A review by bibliowrecka
If This Is a Woman: Inside Ravensbruck - Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm
5.0
Whew. It took me forever to finish this book and sometimes I felt like I was forcing myself to read it. Not because it was bad; in fact it's one of the best books I've read this year. It was just too much to take in large doses. Anyone who's gone through the American public school system has almost certainly read plenty of books about/set during the Holocaust (In fact, there's a great YA book called Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust that's about a Jewish teen who's sick and tired of being seen as some sort of expert representation of her people every time it comes up at school). But the story of the Ravensbruck women's concentration camp was one I'd never heard before, until I read Elizabeth Wein's Rose Under Fire, which is partially set there. After that book wrung my heart, I spotted this one on the new books shelf at my library and picked it up on a whim. And let me tell you, I thought Wein's fiction was heavy reading, but this is something else entirely, because it's all true, and very heavily researched and footnoted. Helm tracked down dozens of women who survived Ravensbruck as well as lots of documentation of the lives of many who weren't so fortunate. This also marks the first major examination of Ravensbruck in the west after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which kept a lot of information locked up in East Germany for years.
The information is laid out mostly chronologically, moving from the camp's founding with almost entirely German prisoners just before war broke out, to later years when Polish, Hungarian, and other nationalities dominated the camp. Ravensbruck was not a death camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka (although in later years it did have a crematorium and many women were worked to death while there or shipped on to camps where they were gassed). In fact, at least in the early years, women who were sent to Ravensbruck from other camps commented on how clean and well-fed and housed its inmates were, comparatively. Still, the guards were brutal and the labor was backbreaking, and as the war went on the camp became more and more crowded and the "good" conditions disintegrated quickly. Helm follows several women who spent years in the camp, from beginning to end, and their stories give you a great picture of the camp in all its stages.
By far the hardest stories for me to read were those of the "Rabbits" - Polish prisoners who were selected to be guinea pigs in experiments led by the camp doctors. Elizabeth Wein tells a fictionalized version of their story in Rose Under Fire, so I was already familiar with them, but Helm interviewed many of the survivors and goes into harrowing detail of the surgeries and experiments they went through. Supposedly the doctors were testing the effects of gangrene on wounded soldiers by cutting open the women's legs and deliberately introducing contaminants. In practice the experiments were run very unscientifically and no useful data ever emerged, so it was basically just another form of torture for the prisoners. Several women died, and survivors were left permanently disabled. One of the rabbits, a young Polish girl, found a way to smuggle letters written in invisible ink (composed of her own urine) out to family members back home and helped get the word out about what was happening to them. They all lived under the fear that eventually the camp leaders would kill them all to make sure word never got out, and in fact, this was attempted, but other prisoners helped to hide and protect the Polish rabbits. This section is where I bogged down the most simply because it was so hard to read.
It was also hard to read the stories of the Soviet Red Army women who found themselves in the camp, both because of their experiences there and because of what happened to them afterwards back in Russia. Stalin's government was especially harsh on Russian prisoners of war, and many of the women who had already survived one prison camp were convicted again of collaboration with the enemy and sent to the Gulag. Those who weren't had to remain quiet about their Ravensbruck experiences for fear of the same thing happening to them, and some even turned on their former comrades in an effort to save themselves.
There are so many other stories from this book I could share, but this is already a long review. If This Is a Woman is a remarkably well-written and thoroughly researched book that sheds some much-needed light on a facet of World War II atrocities that hasn't gotten enough attention. Highly recommended, if you have the time and the stomach for it.
The information is laid out mostly chronologically, moving from the camp's founding with almost entirely German prisoners just before war broke out, to later years when Polish, Hungarian, and other nationalities dominated the camp. Ravensbruck was not a death camp like Auschwitz or Treblinka (although in later years it did have a crematorium and many women were worked to death while there or shipped on to camps where they were gassed). In fact, at least in the early years, women who were sent to Ravensbruck from other camps commented on how clean and well-fed and housed its inmates were, comparatively. Still, the guards were brutal and the labor was backbreaking, and as the war went on the camp became more and more crowded and the "good" conditions disintegrated quickly. Helm follows several women who spent years in the camp, from beginning to end, and their stories give you a great picture of the camp in all its stages.
By far the hardest stories for me to read were those of the "Rabbits" - Polish prisoners who were selected to be guinea pigs in experiments led by the camp doctors. Elizabeth Wein tells a fictionalized version of their story in Rose Under Fire, so I was already familiar with them, but Helm interviewed many of the survivors and goes into harrowing detail of the surgeries and experiments they went through. Supposedly the doctors were testing the effects of gangrene on wounded soldiers by cutting open the women's legs and deliberately introducing contaminants. In practice the experiments were run very unscientifically and no useful data ever emerged, so it was basically just another form of torture for the prisoners. Several women died, and survivors were left permanently disabled. One of the rabbits, a young Polish girl, found a way to smuggle letters written in invisible ink (composed of her own urine) out to family members back home and helped get the word out about what was happening to them. They all lived under the fear that eventually the camp leaders would kill them all to make sure word never got out, and in fact, this was attempted, but other prisoners helped to hide and protect the Polish rabbits. This section is where I bogged down the most simply because it was so hard to read.
It was also hard to read the stories of the Soviet Red Army women who found themselves in the camp, both because of their experiences there and because of what happened to them afterwards back in Russia. Stalin's government was especially harsh on Russian prisoners of war, and many of the women who had already survived one prison camp were convicted again of collaboration with the enemy and sent to the Gulag. Those who weren't had to remain quiet about their Ravensbruck experiences for fear of the same thing happening to them, and some even turned on their former comrades in an effort to save themselves.
There are so many other stories from this book I could share, but this is already a long review. If This Is a Woman is a remarkably well-written and thoroughly researched book that sheds some much-needed light on a facet of World War II atrocities that hasn't gotten enough attention. Highly recommended, if you have the time and the stomach for it.