Ravensbrück concentration camp

**Ravensbrück concentration camp** (pronounced "RAW-vins-brook") was a concentration camp for women, run by Nazi Germany during World War II.  It was in northern Germany, near the town of Ravensbrück.

The *Schutzstaffel* (SS), led by Heinrich Himmler, ran Ravensbrück concentration camp.

In November 1938, Himmler gave the order to start building the camp at Ravensbrück.  By 1939, Ravensbrück was the biggest women's concentration camp in Nazi Germany.

## Growth of Ravensbrück
### The women's camp
After Heinrich Himmler decided that Ravensbrück should be built, the SS brought about 500 male prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration camp to the area.  The SS forced these prisoners to build Ravensbrück.  SS records say that Ravensbruck was designed to hold 3,000 prisoners.p.&nbsp;15  By the end of 1942, the camp held 10,000 prisoners (including many Soviet prisoners of war).

### New camps
To make room for more and more prisoners, the Nazis added new camps to the original women's camp.

In April 1941, the Nazis added a concentration camp for men next to the women's camp.  The SS forced the male prisoners to build the new camps in the Ravensbrück complex, and to work on making the women's camp bigger.

## Types of prisoners
. She was a captured member of the Dutch resistance. ]]
Of the 153,000 people who were prisoners at Ravensbrück between 1939 and 1945:
* Communists and socialists
* "Criminals", including prostitutes and  who had done abortions
* Jehovah's Witnesses
* Jewish people
* People with physical disabilities and mental illnesses
* "Race defilers" (like Jews who had sex with Germans)
* Roma and Sinti people
* Soviet prisoners of war
* Women who refused to get married

### By country
The Nazis sent people from over 30 countries to Ravensbrück.  For example, historians estimate that:

### Living conditions
When Ravensbrück first opened, and the camp was not too crowded, living conditions were not too bad.  However, during the winter of 1939 to 1940, the camp got more crowded, and the SS reacted by giving the prisoners less food.  After 1941, the food got much worse, and prisoners got much less of it.  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:

### Medical experiments
 during a medical experiment]]
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.

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.

## Death at Ravensbrück
 at Ravensbrück.  When people died at the camp, their bodies were burned to ashes here]]
Nobody agrees on how many people died or were murdered at Ravensbrück.  Estimates range from 52,200, to 90,000,  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.

## Death march and freedom
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  towards the middle of Germany.  The SS guards had been ordered to kill anyone who could not keep up.

## Photo gallery

File:Fusée V2.jpg|A fake V-2 rocket.  Prisoners had to make parts for these flying bombs at the Siemens factory
File:Purple Triangle.JPG|Example of the markings a Jehovah's Witness would have to sew on their clothes
Image:Female prisoners in Ravensbrück chalk marks show selection for transport.jpg|Surviving female prisoners meet with the Red Cross in April 1945. The white paint crosses showed they were prisoners
Image:Ravensbrück Müttergruppe.jpg|The monument *Zwei Stehende* (Two Women Standing)
Image:Ravensbrück_Mauer_der_Nationen.jpg|The Wall of Nations, where 300 prisoners were buried
Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-D0415-0016-006, Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, Plastik.jpg|Memorial statue *Tragende* (Woman with Burden), by Will Lammert

## Related pages
* The Holocaust

## References