The Jewish Women Of Ravensbr Ck Concentration Camp

Ravensbrück was the only major Nazi concentration camp for women. Located about fifty miles north of Berlin, the camp was the site of murder by slave labor, torture, starvation, shooting, lethal injection, "medical" experimentation, and gassing. While this camp was designed to hold 5,000 women, the actual figure was six times this number. Between 1939 and 1945, 132,000 women from twenty-three countries were imprisoned in Ravensbrück, including political prisoners, Jehovah's Witnesses, "asocials" (including Gypsies, prostitutes, and lesbians), criminals, and Jewish women (who made up about 20 percent of the population). Only 15,000 survived. Drawing upon more than sixty narratives and interviews of survivors in the United States, Israel, and Europe as well as unpublished testimonies, documents, and photographs from private archives, Rochelle Saidel provides a vivid collective and individual portrait of Ravensbrück’s Jewish women prisoners. She worked for over twenty years to track down these women whose poignant testimonies deserve to be shared with a wider audience and future generations. Their memoirs provide new perspectives and information about satellite camps (there were about 70 slave labor sub-camps). Here is the story of real daily camp life with the women’s thoughts about food, friendships, fear of rape and sexual abuse, hygiene issues, punishment, work, and resistance. Saidel includes accounts of the women's treatment, their daily struggles to survive, their hopes and fears, their friendships, their survival strategies, and the aftermath. On April 30, 1945, the Soviet Army liberated Ravensbrück. They found only 3,000 extremely ill women in the camp, because the Nazis had sent other remaining women on a death march. The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp reclaims the lost voices of the victims and restores the personal accounts of the survivors.

Months before the outbreak of World War II, Heinrich Himmler—prime architect of the Holocaust—designed a special concentration camp for women, located fifty miles north of Berlin. Only a small number of the prisoners were Jewish. Ravensbrück was primarily a place for the Nazis to hold other inferior beings: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Resistance fighters, lesbians, prostitutes, and aristocrats—even the sister of New York’s Mayor LaGuardia. Over six years the prisoners endured forced labor, torture, starvation, and random execution. In the final months of the war, Ravensbrück became an extermination camp. Estimates of the final death toll have ranged from 30,000 to 90,000. For decades the story of Ravensbrück was hidden behind the Iron Curtain. Now, using testimony unearthed since the end of the Cold War and interviews with survivors who have never talked before, Sarah Helm takes us into the heart of the camp. The result is a landmark achievement that weaves together many accounts, following figures on both sides of the prisoner/guard divide. Chilling, compelling, and deeply necessary, Ravensbrück is essential reading for anyone concerned with Nazi history.

Winner of the Longman-History Today Book Prize: A 'profoundly moving chronicle' (Observer) that tells the story of Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp designed specifically for women, using new testimony from survivors On a sunny morning in May 1939 a phalanx of 800 women - housewives, doctors, opera singers, politicians, prostitutes - were marched through the woods fifty miles north of Berlin, driven on past a shining lake, then herded through giant gates. Whipping and kicking them were scores of German women guards. Their destination was Ravensbrück, a concentration camp designed specifically for women by Heinrich Himmler, prime architect of the Nazi genocide. For decades the story of Ravensbrück was hidden behind the Iron Curtain and today is still little known. Using testimony unearthed since the end of the Cold War, and interviews with survivors who have never spoken before, Helm has ventured into the heart of the camp, demonstrating for the reader in riveting detail how easily and quickly the unthinkable horror evolved. 'It not only fills a gap in Holocaust history but it is an utterly compelling read' Taylor Downing, History Today 'A sense of urgency infuses this history, which comes just in time to gather the testimony of the camp's survivors . . . meticulous, unblinking . . . [Helm's] book comes not a moment too soon' The Economist

Presents a case study of the Ravensbruck concentration camp, the only Nazi camp in Germany specifically designed for women. It successfully blends the larger history of Nazi Germany with the women's experiences, interspersing the text with illustrations done mostly by camp inmates.

To date, Judith Buber Agassi has recovered the identities of over 16,000 Revensbruck prisoners. Now in paperback, this study of Ravensbruck, largely overlooked in favor of more notorious killing camps, brings to the forefront a unique set of Holocaust victims. The daughter of a Ravensbruck survivor, Judith Buber Agassi has taught sociology and political science at universities in the United States, Canada, Israel, Germany, and Hong Kong. She currently resides in Tel Aviv with her family"--Book cover, page [4].

Accompanying CD-ROM includes the names of all known Jewish prisoners of Ravensbreuck.

The first book in English to specifically address the sexual violation of Jewish women during the Holocaust

About the participation of German women in World War II and in the Holocaust.