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Women's Concentration Camp Ravensbrück - Chronology

Male prisoners from Sachsenhausen build the first section of the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women.

867 women from the Lichtenburg concentration camp are moved to Ravensbrück. They have to work on the continued extension of the camp as well as on the construction of the SS quarters.

A convoy of 440 Sintis and Romas with children from the Austrian province of Burgenland arrives.

Arrival of approximately 60 Polish women from the territory of the Reich.

The Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler inspects the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück. He orders the official introduction of corporal punishment for the women prisoners.

Founding of the SS enterprise "Society for Textile and Leather Processing Ltd." in Ravensbrück.

Some 4,200 women, including women from Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, live in sixteen barracks.

Establishment of a male camp in Ravensbrück with 350 prisoners from Dachau.

3,500 new prisoners are registered in Ravensbrück including women from the Netherlands, Poland, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

Some 1,000 women are moved to Auschwitz to build the extermination camp there.

About 1,600 "selected" Ravensbrück women are gassed in Bernburg, among them 700-800 Jewish women.

Arrival of 182 women from the liquidated Czechoslovakian village of Lidice.

The completed "Uckermark preventive arrest youth camp" is filled with 400 young girls.

Industrial barracks are built for the Siemens & Halske electrical combine and the first women are trained.

Medical experiments began on healthy Polish women.

More than 600 prisoners, among them 522 Jewish women, are transferred to Auschwitz. The RSHA (The Reich Supreme Security Authority) had ordered to make the camp "free of Jews".

The Ravensbrück camp reaches a strength of 10,800 women and men, among them women from France, Belgium, Norway, Luxemburg, Rumania.

The Malchow subcamp (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) was established. Prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were assigned to the production of explosives under inhumane conditions.

536 Soviet female prisoners of war - physicians, nurses, signal-communication women auxiliaries of the Crimean army - are deported to Ravensbrück.

Prisoners are employed to a larger extent in the armanent industry. Annex camps are built, e. g. in Karlshagen, Neubrandenburg and Velten.

In March 1943, the Neubrandenburg company Mechanische Werkstätten Neubrandenburg (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) GmbH used the first 200 female prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp "on an experimental basis" in the production of aircraft equipment.

Starting in March 1943, prisoners from Ravensbrück concentration camp were forced to perform forced labor for Polte-Werke in the Grüneberg subcamp (Brandenburg). More than 700 prisoners had to assemble aircraft parts for the Heinkel-Werke, among others, in the armaments production at the Velten subcamp (Brandenburg).

Hitler officially instructed Albert Speer as Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition to organize the relocation of armaments production from the endangered areas. Subsequently, subcamps of the Ravensbrück concentration camp such as Waldbau or Schwarzenpfost (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) were also established.

Arrival of a convoy of 1,000 French women from Paris.

The subcamp Barth (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) was established, where about 6,000 prisoners from 18 nations had to carry out forced labor under inhumane conditions in the aircraft factories of the Heinkel Company.

A crematorium is built for the camp. The ashes of the dead are dumped into Lake Schwedt.

Probably as early as the fall of 1943 (January 1944 at the latest), work began in Neubrandenburg on building a semi-subterranean camp in the forest (KZ "Waldbau"). Several production halls, dozens of high-quality machine tools and at least 2,000 women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp were located there in the production of equipment parts, especially for the Fieseler 103 flying bomb (the so-called "V1" bomb) .

The SS commander's headquarters is in command of 15,100 female and male prisoners in Ravensbrück and the annex camps.

Approximately one thousand French women evacuated from prison in Compiègne arrive at Ravensbrück.

Convoys from the concentration camps of Riga and Majdanek decamped by the SS arrive at Ravensbrück.

A total of 2,500 women were transported to the armaments factories Heinkel-Rostock and Siemens-Zwodau.

Concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers had to build a satellite camp for the Heinkel aircraft factory in Schwarzenpfost near Rövershagen (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) and an lodging camp for the mainly female prisoners in Oberhagen.

At the Datzeberg in Neubrandenburg (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), concentration camp prisoners had to build an underground "operating materials store" for flammable materials, acids and raw materials. For the project under the camouflage name "Anitmonit", prisoners carried out tunnel excavation work.

Due to the overcrowded barracks, a large tent is put up where many women and children die in winter.

In September 1944, the subcamp Neustadt-Glewe (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) was established, where hundreds of female prisoners, mainly from Poland and Belarus, were forced to carry out forced labor in aircraft production for the Dornier-Werke. At the beginning of 1945, the number rose to as many as 5,000 prisoners.

After the suppression of the Warsaw uprising, 12,000 Polish women and children are deported to Ravensbrück.

Prisoners move into the six barracks near the Siemens halls.

Sterilization of Roma and Sinti girls and women.

70,000 prisoners are taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp to work, among them 10,000 - 13,000 Polish and Jewish women from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The Ravensbrück concentration camp is in command of 46,070 female and 7,858 male prisoners, half of them employed in branch camps. They are guarded by 1000 SS men and 546 female warders. In January/February the number of prisoners is increased by 11,000 from evacuated concentration camps and subcamps.

Up to 3,000 women and girls were housed at the same time in the Retzow-Rechlin subcamp (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), including many French women and Jewish Hungarians, but also other groups such as Sinti and Roma.

Old, sick women unable to work are "selected" and transferred to the evacuated Uckermark camp. 5,000-6,000 of them are gassed, poisoned or shot dead.

The International Red Cross and the Swedish Red Cross are permitted to evacuate 7,500 women via Denmark to Sweden.

All prisoners, with the exception of 3,000 seriously ill women and men, are driven from the camp on a "death march" going west. By 3 May, the prisoners from Ravensbrück and the branch camps are reached and liberated by the units of the Second Byelorussian front.

Units of the Red Army free approximately 3,000 sick women as well as prisoner care personnel in the concentration camp.

The so-called Ravensbrück trials against the SS personnel of the women's concentration camp take place in Hamburg. Sixteen death sentences are among the verdicts.


Compiled from information on the website of the Ravensbrück Memorial. Data on the subcamps provided by zeitlupe | Stadt.Geschichte & Erinnerung