Camp Conditions
The conditions at Ravensbruck were considered equally brutal as the other camps at the time. Victims were murdered in many different ways such as hangings, starvation, beatings, torture, and shootings. Women were worked to death, and if they were not capable of manual labor they were immediately sent to the gas chamber. SS doctors performed medical experiments on the prisoners and often killed them by lethal injection. SS officers were constantly on guard and made sure the prisoners were working their hardest. As the war came to an end, death rates increased because the officers tried to exterminate as much of the population as possible to hide their crimes (USHMM).
Children
Children were also held as prisoners at Ravensbruck. These children were treated just as brutally as the adults at the camp. Babies were sentenced to death before they were born, and often times they would be killed within minutes after their birth. They were taken from their mothers and immediately drowned or put in a sealed room to die. The mothers of these children were forced to watch this happen. Children were also thrown alive into the cremotory, buried alive, strangled, or used for medical experiments. Girls as young as 8 were sterilized by direct exposure to x-rays (USHMM).
Housing
Barracks that were originally created to hold 250 women were later used to house up to 2,000 people. Three or four women shared a bed, and many others were left to sleep on the floor. Risk of lice and fatal diseases made living in barracks a danger to the prisoners (History & Overview).
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"Then, silencing the tuneless song of the Ukrainians, another song came to the ears of the women, as a parallel column of female creatures in striped sacking marched briskly past. Their heads were shaven, their eyes were dead and the skin was drawn tightly back from the bones of their faces so that they were rows of skulls marching. They stepped out in time to the crack of an SS woman’s whip, and by order, they sang a merry song, opening and shutting the caverns of their mouths in macabre melody. The black door of the camp swung open at their approach and on the heels of these scarecrow travesties of womanhood, the new entry shuffled into Ravensbrucke" (Ravensbruck Concentration Camp). This is a quote from Odette Samson, a British SOE agent during World War II.
Medical Experiments
"They took those legs that so loved movement and dancing, and removed a large section of bone from them. Then, for good measure, they injected them with bacteria. She lay there, butchered, her legs in plaster - still trying to smile."[And I am afraid of my dreams by Wanda Półtawska; translated from the Polish by Mary Craig; Hodder & Stoughton, 1987].
Doctors began to use the prisoners of Ravensbruck for gruesome medical experiments. These experiments were done for the sake of German medical advances. For instance, doctors would deliberately wound the prisoners, and then they would test different chemicals on the wounds to see which ones prevented infection. Often times these chemicals would harm the prisoners, and many were fatally wounded. After the experiments the prisoners would be killed. Other experiments focused on studying the process of regeneration of bones, muscles, and nerves, and the possibilities of transplanting bones from one person to another. They would break up, dissect, and graft bones muscles and nerves. Prisoners would be permanently injured and underwent extreme pain (Ravensbruck Medical Experiments).
Doctors began to use the prisoners of Ravensbruck for gruesome medical experiments. These experiments were done for the sake of German medical advances. For instance, doctors would deliberately wound the prisoners, and then they would test different chemicals on the wounds to see which ones prevented infection. Often times these chemicals would harm the prisoners, and many were fatally wounded. After the experiments the prisoners would be killed. Other experiments focused on studying the process of regeneration of bones, muscles, and nerves, and the possibilities of transplanting bones from one person to another. They would break up, dissect, and graft bones muscles and nerves. Prisoners would be permanently injured and underwent extreme pain (Ravensbruck Medical Experiments).
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