On 15 May 1939, the Ravensbrück concentration camp near Fürstenberg an der Havel in the German Reich was officially opened as a central concentration camp for women. Several thousand Sinti and Roma of various nationalities were interned in this camp and its satellite camps until the end of the war. From 1941, several hundred Sinti and Roma men and young people were also held in a camp section separate from the women’s camp.
Organisation and Structure of the Camp
The camp, located just under 90 kilometres from the capital Berlin, took over the function of the Lichtenburg women’s concentration camp, which was dissolved on 18 May 1939 and was the only one at the time. The camp complex consisted of the women’s camp, an adjoining men’s camp, the Uckermark youth concentration camp for girls and young women1Hepp, Vorhof; Limbächer, Merten, Pfefferle, Mädchenkonzentrationslager, 100. and the so-called Siemens camp, where a Siemens production facility was located. A row of houses was built in front of the SS commandant’s office for female SS guards and higher ranks of SS leaders.
In December 1940, 4,200 women inmates were already registered in Ravensbrück, housed in 16 barracks. The women’s concentration camp was continuously expanded until 1945. The SS had more and more barracks and, in autumn 1944, a tent erected to house the inmates.
In June 1940, an industrial facility was set up within the camp walls, where traditional women’s work such as tailoring, weaving and braiding were carried out in production units of the SS company ‘Gesellschaft für Textil- und Lederverwertung mbH (Texled)’. In the immediate vicinity of the camp Siemens & Halske built 20 factory installations, where inmates had to perform forced labour from late summer 1942 onwards. Over 40 satellite camps were established throughout the Reich, in which inmates from Ravensbrück had to perform forced labour.
Sinti and Roma in the Camp
Between 15 and 18 May 1939, 974 women were transferred from the Lichtenburg concentration camp to Ravensbrück.2Beßmann and Eschebach, Frauen-Konzentrationslager, 28. According to the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum, they included at least eight Sinti and Roma.
On 29 June 1939, the first large transport of 440 Sinti and Roma, including people as young as 14, arrived at the camp from Lower Austria and Burgenland. The transport list shows that they were mostly Roma, but some surnames such as Weiß, Steinbach or Laubinger suggest that there were also Sinti among them.3Cf. Archiwum Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Warsaw (AGK), KL Ravensbrück 54, access list of 29 June 1939, sheets 39–54, Ravensbrück Memorial Museum/Brandenburg Memorials Foundation (Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück/Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, MGR/StBG) collections, RA no. V/3-3, no. 6 (copy). See Danckwortt, Sinti und Roma; Halbmayr and Schmid, Zigeunerinnen. In addition to this transport, there were other individual transfers from Austria, which had been annexed as the ‘Ostmark’. Rosa Winter (1923–2005), for example, was sent from a prison in Salzburg to Ravensbrück because she had refused to continue making herself available as an extra for Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003).4Cf. Laher, Uns hat es nicht geben sollen, 34–35.
Sinti and Roma were sent from all over the Reich and, after the beginning of World War II, also from the German-occupied territories, although it should be noted that not all ‘Gypsy women’ internees were registered as such. By the spring of 1941, there were at least 550 Sinti and Roma girls and women in the camp. Individuals were sent to the camp on various grounds, including violating the Immobilisation Decree, fortune-telling, ‘Rassenschande’, or under the pretext of ‘asociality’. Those affected therefore had to wear the black triangle on their inmate clothing. In addition, non-Roma women who lived in relationships with Sinti or Roma men were also interned.
According to the ‘Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Frauen-Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück 1939–1945’,5The ‘Kalendarium’, published in 1999, was the first attempt to compile an overview of the incoming and outgoing transports and the events in the women’s camp despite the incomplete records. It was modelled on the chronology of Auschwitz-Birkenau compiled by Danuta Czech, which had been published ten years earlier. In view of the limited opportunities at the time to analyse the sources in greater depth in various archives (such as the Arolsen Archives) and the research that has since been carried out, as well as the restriction to the events in the women’s camp, the ‘Kalendarium’ can be regarded as neither complete nor free of errors. Nevertheless, it is a helpful starting point for research on many questions. See also Strebel, “Rezension.” one or more inmates were listed as ‘Gypsies’ in almost every second transport to the camp from 1939 to 1942. However, this density of entries ended with the deportations ordered by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp at the end of February 1943. Auschwitz was now the camp to which Sinti and Roma were sent as a matter of priority.
However, the Sinti and Roma already in Ravensbrück—both men and women—remained there and in its satellite camps until early 1945. Two documented transports are an exception: The transport of 23 March 1942 to Auschwitz and the transport of 30 January 1944 to Lublin-Majdanek are said to have contained Sinti and Roma.6Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 364–65, 398; Philipp, Kalendarium, 89, 143.
From Auschwitz to Ravensbrück
Between April and the beginning of August 1944, at least 1,107 Sinti and Roma women and girls and 213 men and boys were transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Ravensbrück in three transports. These were adults, young people and children who had been selected as ‘fit for labour’ before the camp section BIIe there was dissolved.
According to the records of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, 473 women and girls were deported from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Ravensbrück on 15 April 1944, a further 161 women and girls on 24 May 1944 and another 535 women and girls on 2 August 1944, together with a total of 490 men and boys.7Figures according to information from Teresa Wontor-Cichy, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 28 May 2024. The data in Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 611, 632, 677, are partly out of date. The Ravensbrück calendar lists 534 people for 19 April 1944 and 161 people for 27 May 1944 for the first two transports for which the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum archives have access lists. Cf. Philipp, Kalendarium, 151, 155, 286, 292. There is no entry in the Ravensbrück calendar for the third transport, which left Auschwitz for Ravensbrück and Buchenwald; the reason is unknown. There is also no entry for this transport in the archive of the Ravensbrück Memorial. Survivors’ reports suggest that inmates were taken shortly before the end of the compilation of the transports in Auschwitz-Birkenau, which could explain the differing numbers in the calendars. Cf. Tuckermann, Die Lebensgeschichte, 148. When these transports arrived at the camp, it was completely overcrowded.
As the survivor Ceija Stojka (1933–2013) reported, there was a shortage of food and beds and camp uniforms were no longer issued, only thin civilian clothes marked with a cross.8Stojka, We Live in Secrecy, 57; Danckwortt, “Der Boden unter unseren Füßen.” Many of the women brought in from Auschwitz were transferred to forced labour in satellite camps.
Hungarian Roma and other Nationalities
The Hungarians made up a large national group among the Roma.9In the study by Janos Barsony and Agnes Daróczi on the persecution of Roma in Hungary, one of the interviewees remembers Ravensbrück. She mentions Block 30, see Barsony and Daróczi, Pharrajimos, 141–42. The transports of Hungarian Jewish women to Ravensbrück also included Sinti and Roma. For example, the admissions list for one transport from Auschwitz dated 29 October 1944 contains the names of 210 ‘Gypsy women’.10Cf. AGK, KL Ravensbrück 73, Zugangsliste, pp. 67–82 (29 October 1944); Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 135, n. 167; Philipp, Kalendarium, 175, 315. Apparently, transports from Hungary also travelled directly to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Many had been interned in the Komárom camp before being deported.
One transport from Komárom is documented in the Ravensbrück ‘Kalendarium’ with the arrival date 28 November 1944: Hungarian Jewish women, Hungarian ‘Gypsies’ and other Hungarian women are listed as ‘Special transport no. 129 from Gomarom/Hungary’.11Philipp, Kalendarium, 324; Aas, Sinti und Roma, 116. 290 Hungarian Roma (not listed by name) are listed among the Ravensbrück inmates.12A study from Hungary mentions several Hungarian localities from which people travelled to Ravensbrück—presumably via Komárom. The following places or regions or camps are mentioned Baksa, Bánfa, Budapest, Bük, Csót, Erzsébet, Fertörákos, Gesztreg, Gutorfölde, Horvátsidány, Kispest, Komárom, Lábatlan, Ondód, Pereszteg, Perkáta, Rákospalota, Sárvár, Soroksár, Szigetcsép, Torony, Újpest, Vép and Vép-Sándorháza. Cf. Barsony and Daróczi, Pharrajimos, 185–224. How long they remained in the camp and what happened to this group of inmates is largely unexplored. So far, there are only isolated references to their whereabouts; for example, there is a mention of the presence of Hungarian Roma in the Zwodau satellite camp.13Aas, Sinti und Roma, 136. In a transport arriving on 18 January 1945 from Käsmark (Slovakian Kežmarok), Slovak state, there were 15 ‘Gypsy women’, mainly of Hungarian nationality, as well as Jewish women.14Cf. AGK, KL Ravensbrück 75, Zugangslisten, pp. 60–84 (28 November 1944); Philipp, Kalendarium, 176, 190, 325; AGK, KL Ravensbrück 42, Zugangslisten, p. 29 (18 January 1945); Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 135–36, n. 167.
Sinti and Roma were also included in transports from other countries.15For example, a former Spanish inmate mentions that a woman was called ‘la gitana’ (the Gypsy). Cf. Català, “In Ravensbrück,” 98. The calendar lists Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Italian and Yugoslavian ‘Gypsy women’.16For example, Polish women (Philipp, Kalendarium, 244, 248), Czech women (ibid., 329), Slovak women (ibid., 329), Italian women (ibid., 329) and Yugoslav women (ibid., 329). The survivor Barbara Reimann (1920–2013) mentions Greek ‘Gypsy families’17Bruder and Kleffner, Barbara Reimann, 110, 123. There is no entry on this in the Ravensbrück calendar. and the survivor Germaine Tillion (1907–2008) reports on French and Belgian Sinti and Roma women.18Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 212–13.
Children and Young People
Sinti and Roma were not the only group of inmates in Ravensbrück that included children and adolescents, but in their memoirs, former inmates associate the presence of children and adolescents in the camp particularly strongly with this group.19Buchmann, Die Frauen von Ravensbrück, 30; Amesberger and Halbmayr, Vom Leben und Überleben, 132, and Amesberger, Auer and Halbmayr, Sexualisierte Gewalt, 169–70. The transports from Auschwitz-Birkenau that began in 1944, as well as those from the prison in Prešov (eastern Slovakia), brought numerous boys to the camp, and part of the fifth barrack in the men’s camp, which had been built in 1941 adjoining the women’s camp, was separated off as a ‘children’s block’.20Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 304. The admission lists, which survive in incomplete form, record 162 children of Sinti or Roma women between 1939 and 1945.21Pawelke, “Als Häftling geboren,” 100. Other young Sinti and Roma were interned in the Uckermark youth concentration camp.
Despite the inhumane conditions, some children were born in Ravensbrück. In the surviving fragments of a birth register for the period from 19 September 1944 to 22 April 1945, 29 Sinti and Roma from Germany and Austria and 22 Hungarian Roma are listed among the mothers.22Cf. Bruder and Kleffner, Barbara Reimann, 123; Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 266–67. The original ‘birth book’ is preserved at the Ravensbrück Memorial, and a copy can be viewed in the Arolsen Archives under 1.1.35, Ravensbrück concentration camp, 251600: Birth book of Ravensbrück concentration camp (19 September 1944–22 April 1945). However, the children had little chance of survival.
Everyday Camp Life and Forced Labour
Initially, according to reports from survivors of other inmate groups, Sinti and Roma were kept apart from other inmates in a special ‘Gypsy block’. The details of which block this was vary: Blocks 4, 9, 10 and 22 feature in some survivor reports.23Block 4: Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, 174; Block 10: Bauer, Eine Gießener Lehrerin, 62; Block 9: Wagner, Geboren am See, 125; Philipp, Kalendarium, 53; Block 22: Wagner, Geboren am See, 327; Català, “In Ravensbrück,” 29. Blocks 4, 8, 19, 22 and 25 are mentioned in documents in the archive of the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum.24MGR/StBG, Reports 294, 55, 184, cited in Kenrick and Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies, 174. See also Rose and Weiss, Sinti und Roma, 49. The Sinti woman Rosa Wiegand {1918–2001) names Block 4 as her accommodation.25Cf. Ibid. Other former inmates remember being housed together in a common barrack.26Lundholm, Das Höllentor, 31. As the number of inmates increased, the women arriving were allocated to different blocks.
In 1944, some of the newly admitted Sinti and Roma were forced to vegetate in catastrophic conditions in a tent on the new camp grounds with Jewish women deported from Hungary and Auschwitz and Polish women who had been deported after the Warsaw Uprising. Others were housed in an area of the camp adjacent to the men’s camp.27Guth, Z 3105, 125.
Like the Jews, Sinti and Roma belonged to the lowest category of inmates in the concentration camps and were often assigned to physically hard and dirty work, such as cleaning latrines.28Müller, Die Klempnerkolonne, 183. A promotion to the rank of prisoner functionary and the associated access to better food, accommodation and lighter labour meant a higher chance of survival, which Sinti and Roma were usually denied. For Ravensbrück, however, it is known that Sinti and Roma held the position of foreman or ‘instructor’ (the term ‘Kapo’ was not used in Ravensbrück) in certain work details, such as the workshop where straw shoes were made. For the Barth satellite camp, a block elder named ‘Lissy’—the surname is not known—is mentioned for Block 10.29Radau, Nichts ist vergessen, 74.
Sinti and Roma were frequently deployed for forced labour in the workshops making cane mats and straw shoes, the tailor’s shop, the furrier’s shop of the SS company ‘Gesellschaft für Textil- und Lederverwertung mbH’ and the laundry, but also in the Siemens & Halske plant located near the main camp.30Rose and Weiss, Sinti und Roma, 40–71; Internationaler Freundeskreis e.V. für die Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, Zwangsarbeit. From spring 1942, most of the Sinti and Roma interned in Ravensbrück were transferred to satellite camps and detachments to work in armaments factories. Many had only spent a few days in the main camp before being transferred.31However, there were also transfers back to the main camp; see e.g. AGK, KZ Ravensbrück 1945, I,10-I,20; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 496, n. 234.
It is known that numerous Sinti and Roma were deployed in the Barth, Schlieben, Altenburg, Graslitz, Wolkenburg and Zwodau satellite camps.32On Zwodau and Wolkenburg, see Aas, Sinti und Roma ; on the Barth satellite camp, see Radau, Nichts ist vergessen; see also Rose and Weiss, Sinti und Roma, 46–71. With the restructuring of the satellite camp system in autumn 1944, some of the Ravensbrück satellite camps were subordinated to the Buchenwald, Flossenbürg or Sachsenhausen concentration camps.
Forced prostitution was a particularly degrading form of forced labour. The women and girls selected at Ravensbrück concentration camp who were forced into prostitution in the brothels of other camps are said to have included ‘Gypsies’.33Cf. Sommer, Das KZ-Bordell, 224; see also Amesberger, Auer and Halbmayr, Sexualisierte Gewalt.
Several reports state that SS guards often mistreated Sinti and Roma girls and women and set dogs on them which inflicted serious injuries.34Laher, Uns hat es nicht geben sollen, 37. In addition, they were made to stand for hours at roll call, even in sub-zero temperatures, and inmates were doused with ice-cold water, deprived of food, detained in the bunker, sent to the dreaded punishment block, beaten and subjected to other forms of abuse. In the men’s camp at Ravensbrück concentration camp, inmates were also punished by being hanged from stakes and publicly executed on the gallows.35Cf. Strebel, “Das Männerlager”, 156.
The inmates constantly suffered from hunger. There were no parcels from relatives, as relatives and friends were usually also interned.36Berger, Holzinger, Podgornik and Trallori, Ich geb Dir einen Mantel, 83. Lily van Angeren-Franz (1924–2011) states that the Sinti and Roma in the Graslitz satellite camp were even deprived of parcels provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross.37Cf. Schmid, “Polizeilich zwangsentführt,” 91. In some cases, women, including Sinti and Roma, tried to escape the terror by committing suicide.38Buber-Neumann, Under Two Dictators, 166. The Polish historian and survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp Wanda Kiedrzynska (1901–1985) also reports a suicide at the beginning of March 1940. Cf. Philipp, Kalendarium, 47.
However, escape attempts were much more common. Katharina Waitz (1901–1941), admitted on 6 January 1939, escaped twice from Ravensbrück, in June 1939 and in March 1941. She was seized by the SS and brutally murdered on 5 March 1941.39Cf. Philipp, Kalendarium, 39; Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 279 f.; Information from the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum. Philomena Franz (1922–2022) escaped several times from work details deployed outside the camp and satellite camps of Ravensbrück.40Franz, Zwischen Liebe und Hass, 69.
The Men’s Camp in Ravensbrück
In April 1941, there began the construction of a men’s camp, in which over 20,000 inmates were held until 1945. Like the women, the men had to perform forced labour in the camp and in the armaments industry. The surviving registers list a total of 292 men and boys, mainly of German nationality, with the addition ‘Gypsy’.41MGR/StBG, Collections, RA-No. II/10; Philipp, Kalendarium, 78; Strebel, “Das Männerlager”; Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 297–98.
Among them were Max Friedrich (1909–1991), Heinrich Leimberger (1925–unknown) and Josef Leimberger (1914–unknown), who were among the first inmates of the men’s camp after it opened.42Cf. Rose and Weiss, Sinti und Roma, 41. However, the total number was probably higher. In his memoirs, Karl Gerber (1906–1983), who was interned as a communist, mentioned a group of ‘Gypsies’ who were sent from Buchenwald to Ravensbrück and transferred to Mauthausen in July 1941.43Gerber, KZ Lagerbuch, 309–10, quoted from Strebel, “Das Männerlager”, 151. The inmates from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp and the Salzgitter-Watenstedt satellite camp of Neuengamme concentration camp, who reached Ravensbrück on 14 and 15 April 1945 on ‘evacuation transports’, will also have included Sinti and Roma.44Cf. Strebel, “Das Männerlager”, 168–69.
However, the majority, a total of 212 of the Sinti and Roma housed in the men’s camp, had arrived in Ravensbrück on the last transport from Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were given the inmate numbers 9 509 to 9 719 as well as 9 722 and 9 723. Two of them managed to escape. At least 183 of the men were transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 3 March 1945 as part of a partial evacuation of the men’s camp.45Calculations by Tobias Metzner based on the prisoner number register (Nummernbuch) of the men‘s camp at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, preserved in the Arolsen Archives, see https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/de/archive/1-1-35-1_2492000 [accessed: 06/05/2025]. The prisoner with the number 9606 was a Yenish. This group consisted primarily of former Wehrmacht soldiers who, after suffering forced sterilisation, were transferred to Sachsenhausen and forced to serve at the front in the SS special unit Dirlewanger.46Cf. Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 297, n. 38; AGK, KL Ravensbrück 50, Einlieferung von Zigeunern, undated, pp. 47–50; Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, 346–47. See also Winter, Winter Time; Guth, Z 3105.
Medical Experiments and Organised Murder
Between 1942 and 1945, the SS doctors Walter Sonntag (1907–1948), Horst Schumann (1906–1983), Franz Bernhard Lucas (1911–1994) and Carl Clauberg (1898–1957) carried out sterilisation experiments and sterilisations in Ravensbrück concentration camp using surgical procedures, X-ray irradiation and injections of a liquid into the uterus. Even children under the age of ten were not spared.47Strebel, “Das Männerlager”, 161. It was primarily Sinti and Roma of both sexes who were used for these experiments.
From April 1942, inmates who were exhausted from forced labour and unable to work through hunger and illness were murdered in the gas chambers of the Bernburg, Hartheim or Berlin-Buch ‘sanatoriums and nursing homes’48Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 358–58, 262–63; Philipp, Kalendarium, 86–87, 178; Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 332–33, 336–37. According to camp rumours, the first transport had Berlin-Buch as its destination. More recent research assumes that this was only a stopover; Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 336. as part of ‘Aktion 14f13’ (Operation 14f13) or were sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin-Majdanek to be killed.
The Uckermark camp was partially dissolved in December 1944 and converted into a selection and killing facilty for the women’s concentration camp. At the beginning of 1945, a gas chamber was put into operation, in which around 5,000 to 6,000 women were murdered before the end of the war. The ashes of the murder victims were poured into the neighbouring Schwedtsee lake. Other inmates were murdered by firing squads.49Cf. Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 288.
War’s End and Liberation
On 2 March 1945, a transport of 1,981 women left Ravensbrück for the Mauthausen concentration camp. They are said to have included 800 Sinti and Roma with babies and small children.50Philipp, Kalendarium, 198; Tillion, Frauenkonzentrationslager Ravensbrück, 262, 402. Some were transferred from there to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.51Tuckermann, Die Lebensgeschichte, 175, 185–88. Other transports went directly to Bergen-Belsen, which had already become a death camp.
Shortly before the end of the war, the International Red Cross and the Swedish and Danish Red Cross succeeded in transporting around 7,500 inmates to Sweden, Switzerland and France. Sofia Taikon (1931–2005) was one of the Roma who made it to Sweden thanks to this rescue operation (white buses) and was thus able to survive. The remaining inmates in Ravensbrück were driven on one of the cruel death marches. Inmates who were at the end of their tether were shot by the guards along the way. On 30 April 1945, Red Army units liberated around 2,000 inmates in Ravensbrück who had been left behind as unfit to march. The satellite camps were also liberated in April and May 1945.
Over 132,000 adult women and children, 20,000 men and 1,000 young women from 40 nations were registered in Ravensbrück and the Uckermark camp.52Official figures on the website of the Ravensbrück Memorial, www.ravensbrueck.de [accessed: 30/05/2023]; Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Ravensbrück, Gedenkbuch. The exact number of interned Sinti and Roma has not yet been determined. Estimates based on extrapolations range from 4,300 to 6,650 Sinti and Roma; the historian Bernhard Strebel (born 1962) assumes a minimum figure of 2,800.53The extrapolation of the evaluation results by Kiedrzynska (Ravensbrück, 309–13) and Schlaefer and Schröder (Jüdische Häftlinge) yields 6,650 and 4,300 Sinti and Roma respectively from the total number of 123,000 inmates (data according to Strebel, Das KZ Ravensbrück, 134). Strebel considers these figures to be too high; cf. ibid. How many of them died in Ravensbrück and its satellite camps and in Uckermark is not known, nor is the fate of those who were transferred from Ravensbrück to other camps.
Trials of Nazi Perpetrators
The first Ravensbrück trials from 1946 to 1948 comprised a series of court proceedings under British jurisdiction. The defendants were SS members, members of the camp staff and prisoner functionaries. From 1949 to 1950, trials against camp staff took place before the French military court in Rastatt. On 10 March 1950, the court sentenced the former camp commandant Fritz Suhren (1908–1950) and the labour deployment chief Hans Pflaum (1902–1950) to death. In 1950, the Stuttgart Regional Court sentenced Rudolf Beer (1911–1981), head of protective custody section of the men’s camp, to 15 years in prison.
In all of these proceedings, the crimes committed against Sinti and Roma were barely considered, if at all. It was not until 1955 that repeated mistreatment of Sinti and Roma played a role when the SS guard Erika Bergmann (1915–1996) was sentenced to life internment by the Neubrandenburg District Court.54Cf. Buchmann, Die Frauen von Ravensbrück, 15; also Baetz, Herzog and von Mengersen, Die Rezeption, 49–50. Further trials took place before courts in the GDR from 1948 to 1966. A systematic evaluation of the preliminary proceedings and Nazi trials with regard to the Sinti and Roma victim group has not yet been carried out for Ravensbrück.
Ravensbrück Memorial Museum
The Soviet army took over the camp grounds and used them as barracks until 1993. Ravensbrück was inaugurated as a National Memorial in 1959. A memorial square was designed as the centre of the memorial site and laid out between the area in which the inmate barracks stood (which was screened by the original camp wall), the crematorium, the building housing punishment cells (Zellenbau) and the Schwedtsee lake, which is also a mass grave since it holds the scattered ashes of the murdered inmates. For decades, the actual site of the camp and the surrounding camp areas, including the Siemens workshops, the Uckermark youth concentration camp and the SS housing, were not even accessible for commemorative events or research because of their military use.
The memorial has been part of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation since 1993. As part of the remodelling in the early 1990s, the Museum of the Anti-Fascist Resistance Struggle in the former commandant’s office was replaced by two new permanent exhibitions. A new main exhibition has been on display here since April 2013.
The countries of origin of the inmates are listed on the wall surrounding the plateau in front of Schwedtsee lake; in front of it, separate memorial plaques from 1988 and 1994 commemorate the Jewish victims and the victims of the Sinti and Roma. In the Hungarian memorial room in the former Zellenbau, unlike in the memorial rooms for other nationalities, explicit reference is made to ‘the Jewish and Gypsy women dragged here en masse from Hungary’.55Eschebach, Ravensbrück, 184.
On 25 March 1995, a memorial room for the Sinti and Roma murdered in the Ravensbrück concentration camp was opened in the basement of the Zellenbau. The following dedication text is inscribed in German, English and Romanes on three brass wall plaques framed in wood: ‘In reverence and mourning, we Sinti and Roma remember our mothers, wives and children who were murdered by the SS in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. We also remember all our people who were victims of Nazi genocide throughout the entire sphere of influence of National Socialism.’
The memorial room also contains five biographies of Sinti and Roma as well as a display case containing a small teddy bear. A boy, whose name is not known, had bent down for his teddy bear when he arrived on the camp road, whereupon he was brutally beaten to death by an SS man. An inmate who had witnessed this scene with horror hid the teddy bear under her apron, kept it after the liberation and donated it to the memorial site to furnish the memorial room for the Sinti and Roma. The teddy bear is regarded as a symbol of the compassion and solidarity of the Ravensbrück women with the persecuted children.
The ‘Ravensbrück Women’ exhibition in the original memorial complex already featured the biographies of Ceija Stojka and Amalie Schaich (1929–2010) in memory of persecuted Sinti and Roma.56Cf. Jacobeit, Ravensbrückerinnen. Further biographies and documents on this group of victims were added to the main exhibition opened in 2013 in the former SS commandant’s office. On 2 August 2023, a memorial plaque for the Sinti and Roma women from Koblenz who had been deported to Ravensbrück via Auschwitz-Birkenau was unveiled on the initiative of a relative.
