Skip to main content

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp


Ravensbrück: Life and Death
 in Hitler’s Concentration Camp     

by Sarah Helm

Reviewed by

Geoffrey W. Sutton, Ph.D.



Ravensbrück offers an organized collection of women’s voices documenting the diverse ways individuals and tribal groups of European women responded to Nazi enslavement, violence, and murder.

The collection of stories is organized chronologically. But themes emerge because policies and war events change.  Changes in policy sometimes mean changes in leaders. But changes in policy also reflect changes in the war, which in turn, result in changes in the size and character of the camp’s victims.

We have heard stories of the brutality of Nazi leaders in the death camps focused on the extermination of Jews. But at Ravensbrück we learn that Nazis, governed by superiority myths and emboldened by conquest, systematically destroyed the lives of European women after extracting every ounce of strength as they labored for the Reich on the trail toward oblivion.

Survival was not a result of imbuing constant pain with meaning but rather that curious mix of physicality with willpower, connectedness, and copious amounts of chance events mediated by the capricious death merchants that simply didn’t get to a group before the predatory liberators added rape to the memories of those who lived beyond the Nazi surrender.

We get considerable detail about life in the camp for women assigned to different tasks mostly in support of the war. We also get an insiders’ look at their ever-deteriorating starvation rations, limited sleeping space, tortuous inspections, and constant intimidation.

When there are different perspectives, we get more than one quote to help discover the way horror deferentially impacted these women.

We learn of prisoners as guards promoted to carry out crimes against their fellow prisoners. We learn lessons of plunder, methods of violence, and bizarre biological procedures. We see how creative humans can be when they think of ways to make others suffer before removing the last breath from their bodies.

Here and there we learn of small acts of kindness. We see that some bravely find ways to communicate their horror to the outside world, hoping that someone somewhere will hear their cry. We feel disgusted by the impotence of the Red Cross and cheer when the Swedes find ways to bring about a dramatic rescue in the face of orders to hide all evidence, including people who are barely alive.

Then we cheer when the Russian liberators arrive. We see the caring response of hardened soldiers faced with the emaciated remnants of Nazi terror. But then a wave of disgust arises as these liberators become sexual predators attacking vulnerable prey like wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Ravensbrück is not for the faint of heart, but it is an important read to understand the lack of boundaries when it comes to violence against women.

Notes: Ravensbrück was liberated 30 April 1945. The number of deaths is unknown. Reports range from 30,000 to 90,000 died or killed.

Related Posts

Nazi Doctors, Medical Killing, Psychology of Genocide

The Wisdom of Psychopaths


Reference

Helm, S. (2016). Ravensbrück: Life and death in Hitler’s concentration camp. New York: Penguin Random House.


Connections

   My Page    www.suttong.com
   My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE
   FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton
   TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

Publications (many free downloads)
  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)     
  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Denial of Death and the Meaningful Life- Book Review

  The Denial of Death   by Ernest Becker A Review by Geoffrey W. Sutton The prospect of death, Dr. Johnson said, wonderfully concentrates the mind. The main thesis of this book is that it does much more than that: the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.  — Ernest Becker, xvii I completed a recent reading of this old classic yesterday (13 December, 2015) because I was interested in Becker’s contribution to Terror Management Theory, which I find so helpful in understanding the ways U.S. leaders are publicly responding to terrorist activities. Becker’s ideas are more than forty years old and many have not withstood the test of time. However, his basic premise that we deny the reality of death in many ways remains valid
3 comments
Read more

A Christmas Carol offers lessons in Psychology and Faith A Book Review

A Christmas Carol By Charles Dickens A Review by Geoffrey W. Sutton My copy of A Christmas Carol was a gift on Christmas day, 1963. Two Christmases before I had walked the cold, fog-laden, smog drenched streets of Old London with my dad whilst my mother visited with her family. It was a grey day and a grey week. We took turns warming parts of our body by fireplaces here and there. After five years in the U.S. we had returned home to London on the occasion of my maternal grandmother’s death.  Dickens’ story paints a familiar tale textured by my early memories and enriched today by having watched my favourite rendition of A Christmas Carol ( 1984 ) with my wife on Christmas eve. My interest in reviewing the book is not just for a pleasant walk about the old streets of London but I'm motivated by a sense of appreciation for the poetic and colourful artistry with which Dickens plumbs the hopes and fears of humanity. So, follow
Post a Comment
Read more

WILLPOWER Setting & Reaching Goals- Book Review by Sutton

WILLPOWER Rediscovering the Greatest    Human Strength By Roy Baumeister & John Tierney Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton I go to a gym, which is crowded in January. Regulars know the early Happy-New-Year commitments to fitness will weaken sometime in February. Roy Baumeister has spent a good part of his career studying self-control. His book, Willpower   written with Tierney,  entertains and informs us with an organized set of findings explaining factors that influence self-control. Two critical factors weaken our judgments: food and sleep. We need glucose and sleep to be at our best when it comes to making wise decisions and marking progress toward our goals. A pretty woman can loosen a man’s grip on his career--we hear these news stories from time to time as one political group takes aim at each other's leaders--men who failed at sexual self-control and sadly blame women for their lack of self-control. Fat shaming happens. T
Post a Comment
Read more