Remembering the lesbians, prostitutes, and resisters of Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Nestled alongside an idyllic lake, the Ravensbrück concentration camp, 50 miles north of Berlin, was constructed in 1939 specifically to house women. By the end of the war, 130,000 women from 20 European countries had been led through its entrance, often unaware of the danger inside.

Most of the camp’s inhabitants weren’t Jewish; rather, they were considered inferior because they were prostitutes, lesbians, political resisters, “work-shy,” or “asocial.” Roma (Gypsies) and Jehovah’s Witnesses—the latter had only to renounce their faith to be freed—were also imprisoned there. All were considered “useless mouths” by the Nazis, worthy of brutal treatment. More than 30,000—some estimate as many as 90,000—women perished there from starvation, disease, gassings, hanging, torture, or execution by shooting.

“They had what I would call dead eyes,” said Sylvia Salvesen, a Norwegian survivor of Ravensbrück, recalling her first impression of the bald, skeletal prisoners she saw when she arrived at the camp in 1943. Author Sarah Helm chronicles Salvesen’s story, and those of many others, in a new book, Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women. Helm’s exhaustive research includes interviews with numerous survivors. The youngest were in their mid-80s; many have since passed away.


Remembering the lesbians, prostitutes, and resisters of Ravensbrück concentration camp.