📅 On April 30, 1945, Soviet troops liberated the prisoners at the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. Women from over 20 countries had been imprisoned, including Charles de Gaulle’s niece Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Polish film director Wanda Jakubowska and legendary Soviet intelligence officer Maria Baida.
💬 “To never forget the black night of Ravensbrück. To tell our children’s children about everything. Until the end of our days, to strengthen friendship, peace and unity. To destroy Nazism. This is the motto and the outcome of the struggle.” The prisoners of Ravensbrück took this oath on the day the concentration camp was liberated by the 49th Army of the 2nd Byelorussian Front. The Soviet soldiers were greeted by about 3,000 prisoners – everyone whom the Nazis, fleeing in fear, did not have time to evacuate. About 700 Soviet women were liberated.
ℹ️ The women’s death camp in the village of Ravensbrück (90 km north of Berlin) was built in 1939 and was originally intended for German women whom the Nazi regime found objectionable. With the outbreak of World War II, they began to bring women here from the Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia and later from a number of other European countries. The first Soviet prisoners of war – doctors, nurses and signal operators who took part in the battles for Crimea – were brought there in February 1943.
🕯️ Ravensbrück was not a very large concentration camp. During the entire war, about 132,000 prisoners were kept there, which is dozens of times fewer than at the notorious Auschwitz or Treblinka camps. At the same time, the death rate in Ravensbrück was very high: of 132,000 prisoners, more than 90,000 did not make it home. Mostly, they died of hunger, hard labour and bullying by the guards. In addition, groups of prisoners subject to extermination were formed twice a month.
▪️ The atrocities that the prisoners, often young girls, had to endure can be seen in photographs or learned from eyewitness accounts. Medical experiments were conducted on the prisoners with pathogens of infectious diseases injected in their bodies, healthy limbs amputated and women sterilised. Children who were born in Ravensbrück were taken away from their mothers. Most of them died of starvation.
🚩 The prisoners evacuated by the Nazis as the Soviet troops were approaching the camp were rescued soon after as well. By May 3, 1945, a military hospital was set up at Ravensbrück, where the best Soviet doctors from nearby military units worked. Women from more than 20 countries who survived the horrors of Ravensbrück have carried the memory of the feat of the Soviet soldiers who liberated them throughout their lives.
🔗 Memorial website: https://www.ravensbrueck-sbg.de/en/
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