By Kevin Seabrooke

During the liberation of camps like Dachau and Buchenwald, American journalists documented the horrors for the world to see. But Ravensbrück, the only concentration camp designated for women, remains largely unknown. There were no photos, film, or news reports of its liberation because it was in a dense forest some 50 miles north of Berlin in the Soviet zone of post-war Germany and off-limits to westerners. Many of the 130,000 women who passed through Ravensbrück were members of resistance movements in Nazi-occupied countries.

The majority shareholder of the limited company that operated Ravensbrück was SS head Heinrich Himmler, who made huge profits from its slave labor. When the women were worn down by a lack of food, disease and 12-hour work days they were sent to Auschwitz. An estimated 40,000 died in the camp from various causes, including lethal injections and medical experiments.

This is a fascinating story of a tight-knit group of women from the French Resistance who documented the camp’s activities and worked against their captors to survive.

The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp (Lynne Olson, Random House, New York, NY, 384 pp., bibliographical references, index, photos, June 3, 2025 $35, HC)

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