How different were the conditions in female only concentration camps compared to male only camps? were there different punishments and levels of brutality? were there female capos? was the work different?

by TheKoi
commiespaceinvader

There was only one really bona fide "female only" Concentration Camp and that was Ravensbrück. I'm putting "female only" in quotes since even in Ravensbrück there was indeed a small separate camp for male prisoners. Similarly, other Conentration Camps such as Auschwitz had separate camps for female prisoners and even some mixed camps - the Familienlager for Roma and Sinti families - under its administration.

While Ravensbrück was founded in 1938, there were predecessor camps in Moringen and Lichtenburg but for answering your questions, I will focus on Ravensbrück since it fits the definition of what we now understand as a Concentration Camp better than the early camps in Lichtenburg and Moringen (despite the Lichtenburg system having a similar influence on the establishment of the CC system as the Dachau system).

As for what was similar:

The prisoners administration was similar to every other Concentration Camps. Prisoners were classified with triangles, there were Capos in charge of work details who were female instead of male, the prisoners had to work in a nearby Siemens factor manufacturing radio equipment for the Wehrmacht, and there was the level of brutality and murder that was very much present in every other concentration camp.

As for differences:

The camp was guarded by female guards. Ultimately under the administration and supervision of male officers, the camp guards were female. About 3000 female guards were present at Ravensbrück throughout its history. As far as we can tell through research, the female guards of Ravensbrück did not distinguish themselves by ways of brutality from the male guards, generally being as violent and brutal as male guards in other Concentration Camps. Where they are different is the social structure of the guards. Whereas the male guards at concnetration camps presented a rather heterogeneous sample of the German population, the female guards are much more homogeneous. It is generally accepted that most of them came from a lower socio-economic background and used the SS-auxilliary service (women were not members of the SS but SS-auxiliaries) as a means of rising the social strata. There were a considerable number of women who were single mothers with children out of wedlock for example. As previously mentioned, they didn't really differ in their conduct from male guards concerning brutality or the level of violence. They and the violence they perpetrated still received a very high amount of attention, mainly because after the war and until very recently they were seen through a lens distorted by patriarchal stereotypes of women being caregivers and unable of violence. Regarding them, the interesting aspect is that they do not differ from their male colleagues when it comes to violence.

Another slight difference can be found in the prisoner population and prisoner self-organization. While there were women of similar groups as men in other CCs such as communists, Polish nationalists, Jehovah's Witness, Roman and Sinti, Soviet POWs, and so-called asocials, due to the nature of the camp as a women's Concentration Camps, there were a couple of prisoner groups not present in other camps. Especially when it came to the very under researched prisoner groups of so-called criminals (those with the green triangles) and the so-called ascoials, there seem to be differences due to the fact that these people were women. For example, professional prostitutes, lesbians persecuted as asocials, and women who refused - to put it broadly - to socially perform women (today, the term would probably be queer) seem to be groups without a male equivalent in other camps (male homosexuals being a separate group in other Concentration Camps but they were often subjected to sexual violence by fellow prisoners; something that does not appear very much with lesbians in Ravensbrück).

Also, prisoner self-organization seems to differ in Ravensbrück from the other Camps. Prisoner self-organizations seems to have been generally tighter than in other camps, following the testimonies of former prisoners. There seem to have been more and more intense contact between the different national and political groups such as Communists and Poles and Germans etc. etc. This appears to stem from the high number of older Communist prisoners in the first wave of Ravensbrück prisoners.

One major difference that distinguishes Ravensbrück from majority male Concentration Camps is the much higher prevalence of sexualized violence, mainly in form of forced prostitution, rape by male officers, and medical experiments. While there certainly was for example rape by guards and male officers in other camps, due to the fact that the Ravensbrück prisoner population were women, rape as a crime perpetrated by the male SS-officer population was much more prevalent. Similarly, the officer and prisoner bordellos in other camps were almost exclusively supplied by Ravensbrück. Basically, female prisoners were forced into prostitution by the camp administration.

Ravensbrück prisoners also almost exclusively supplied certain Nazi medical experiments. Some were transferred to Auschwitz in order to experimented on in fertility experiments and also, there were doctors in Ravensbrück conducting Nazi experiments such as sterilization and sulfonamid trials there.

To generalize and put it short: There were less differences between Ravensbrück as a Concentration Camp almost exclusively female prisoners to other Conentration Camps with an almost exclusively male prisoner population. Similarly, there were less differences than one would expect between female and male concentration camp guards. There are differences related to gender aspects and other aspects, especially in regards to sexualized violence and discursive exceptions of women and womanhood, however, the really interesting aspect, also from a gender perspective, is more how similar Ravensbrück was to other Camps rather than how different it was.

Sources:

  • Benz, Wolfgang/Distel, Barbara (Hrsg.): Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager. Band 4: Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, C. H. Beck, München 2006.

  • Daniel Patrick Brown, The Camp Women: The Female Auxiliaries Who Assisted the SS in Running the Concentration Camp System.

  • Carola Sachse: Jewish forced labor and non-Jewish women and men at Siemens from 1940 to 1945, in: International Scientific Correspondence, No. 1/1991, pp. 12–24.

  • Morrison, Jack G.: Ravensbrück. Das Leben in einem Konzentrationslager für Frauen 1939–1945. Pendo, Zürich/München 2000.

  • Strebel, Bernhard: Das KZ Ravensbrück. Geschichte eines Lagerkomplexes, Paderborn/München/Wien/Zürich 2003.

TheKoi

during ww2.