If This is A Woman - Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women
Sara HelmRavensbruck was designed as a women's camp and the site is situated about 50 miles north of Berlin. The guards were mainly women too and quite brutal and in some cases sadistic. The camp opened in May 1939 and a
- Author
- Sara Helm
- Publisher
- Little Brown
- Price
- £25
- Published
- 2015
If This is A Woman – Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sara Helm
Ravensbruck was designed as a women’s camp and the site is situated about 50 miles north of Berlin. The guards were mainly women too and quite brutal and in some cases sadistic. The camp opened in May 1939 and at the end of the war there were more than 130,000 inmates, with more arriving from the long march westward. Very few of the inmates were Jewish, most being political enemies of the Third Reich including Resistance and Escape Line operators, social outcasts, Gypsies and anyone considered undesirable by the authorities. Many were sick and injured. Life in the camp was harsh, and prisoners were constantly beaten, tortured, used for medical experiments and simply shot out of hand. The prisoners were used as slave labour to local industries and had to walk miles to and from their place of work. Everyone starved, many to death.
Although not designed as an extermination camp, Ravensbruck became one during the final months of the war when more than 50,000 prisoners were put to death. Like many of the former concentration camps Ravensbruck was behind the “Iron Curtain” until 1989. Helm’s research for this book has been extensive, particularly in her search for survivors. This book is not only about Ravensbruck, and how it evolved into a mass killing machine on an industrial scale, but also a testament to the survivors and their tenacity and sheer will to live. At times quite harrowing and disturbing but one of the few books that deals with the life of Ravensbruck from beginning to end.
ISBN 9-781-1-4087-0107-2. Little Brown. £25.