Many prisoners worked at a Siemens Electric Company factory next to the women's camp. The prisoners worked as slaves, making parts for Nazi V-1 and V-2 rockets (flying bombs). Other prisoners worked at important German companies like Daimler-Benz (now Mercedes-Benz) and AEG (a German electrical company).
Some prisoners in the women's camp did other jobs, like:
Some women had to work outside. They built roads and buildings. Sometimes these women were used like animals. For example, sometimes twelve to fourteen women would have to pull a huge roller to pave the streets.
Women who were too sick or injured to do other jobs - usually because of medical experiments - knitted things like socks for the German Army, or cleaned the barracks and latrines.
Prisoners usually worked for twelve hours a day. Some worked from 7:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night. Others worked from 7:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning.
Prisoners did not have to work on Sundays.
Starting in 1942, Nazi doctors did medical experiments on 86 women prisoners. The doctors did two types of experiments.
In the first type, the doctors cut the women's legs, muscles, and nerves, or broke their leg bones. Then they infected these wounds with bacteria. Sometimes they rubbed wood or glass into the wounds. Then they gave the women sulfanilamide antibiotics to see if they would work.
In the second type of experiment, the doctors studied whether bones could be taken from one person and put into another person. They amputated some women's arms or legs to do these experiments.
In January 1945, Nazi doctors sterilized about 120 to 140 Roma women and children. The doctors were trying to find a quick, easy way to sterilize people.
Some women died from these experiments. The SS killed some other women who had wounds that did not heal.
Some of the women and young children at Ravensbrück were raped or sexually abused.
Starting in 1942, the SS created brothels in eight other concentration camps, like Buchenwald and Dachau. Women from Ravensbrück were forced to work as prostitutes in these brothels.
Nobody agrees on how many people died or were murdered at Ravensbrück. Estimates range from 52,200, to 90,000, to 117,000.
Prisoners at Ravensbrück died for many reasons. These included:
Many prisoners were also murdered by the SS.
Unlike many other concentration camps, Ravensbrück did not have its own gas chamber until early 1945. The SS used other ways of killing prisoners.
Regularly, the SS would perform "selections." They would pick out prisoners who looked too sick or weak to work. Then they would kill these prisoners.
At first, the SS killed prisoners by shooting them or giving them lethal injections in the camp's "hospital." Then, starting in 1942, they began sending prisoners to other places that did have gas chambers, like Hartheim Euthanasia Centre, so they could be killed there. Between 1942 and 1944, the SS sent about 60 groups of prisoners to Hartheim to be gassed to death. Each group had 60 to 1,000 prisoners in it.
The SS also sent prisoners to Auschwitz concentration camp to be killed in its gas chambers.
In early 1945, the SS made prisoners build a gas chamber at Ravensbrück. By this time, the Nazis knew that the Soviet Red Army was getting close. They wanted to kill as many prisoners as possible before the Red Army arrived. In its last few months, Ravensbrück became an extermination camp (a death camp). The SS started sending children and prisoners from Ravensbrück's sub-camps to the main camp, so they could be gassed to death. In just a few months, the SS killed 5,000 to 6,000 prisoners in the gas chamber.
In March 1945, the Red Army was very close to Ravensbrück. The SS did not want to leave any witnesses to tell the Soviets what had happened at Ravensbrück. In March, they sent about 8,000 prisoners to other concentration camps.
On April 27, the SS forced about 20,000 female prisoners and about 3,000 male prisoners to march towards the middle of Germany. This was a death march. The SS guards had been ordered to kill anyone who could not keep up. However, Soviet soldiers found the route of the march and freed the prisoners who had survived the death march.
On April 29, the SS guards that were still at Ravensbrück ran away from the camp. The next day, the Red Army arrived at Ravensbrück and freed the camp. They found only about 3,000 very sick prisoners. These were the prisoners that the SS had left behind because they were too sick to march.
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The Dream Makers II