Ravensbrück concentration camp
| Ravensbrück | |
|---|---|
| Concentration camp | |
Ravensbrück | |
| Location | Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany |
| Commandant |
|
| Operational | May 1939 – April 1945 |
| Number of gas chambers | 1 |
| Inmates | Mostly female political prisoners, 48,500 Polish; 28,000 Soviet Union, 20,000-plus Jews |
| Number of inmates | 130,000 to 132,000 |
| Killed | Unknown; 30,000 to 90,000 died or were killed. |
| Liberated by | Soviet Union, 30 April 1945 |
Ravensbrück (German: [ˌʁaːvn̩sˈbʁʏk]) was a Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure of 132,000 women who were in the camp during the war includes about 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, almost 2,000 from Belgium, and thousands from other countries including a few from the United Kingdom and the United States. More than 20,000 (15 percent) of the total were Jewish. More than 80 percent were political prisoners. Many prisoners were employed as slave laborers by Siemens & Halske. From 1942 to 1945, the Nazis undertook medical experiments on Ravensbrück prisoners to test the effectiveness of sulfonamides.
In the spring of 1941, the SS established a small adjacent camp for male inmates, who built and managed the camp's gas chambers in January 1945. Of the female prisoners who passed through the Ravensbrück camp, about 50,000 perished; some 2,200 were killed in the gas chambers.