Ravensbruck was a special camp where 92,000 women and children out of the 132,000 suffered a cruel death. Being the only women
camp created by the Nazis, Ravensbruck was one of the four infamous prewar concentration camps. On May 15, 1939, It was
officially reestablished from Concentration Camp Lichtenburg, a small women camp created during the first years of the Third Reich.
Focusing on textile industrial concerns, Ravensbruck assigned camp women to work primary in producing SS uniforms. It also
functioned as a training center for female SS who intended to go into service in the camp system. SS women were generally
stout, strong,and healthy. They were from all classes of society. However, not all of them volunteered to go to the camps and to help
murdering human beings. The Nazis selected some from among the labor draftee and forced them to work as guards.
The inmates of Ravensbruck came from many countries. The Polish women formed the elite and ran the camp internally. Although all
women were badly misused, the authorities used the most brutal treatment for the Jewish inmates, especially the French Jews. The
Jewesses were assigned to digging, building roads and houses, chopping wood.
Despite the strict rules in the camp, the inmates in Ravensbruck managed to organize resistance movement. The communist and
French women began to hold secret meetings to spread war news. The inmates chose three women as leaders. They exchanged
newspapers, secured maps, held Sunday meetings. The group helped awaken the courage to live and the will to exist.
The most horrifying and shameful crimes at Ravensbruck were those experiments that used young and healthy Polish women as
guinea pigs for experimental operations. On August 1, 1942, SS doctors subjected six women in their first experiments. The
sulfanilamide experiments or the infectious operations on limbs were directly related to the German war effort. Dr. Gebhardt
conducted three series of sulfanilamide experiments with each group of subjects. In one he used a bacterial culture and fragment
of wood; in the second he used bacterial culture and fragments of glass; in the third he used all three objects. The staff made
incisions in the legs of several women inmates to simulate battlefield infections. Then they infected the wounds with bacteria, wood
shavings, glass fragments, gas gangrene, and tetanus. After days they treated the wounds with sulfanilamide and other drugs.
In addition to the sulfanilamide experiments, Gebhardt's staff also removed sections of bones, muscles, and nerves from the legs of
women subjects to conduct related experiments. The bone operations included bone breaking, bone transplantation, and bone
grafting. In the first instance the doctors used a hammer to break the bones of the lower part of both legs into several pieces. Later
they joined the bones with clips and placed the legs into several pieces. Sometimes, they operated similar experiments on the same
people after their legs were "healed."
The camp inmates treated the guinea pigs in an unusual manner. The majority were protective toward the youngest and most crippled
of their colleagues. Workers stole sheets and shoes for them. Cooks stole cauldron of soup for them. When the SS doctors decided
to execute all their guinea pigs, the women prisoners fought for their lives. Some women proposed to give the younger ones false
documents and then let themselves be killed in their place.
The long-awaited liberation came on April 30, 1945. However, 20,000 women died when the SS evacuated them and 32,000 were
already killed in the gas chamber. When the Allies arrived, only 3,000 sick inmates remained in the camp.
