Ravensbruck was the preeminent concentation camp for women during the Holocaust. It originally opened as a camp for political prisoners in 1939, with about 500 inmates, grew to about 10,000 in 1942, and at the close of the war in January 1945 had nearly 50,000. It also had a "sister" camp, Uckermack, which housed women from 16-21, although at least one 8 year old girl is known to have been interned there. Women who reached the age of 21 were then transferred to the main Ravensbruck camp.

The women came from 30 countries, particularly Polish and Soviet POWs. Among the prisoners were ‘the cream of Europe’s women’…; they included General de Gaulle’s niece, a former British women’s golf champion and scores of Polish countesses." (Helm 2015).

The prisoners were subject to medical experimentation, forced labor in a factory belonging to the Siemens electric company (which still exists today, although to their credit the company does provide substantial funding to the Ravensbruck memorial and several other relief organizations for former forced-laborers (Siemens 2015), and serving as a sex workers in a brothel for SS-men. The last fate I find particularly heartbreaking as, "prisoners "volunteered" after the camp authorities promised them preferential treatment or release from the concentration camp after six months. None of the women were released early from the camp as promised." [emphasis added] (USHMM 2017).

Women served as guards at the prison as well, female SS auxiliaries, many of whom had worked in the west prior to the war (Helm 2015). The commandant, Johanna Langefeld, is a deeply polarizing figure. On one hand, she successfully lobbied to keep control of the camp from her male SS counterpart, she personally supervised the selection of prisoners to removal to the death camp at Auschwitz. She was eventually relieved of her position after being considered "too soft" after an attempted mutiny by Polish prisoners, and was arrested by the SS.

Her successor, Dorothea Binz, earned the monikers "The Beast" and "The Beautiful Bitch," and before taking over as wardeness had been the head of the "punishment block" of the camp. Fond of setting dogs on her prisoners, she once beat a prisoner to death after the prisoner attempted to electrocute herself by running into the electric fence (Helm 2015).

In 1945, a gas chamber was constructed on the grounds of Ravensbruck and 3600 women were gassed at Ravensbruck, with a total of nearly 6000 killed by gas chambers at other camps, including Auschwitz. In March of 1945, the order to liquidate the camp was given ahead of the advancing Red Army, and 24,500 women were ordered onto a death march to Mecklenburg. When the Soviets arrived they found nearly 3500 ill and infirm prisoners who had been left behind.

After the war, there allies tried 16 wardens, guards, and doctors from the camp, including four "Kapos" or prisoner-inmates with administrative duties. 12 were sentenced to death, one died during the trial, and three were sentenced to hard-labor of 10-15 years. Binz was executed by hanging. Langefeld was extradited to Poland, where she escaped. She went into hiding, first in a convent and then after 1957 in her native Germany where she died in 1974 at the age of 73.

In total, six more Ravensbruck trials would be held. Five people were tried for their role in the Unckermack juvenile camp, with two acquittals, two prison sentences, and death for Ruth Neudeck, the ruthless warden of the camp who, as one French resistance prisoner testified, "once cut the throat of a prisoner with a shovel."

If you're looking for good writing about Ravensbruck, I highly recommend Sara Helms' Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women (2016). I've quoted extensively from a longer magazine piece she wrote in 2015 while writing that book, and a shorter newspaper article from the Daily Mail during that same time period. On the web, you can also find loads of good information at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org) and the Jewish Virtual Library (jewishvirtuallibrary.org. The University of Southern Florida also has a collection of archaelogical images from Uckermack.