Jüdische Frauen im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939-1945

A study based on oral and written testimonies of Jewish and non-Jewish women, as well as on Gestapo records and documents of concentration camps. Between 1939-42, 1,321 Jewish women were interned in Ravensbrück, constituting ca. 10% of the prisoners. These women belonged to different categories, e.g. "political prisoners", "Jews of first grade", "Mischling of first grade", "half Jewish", or "Jewish Mischling". One excuse for detainment which targeted Jewish women exclusively was "Rassenschande". The biggest group of Jewish women was imprisoned in summer 1944, among them women from Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; some were returned to Ravensbrück a second time, after having been sent to Auschwitz in October 1942. All of the women, except those from Hungary and the "Mischlinge" from Germany, had been imprisoned for several years in Nazi concentration camps, had experienced ghetto life, forced labor, starvation, and violence, had lost close family members, and were in a condition of intense physical and mental exhaustion. The living conditions in Ravensbrück deterioriated gradually and work conditions were worse for Jewish women than for others. Many Jewish women died in Ravensbrück during the last months of the war. Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universität Berlin, under the title: Jüdische Häftlinge im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939-1945. 423 pages ; 22 cm