make it possible to sell “spare parts” to private patients, and in addition, after the “ final victory ”, the many soldiers in the Reich who had become “cripples” should be healed in this way.

Doctors and nurses kept information to themselves about the type of injuries inflicted on the women in the experiments. Prisoners of the men's camp in the women's concentration camp reported bone and nerve operations on at least six male inmates, four of whom died after a short time.

The women in Ravensbrück experienced their tormentors in different ways. Inmate Wanda Półtawska later testified positively about Oberheuser that she tried to save Alfreda Prusówna. But there was no appropriate facility in the district for a requested blood transfusion.

In the concentration camp, pardons were given for women sentenced to death as part of human experiments. After a while in the camp, the inmates believed that participating in the experiments would protect against execution, although there were no justifications for the notification of such pardons. But when ten of the Polish women unanimously refused to attempt the experiment after they had doubted the whole matter, they had to go to the so-called punishment bunker as punishment, where on August 16, 1943 five of them were directly operated on by force. The refusal of these women led to a show of solidarity from all women in the camp.

In interviews after the end of the war, Oberheuser and Fischer stated that with these experimental operations they had given the women sentenced to death a chance to survive. However, this contradicts the fact that women, when they recovered somewhat from the experiments, were very often murdered or died as a result of further attempts.

See also : List of Nazi doctors and those involved in Nazi medical crimes

Prosecution

The so-called warehouse director, Johann Schwarzhuber, 1st Ravensbrück Trial (1947)

The first trials took place from 1946 to 1950. The Ravensbrück Trials are a series of legal proceedings opened under British and French jurisdiction. The accused were leaders, SS men, members of the camp staff and prison functionaries of the concentration camp.

The trial against Gebhardt for medical experiments on concentration camp inmates, especially in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and in its Hohenlychen clinic twelve kilometers away , as well as in the Auschwitz concentration camp , and against Oberheuser and Fischer in the Nuremberg medical trial , took place on April 3 and 8, 1947 . Oberheuser was the only woman who was charged with crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg medical trial.

From 1949 to 1950 there were trials against members of the camp staff before the French military court in Rastatt . On March 10, 1950, the court sentenced the former camp commandant Fritz Suhren and the labor operations manager Hans Pflaum to death in this last trial, which was part of the Ravensbrück trials .

Another trial of the concentration camp took place in 1966 before the Rostock District Court in the GDR .

Renewed attention and interest in the concentration camp followed after the third Majdanek trial before the Düsseldorf Regional Court in 1976. The SS guard Hermine Braunsteiner , who was tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal , received the greatest attention in the trial .

In September 2006, the history of the women's concentration camp returned to public awareness when the USA expelled Elfriede Rinkel, who was now 83 years old . She had lived in California since 1959, announced the US Department of Justice in Washington . But she lied about her Nazi past. Rinkel, who still has German citizenship , returned to Germany at the beginning of September after the US authorities learned of her past life during the Nazi era and a court ordered her to leave the country by the end of the month. From June 1944 until the camp was closed in April 1945, Rinkel was a guard in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. The US Department of Justice said that she used a trained dog in the "fulfillment of her duties". In the women's concentration camp, the guards forced inmates to do the hardest work, often with the help of dogs. "Concentration camp guards like Elfriede Rinkel played an important role in the horrific mistreatment of innocent victims by the Nazi regime," the ministry said.

Reuse and commemoration

1959 was memorial Ravensbrück in Fuerstenberg / Havel as the smallest of the three planned according to uniform guidelines national memorial sites of the GDR on an area of 3.5 hectares on the edge of the former camp opened. Until 1993, the main focus was on anti-fascist resistance and women imprisoned for political reasons. The actual camp area - the approximately 30 hectare narrow camp area within the historical wall as well as the other storage areas with the Siemens camp Ravensbrück , the youth concentration camp Uckermark , the SS settlement and other areas, a total of around 170 hectares, was used by the Soviet army from 1945 to 1993 used - first as a repatriation camp , later as barracks. As a result, the camp area was not open to the public until 1993, not even for memorial events or for research. In 1993, the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation , established after German reunification, took over the memorial and memorial as well as the former main camp and other parts of the former camp complex. The previously politically one-sided and scientifically unsustainable documentation exhibition was closed in 1993 and replaced by a new one with the title Ravensbrück. Topography and history of the women's concentration camp replaced. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the liberation, the renovated entrance area of ​​the former concentration camp site was made accessible to the public as the first section of the historical concentration camp area.

Vrouwen van Ravensbrück , Amsterdam

To commemorate the victims of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, the Vrouwen van Ravensbrück memorial was inaugurated in Amsterdam , the Netherlands, in 1975 , which is used annually for a memorial event on the occasion of the liberation of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

As part of the siemens @ ravensbrück project, Siemens AG trainees have been studying the history of the Siemens warehouse every year since 2010 in project weeks, see Siemens warehouse Ravensbrück # processing by Siemens .

Documentaries

• Loretta Walz : The women of Ravensbrück . Germany, 2005

literature

Introductions

• Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (ed.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps . tape 4 : Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück . C. H. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-52964-X , Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, p. 471-608 .
• Alyn Beßmann, Insa Eschebach (ed.): The Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. History and memory. Exhibition catalog (=  series of publications by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation . Volume 41 ). Metropol, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86331-122-3 .
• Helga Schwarz, Gerda Szepansky (eds.): … And yet flowers were blooming. Ravensbrück women's concentration camp. Documents, reports, poems and drawings from everyday life in the camp 1939–1945 . Brandenburg State Center for Civic Education , Potsdam 2000, ISBN 3-932502-25-6 ( political-bildung-brandenburg.de [PDF; 1.6 MB ]).

Overall scientific presentations

• Jack G. Morrison: Ravensbrück. Life in a concentration camp for women 1939–1945 . Pendo, Zurich / Munich 2000, ISBN 3-85842-486-2 .
• Bernhard Strebel : The Ravensbrück concentration camp. History of a camp complex. with a preface by Germaine Tillion . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2003, ISBN 3-506-70123-1 (also: Dissertation 2001 at the University of Hanover under the title Der Lagerkomplex des KZ Ravensbrück ).
• Germaine Tillion : Ravensbrück women's concentration camp . Klampen, Lüneburg 1998, ISBN 3-924245-72-X (With an appendix The mass killing by gas in Ravensbrück by Anise Postel-Vinay).
• Nikolaus Wachsmann : KL: The History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Siedler Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-88680-827-4 .

Individual points of view

• Sigrid Jacobeit, Lieselotte Thoms-Heinrich : Way of the Cross Ravensbrück. Life pictures of anti-fascist resistance fighters. Röderberg, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-87682-834-1 .
• Sylvia Köchl: »The Need for Just Atonement«. Routes from "professional criminals" to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Mandelbaum, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-85476-507-3 .
• Henning Fischer: survivors as actors. The women of the Ravensbrück camp communities: Biographical experience and political action, 1945 to 1989. UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, Konstanz 2017, ISBN 978-3-86764-772-4 .
• Franziska Bruder, Tanja Kinzel, Andrea Rudorf: Polish women in Ravensbrück. Biographical sketches on the diversity of the background to persecution and the experiences made , Camp Community Ravensbrück / Freundeskreis eV, 2021.

Web links

Commons : Ravensbrück concentration camp  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature about the Ravensbrück concentration camp in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ravensbrück memorial site
• Camp community Ravensbrück / Freundeskreis e. V.
• Austrian camp community Ravensbrück and friends
• Ravensbrück - survivors tell. Dossier from the Federal Agency for Civic Education
• Jasmin Lörchner: Ravensbrück concentration camp - beating, torturing, cuddling with the dog. In: Spiegel online. January 22, 2016 (photo gallery). 
• Memories of the Second World War - Women in the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. in the online archive of the Austrian Media Library
• Florian Stark: “Walküre” and “Revolver Anna” tormented women in the concentration camp. Welt.de, September 7, 2020.
• Stefanie Ranner's life picture on Memorial.at: https://www.memorial.at/memorial/assets/files/Stefanie-Ranner.pdf
• http://www.erinnern-gailtal.at/ranner-stefanie-1923-1944/

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002 (dissertation TU Berlin), urn : nbn: de: kobv: 83-opus-4303 , doi : 10.14279 / depositonce-528 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Stefan Hördler: The final phase of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Personnel Policy and Destruction. In: Journal of History. Vol. 56, No. 3, 2008, p. 247.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Fürstenberg / Havel: Ravensbrück Memorial and Memorial. In: Ulrike Puvogel , Martin Stankowski : Memorials for the victims of National Socialism. Volume 2. Federal Agency for Civic Education , Bonn 2000, ISBN 3-89331-391-5 , pp. 271-275 ( PDF ; 23.8 MB).
   Ravensbrück memorial site. In: Dossier: Ravensbrück - Survivors tell. bpb.de, May 3, 2005, accessed October 9, 2020.
4. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 66.
5. ↑ Location overview: Concentration camps and satellite camps. Ravensbrück concentration camp. In: Database Germany - a monument.
6. ↑ IfZ Munich MA 443/9815 (letter from the Gestapo of 27 May 1939).
7. ↑ ^{a b c d} Constanze Jaiser: Women's camp Ravensbrück - self-assertion between life and death. In: Ravensbrück - survivors tell. Dossier of the Federal Agency for Civic Education , March 7, 2006. Accessed February 5, 2014.
8. ↑ Buber-Neumann 1985, p. 226, Pingel 1978, p. 168 (note 141); Garbe 1995, p. 68.
9. ↑ Grode 1987, p. 118; See Philipp 1999, p. 74 f.
10. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 57.
11. ^ Zámečník: That was Dachau. Luxemburg 2002, p. 285 ff. On the experiments in Ravensbrück: Statement by Gebhardt in NOR 1, Prot, pp. 3965–4261 G. Statement by Dr. Fischers in NOR 1, Prot, pp. 985–986, pp. 4303–4433 G. Testimony of the Polish prisoner doctor Zofia Maczka P. 1450–1459 G. Testimony from female prisoners from Ravensbrück: Nürnberger Doc. NO-861, NO-864 , NO-871, NO-875-875, NO-877.
12. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 67.
13. ↑ ZStLud., Women's concentration camp 1972, p. 131.
14. ↑ Zumpe 1969, (Part I), p. 21 f.
15. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 66.
16. ↑ Vespignani 1976, p. 112 f .; Dachau concentration camp n.d., p. 120; Lundholm 1988, p. 217; See Buchenwald 1988, p. 50 f.
17. ↑ Philipp 1999, p. 101.
18. ↑ Zámečník, p. 288.
19. ↑ Beyond human measure. 1979, p. 8; see Philipp 1999, p. 187; Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 197.
20. ↑ ZStLud., Women's concentration camp 1972, p. 20; Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp 1945, p. 26 f .; Strebel 1998, p. 228.
21. ↑ ZStLud., Women's concentration camp 1972, p. 20.
22. ↑ Brief description of the place of the tent as a memorial site
23. ↑ PRO WO 235/526, deposition of the witness Anni Rudroff of 11 March 1948 ZStLud., Frauenkonzentrationslager 1972, p. 105 (note 207); Strebel 1998, p. 236.
24. ↑ Müller 1987, p. 177 ff.
25. ↑ Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp 1945, p. 23 f .; Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp 1986, p. 148 f.
26. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002; Schaeder 1960, p. 29.
27. ↑ Czech 1989, p. 984 (note *); Philipp 1999, p. 191 and p. 211 (note 4).
28. ↑ Über Menschliches Maß 1979, p. 8; Czech 1989, pp. 984 and 992; Philipp 1999, p. 191.
29. ↑ ^{a b c} Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002.
30. ↑ PRO WO 235/309, deposition of Schwarzhuber from 15 August 1946th
31. ↑ Stefan Hördler: The final phase of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Personnel Policy and Destruction. In: Journal of History. 56th vol., No. 3, 2008, p. 244 f.
32. ↑ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war. Göttingen 2015, pp. 165, 171 f.
33. ↑ Inside the Nazi death camp for Women: Injected with petrol, infected with syphilis and raped by their liberators, the shocking fate of prisoners at Ravensbruck. In: Daily Mail. January 10, 2015.
34. ^ Christiane Baltes: Sweden and the liberation of Scandinavian concentration camp inmates from Germany. “Bernadotte Action” and United Nations Relief and Rehability Administration (UNRRA). (PDF; 17 kB). Humboldt University of Berlin, Northern Europe Institute, December 8, 2005.
35. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 26.
36. ^ International Ravensbrück Committee. Austrian camp community Ravensbrück and friends, accessed on April 5, 2015 . 
37. ↑ Erika Runge : Resist defenselessness. (Conversation with Doris Maase ). In: Pumpkin Seed. Volume 4, 1975, p. 147.
38. ↑ 42nd Grimme Prize 2006 - price decisions.
39. ↑ Plewe / Köhler 1997, pp. 17–32.
40. ^ Bärbel Schmidt: History and symbolism of the striped concentration camp inmate clothing. Oldenburg 2000, p. 102 ff., Uni-oldenburg.de (PDF; 1.8 MB)
41. ↑ Jan Erik Schulte : Forced Labor and Destruction: The Economic Empire of the SS. Oswald Pohl and the SS Economic Administration Main Office 1933–1945. Paderborn 2001, p. 131 ff.
42. ↑ Ravensbrück Women's Concentration Camp 1945, p. 21 f .; Franz 1946, p. 21; Lundholm 1988, p. 124 and 142.
43. ↑ Those cursed hours in the evening - the prisoner brothels in the concentration camp. In: 3sat.de. February 4, 2014, archived from the original ; accessed on January 2, 2021 . 
44. ↑ Kató Gyulai: Two sisters. Story of a deportation. Ed. Linde Apel, Constanze Jaiser. Berlin 2001, p. 35.
45. ↑ ZStLud., Women's concentration camp 1972, p. 97.
46. ↑ PRO WO 235/309, deposition of Treite of 14 August 1946th
47. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 199.
48. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Women formed families in the concentration camp. Welt Online , April 23, 2013. Retrieved February 5, 2014.
49. ↑ Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand: "I'm dying of hunger!" : Recipes from the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Donat, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-931737-87-X , p. 237 .
50. ↑ Eva Oswalt papers: Cookbook (Item 2008.86.1_001_011_0001 to 2008.86.1_001_011_0149), interactive search. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2008, accessed April 24, 2018 . 
51. ↑ Gerold Büchner: Suffering and courage to live. In: Berliner Zeitung . April 22, 2013.
52. ↑ Still. 23rd edition. R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal, p. 83.
53. ^ US Holocaust Memorial Museum
54. ↑ Stefan Hördler: Order and Inferno. The concentration camp system in the last year of the war. Göttingen 2015, p. 165.
55. ↑ ^{a b} Eva Storrer: “I am innocent” - female guards in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. NDR 1 Radio MV unabridged version (PDF; 149 kB) Retrieved on February 5, 2014.
56. ↑ ^{a b} Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): The doctor Herta Oberheuser. In: Victims and perpetrators. Women's biographies of the NS. Nördlingen 1987, p. 253.
57. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. BIS Verlag, Oldenburg 1999, ISBN 3-8142-0640-1 , p. 95, uni-oldenburg.de (PDF; 476 kB).
58. ↑ ^{a b} Iris-Maria Hix: From reproduction to extermination selection. In: Annette Kuhn: Women's life in everyday Nazi life. Bonn 1999, p. 276.
59. ↑ quoted in: Alexander Mitscherlich, Fred Mielke: Medicine without humanity: Documents of the Nuremberg Medical Trial. Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 205.
60. ↑ Nuremberg Documents No. 862, cited in parts by: Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi Medicine and its Victims. Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 156.
61. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 117.
62. ↑ Beyond human measure. 1979, p. 34.
63. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 28.
64. ↑ Rothmaler 1993, p. 143.
65. ↑ BA Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten ZM 1640 A2, p. 283 f.
66. ↑ BA Dahlwitz-Hoppegarten ZM 1640 A2, pp. 276-278 (statement by Mlada Tauferova).
67. ↑ From the Ravensbrück Trial. In: Vespignani 1976, p. 118, quoted from: SS in action. 1957, p. 364; See Lorska 1987, pp. 209 f.
68. ↑ Bruha 1984, p. 119.
69. ↑ Silke Schäfer: On the self-image of women in the concentration camp. The Ravensbrück camp. Berlin 2002, p. 115.
70. ↑ Sehn 1959, p. 26.
71. ↑ Till Bastian : Terrible Doctors. Medical crimes in the Third Reich. Nuremberg 1995, p. 86.
72. ^ Stanislaw Kłodziński: Sterilization and castration using X-rays in the Auschwitz camp. Crimes of Horst Schumann. In: International Auschwitz Committee , ed., Inhuman Medicine. Anthology, Volume 1, Part 2, Warsaw 1969.
73. ↑ Thomas Schilter: Psychiatry crime in the Third Reich. Horst Schumann's career. In: International journal for the history and ethics of the natural sciences, technology and medicine. Issue 1, 1998.
74. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators - women's biographies of the NS. Noerdlingen 1987.
75. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators - women's biographies of the NS. Nördlingen 1987, p. 252.
76. ↑ PRO WO 235/531, statement by Dr. Zofia Maczka of April 16, 1946; the testimony of Dr. Z. Maczka also in: Mitscherlich / Mielke 1989, p. 154; Experimental operations 1960, p. 19.
77. ↑ Strebel 1998, p. 161.
78. ↑ Póltawska 1993, p. 101.
79. ↑ Póltawska 1993, p. 104.
80. ↑ experimental operations. 1960, p. 53. About human measure. 1970, p. 23.
81. ↑ Bruha 1984, p. 110.
82. ↑ Iris-Maria Hix: From reproduction to extermination selection. In: Annette Kuhn: Women's life in everyday life under the Nazis. Bonn 1999, p. 277.
83. ↑ Claudia Taake: Accused: SS women in court. BIS Verlag, Oldenburg 1999, ISBN 3-8142-0640-1 , p. 94, uni-oldenburg.de (PDF; 476 kB).
84. ↑ Angelika Ebbinghaus (ed.): Victims and perpetrators - women's biographies of the NS. Noerdlingen 1987.
85. ↑ Review on hsozkult.de

Coordinates: 53 ° 11 ′ 28 ″  N , 13 ° 10 ′ 6 ″  E