Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women

On a sunny morning in May 1939 a phalanx of 867 women-housewives, doctors, opera singers, politicians, prostitutes-was marched through the woods fifty miles north of Berlin, driven on past a shining lake, then herded in through giant gates. Whipping and kicking them were scores of German women guards.



Their destination was Ravensbrück, a concentration camp designed specifically for women by Heinrich Himmler, prime architect of the Holocaust. By the end of the war 130,000 women from more than...