Jewish Women in the Concentration Camp System in Germany, 1933-1945

Abstract

This Master’s Research Paper examines the experiences of Jewish women in the three women’s concentration camps of Nazi Germany: Moringen, Lichtenburg, and Ravensbrück in chronological order from 1933 until 1945. With the exception of various early provisional concentration camps in the early 1930s and women’s subcamps of former men’s camps towards the end of the war, women were largely relegated to one camp at a time (Moringen 1933-1938, Lichtenburg 1937-1939, Ravensbrück 1939-1945). As a result, studying the experiences of these women as they were transferred from one camp to the next throughout the Nazi period allows us to examine how women’s concentration camp experiences evolved and changed over time. In studying specifically the experiences of Jewish women, we see not only how gender, but also race, affected the treatment and experiences of female prisoners in these camps. Ultimately, the three main camps reflect both Nazi policies and social movements which affected how long Jewish women stayed in the camps, the reasons given for their arrest, and how they were treated and categorized within the camps. The secondary focus of this project was to examine life within the camps, how these women reacted to their imprisonment, how they survived months or even years in the concentration camp system, and how they interacted with fellow non-Jewish prisoners.

Organized into three main sections (one for each camp examined) with some subsections to focus on particular aspects of each camp, this paper follows the development of the women’s concentration camp system in a chronological order. The lengthy introduction seeks to establish the origins of the Nazi concentration camp system, the particular difficulties in studying Jewish and female prisoners in the earliest camps, the subject of gender in historical analysis, and the available historiography on this topic. The section on Moringen is divided into two parts. The first section deals with the organization of the Moringen concentration camp, including an examination of the available primary sources which discuss the separation of Jewish women into their own “Judensaal” (Jewish Hall). The second section examines daily life within Moringen. Lichtenburg is examined in only one section, both because it served as a women’s camp for just over one year and because there are few sources dedicated to this camp. The final two sections examine Ravensbrück. Part 1 deals with the first period (1939-1942) in which Jewish women were imprisoned in the camp, ending with the final deportations of Jewish women to Auschwitz in the Fall of 1942 after which the camp remained “Judenrein” (“free of Jews”) for a short while. Part 2 on Ravensbrück deals with the late war years in the camp and the declining conditions from 1943 until liberation in 1945 during which thousands of Jewish women entered the camp from eastern camps and ghettos.

This paper contributes to the historiography on gender and race in the German concentration camp system by examining both the development of the concentration camp system for women and the particular experiences and daily life and survival of Jewish women from 1933 until 1945.