Dr. phil. Constanze Jaiser
Literature scholar and theologian

Publications on the subject, include:

Poetische Zeugnisse. Gedichte aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück. Stuttgart/Weimar 2000

Europa im Kampf 1939-1944. Internationale Poesie aus dem Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück. Berlin 2009

Ein Schmuggelfund aus dem KZ – Erinnerung, Kunst und Menschenwürde. Berlin 2012

Éliane Jeannin-Garreau

1911 - 1999 France. She began studying painting in Paris in 1933, but had to abandon her studies and became a bank clerk. After the occupation of France, she joined a Résistance group. In 1943 she was arrested and sent to Ravensbrück. Already in the first months in the concentration camp she made drawings. When she was transferred to Holleischen, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, she had to leave the pencil drawings behind. These were kept by a French fellow prisoner and donated to the Ravensbrück Memorial in 1995.

Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz

1909 - 1955, Polish painter and draftswoman. Educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Before the outbreak of World War II, she had solo exhibitions in Warsaw and participated in international exhibitions in Amsterdam, Paris, New York and Copenhagen. During the German occupation of Poland, she was active in the underground. The Nazis arrested her in 1941 and put her in prison for several months before transferring her to Ravensbrück concentration camp, from which she was rescued to Sweden at the end of the war. Together with Maja Berezowska and Kusmievkowa, she exhibited drawings she had made during her time as a concentration camp inmate at the Malmö Museum in 1946. These drawings were made in the utmost secrecy in the typhus barracks with pencils, crayons and paper secretly stashed away. She died after a long incurable illness, which was a consequence of her imprisonment in the camp.

France Audoul

1894 - 1977. Francine Jeanne Etiennette Audoul-Martinon was born in Lyon, where she studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. As a member of the Résistance, she was deported to Ravensbrück (No. F 27.933). With stolen scraps of paper and pencils, she was able to make 32 sketches of camp life and portraits, which she was able to hide with the help of some friends and take back to France after liberation. After 1945 she resumed her artistic activity and participated in numerous exhibitions. In 1966, the camp drawings were published in the book Ravensbrück - 150 000 femmes en enfer.

Maria Hiszpańska-Neumann

1917 - 1980 Warsaw. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The Gestapo arrested her on April 19, 1941 and deported her to the Ravensbrück concentration camp a year later. There she was given the prisoner number 10219 and had to perform forced labor. In the Ravensbrück concentration camp, Maria Hiszpańska made over 400 drawings. Most of them were lost or had to be destroyed so that the SS would not find them. In 1943, Maria Hiszpańska was transferred to Neubrandenburg, ta subcamp of Ravensbrück, where she had to produce parts for military aircraft in the armaments factory "Mechanische Werkstätten." She survived the war and returned to Warsaw. There she resumed her artistic practice, working as a graphic artist and designing murals in churches.