In the last months of WWII, the people of the world went from one shocking discovery to another as Allied forces pressed into Germany from west and east. On January 27th, 1945, Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau in southwestern Poland. Though several reports from both underground movements and escapees themselves were known as the highest levels of the Allied governments, seeing the camp and hearing about what happened there made it dawn on the people in the US, USSR, and Great Britain just how evil the Nazi regime was. A few weeks later, British forces liberated the unbelievably crowded and filthy Bergen-Belsen camp north of Hannover, and the Americans liberated the Dachau camp near Munich, the first camp established by the Nazis. Hundreds of large and small other camps were liberated throughout Europe.
One of the many things that shocked the liberators and the Allied public was the presence of female guards, known in German as “Aufseherin” – “female overseer.” They were doubly shocked when the Red Army liberated the Ravensbrück (pronounced “RAH – VENNS – BROOK”)camp north of Berlin on April 30th, 1945.
Why the shock? Because Ravensbrück was a camp for women – the largest of many when sub-camps and segregated areas of other camps are considered. Nine sub-camps in the Gross-Rosen camp system were for women only and primarily staffed by women. The camp at Brinnlitz, Oscar Schindler’s hometown, which we see in the movie, was populated and staffed by women for most of the war. In the last days of the war, thousands of women brought in on the infamous Death Marches were dumped in other camps like Bergen-Belsen and essentially left to fend for themselves. One of them was Anne Frank.
The Nazis established their first concentration camp at Dachau just outside Munich soon after they took power in early 1933. Aside from housing so-called “enemies of the state,” Dachau was purposefully set up to be a training ground for SS camp personnel and the system of extreme cruelty that was put in place. Most of the extermination camp commandants, and many others, were “trained” at Dachau – where brutality was encouraged.
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