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Red Army liberated the prisoners of Ravensbrück, Germany's largest women's concentration camp
On 30 April 1945, the Red Army took control of Ravensbrück, the largest women's concentration camp in Nazi Germany, ending the years of suffering of its prisoners.
The Ravensbrück concentration camp was built by female prisoners in May 1939, 70-80 kilometres north of Berlin. By 1945, when the camp was about 170 hectares in size, 130,000 women had passed through its system. The national composition was constantly expanding with prisoners from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, Luxembourg and the USSR. The Ravensbrück camp network, in addition to the main camp, also included sub-camps, which were located from the Baltic Sea to Bavaria.
Prisoners were used as free labour: for 12-14 hours they sewed clothes, worked in the electrical engineering production of the Siemens & Halske concern, performed various camp tasks, and worked in military factories to which Ravensbrück supplied prisoners. According to different estimates from 50 to 100 thousand people died from hard working conditions, meagre food, consequences of medical experiments, which German doctors performed on prisoners.
The camp was managed and guarded by SS units, and the direct management of prisoners was carried out by female guards - women aged 20 to 30, who, as a rule, did not have a good education and went into this service for the sake of career advancement. Ravensbrück was a training school for female guards for other camps in Nazi Germany.
In view of the approaching Soviet troops, on 27 April 1945, the camp authorities drove more than 20,000 prisoners on a "death march" westwards, leaving 3,500 weakened women and children in the camp. The column stopped at the Malchow camp, where guards locked them up and left. On 29 April 1945, the women prisoners were liberated by the Red Army. On 30 April, Soviet troops took control of the main camp at Ravensbrück, and by 3 May they had liberated all the sub-camps of this system.
Lit.: Аристов С. В. Люди доброй воли. Нацистский концентрационный лагерь Равенсбрюк в судьбах бывших узниц из Советского Союза. Подольск:, 2012; Аристов С. В. Жизнь вопреки: стратегии выживания в нацистском женском концлагере Равенсбрюк (1939–1945 гг.). Исследование и свидетельства. М., 2018; Аристов С. Империя смерти. Концлагеря Третьего рейха: самая полная иллюстрированная энциклопедия. М., 2022; Вахсман Н. История нацистских концлагерей. М.: Центрполиграф, 2017.
Based on the materials of Presidential Library: