Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by the order of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that it was intended exclusively to hold female inmates.

By the summer of 1941 with the launch of Operation Barbarossa, an estimated total of 5,000 women were imprisoned, who were fed gradually decreasing hunger rations.

Other victims included the Roman Catholic nun Élise Rivet, Élisabeth de Rothschild (the only member of the Rothschild family to die in the Holocaust), Russian Orthodox nun St. Maria Skobtsova, the 25-year-old French Princess Anne de Bauffremont-Courtenay, Milena Jesenská, lover of Franz Kafka,[13] and Olga Benário, wife of the Brazilian Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes.

[14] Among the survivors of Ravensbrück was author Corrie ten Boom, arrested with her family for harbouring Jews in their home in Haarlem, the Netherlands.

She documented her ordeal alongside her sister Betsie ten Boom in her book The Hiding Place, which was eventually produced as a motion picture.

SOE agents who survived were Yvonne Baseden and Eileen Nearne, who was a prisoner in 1944 before being transferred to another work camp and escaping.

Several dozen block overseers (Blockführerinnen), accompanied by dogs, SS men and whips oversaw the prisoners in their living quarters in Ravensbrück, at roll call and during food distribution.

Rosel Laurenzen originally served as head of the labour pool at the camp (Arbeitdienstführerin) along with her assistant Gertrud Schoeber.

Other high ranking female guards included Christel Jankowsky, Ilse Göritz, Margot Dreschel, and Elisabeth Kammer.

Other guards in the camp included Hermine Boettcher-Brueckner, Luise Danz, Irma Grese, Herta Oberheuser, and Margarethe de Hueber.

Between 1942 and 1943, almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp were sent to Auschwitz in several transports, following Nazi policy to make Germany Judenrein (cleansed of Jews).

The list is one of the most important documents, preserved in the last moments of the camp operation by members of the Polish underground girl guides unit "Mury" (The Walls).

In 1939 and 1940, camp living conditions were acceptable: laundry and bed linen were changed regularly and the food was adequate, although in the first winter of 1939/40, limitations began to be noticeable.

[26][27]Buber-Nuemann wrote how her first meal in Ravensbrück exceeded her expectations, when she was served sweet porridge with dried fruit (backobst), plus a generous portion of bread, margarine, and sausage.

Out of the 74 Polish victims, called Kaninchen, Króliki, Lapins, or "Rabbits" by the experimenters, five died as a result of the experiments, six with unhealed wounds were executed, and (with assistance from other inmates) the rest survived with permanent physical damage.

[citation needed] All inmates were required to do heavy labor ranging from strenuous outdoor jobs to building the V-2 rocket parts for Siemens.

Although women often volunteered for these positions, hoping they would be spared the most difficult physical labour and perhaps receive better rations, most in fact died quickly due to sexual abuse and the rampant spread of venereal disease.

[38] With the Soviet Red Army's rapid approach in the spring of 1945, the SS leadership decided to remove as many prisoners as they could, in order to avoid leaving live witnesses behind who could testify as to what had occurred in the camp.

[38] Some 2,500 ethnic German prisoners remaining were released, and 500 women were handed over to officials of the Swedish and Danish Red Cross shortly after the evacuation.

[40] Having fled to Bavaria, Fritz Suhren and Hans Pflaum [fr] were caught by the American troops in 1949 and were sent to the French occupation zone.

For the inaugural opening of the National Memorial site, a scaled-up version of Tragende (Woman with Burden) was created (under the supervision of Fritz Cremer) and exhibited.

The three National Memorials Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrück played a central role in the GDR's remembrance policy under Erich Honecker.

[43] According to historian Anne-Kathleen Tillack-Graf the political instrumentalisation of these memorials, especially for the current needs of the GDR, became particularly clear during the major celebrations of the liberation of the concentration camps.

The exhibition's information boards describe the origins of the transports and how they developed over time and explain the different types of trains, where they arrived, and the part played by the local residents.

[citation needed] A monument to the French victims of Ravensbruck is one of the memorials to several concentration camps in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Karin Landgren Blomqvist helped the survivors but regrets this detail:The clothes one was to take care of proved to be dirty rags, infested with lice, which were according to Swedish standards too worn down to be worth cleaning.

Inseams, hems, and waistbands, many had with great effort and danger for life during internment in camp managed to save personal souvenirs and treasures.

Prisoners could be punished if caught but many disregarded camp rules and continued to make art in secret, such as dolls for orphaned or lost children.

Children on their own would not survive in the camp but women would step forward and behave as surrogate/adoptive mothers, making dolls and taking care of them.

As detailed in the letters, their legs were sliced open with glass or wood before the doctors introduced bacteria and test medicine.