Non­fic­tion

Ravens­brück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Con­cen­tra­tion Camp for Women

Sarah Helm
  • Review
By – August 6, 2015

Sarah Helm, a jour­nal­ist for The Sun­day Times, deliv­ers a com­pre­hen­sive his­to­ry of the Ravens­brück con­cen­tra­tion camp, a lager des­ig­nat­ed by Hein­rich Himm­ler for women. By the end of the war, more than 130,000 women from twen­ty dif­fer­ent Euro­pean coun­tries had been incar­cer­at­ed in Ravens­brück, among them Gen­er­al Charles deGaulle’ s niece, the grand­daugh­ter of Mar­tin Buber, and Gem­ma La Guardia, sis­ter of New York’s wartime may­or, whose moth­er was Jew­ish. Although Jews were a small num­ber of the camp’s inmates, they were con­fined to their own block, where they were exposed to tor­ture and bru­tal sadism.

Among the hor­rif­ic exam­ples Helm describes is the infa­mous Budy mas­sacre of Octo­ber 1942. In a small vil­lage four miles from Aush­witz, a num­ber of women Kapos and guards from Ravens­brück were sent to main­tain dis­ci­pline in the Ravens­brück sub-camp of Budy, where four hun­dred women — many of them French Jew­ish intel­lec­tu­als, teach­ers, and artists — were impris­oned in a desert­ed school and worked to drain a swamp. The bru­tal­i­ty of the camp’s female Kapos was so extreme that upon his inves­ti­ga­tion of the oper­a­tion Rudolph Höss, the Kom­man­dant of Auschwitz wrote, I find it incred­i­ble that human beings could ever turn into such beasts. The way the Kapos knocked the French Jew­ess­es about tear­ing them to pieces, killing them with axes and throt­tling them… it was sim­ply grue­some.” Even Hein­rich Himm­ler found reports of the Budy mas­sacre unac­cept­able, and made scape­goats of six Kapos who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the killing. They were sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed. In the final months of the war, Ravens­brück became an exter­mi­na­tion camp, and it is esti­mat­ed that the death toll by April 1945 ranged from 30,000 to 90,000.

Most of the pris­on­ers at Ravens­brück were aso­cials,” includ­ing les­bians, crim­i­nals, and oth­er use­less eaters.” There were also female polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, as well as Jews. All were iden­ti­fied by col­or arm­bands and dis­ci­plined by female Kapos who were cho­sen by the SS for their cruelty.

Ravens­brück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Con­cen­tra­tion Camp for Women is a dif­fi­cult book to digest: Helm describes the med­ical exper­i­ments per­formed on the inmates in detail, the beat­ings, the sadis­tic behav­ior of the guards, but also the resis­tances of the inmates in their efforts to sur­vive. The book is an absolute­ly nec­es­sary read to under­stand how cru­el the Nazis — includ­ing the physi­cians, guards, and elite oper­a­tors, like Himm­ler — behind the sav­age behav­ior in Ravens­brück were.

Relat­ed Content:

Jack Fis­chel is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of his­to­ry at Millersville Uni­ver­si­ty, Millersville, PA and author of The Holo­caust (Green­wood Press) and His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Holo­caust (Row­man and Littlefield).

Discussion Questions