Original subtitles

[Music]

it was the only concentration camp in

History built exclusively for

women ravensbrook Germany was less than

100 kilomet North of Berlin near the

town of

[Music]

firstenberg the complex covered 9 Square

kilm making it the second biggest Camp

after awit it was established in 1938 by

Hinrich himler the head of the SS and

Hitler's right-hand man it was a

segregated internment camp designed to

Halt the reproduction of the supposedly

inferior races and held prisoners of war

and women seen as criminals in the eyes

of the

Nazis for what reason were we in prison

what had we

done that was the first shock of

ravensbrook from 1939 to 1945 between

130 and 145,000 women were were deported

from across Europe to ravensbrook

including some 8,000 French women as

they were of all ages from fit young

girls to ladies in their 60s and older

there were also

infants that's something for which I've

never been able to forgive the Germans

the children in the camps the things we

saw nothing like this had ever been seen

before for the deported women

ravensbrook was the Incarnation of Hell

the female Nazi guards behaved like

monsters you know women are sometimes

the worst some of the older deported

women used to pinch their cheeks to give

themselves some color because after the

roll call any women who were not in good

shape would disappear

forever the French women were among the

most detested in the camp we oh yes the

hows and screams the blows from the

offin and even the SS that was part of

everyday life you should remember that

there were quite a lot of us French

women

and we weren't very easy to

manage medical experiments were carried

out on human guinea

pigs I realized they had removed one of

my

bones Nazi ideology called for the total

anhil of Jewish women and their children

with no distinction for age or

sex we were destined to disappear from

the surface of the

Earth

through the testimony of the last

survivors illustrated by some

exceptional drawings made within the

camp by a French prisoner along with

digital

reconstructions this is the story of

ravensbrook The Forgotten

Camp I wish to declare the

following May 1939

Germany the second world war had not yet

broken

out nonetheless the Third Reich was

rolling out a huge secret operation

across the whole German

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territory Hitler's trains and trucks

crossed the country loaded with

prisoners who were political opponents

or Germans and austrians deemed Unworthy

of the Aryan

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race on May 15th one Convoy arrived at

the edge of the small town of

firstenberg 84 km north of

Berlin

on board were 860 German women and seven

austrians they were the first inmates in

the reich's only concentration camp

exclusively reserved for women and their

children

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ravensbrook the brand new camp at the

time comprised 16 dormatory Shacks two

Workshop blocks the common 1.2 guard

quarters showers kitchens and the

infirmary called the

Rivier the 9 squ km site was ringed by a

wall 4 M high topped with electrified

barbed

wire as the roundups continued the

number of dormatory blocks doubled to

32 the Nazis also built a bunker

containing 80 cells one one gas chamber

and a building to house three

crematorium

ovens today the dormatory blocks in

ravensbrook have gone destroyed by the

Nazis and later by the Russians when

they discovered the

camp only a handful of buildings

Remain the Bureau of the commandant and

the SS officers known as the

Kanto the crematorium

ovens and some textile Factory

buildings ravensbrook was based on the

model of daa for example the layout of

the Shacks in a rectangle was exactly

the same in both

camps the idea of ravensbrook actually

was developed um by himler and himler

ultimately became the chief of all the

concentration camps uh so Robins BR was

his

plan the head of the SS the police and

the Gusto Hinrich himler was strongly

attached to the idea of building a

woman's camp and he himself chose the

site at

ravensbrook now why he chose that nobody

knows exactly but he he he knew the area

himler knew that area a lot of these SS

uh officers used to love to go hunting

they used to love to go out from Berlin

they could get out from Berlin in a day

and this was an place with lots of Open

Spaces H H himler had built the camp in

a location that was isolated and at the

same time well connected since it was

close to firstenberg station and a

highway that connected some major German

cities it was a strategic spot in the

middle of the countryside close to a

peaceful Lake because himler had some

very particular

beliefs it was his strange ideology and

fantasies about Rebirth of the of of the

German Soul the German land the German

being in a

purity himler was convinced that by

assembling these prisoners in the

regenerative forests of the Reich the

Aryan race would be

purified up until 1937 women had been

less targeted by his

policy

we're dealing with a society that

imagines itself as viral and so there's

a very strong idea that women don't

think and therefore do not represent any

political danger which explains why

between 33 and 37 the Nazis didn't do

anything much against

women but from 1937 on the wind changed

the Nazis ruthlessly hunted down female

political oppon o and Communists and

later Jewish and Rah

women Hitler uh began to realize that um

that women were being rounded up in

increasing numbers and then they needed

to have a place for them uh and so he

devis this idea of a specific

concentration

camp today very few survivors remain to

testify about their arrival in

ravensbrook

when the train came to a halt we all got

off we didn't know where we

were immediately the SS appeared

accompanied by their threatening

dogs Lo move

it and the dogs were dressed in the same

way they had also gray Uniforms on with

the SS on

it and the gods were shouting away snow

snow

snow we walked through the huge Gateway

which was very

imposing and all we saw were the rows of

blocks we were in a big Assembly Square

where we collapsed with fatigue

especially thirst thirst is

terrible it's worse than hunger for me

anyway it's worse than

hunger we saw two people come to water

the part of the square which we weren't

in and none of us forceed so much as a

teaspoon of

water we saw some very thin women file

past dragging themselves along with

shovels on their backs it was a terrible

shock because were in such a state it

made you wonder who on Earth are these

women where are we you never imagined

you would become the

same these women must have done some

appalling things to be treated in such a

way they looked awful to

us some of them who were French called

to us you'll soon look like

us and I admit we thought this was

impossible they wouldn't treat us in

this manner we couldn't imagine what was

going to happen to us in the time that

followed I just turned 11 when I arrived

at

ravensbrook and so I had no idea what to

expect for what reason had we been sent

to prison what had we done we had no

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idea Lily lenel Rosenberg French arrived

in ravensbrook in

1943 the reason for her incarceration

Jewish ma Jose shalov French deported

age 21 arrived in

1943 reason for incarceration member of

the

resistance jacn fui French aged 21 in

1944 when she arrived in ravensbrook

reason for incarceration resistance

membership

Selma voner Dutch deported in 1944 to

ravensbrook age

22 reason resistance

membership Wanda Kulik rosovich from

Poland was the first of these survivors

to arrive at ravensbrook in 1940 at the

age of 18 the reason for her

incarceration resistance

membership all Europe was there there

wasn't a country in Europe that wasn't

represented in ravensbrook

from 1939 to

1945 convoys arrived from Poland Austria

the Netherlands the Soviet Union Belgium

France and

beyond all these women followed the same

protocol on

arrival they made us stand for 24 hours

in the Square before were sending us to

the

showers

there we had to undress fully and wait

for the

Germans then they took everything we had

removing wedding rings all

that this scene and others were

immortalized in the utmost secrecy by

Violet luk a member of the French

resistance during her captivity

here her remarkable drawings acted as

evidence during the ravensbrook

trials we all had to strip

naked we were so embarrassed you know at

the time we were very

modest I had never seen my mother naked

and she felt very awkward in front of

her

sons then you were looked at by doctors

by a doctor who I don't think had gloves

on or anything like that and in and um

investigated you sexually as

well um which

was we had to spread our legs and lean

forward then they shined a torch

underneath

us to check that we hadn't hidden any

valuables like

jewelry then they gave us what was the

only possession of the deported which

was your

bowl and we used to sleep with our Bowls

because if you lost it you got no soup

and you would die much sooner they threw

a dress to each of us which we put

on my name disappeared I was no longer

Mar Jose

shamb they called me

21706 the deportees then spent a

fortnight in quarantine before being put

in the

Shacks each woman was identified by a

piece of cloth a yellow star for the

Jewish women a triangle for the rest

those in the resistance were given red

ones we were turned into shook pieces

that the Nazis despised

how do you withstand such a

situation that was the first shock of

being in

ravensbrook the shock felt by the

inmates as they were stripped of their

identity was only the first of

many from the third floor building known

as the comman tuo max kugle ruled the

camp with an iron hand until

1942 appointed by hinr himler he was a

fervent Nazi a notorious anti-semite and

a cruel

man in the initial rules at the

ravensbrook Concentration Camp there was

nothing about prisoners being beaten it

was Max kugle who in 1940 encouraged by

Hinrich himler asked that punishment

beatings also be applied to

women kgle realized there was no bunker

he he didn't uh tolerate that he

persuaded him that this was

necessary the bunker was always a place

of absolute horror for all

Prisoners the lower levels were the

scenes of torture of

beatings and they were held in solitary

confinement in darkness with no

food to run the camp kogal had under his

command some 50 SS troops and 55 female

guards these were Prestige posts

well paid for German women of modest

background they were known as The Black

Crows from the moment they put on their

uniform suddenly they were

transformed it took around 2 weeks for a

new guard to become as brutal and as

violent as the other

guards it was forbidden to look the Nazi

guards in the

eyes when they took the roll call we had

to have our head lowered like

this you quickly got used to being

struck and slapped blows to the Head too

you know women are sometimes the

worst fale violence remained more

intensely scored in the prisoners

memories than the violence of the men

because it was

unexpected whether French Resistance

members polish or

German or women deported for racial

motives for all the first torture was

the roll call four times a day the

prisoners were counted in the central

square covering 2 square

km the first blast of the siren which

governed everything was the wakeup at

3:20 a.m. we would go and stand outside

and stay still in this position weren't

allowed to talk with the woman next to

you the number of prisoners counted had

to correspond to the guard's list for

example if a woman had escaped the whole

Camp was left standing for hours until

she was

found the women would wait here at 20°

below freezing in Winter and in 30° heat

in summer it was real

torture

I can still see some of the older

deported women those who were sickly who

would pinch and slap their cheeks during

the roll

call to begin with I wondered what this

gesture

meant I quickly realized they were doing

this to put some color in their cheeks

because when roll call was over any

women who were not in good shape were

taken aside and they would disappear

forever among the persecutors three

names have gone down in history Joanna

leld headguard until 1942 and the first

head of the women's camp in

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aitz Maria Mandel who took over from

Joanna langfeld at the women's section

of

aitz and dorothia bins known as the

beautiful [ __ ] the last headguard of

ravensbo Brook she took part in the mass

killings that took place

[Music]

there

bz was an extremely brutal woman who

regularly struck

people I was once beaten to the ground

simply because I put my hands in my

sleeves when they were

freezing she was very much a kid who was

very troubled herself she was a blonde

she was pretty she was attractive to men

and obviously she had innate inside her

some fairly sadistic Tendencies which

the camp encouraged and brought

out officially dorothia bince and her

fellow guards did not have the right of

life and death over prisoners but they

often killed with their bare hands or

kicked people to death their accessories

were clubs and

dogs himler had worked out that with one

dog they could save on two or three

extra

guards him believe that women are

naturally afraid of dogs so they were

used on a much wider scale as part of

the Guard apparatus in concentration

camps for

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women to keep the women guards happy

they lived in comfortable houses and

would go ice skating in Winter and

boating in

summer they frequented the SS soldiers

and would sometimes form intimate

relationships with them when they left

the camp where these men and women had

committed the worst Horrors they had to

give the impression that they were going

home like any office

employee 50 m from their Villas the

inmates observed

them we knew that they ate well they had

boots they

had we had nothing we were in the

cold they were well equipped warmly

dressed that's for sure

the German polish and Dutch women

interned in ravensbrook whether

political prisoners prostitutes or those

of Jewish origin were all put in

dormatory

blocks each block which contained up to

200 inmates was divided into two

symmetrical Parts in each Wing there was

a dormatory and common room with

latrines and a washroom in the

center there were three of us per bunk

and a bunk was about 70 CM wide in other

words the width for one person but there

were three of

us so you can perhaps imagine what life

was like in those

conditions we were like

sardines deprived of all Humanity the

inmates were condemned to a slow death

it was Hitler's

will but killing the prisoners was not

enough for the Nazis they had to see

them

suffer there was always a hierarchy

amongst the prisoners because of course

himler was a master of the art of divide

and

rule the Nazis knowingly involved the

prisoners in the working methods of the

concentration camps deliberately to

provoke antagonism between

them

they also planted spies in the blocks to

know what was going on inside and to

maintain

control the SS didn't have enough staff

or guards to keep control on their own

the prisoners had to do it themselves

there's no doubt that if nobody had

agreed to collaborate with the na

management system these camps wouldn't

have been possible to

run

at the same time victims and persecutors

so-called capos emerged in the men's

camps in the mid 1930s and soon made

their appearance in

ravensbrook where they were known as

Blas one nationality that had been

present since 1939 gradually imposed

itself over time in these strategic

posts the Polish I polish women were the

most widely represented nationality in

ravensburg

around 140,000 went through the

camp they had good knowledge of the

German

language so they had more chance of

obtaining these

posts many Polish women were capos they

wouldn't tell you this but Polish women

were not well-liked in the

camps they worked for the Germans

especially thein and in general they

were not very

kind some people even have appalling

Recollections of these

capos through their dedication to duty

some Polish inmates even succeeded in

winning the respect of Joanna leld

Ravens Brook's head

guard she admired the Polish for their

nationalism and their

patriotism however as a good National

Socialist she had no pity for the Jewish

prisoners she was anti-semitic and would

pick these women in 1941 to send them to

special centers Where They carried out

the extermination by gassing certain

female

prisoners if there was a hierarchy in

the horror the worst treatment in

ravensbrook was reserved for Jewish

women Jews had been present in the camp

since 1939 and accounted for 15% of the

female population

there from 1944 on thousands of Jewish

women were sent there from awit or else

deported there directly on their own or

with their children both girls and

boys the only children who were deported

were Jews and ROMs

we were destined to be eliminated from

the surface of the

[Music]

planet on the night of October 27th 1943

Lily aged 11 was sleeping peacefully in

the family apartment in rube northern

France when she heard the boots of the

SS in the

stairwell

figure this date remains indelibly

imprinted in my mind

because it was my mother's

birthday it was on that night that the

Fel joh Marie came crashing into our

house in the middle of the night at 3 in

the morning they marched up the stairs

banging on the doors we were woken with

a

start the whole family was

arrested reason given was that we were

of Jewish

origin that was our

crime Lily was then sent to Germany with

her mother and two brothers age nine and

three her father was sent to binval from

where he never

returned in ravensbrook Lily met the

same fate as thousands of other deported

Jewish

women they were kept separate from the

other prisoners they were given less

breaks from the slave labor they were

slurred by the guards they were called

Jewish

[ __ ] and many of the prisoners probably

felt a certain anti-Semitism towards

them as

well whether due to overcrowding or

simple Nazi pragmatism it is hard to say

why some Jewish women were sent to

ravensbrook rather than

elsewhere it is also hard to say how

many Jewish women and children died in r

Brook but one thing is sure even before

the construction of a gas chamber at the

camp their chances of survival were much

lower than any other group in the

camp the Nazis according to their whim

would sometimes pluck a child from one

block or

another and that child would never be

seen again every evening when she

returned from work Mama anxiously

wondered will I find my little children

waiting for me

me political prisoner was much better

mind you many of them were killed or

died just the same but not as

automatically as when you were

Jewish there was no question about not

being sent to

ourz Selma Vare was 22 when she was

deported to ravensbrook a member of the

resistance she hid her Jewish identity

and Till The Liberation as did Denise

ver the sister of siman V I was afraid

of that all the time yeah I pushed my

real identity away as much as possible I

was scared that I was going to talk in

my

sleep I was scared all the time about

that yes yes the Jewish were always

singled out um For Worse treatment than

the rest of the prisoners um and this

went through right till the very

end

and yet amidst the nightmare of the

Jewish women's block there were rare

moments of

Happiness there was a Polish lady who

was

amazing and when there weren't too many

SS around she gathered us together and

told us sing

something for those few minutes when we

were singing we thought we had already

left the camp and were perhaps at home

they were exceptional moments

come quick and save us from

here I beg you if you don't come we will

all be done

for do not forget

us as the population in ravensbrook

continued to grow numbering more than

2,000 prisoners Germany was making

territory torial gains in an Ever more

brutal

War verm Tanks entered

France the French capitulated Paris was

declared an open

City soon after women began joining the

resistance among them was jacn flurry

who was 17 at the

time I'm from a family who objected

strongly to the occupation the whole

family became active in the resistance

movement jacleen joined the defense of

France group one of her missions was to

carry the movement's clandestine

newspaper from Paris to

Versailles seeing the swasa flying over

the CH de was unacceptable for us

totally

unacceptable and without any need for

discussion we thought we had to do

something against this occupying

Force at the end of June 1944 she was a

arrested in her home by the gapo after 4

years of resistance

activity only her brother managed to

escape my father mother and I were

arrested in late June of 44 and taken to

fren

prison we were taken there in a black

Citroen which I think was familiar to

all resistance members who were

arrested from prison jacan was sent to

ravensbrook the most frequent

destination for those deported from

occupied France under repressive

measures among the French Resistance

members in the women's Camp along with

jacen some became well-known figures

like the ethnologist jamain

ton jeen Viv deal the General's

niece and Denise V the sister of siman V

but this was only part of the picture

you had sort of French Aristocrats you

had countesses mixed up with kind of

French prostitutes with French lawyers

with with all sorts they were all mixed

up the French women were among the most

hated in the camp despised by the Slavic

inmates who found them too

precious when the French women found out

some Polish women were due to be shot

would come to see us and

say give me your scarf you won't be

needing it

now the slaves they're physically

tougher and the French were physically

very weak right from the start they were

much more

delicate so the French start dying very

quickly the French women who arrived in

ravensbrook later than the other

nationalities were assigned the hardest

tasks

this very quickly left its mark on us we

were soon just skin and bone since we

hardly ate anything you wither away very

quickly you unload coal wagons for 12

hours you get home you've got nothing to

change into you only have water you've

got nothing to wash with you're in a

terrible state of

fatigue and the next day

you're woken at

4:30 you head off for another 12 hours

of the same

work and when the road was finished they

tore it up to start

again can you imagine living like

that do you think that's

enough the Nazi guards also hated the

French women and never appointed them as

Blas

ah yes the howls the screams the blows

from the

offin and even the SS all that was part

of everyday life you should remember

there were quite a lot of us French

women and we weren't very easy to

manage the Germans also had a very firm

idea about France and saw the French as

hereditary enemies of

Germany the French women were not

trustworthy

we often heard them say you French women

you're very poor workers if they only

knew how delighted we were to hear that

then maybe they wouldn't have said it so

often but we were very happy about that

because we were doing it deliberately

obviously June

1941 German broke the German Soviet pact

and attacked

Russia to execute his plan Hitler

mobilized Millions more

solders the Nazi war machine depended on

the output of German industry more than

ever they had to produce more and more

military equipment ammunitions and this

led to companies involved in war rated

production to set up on an increasingly

large scale is part of the Concentration

Camp

system from 1942 onwards companies such

as IG farbin Porsche balen Bush and Opel

began to rely on the Concentration Camp

mechanism seamons moved into

ravensbrook its vast factory made up of

16 Workshop blocks used the deported

women as

labor the inmates would be leased and

made available without wages

by a private company which paid the SS a

variable

sum Germany would become an immense War

Factory and Deportes formed a Workforce

which cost

nothing when a Deport died they were

immediately

replaced the women deported to

ravensbrook were particularly useful

himler

believed they had smaller hands so could

carry out more precise and meticulous

tasks we were quite simply slav know two

ways about

it between the slavery torture and

secret transports to the gas Chambers

ravensbrook in 1942 was a hellish prison

regime but the Nazis would sink yet

further in the horrors they

perpetrated in 1942 Hitler lost one of

his key

men Reinhard HRI chief of the Reich main

Security Office died as the result of an

ambush in

Prague the SS doctor Carl gibart was

dispatched to save him in vain Hitler

was

Furious when Paul gibart it was Carl

gibart who decided on the treatment but

his approach was

criticized if he had used the new

antibacterial drug sulfonamide pish

could have

survived

[Music]

to preserve his reputation gibart set

out to demonstrate the ineffectiveness

of sulfonamide a forerunner of

antibiotics on Gang

Green and ravensbrook would be the arena

of his medical

experiments these were carried out in

the Rivier the infirmary

block a double building covering 1500

square m connected by a corridor

comprising 20 rooms in including seven

Wards for the hospitalization of inmates

an operating theater an examination room

and

offices that day a group of inmates were

presented to a college of Nazi

doctors the women were all in perfect

health and they were

polish the Nazis considered Jews as a

sort of

subhuman so any experiments on them

would not be conclusive when applied to

arens

so they had to use human subjects that

they saw as closer to Aryan made up of

Polish a subcategory in terms of Nazi

ideology but nonetheless a form of

humanity closer to the

[Music]

German since its Creation in 1939 the

infirmary in ravensbrook was not like

any ordinary

[Music]

hospital in General when anyone went to

the

it was to

die I shared a bunk with the woman who

had died in the night and another who

was coughing up

blood but in

1942 the diabolic mind of Heinrich

himler came up with the idea of using

inmates at ravensbrook as human guinea

pigs prefiguring mangal's work in

aitz Carl gibart was put in charge of

this

mission concentration camp system

offered SS doctor subjects in this case

human beings who were seen as raw

material that could be used in a whole

range of medical

experiments one of these guinea pigs

survived Wanda Kulik rosovich we tracked

her down to the Polish Capital

Orsa on that day they took me into the

operating theater in a wheelchair

I had no idea why I was being taken

there they injected us with a

liquid we were laid

down completely

drowsy we didn't know what was going to

happen to us we were in good

health

they were the most horrific mutilations

that were carried out on legs primarily

but not only on legs where they were um

they their bones were deliberately

broken and um their muscles were CR were

crushed and they were infected

deliberately with Gang Green and with

other incredibly

infectious

diseases the subject had pieces of glass

glass and splinters of wood pushed into

open

wounds and were injected with diseases

like typhus and gas

gangin gebhart's experiments not only

violated every ethical code but they

demonstrated

nothing disoriented and semiconscious

Wanda was unsure how many days and

nights he stayed in the

Rivier I realized they had removed one

of my

bones our legs stank like rotten

fish the stench was

terrible on top of that it was awfully

hot all in all it was

horrendous in the eyes of the Nazis we

weren't even

human in total 86 Deportes including 74

Polish women were used as human guinea

pigs in ravensbrook as the these

clandestine photos

show 23 would die as a result of these

experiments having had nerves muscles or

bones removed the survivors tended to

hop around and were given the cruel

nickname of

rabbits those young Polish women walked

with difficulty they had wounds on their

legs and we learned from fellow inmates

that they had been used as guinea

pigs it was more than a shock it was

unimaginable not only inhumane but we'd

never even thought such a thing could

happen one year later in February 1943

the Nazis suffered a crushing defeat in

Stalingrad they were losing ground the

Allies landed in

Italy yet ravensbrook seemed cut off

from the rest of the

world and the rabbits were still

undergoing the most inhuman human

torture and executions

intensified then in March 1943 the

mutilated inmates attempted the

unthinkable we organized a sort of March

of the

infirm we wanted to see the

common we wanted to tell him that the

prison the operations the firing

squads it's all getting to be too much

don't you

think the response of Fritz Surin the

Camp's new commandant to these

grievances was to issue orders for four

of the protesters to be executed the

human guinea pigs continued to rail

against the Nazi machine the head guard

Joanna langerfeld came to their

defense Joanna langfeld found out that

these women were due to be executed

because they had been summoned by her

hierarchy that was when she picked up

the phone and called the Comm

leld was herself stripped of her

functions for

insubordination after the war despite

her involvement in the killing of Jewish

Women some Polish women helped her

escape the prison where she'd been

incarcerated thereby avoiding

trial in ravensbrook despite lel's

intervention on February 4th 1945 the

Polish women were ordered not to leave

their block their execution was

approaching

they had to be killed because they would

be the living Witnesses the living

evidence of this war

crime the Rapids probably would have

been killed if other inmates had not

risked their lives to save

them a general roll call was

announced all the prisoners were

assembled in the

Square had to stand there until guards

identified

them one inmate created a diversion

shouting out that there was some bread

available

somewhere the starving prisoners all

rushed to that place sparking chaos

which allowed the Polish women to

hide they were hidden in the roof of the

blocks they were hidden in the hospital

block and they were pretended to be dead

or or they were disguised or they were

dressed up in in in other

clothes and they were moved at night if

if it was felt that the guards knew

where they were then the prisoners came

together and sort of moved them from

block to

block the prisoners hid the rabbits in

other blocks they did for example swap

their prisoner numbers for those of

inmates who were already

dead they were helped by the whole Camp

the whole Camp tried to save them and

what's more

succeeded despite the incessant hunt

that continued up until the liberation

of the camp the Nazi guards never put

their hands on the Rapids in what was a

powerful Act of resistance in the

history of the concentration

camps 1944 German forces were teetering

all over Europe the Reich was was

collapsing and yet this was when the

Nazis would generate even more victims

with the mass deportation of Jews to

carry out their project of extermination

and the dismantling of resistance

networks so far the Nazi doctors at

ravensbrook had managed to control the

occasional pregnancy by performing

abortions on any deportee who arrived

pregnant but now the inmate population

was exploding they simply couldn't carry

out abortions at the rate that was

necessary to stop babies being being

bought in the camp so this extraordinary

uh idea was arrived at which was that we

will let the babies be

born and then we'll let them

die Fritz Surin started the Kinder

Zimmer award for children to which

French Resistance member m Jose shalov

was assigned as a medical

student I entered this room and was

appalled to find newborns piled up on

the heads where they were being

kept they looked like little old men it

was horrific that was one thing for

which I could never forgive the Germans

the children in the camps the things we

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saw the technique of starvation had

already been tried by the

Nazis in ravensbrook it was applied to

babies and their

mothers the food was so appalling that

the state of their bodies was just not

producing any breast milk so that's an

added torture that not only have you

given birth to this baby but you then

can't feed the

baby so once again in ravensbrook an

active resistance was organized the Deep

ores who still had any milk often the

ROM women who were more robust breastfed

babies other than their own it was an

act of

desperation in ravensbrook I saw

comrades who died there were executions

but for me the worst was the Kinder

Zimmer with the Advent of the Kinder

Zimmer in 1944 ravensbrook had sunk to

Fresh depths of

horror that violence was part of a very

particular stage in the war a time when

the mass murder of anyone who could

constitute a danger

began the Nazis wanted to take their

murderous ideology regarding the

supposed inferior races to its Grim

conclusion and at the same time silenced

the the witnesses and victims of their

crimes jine tillon who uh the French

prisoner who wrote about this said it

was

lasas it was lasas they were hunting

them down like animals and that's for

the last days of robins

bre in 1943 the Nazis had already built

three crematorium ovens in ravensbrook

to burn the bodies of women killed by

shooting or injection or who simply died

due to the

conditions to step up the pace of

killing the extermination now took place

in the Camp's gas

chamber here from the start of 1945 the

Nazis packed in up to 180 people at a

time none of the inmates were ignorant

of what was going on there there were

several ways of killing people of course

I was dead scared to go to the doctor

because if you were going to be sent to

the rever that they might take M inject

you and that's how people died and were

taken to the

commission Mama Tried to Shield us from

death it was sometimes present but you

know you can hide it from a little child

by pretending the person is asleep or

saying they went to the hospital to be

treated so when a dead person was remove

mov you didn't

realize we knew our fellow inmates we

knew their real names and when they died

they would tell us if you ever get back

home tell them how I

died at the time I thought a lot about

France because I thought I'd never see

it

again between January and April 1945 in

just 3 months nearly 6,000 women and

children died in the gas chamber at

ravensbrook June 6th

1944 while the Nazis continued the mass

murder in ravensbrook the Allies landed

in

Normandy but in the reich's other

territories Poland Austria Germany

itself The Liberation was still a long

way

off when we heard about the D-Day

Landings we said to ourselves we're not

going to spend another winter

here but unfortunately there was lots of

fighting it took a lot longer than we

had hoped it was interminable we had to

hang on to the

end the deportees had to wait for long

months during which Millions more fell

victim to the Nazi killing

machine aitz was liberated on January

27th

1945 booken Wald on April

10th and ravensbrook on April 30th by

the Red Army some of the Russian command

ERS were obviously horrified by what

they saw and did everything they could

to help there was also a very dark side

to the Liberation because of course the

Russian Red Army was Notorious for rape

of

women among the ranks of the prisoners

who were finally freed was Mar Jose

shalov a French Resistance member who

had spent two years in the

camp the French women all sang the mares

at the top of their voices it was

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incredible

Lily lenier Rosenberg was transferred in

early April 1945 to Beren

bellson having been liberated she

returned to France with her two little

brothers she was reunited with her

mother

later k What revenge over the Nazis and

it's true it's a kind of Revenge how

else can you explain that three little

children returned that a child age three

and a half

survived French Resistance members jacen

flurry and her mother avoided the death

marches before returning to France and

to the Reception Center for deportees at

the leesia hotel in

Paris there were lists pinned up in the

lobby as far as I remember and we were

asked lots of

questions it was very hard it wasn't

just we're home that's great not at

all and then the following morning they

gave you 10 Franks and a Metro ticket

and that was it you went

home piecing oneself back together

having survived ravensbrook in a France

that wanted to forget was certainly No

Easy

Task the trials which took place from

1946 to 1950 did however allow certain

women who'd been in the French

Resistance to tell their

story I knew the names of the commandant

and the doctors at the camp so after the

war I testified against them

in principle I'm against the death

penalty but I thought it was quite

appropriate that those in charge at

ravensbrook were

executed in 1947 Carl Gart was sentenced

to death having been found guilty of

murder war crimes and crimes against

humanity the commandant Max kogel was

arrested by the US Army but committed

suicide side in his cell in

1946 Fritz Surin was sentenced to death

and shot in

1950 the guard Dortha bin was executed

in

1947 yet despite the trial and its

Singularity the ravensburg camp long

remained a footnote in the history of

the

war the people who write write the

history are usually men and men were

simply not interested male historians

were not interested and indeed most of

them are not today interested in

ravensbrook and they showed

extraordinary ignorance about

ravensburg the prosecuting lawyer who

was actually a British Barrister trying

to explain ravensbrook to the judges

described it as that he said he had to

understand this not just as a crime

against but a crime against women

because they were very specifically

crimes fortunately the president ious

accounts of the survivors still resonate

notably the celebrated writings of the

French Resistance member jamain

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Tong I owe the fact that I survived

first and foremost to Good

Fortune then to anger and the will to

expose these crimes and lastly to a

coalition of friendship because I had

lost the visceral desire to

live