Ravensbrück concentration camp

Ravensbrück concentration camp for women
View of the barracks at Ravensbrück
Female inmates in 1939
Operation
Period	May 1939 – April 1945
Location	Fürstenberg/Havel
Prisoners
Total	132,000–153,000
Deaths	50,000+2,200  to 90,000  to 117,000  according to different sources

Ravensbrück (pronounced [ʁaːvənsˈbʁʏk]) was a German concentration camp for women, during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel).

Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that the camp was intended to hold exclusively female inmates. The facility opened in May 1939 and underwent major expansion following the invasion of Poland. Between 1939 and 1945, some 130,000 to 132,000 female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system; around 40,000 were Polish and 26,000 were Jewish from all countries including Germany, 18,800 Russian; 8,000 French, and 1,000 Dutch. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, about 50,000 of them perished from disease, starvation, overwork and despair; some 2,200 were killed in the gas chambers. Only 15,000 of the total survived until liberation. According to Britannica, on 29–30 April 1945 some 3,500 female prisoners were still alive in the main camp. Although the inmates came from every country in German-occupied Europe, the largest single national group incarcerated in the camp consisted of Polish women. In the spring of 1941, the SS authorities established a small men's camp adjacent to the main camp. The male inmates built and managed the gas chambers for the camp in 1944.

Camp commandants included SS-Standartenführer Günther Tamaschke from May 1939 to August 1939, SS-Hauptsturmführer Max Koegel from January 1940 till August 1942, and SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Suhren from August 1942 until the camp's liberation at the end of April 1945. Many of the slave labor prisoners were employed by the German electrical engineering company Siemens & Halske.