Though Auschwitz and Dachau are two of the most infamous Holocaust death camps, the Nazis built dozens more, each with its own unique fingerprint of horror.
Among them was Ravensbrück. Located in the scenic hill country outside of Berlin, Ravensbrück housed only women prisoners and, by death camp standards, not a lot (about 132,000 between 1939 and 1945).
“The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp,” a new book by Rochelle G. Saidel, tells a heretofore under-explored aspect of camp history. Surprisingly, most of the inmates there were not Jews but rather political prisoners, Gypsies, prostitutes, lesbians and other “social deviants.” Saidel, a respected Holocaust historian, set out to tell the camp’s Jewish story.
As the author makes clear, just because Ravensbrück was built exclusively for women didn’t mean life there was easy. Intended as a slave labor camp, it was as brutal as Bergen-Belsen, and by 1944 even had its own gas chamber. Only about 20 percent of its inmates survived the war. Of those still alive, Saidel interviewed many, and it is their testimony that lies at the heart of the book.
Jews arrived at Ravensbrück in two waves, the first from 1939 to 1942 (all eventually murdered), the second wave coming afterward. Some from that second group survived. But torture was routine and violent death never far away.
Yet the resourcefulness of the inmates proved remarkable. As Saidel writes, the women’s familiarity with homemaking skills “equipped them to form surrogate families, care for each other and perform routines that helped to sustain life.”
One of those heroines was Olga Prestes, a German Jewish communist imprisoned at Ravensbrück from 1939 until her murder in 1942. She rallied fellow prisoners to launch a personal hygiene and gymnastics program. She also created a detailed handmade atlas to teach geography to inmates and read “War and Peace” aloud to a group of enthusiasts.
But the Ravensbrück story is one of countless random acts of kindness. Inmates would often give gifts to one another, such as greeting cards and embroideries made from scraps of threads. Many of these items are now on display at the Ravensbrück memorial museum. In the early days of the camp, poems and plays were written and even performed (before the Germans got really good at squashing the life out of its prisoners).
Saidel follows her interview subjects through the camp’s horrific final months and on to liberation. Most prisoners had been forced into a little-known death march, which took many lives. For others, the immediate post-liberation period was equally dangerous. Some camp refugee convoys were mistakenly bombed while on their way to Sweden.
But ultimately, as with other Holocaust survivor populations, most of the inmates of Ravensbrück found the strength to rebuild their lives.
One of the most moving sections of the book is the series of photographs of the women, some from the prewar period, others recent. There’s nothing remarkable about the pictures, many of them simple snapshots. The women now live all over the world, from Oakland to St. Petersburg. Yet their smiling faces offer mute testimony to their courage.
Saidel is more scholar than storyteller. Her narrative style is a bit dry, and her jump-cut approach to what might have been better presented as a straight chronology can be a bit disconcerting.
Yet her book has value even beyond the text. Because Ravensbrück was located in what would become the GDR (the former communist East Germany), the camp turned into a memorial for the martyred socialist and communist prisoners there, the Jewish story all but forgotten.
Saidel corrects that historical wrong. Her book may not be a page-turner, but it is a valuable addition to the Holocaust literature.
“The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp” by Rochelle G. Saidel ($29.95,Terrace Books, 279 pages).