The deadliest all female concentration camp of the Second World War was Ravensbruck.
It was opened in May 1939 and operated right up until the end of the conflict, and during
the war around 130,000 inmates passed through the barbed wire fences.
The death toll at Ravensbruck is unknown, and it ranges from between 30,000 to 90,000
people who succumbed to the terrible conditions there.
Many different people from different backgrounds were imprisoned there, from British SOE women
spies to even a 25 year old French Princess.
Executions were carried out at Ravensbruck, and the largest single group of women killed
there was 200 young Polish women belonging to the Home Army, and over the years many
different commandants oversaw the evil conditions there.
There was a shortage of food, and women were forced to work incredibly hard and disease
also ran rampant, but also the Nazis carried out many medical experiments upon the women.
However this was not the first all female concentration camp opened by the SS, as two
years before an all male camp was changed to become a womens camp.
Join us today as we look at the first female concentration camp, and remember to support
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Although Ravensbruck was intended to be the purpose built all female camp when it was
opened by Heinrich Himmler, a number of prisoners were transferred here from Lichtenburg Concentration
Camp.
Lichtenburg was one of the first concentration camps built and opened by the Nazis following
Hitler taking control and it was operated by the SS from 1933 to 1939.
It was not the biggest site and was found inside an old Renaissance Castle in Prettin
near to Wittenberg in Saxony.
When it first opened, it held as many as 2000 male prisoners however following 1937, the
male population was sent to other sites, and they made way for women who became prisoners
there.
It served as the first central women’s concentration camp for the whole of Hitler’s third Reich
until May 1939.
It is known that the conditions at Lichtenburg were rather tough.
Over the years it had a number of different men who acted and served as the commandants
of the camp, including Theodor Eicke who later became the Commandant of Dachau and he was
the first commandant.
Other notable names who ran the site include Hermann Barnowski who later became a terrifying
guard at Dachau, and also Alexander Piorkowski who would be there when the camp became a
site for women.
He later oversaw Dachau, and was later executed for his crimes.
Piorkowski would act as the deputy director of the camp also, and the director of the
women’s camp was Gunther Tamaschke.
Most of the inmates there were prisoners who were considered political prisoners, our habitual
offenders, people who disagreed with the Nazi regime, and many of those women imprisoned
were communist or held communist beliefs.
These were considered enemies of the Nazis, and they rounded up many of their enemies
and they were sent to concentration camps such as Dachau and Lichtenburg.
One woman who was held at Lichtenburg was Lina Haag, who was an anti-Fascist activist.
She was a youth member of the Communist Party of Germany, and she then became a member of
the regional parliament for the Communist Party until Hitler rose to power.
But when Hitler seized control, he ordered her arrest and she was imprisoned at Lichtenburg,
and in a shock move she eventually managed to turn the camp commandant of the site against
the Stuttgart Gestapo, and she was eventually freed.
Following her release she managed to petition for her husband’s release who had suffered
torture at Dachau, and she lived to the remarkable age of 105.
Another prisoner was Lotti Huber, who was a German Actress who later in life would appear
in many films in the 80s and 90s.
Also imprisoned at Lichtenburg was Olga Benario Prestes, who was a German-Brazillian communist
militant.
She was born to a Jewish family, and she worked as an instructor of the Communist Youth International
in the Soviet Union, France and Britain.
She fled to Brazil, and some believed she was a spy for the Soviets, but she was later
arrested in Brazil and then was shocking extradited to Nazi Germany.
She was sent to Lichtenburg in 1938, and then was later transferred to Ravensbruck a year
later, and she was then gassed at the Bernburg Centre where she was gassed along with hundreds
of other female political prisoners.
Lisa Ulrich was also a German politician who was sent to lichtenburg, and she became a
member of the Reichstag as a communist, and when the Nazis took over power she was banned
from Parliament.
She took part in underground communist meetings, but she was detained and charged with preparing
high treason.
She was sentenced to time in concentration camps, and it was at Lichtenburg in December
1937 where she was held.
She claimed that whilst there, her arm was broken when she was forced by a guard to walk
across an area of sheet ice and she fell.
The camps authorities did accept that the accident was the fault of the guard who forced
her to do this, but Ullrich insisted that she needed medication and better food to compensate
for how her body was broken following her time at Lichtenburg.
She was not given any such better treatment, and a camp doctor did place her arm in plaster
and they did come to inspect her.
At these inspections were two SS guards who monitored her every move, and these guards
often came into contact with the doctor.
She was given carrots to eat and was allowed to buy fruit, but any other instruction from
the doctor was ignored, and her plaster cast was removed, but her broken arm was not really
healed.
Whilst at Linchtenberg, she was visited by Heinrich Himmler, who asked her what was wrong
with her arm.
During the meeting Himmler stated how the Nazis struggled to make life better for working
people, and Ullrich even asked him if the Nazis were acting out the agenda of the Communist
Party secretly, and if this was the case then Lisa Ullrich questioned why she had been imprisoned
a number of years.
Like so many camps across the Third Reich, Lichtenberg did develop a reputation for being
brutal and violent, but also very tough.
The prison itself was very rundown and its believed that over time the camp became rather
overcrowded with more women who were dissident to the Nazis being imprisoned there after
their arrest, as it was one of the only places they could go rather than a normal jail or
prison.
Also the conditions were poor, and food rations were not sufficient enough to sustain inmates
and disease was known to have spread around Lichtenburg.
But in May 1939, the women who were inside of the camp were transferred to Ravensbruck
and they became the first inmates there, with a mass transport of 900 women arriving there
and quickly after the war began Ravensbruck would be at capacity.
Following this transfer of inmates, Lichtenberg then closed down and was not operational.
When some of the inmates arrived at Ravensbruck, they were surprised by the conditions there,
compared to other sites.
One woman said, ‘I looked across the great square, and could not believe my eyes.
It was surrounded by manicured lawns, covered by flower beds on which bloomed bright red
flowers.
A wide street, which led to a large open area, was flanked by two rows of wooden barracks,
on both sides stood rows of young trees and along the roadside ran straight flower beds
as far as the eye could see.
The square and the streets seemed freshly raked.
To the left towards the watchtower, I saw a white wooden barrack and beside it a large
cage, the size of a birdhouse the like you see at a zoo.
Within it paraded peacocks (stolzierten) and on a climbing tree dangled monkeys and a parrot
which always screamed the same word, "Mama".
I wondered, "this is a concentration camp”?’
But quickly this image of a camp being picturesque would be shattered by the violence of the
guards.
Quickly it became a site where conditions broke down, and much violent occurred, with
one young Belgian woman describing the site as, ‘They didn't shoot the women.
We were to die of misery, hunger and exhaustion...when we arrived at Ravensbrück, it was the worst.
The first thing I saw was a cart with all the dead piled on it.
Their arms and legs hanging out, and mouths and eyes wide open.
They reduced us to nothing.
We didn't even feel like we had the value of cattle.
You worked and you died.’
But many of the women of Lichtenberg were the first prisoners of Ravensbruck, and they
would be subjected to horrific ordeals at the site and they became part of the many
thousands who would never make it out alive.
With regards to Lichtenburg, it was the first all female SS concentration camp established,
where many prominent female prisoners would be sent to, but it was also shut down before
the war broke out, but many of the guards who worked here would later go on to become
brutal beasts at other sites such as Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz.
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