Women Were Victims of The Third Reich Too

During the pregame at this year’s Super Bowl, the four fighter jets that flew across
the sky in formation were piloted by women, a symbol that women have assumed
a front line role in our nation’s defense. We are proud of them.
Women were on the front lines in other ways during WWII—not always
voluntarily. The Germans afforded special treatment to women by establishing a
separate women’s camp at Ravensbrück, 56 miles north of Berlin. But, as detailed
in Sarah Helm’s splendid history, Ravensbrück, Life and Death In Hitler’s
Concentration Camp for Women (Anchor Books 2016), the fate of women
imprisoned there was no less horrific than what men experienced at other camps.
In some cases, it was worse.
Ms. Helm provides a comprehensive review of what happened at the camp for
women, from mass starvation, to death from the icy elements, to human medical
experiments, to forced abortion and infanticide, mobile gassing trucks used to
reduce the camp’s population, a gas chamber built in the latter stages of the war,
and more. The New York Times called it “a biography of the camp”1 because Ms.
Helm focuses on what we know about the individuals who were imprisoned there
and the people who served as their overseers. Some of the prisoners became
oppressors themselves, willing to take on the responsibility as overseers in
exchange for food and a slightly better lifestyle, but others were heroes, refusing
to relinquish their humanity at great personal cost. The book is difficult to read,
both because of its subject matter but also because it is 658 pages of detailed
accounts. But it is the impressive detail that makes this a worthwhile read.

A Brief History of Ravensbrück

When Hitler assumed control of the German government in 1933, he put many of
his political opponents in jail. The sheer number of these political prisoners
overwhelmed the existing jail system. Concentration camps were built to house
them.
Recognizing a need to segregate prisoners by gender, the Nazis opened
Ravensbrück in 1939. Because it was located in what became East Germany, most of the details in the Ravensbrück story were locked behind the iron curtain until
the 1990s, when its records were made available to the west. Using these
records, Ms. Helm found the survivors who still lived and interviewed them. She
also reviewed transcripts from the war crimes tribunals conducted at Nuremburg
and Hamburg after war’s end. Her careful research yielded a detailed narrative of
the horrors suffered by the women incarcerated at Ravensbrück.

Diabolical Conflict

The Nazi camps were operated, to the extent possible, by the inmates
themselves. For example, official German records at the camp were kept by
prisoners, who welcomed the opportunity to work indoors during the cold
German winters. Prisoners also served as overseers and served in other positions
of authority. But the added privileges that came with these positions often posed
diabolical dilemmas for those who were chosen.
For example, prisoners were appointed as “Blockovas”—leaders of the barracks in
which the prisoners lived. Kathe, a Jew who had worked as a Blockova, explained
the system to her friend, Rosa, who had recently arrived. As a Blockova, “You
must always agree with the SS. Always,” Kathe explained. And “if the SS want you
to say, ‘Stinking Jewish women’,” said Kathe, “[y]ou have to say it.” By
compromising her values in this way, Kathe was able to gain opportunities to
influence the guards to make life easier for inmates. Standing on principle would
achieve nothing, she argued. And Rosa accepted her instructions.
Carrying out the instructions of the Nazis sometimes went as far as physical
mistreatment of fellow prisoners. The Germans converted one of the prison
blocks into a so-called Stafblock, or punishment unit, where prisoners who had
misbehaved were segregated for particularly bad treatment. Not only were these
prisoners fed less food—in a camp where inadequate rations were frequently a
cause of death even in the non-punishment blocks—but they were thrashed and
beaten regularly and forced to undertake the hardest, most unseemly tasks, with
no days off.
One day, an escaped prisoner, Katharina, was dragged into the camp and thrown
into the Stafblock. Prisoners in the Stafblock were forced to stand without food
during the three days that the escapee was at large. When Katharina was dragged
back to the camp, having been bitten severely by dogs used to hunt her down,
she was thrown back into the Stafblock, where the prisoners were told to do what
they wanted with her. “[T]he worst of them pushed her into the bathroom,
swearing at her, and beat her to death with chair legs.”
Not all prisoners turned into beasts, however. Some prisoners were heroes.
Shortly after Katherina was murdered, a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses
incarcerated at Ravensbrück refused to perform certain tasks because they were
pacifists and would do nothing that contributed to the war effort. The
commandant ordered that they be thrashed for their disobedience. Some
prisoners from the Stafblock volunteered to do the thrashing, but one, Else Krug,
refused. “’No, Herr Commandant,’ said Else. ‘I will never beat a fellow prisoner.’”
The Commandant ordered that Else be taken away, blustering, “You’ll have cause
to remember me.” And she did.

Jewish Prisoners

The German obsession with the Jews was apparent from the early days of
Ravensbrück. Before the war began, about ten percent of the Ravensbrück
population were Jews. The Jews were isolated in a separate block, a sort of
barracks, and treated miserably. They were beaten more and fed less than the
other prisoners.
Before the roundups of Jews began in Germany, Jewish women were abused and
sent to Ravensbrück. Ms. Helm reports the experience of a Jewish woman, Herta,
who was forced by a soldier or policeman (she only knew he wore a uniform) to
have sex with him. When she reported it to the police, she was questioned in
embarrassing detail about everything that happened during the encounter; then
she was sent to Ravensbrück.
Ms. Helms’ stories include reports of heroism in the Jewish block. A lockdown of
the Jewish block occurred in November 1939 because a Jew had attempted to kill
Hitler. Apparently, the Germans believed that since the would-be assassin was a
Jew, all Jews should be punished. Doors were barred, windows were boarded up,
and roll call took place inside the block by a guard named Zimmer, who beat the
inmates violently and at random each time she took roll. The inmates were
without air as the windows could not be opened during a barricade that lasted
three weeks. But a blockova—a Jewish mother named Olga who was revered by
the inmates—demanded that the lockdown cease. Survivors reported that this
was a courageous act since no one had the impudence to question an order by
the commandant of the camp. But it worked, and things returned to normal.
Eventually, Jews from Ravensbrück were transferred to Auschwitz, which was
equipped with gas chambers for mass killing. At war’s end, surviving Jewish
women were sent to Ravensbrück, where conditions had deteriorated to include
mass killing.

Medical Experiments–Rabbits

Human medical experiments began at Ravensbrück in 1942 to learn more about
how to cure gas gangrene, a common infection on the battle field. At first, men
were brought to Ravensbrück, where they were intentionally infected with
gangrene, but when the initial experiments were inconclusive, German doctors
reached into the abundant supply of women imprisoned there.
For these studies, the Germans selected a group of young, healthy women
brought to Ravensbrück from Poland, where many had actively resisted the
German occupation. As word spread around the camp about these experiments,
the victims were given a nickname, rabbits.
Some of the rabbits died, but those who survived were often badly mutilated. It
dawned on the victims that the Germans could not allow them to live—witnesses
to what everyone knew were war crimes.
Some of the rabbits bravely found ways to communicate with their families about
what was happening to them. They believed that public knowledge of the
experiments might save their lives since there would be less reason for the
Germans to kill them. Word eventually reached the International Red Cross in
Switzerland, but nothing was done to stop the experiments, which had expanded
far beyond their original purpose. It was not until post-war trials at Nuremberg
and Hamburg that physicians who conducted the experiments were called to
account.

Mass Killing

In the beginning Ravensbrück was not established as an extermination camp like
Auschwitz. Nevertheless, the Germans inflicted death in a variety of ways even
before they built gas chambers to speed the process. Daily diet was not
sustainable. Those given positions of privilege, such as Blockovas, received extra
food. The rest slowly starved. Philosophically, the Germans were opposed to
feeding people who could not further the goals of the Reich through hard work.
Death by murder began with deportations out of Ravensbrück. Prisoners were
placed on trucks, bound for unknown destinations, but those who remained soon
recognized the belongings of these prisoners when they were returned to
Ravensbrück. Deported prisoners hid messages in this clothing so that their fellow
prisoners could learn their fate.
Later, mobile gassing vehicles were used, but as the war drew to a close, a gas
chamber was built to supplement the mobile devices.

Conclusion

The treatment of women at the concentration camp for women was horrific. This
blog provides only a sliver of the detail reported by Sarah Helm. I urge you to read
her book to learn more.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/books/review/ravensbruck-by-sarah-helm.htm