Ravensbrück

The Prisoners of Ravensbrück

The defining factor of the inmates of Ravensbrück was their gender. In the early months of the camp, the inmates included many German and Polish women.  As the camp increased in size, there were substantial numbers of Jewish and Roma women from all over Europe, as well as large populations of political prisoners from Poland, Germany, Austria and the USSR.  Not only were the prisoners themselves mostly women, but the staff were as well. Ravensbrück served as the primary training camp for female SS guards, and many of the most infamous and brutal of the female Nazi guards spent time there.

As in the vast majority of large Nazi camps, daily life at Ravensbrück was harsh. Already inadequate food and housing was pushed to unbearable levels with the constant influx of prisoners. Ravensbrück was also a labour camp, and all prisoners deemed healthy enough to work were forced to spend 12-hour days doing hard physical labour, many of them at a large factory run by the company Siemens. Selections were routinely conducted to ‘weed out’ those women not fit enough to fulfill these exhausting assignments.  Medical experiments were also carried out: many died from the operations, but some survived, scarred and crippled, and testified against the doctors involved after the war.  In addition, Ravensbrück was the main supplier of women for the brothels set up at many major Nazi camps toward the end of the war.  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.

Despite these harsh conditions, the tens of thousands of women interned at Ravensbrück over the years did establish nationally- and politically-based networks of support. They also engaged in secret religious services, committed acts of sabotage in the factories, worked to save the lives of sick comrades and engaged in multiple forms of cultural production.  In the early months of the camp’s existence, when the prisoner population was still fairly small, it was relatively easy for the SS to maintain strict control over the daily lives of the prisoners.  During this time, it was very difficult even to meet up with other prisoners during the rare free hours; occasionally some women would successfully sneak away, always at great risk to themselves, and recite poetry, discuss politics or sing together in small groups.  Once the war began, although daily life worsened in terms of food and housing, the SS also lessened the extent of its control.  It was harder to keep track of the movements of all the prisoners, and punishment for relatively minor infractions decreased.  The relatively high number of German-speaking women in the camp also eased the development of cultural activities, as the guards tended to be more lenient with them.

Ravensbrück included many artists and intellectuals amongst its population.  Especially notable were the large numbers of Polish intelligentsia sent there after the occupation, as well as groups of Czech students.  Usually cultural activity among the women would begin during the initial quarantine phase, when new arrivals were restricted to their barracks for several weeks.  Many composed poems, memorised and/or recorded on scraps of paper, and some even managed to put together booklets recording prisoners’ poems, songs and drawings.  In addition to this artistic activity, there was a variety of music-making at Ravensbrück.

Forced Music

At Ravensbrück, as at Dachau and several other camps, the Nazis used large loudspeakers as a way to harass and manipulate prisoners.  On Sunday afternoons, during free time, the guards broadcast music programmes at maximum volume.  Most women experienced these broadcasts as a distinct form of torture; the only positive side effect was that the volume could conceal whispered conversations.  For some music-lovers, however, the radio could offer moments of pleasure amidst the anguish of camp life:

We suffered through the frequent military marches and war songs of the Hitler soldiers in order to occasionally be able to hear Schubert and Mozart.

In addition to this forced listening to music, women were also forced to march in the main clearing and sing German songs.  As most were not native German speakers, this was not only linguistically difficult but also exhausting and humiliating.  There are also records of a few more talented musicians and singers who were forced by the SS to give private concerts.

Voluntary Cultural Activities

The many poems written in Ravensbrück were often set to music in order to aid memorisation and to increase the number of people who could participate in communal events.  Many barracks had their own repertoire of songs, ranging from children’s songs to political hymns to opera.

Towards the end of the war, SS policy toward music relaxed considerably.  In 1944 singing was no longer officially illegal, and the guards allowed a chorus to exist.  1944 also saw the formalisation of international solidarity networks established by women prisoners.  These groups organised political education programmes and cultural events, and as the end of the war neared, they became increasingly active.  Often their events relied on song and dance to communicate ideas and share information, as language differences made lectures and discussion difficult.

Russians

Many of the Russian women interned in the camp were political prisoners, and they were some of the most active inmates in the underground political resistance.  Among them were also several entertainers and singers, and they sometimes held events on Sunday afternoons.  Gathered together in a barracks, with a few prisoners appointed as lookouts, they sat in a circle and

began to sing.  One of them sprang on the floor, a second joined in, then another, and after a while the entire block swayed with the infectious rhythm, the stomping, clapping, crying, the tempo got faster and faster and eventually forced everyone to join the dance.

In addition to the active communists, there was also a strong presence of devout Russian Orthodox women in the camp, who practised their faith despite strict laws restricting such activities.  Former inmate Lisolette Thumser-Weill remembered the Christmas of 1944, when three Russian women came to her barracks in the middle of the night with candles, clad in prayer scarves made of potato sacks (either of these offenses would have meant the death penalty if they had been caught).  Travelling from barracks to barracks, they sang Russian folk songs and Christmas hymns.

Czechs

The community of Czech prisoners included not only committed communists and socialists, but also skilled professional artists and musicians.  Although they worked long hours at nearby factories, the women would form small groups for music-making in their barracks and practise their repertoire in the evenings and on Sundays.  They also put together carefully assembled and decorated songbooks.  They were especially fond of the progressive and leftist songs of the 'liberated theatre' of Prague and the anti-fascist songs of Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich; younger women also loved to sing the swing-influenced music of Jaroslav Ježek.  At the end of 1942, the Czech women organised a singing group that performed clandestinely in different barracks, sometimes spontaneously singing on the central square when there were no guards nearby.  Their singing was sometimes accompanied by Prague dancer Nina Jirsíková.

It was not until December 1944 that the SS gave permission for the prisoners to organise a small band.  Since all of their belongings had been taken when they entered the camp, none had instruments.  For the first time the SS allowed several women to enter the barracks of confiscated goods to retrieve instruments. They deliberately kept their playing at an amateur level, fearing that if the SS heard them they would demand music at their parties and brothel visits.  Their music-making was intended for the ears of other prisoners, and they learned not only Russian and German, but Polish, Norwegian and Yugoslavian songs in order to increase international solidarity.

Other Musical Activities

The Czech musicians organised several ‘international’ shows, where women from different barracks would perform songs in their native languages.  Although such shows were illegal and held in secret, they were extremely successful. There were several other small singing groups and choruses that existed during the camp’s existence, and countless individual women who composed and sang in the barracks, factories and fields of Ravensbrück.  Some songs survived, both in the small books of music and poems the prisoners painstakingly assembled, and in the memories of the survivors.

Sources

Fackler, G., 2000. "Des Lagers Stimme"– Musik im KZ. Alltag und Häftlingskultur in den Konzentrationslagern 1933 bis 1936, Bremen: Temmen.  

Kuna, M., 1993. Musik an der Grenze des Lebens: Musikerinnen und Musiker aus Böhmischen Ländern in Nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern und Gefängnissen, Frankfurt/M.: Zweitausendeins.  

Knapp, G., 2003. Frauenstimmen: Musikerinnen erinnern an Ravensbrueck, Berlin: Metropol-Verlag.  

Minhoff, S., 1994. "Ein Symbol der menschlichen Würde": Kunst und Kultur im KZ Ravensbrück. In C. Füllberg-Stolberg et al., eds. Frauen in Konzentrationslagern: Bergen-Belsen Ravensbrück. Bremen: Edition Temmen, pp. 207-?  

Silverman, J., 2002. The Undying Flame: Ballads and Songs of the Holocaust, Syracuse University Press.  

Stompor, S., 2001. Judisches Musik- und Theaterleben unter dem NS-Staat, Hannover: Europaisches Zentrum fur Judische Musik.  

1998. Zeugen Jehovas: Vergessene Opfer des Nationalsozialismus. , Vienna.