Forced sexual labor victims ignored even by a “model” country for past liquidation

In February, asked to write about my visit to the Memorial Museum Ravensbrück for the webzine KYEOL while talking about my upcoming research trip with the editorial team, I readily accepted that request. I was relatively familiar with the place as I had visited it a couple of times before for personal purposes, and it was not too far from Berlin, where I would be staying, so I could easily make a day trip there at any time during my stay. However, I was concerned that my account of the visit might take a stance a little different from that of the RIMSS would like to take. Ravensbrück is known in Korea primarily for its association with “comfort women” under Nazis Germany, but its historical significance goes far beyond that.

Limits of Germany, a country often cited as an example to pressure the Japanese government

When dealing with the issue of “comfort women,” which represents the past that East Asian society has failed to overcome, South Koreans often cite Germany as an example, with the intention to put pressure on the Japanese government in light of the precedent set by this “model” country for past liquidation. What greatly contributed to the present positive image of Germany is the compensation payments made to foreign victims of forced labor between 2000 and 2007 through the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (Stiftung EVZ), which was established jointly by the government and industry. However, concerns have been voiced about the limits of such compensation measures within Germany. Those critical of the measures have pointed out that they came too late and were more of a political solution than a move to realize historical justice. In practice, many victims were rejected or excluded due to the rigorous claim verification process, and the amount of compensation paid out fell far short of expectations. The situation was even worse for victims of sexual slavery. Victims of forced sexual labor in “camp brothels” run by the German army and SS (Schutzstaffel) were left out of consideration in the first place, and to this day, they have not been legally recognized as victims and have not received any reparations or compensation.

In fact, during World War II, Germany had a much more systematic “comfort women” system than Japan. The German army and SS directly operated comfort stations for forced laborers on its territory, for its own troops in occupied territories, and even for male prisoners in concentration camps. While the term “comfort station” was coined by the Japanese military, its German equivalence was “bordell,” a common term for “brothel.” The issue of camp brothels has been studied in greater detail. They were directly operated by the SS to more effectively exploit the labor of the male prisoners of these camps. The women for the brothels were drafted from the female inmates at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück. [Photo 1] The site of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp still bears the traces of women who were victims of the Nazis’ sexual slavery. [Photo 2] This is, however, only a small portion of the tragic history of the camp.

A concentration camp where more than 80 percent of inmates were women political prisoners

In April 1939, a few months before the start of World War II, a new concentration camp was opened in Ravensbrück, a small town near the resort town of Fürstenberg, about 90 kilometers north of Berlin. As an international concentration camp that isolated women from all over Nazi-occupied Europe including Germany, it expanded to become the largest women’s camp of the Nazis. More than 80 percent of all inmates were political prisoners, including communists, socialists, and anti-Nazi resistance fighters. It was at Ravensbrück that the wife of Colonel Stauffenberg, who led Operation Valkyrie, the famous assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler, was imprisoned after being arrested by the Gestapo. Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth to her youngest child in the camp. Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz, the niece of Charles de Gaulle, who became France’s first president after the war, was also arrested as a resistance fighter and taken to Ravensbrück. Half a century after her release, she published her memoirs about her life in the camp.

Ravensbrück did not hold only female inmates, though. Following the addition of a small sub-camp for men in 1941, another sub-camp was built for juveniles in 1942 in neighboring Uckermark. [Photo 3] Between 1939 and 1945, 120,000 women and children, 20,000 men, and 1,200 juveniles from around 30 countries passed through the camp. The largest single national group of inmates were Poles (approximately 48,500), followed by Soviets (28,000), Germans and Austrians (24,000), and French (8,000). Around 20,000 of the total were Jews. [Photo 4]

Forced labor, human experimentation, and mass killings under the extermination policy

Ravensbrück was started as a political prison camp, but as it expanded overtime, also functioned as a forced labor camp that supplied laborers to the German arms industry. Siemens was one of the leading manufacturers of war materials at the time, operating a factory nearby the camp. Founded in Berlin in 1854, the electrical company became a major user of the forced labor supplied by the Nazi camps around the city. From 1942, it built its production site in Ravensbrück and manufactured telephones, radios, and measuring instruments. [Photo 5] This earned the company the stigma of a war criminal that would follow it forever, and Hermann von Siemens, the head of Siemens from 1941 to 1956, was temporarily detained in the war criminal camp in Nürnberg in 1945 and questioned as a witness. He was, however, not prosecuted in the end.

As the war prolonged, the prisoners of the Ravensbrück camp were exposed to even more extreme atrocities. They were subjected to inhumane medical experiments and murdered in a gas chamber as the camp performed the function of an extermination camp as well. Starting from 1941, executions were carried out in the execution ground. [Photo 6] In early 1945, with the end of the war nearing, a temporary gas chamber was set up in a hut next to the crematorium. [Photo 7] In just over three months, from late January to April of that year, approximately five to six thousand people were killed in the gas chamber. It is estimated that at least 30,000 and possibly as many as 50,000 women inmates perished at Ravensbrück for various causes, including slaughter in the gas chamber, hanging, starvation, diseases, medical experiments, and harsh labor. There were also a small number of men among the deceased.

Walk along the path where the camp inmates marched

There are two ways to get to the Memorial Museum Ravensbrück from Fürstenberg (Havel) Station, which can be reached by an hour train trip from Berlin Central Station. One is to take a route bus, and the other is to walk about 2 kilometers from the train station to Ravensbrück. I choose to walk: This not only because the buses don’t come often, but also because the path, where countless prisoners who were transported to the station during the war marched to the camp, is also a historical site testifying to suffering of the victims and the crimes of the Nazis.

The path, stretching along a two-lane road, passes through the edge of the village. [Photo 8]] The entrance to the memorial site reveals itself at the end of the road. Once past the gate, the first sight to catch a visitor’s eye is a group of two-storey houses with wooden windows and balconies. Altogether, they create an idyllic scenery that contrasts sharply with the dark, bleak atmosphere of the camp. These houses formed the compound of the female guards who watched over the female inmates, and some of them lived here with their children. The eight buildings well-preserved in their original form have renovated into the current International Youth Meeting Centre/Ravensbrück Youth Hostel that has been in operation since 2002. It consists of three dormitories with around 90 beds, a seminar building and a cafeteria. I once stayed here for a few days when I participated in the annual summer university organized by the museum. It is a beautiful place with a balcony overlooking the dense forest and lake. However, if you turn around from there, the same space leads you to imagine a completely different scene: The opposite side, separated from the guards’ area, was the site of the prisoners’ barracks and gas chamber, which are now gone. [Photo 9]

Ravensbrück, origin of the job of “female guards” notorious for brutal torture and murders

Female guards in concentration camps were called “Aufseherin” in German, which translates into “female overseer.” Recruited from young women aged between 20 and 40 years, they were notorious for assaulting, torturing, and murdering prisoners in a brutal and sadistic manner. In particular, Ravensbrück also performed as a training center for these female guards, literally becoming the birthplace of this “unusual” occupation. Among those building up their career as female guards in the camp, about 3,500 women later served in other “death” camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. However, only 77 of them were tried for war crimes, and very few were finally convicted.

Most of these female guards were usually low-class women who were born to a poor family, left school at an early age, and had no chance for vocational training. Thus, for them, a concentration camp guard with a decent wage, a free accommodation, and a nice uniform must have been an attractive job. If they had been indoctrinated with racist ideology at one of Nazi youth groups during their teenage years, they might have been convinced that a camp guard was a worthwhile job, allowing them to fight their enemies and serve their country.

Published in Germany in 1995, the novel The Reader (Der Vorleser) is a story about a woman who was a Nazi concentration camp guard. The protagonist Hanna, played by Kate Winslet in the film of the same title based on this novel, is a character who turned from a factory worker into a female guard. Hanna is depicted as a woman “inevitably” becoming a female guard, driven by her hidden weakness as illiteracy and consequent ignorance and then atoning for her past deeds for the rest of her life. I read this novel as a story of the post-war German generations who are not directly involved in Nazi crimes but grapple with the sins of the earlier generation, and the novel’s profound insight into guilt and love presented me with so many topics to mull over. However, I thought that the setting of Hanna becoming a concentration camp guard as a desperate choice could be controversial since in post-war West Germany, many former female SS guards posed as an unwilling assistant, thinking only of avoiding their own responsibilities. Yet, the job as a concentration camp guard could never been an inevitable choice. At that time, those who opened the eye to the horrible reality behind the job left the camps, and they were not penalized for that choice.

At the Memorial Museum Ravensbrück, the quarters of female guards, the residences for the camp commandant and SS officers, and the building of headquarters remain well-preserved in their original state. In particular, the camp commandant’s residence[Photo 10] located on a hill overlooking the prisoner barracks, HQ building, guard quarters, etc. were used as Soviet Army officers’ residence and office until 1977 after the war. Aside from these buildings as well as some facilities including the memorial hall around the lake, the entire site of the camp were used for military purposes until 1994 [Photo 11]

Forced Sexual Labor Victims Subject to Double and Triple Exclusion

In the building renovated from the former headquarters of the camp and opened in 2013, the permanent exhibition “The Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp - History and Memory” is housed on the second floor, displaying the SS documentation on forced sexual labor in Nazi camps. [Photo 12] The number of victims identified up to this date amounts to 210, including 174 whose names were verified. More than half were Germans, the rest were Poles, Russians, Eastern Europeans, Dutch, and others. The overwhelming majority, 85 percent, were socially disadvantaged people who were taken to the camp for being “asocials.” These included vagrants, the extremely poor, prostitutes, and lesbians, who were made wear a black inverted triangle marking. [Photo 13] Male homosexuals, on the other hand, were identified by a pink inverted triangle rather than a black one and were not considered “asocials.”

The permanent exhibition also covers the history of the camp and the process of establishing the memorial museum. After the war, the Soviet army took over the former camp, which later belonged to the East German territory. The Soviets used the camp site and buildings for their own military purposes, while the survivors struggled to preserve at least part of the site for remembrance. The first memorial ceremony was held in September 1948, and cemeteries were created to recover and inter the remains found around the crematorium. In 1959, Ravensbrück turned into a national memorial by the government of East Germany. The architects working on the project incorporated into the memorial area some of the former camp buildings, including the crematorium and prison, as well as a section of the four-meter-high camp fences.

Outside the western section of the camp wall, later known as the “Wall of Nations,” another cemetery was established. The bronze sculpture “Burdened Woman” (Die Tragende) by Will Lammert was also created at this time. The Wall of Nations and the Burdened Woman statue standing in front of it form the core of the museum’s design and represent the visual aspect of memory culture in the 1950s and 1960s East Germany. [Photo 14]

The Ravensbrück National Memorial, established in the early years of East Germany, was renamed as today’s “Memorial Museum Ravensbrück” in 1993 after German reunification. The museum is managed by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation (Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten), which is supported by the German federal government and the federal state of Brandenburg. The Wall of Nations, which bear the names of the victims’ countries of origin, and the Burdened Woman statue are artefacts of memory culture from the East German era and still stand as symbols of the Memorial Museum Ravensbrück today.

The Statue of Peace and the memory culture of Ravensbrück

In early 2019, the Memorial Museum Ravensbrück was at the center of a controversy over the removal of the Statue of Peace symbolizing the Korean victims of “comfort women” under the Japanese military. It was a small-sized statue donated to the museum in 2017 by the Korea Verband, a non-profit organization based in Berlin, but the Japanese Embassy, learning the news, complained about the display of the statue and insisted on its withdrawal. Since the statue was not part of the permanent exhibition of the museum, it chose to settle the controversy by removing it. Insa Meinen, the museum director at the time, said, “I never imagined that this small statue would bring such a big controversy,” shaking her head in disbelief.

When I visited the museum in early February, it happened to be the opening day of a new special exhibition with the theme of “Homosexuality in the Nazi Era.” One of the exhibition panels presented the life story of a Chinese woman named Nadine Hwang who was a Ravensbrück inmate. [Photo 15] Born to a Chinese diplomat, Nadine was taken to the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp in 1944 on suspicion of resistance activities, to meet Nelly Mousset-Vos there, who was not only an opera singer but also a Belgian resistance fighter. The two women, who found each other in the concentration camp, became a life partner for one another. Although they were separated for a while, they survived until the end of the war. After the war, they lived together for the rest of their lives disguising themselves as cousins or friends. “Nelly & Nadine” (2022) is a documentary about their dramatic story, which was shown at the EBS International Documentary Festival in 2022, gaining wide attention from the world.

Released from the concentration camp after the war, the female survivors of various nationalities later formed Ravensbrück survivor organizations in their respective countries. In general, each nation or cultural area has its own memory culture, which is reflected in the activities of these organizations. However, the international solidarity built among Ravensbrück survivors, spanning Eastern and Western Europe, has played a crucial role in creating the memory culture of Ravensbrück since the East Germany era, and this tradition continues to this day.