How Did Ordinary Women Become Monsters at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp?
“Usually People don’t like to hear that women can be so cruel.” — Selma van de Perre.
It was the time of 1938. Hitler was ruling Germany. Citizens were divided between nationalist and anti-national. People opposing Hitler’s dictatorship and ideology were used to get killed in the concentration camps. Till 1945, millions of people were killed in these camps.
Political opposition and the people who were not the ideal citizen according to Nazi ideology were getting killed. Even women were also included in that especially Jews, sex workers, the homeless, and abortionists. The name of the concentration camp in which all these women were sent was Ravensbruck. Approx 30000 women were tortured and killed in that camp. Thousands of children were also killed. This cruelty took place by the Nazi female guards.
Hiring for female guards at the concentration camp
“Healthy female workers between the age of 20 and 40 were needed to work on the military site,” read the job advertisement from a 1944 German newspaper. Good wages and freeboard, accommodation and clothing were promised.
What was not mentioned that everyone has to wear an SS uniform? And that the military site in Ravensbruck concentration camp for women.
Many of the young women came from poor families. Who had left school at an early age and had few career opportunities.
To get a job at a concentration camp meant getting higher wages, comfortable accommodation, and financial independence. It was more attractive to work in a concentration camp than any factory.
Many were indoctrinated early in Hitler’s ideology. They used to think, they were supporting society by doing something against its enemies.
Some of them just joined for a good salary or a post. Because of this, they were accounted for this criminal act.
Approx 3,500 women worked as guards at the concentration camps, and all of them started out at Ravensbruck. Many of them later sent to work in death camps such as Bergen-Belsen or Auschwitz-Birkenau.
That shocking story is mentioned in a book which is written by a lady survivor of that camp. Her name is Selma van de Perre. She was a Dutch Jew, who was imprisoned in Ravensbruck as a political prisoner. Because She was a member of the resistance group. Which was opposing Hitler’s ideology. Now she is 98 years old.
Her written book name is “My name is Selma”. Recently this book was published in the united kingdom. But now will publish worldwide. I am going to write some of its portions in my words.
What is that Ravensbruck camp’s story?
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies got built more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites. The perpetrators used these places for a range of purposes. Including forced labor, detention of people deemed to be enemies of the state, and mass murder. Millions of people suffered from starvation and died or were killed. Among these places, Ravensbruck camp was finalized for women.
In 1938, Heinrich Himmler, who was Hitler’s closest one started to plan a concentration camp for ‘’deviating’’ women: such as prostitutes, abortionists, “asocials’’ and socialists, habitual criminals, communists, and Jehovah’s witnesses, among others. Himmler chose a site near the village of Ravensbruck. Because of the village’s name, even camp was given the same name too.
This village is only 80 km (50 miles) far from Germany’s capital Berlin on the north side. The biggest motive to choose Ravensbruck was that it has been just a few hours' distances away from Berlin.
The barracks of flimsy wooden are long gone today. All that is left, is an eerily empty rocky field about 50 miles north of Berlin.
The second reason was, Himmler’s close friend in the SS used to live there. Himmler’s friend was having a country house.
Who was playing a significant role in the SS military at that time?
SS was the deadliest paramilitary force at that time, which conducted major operations. This camp was also built by other prisoners same as other camps.
The first stock of 867 women came to the Ravensbruck camp. Till 1945 1.30 lakh women prisoners were sent. When the Soviet army gets free of this camp that time cruelty, torture, exploitation story was written.
Selma writes in her book. People ask her, How women can be so cruel?
Selma writes- This is an answer for those people. They were not exceptional monsters rather ordinary women. Who ended up doing monstrous things.
Either you can say child whose childhood, Hitler snatched from them and indoctrinated them to hatred, racism, and cruelty.
Selma further writes- Those female guards were fashionable. They used to have a good hairstyle and wear good clothes, used to eat delicious food. By organizing a functional party monthly. They danced and sings. There was an SS sign of wearing a uniform they used to convert in any monster. They were dangerous women.
They felt entertained by beating prisoner women and kids. They were provided trained Alsatian dogs, which were used to torment people in the concentration camps. They used to get happy after seeing the agony. They used to brutally put women to death with poisonous gas.
They loved doing it because they used to feel power by doing all this. They considered prisoners worse than animals. Selma’s parents and sisters were killed in similar concentration camps. Many prisoners were killed, many died of disease and starvation. Many sacrificed their lives due to medical experiments.
Eric Hobsbawm's ideology
Historian Eric Hobsbawm writes in his book “The Age of Extremes”. A good salary was guaranteed during the job of the concentration camp. There was also a good facility for food and accommodation. There was also a kind of freedom for female guards. In addition to some poor women, there were some really influenced by Hitler’s ideology.
They believed in the superiority of the Aryan race. They considered Jews and communists as enemies of the German people. Eric Hobsbawm has written in his book that women influenced by Nazi ideology felt that by killing the perceived enemies of the country, harassing jews prisoners, they are protecting Germany.
They are contributing to nation-building. This brutality in the Concentration and Death Camps began before the Second World War and lasted until 1945.
After collapsing of the Nazi empire
When Germany was defeated. Hitler committed suicide and the Nazi empire had also collapsed. Now it was the time to punish those who committed the most brutal crime against humanity in known history.
The punishment was for all the guards of Hitler whether male or female who had brutally killed thousands of people. However, many of these female guards saved themselves from the punishment.
Approx 1000 female guards were stationed that time at Ravensbrook Camp, of which only 77 were prosecuted and very few of them were punished. At the time of the trial, most of these female guards presented themselves as ignorant helpers — women who were forced by Nazi and patriarchal power. Most of them never talked about the past. They changed their names and got married, and faded into society. Those women petitioned that they had gone to Guard’s job only at the behest of Nazi officials.
If those females guards would have denied it to officials, they would have been killed. In the same way, the officials killed other women who were declared defiantly.
Later it was also revealed that whatever pleas, these Guards gave in their defense was not completely correct.
Selma wrote in her book that when many Guards came to know during their jobs that they had to torture other women, they left the job same time. Nothing bad happened to them.
Remembering that dreadful time, Selma writes that those women were fiendish. They would have also seen chain-gangs of prisoners and the chimneys of the gas chamber from their bedrooms.
If given a chance today, all of that can happen again. Hatred can take a frightening form at any time depending on the color, religion, language, and originality of each other.
“It was the most beautiful time of my life,” said one former female guard, decades later.
