In May 1939, the village of Fürstenberg an der Havel became the site of the Reich’s only major concentration camp designed specifically for women. Surrounded by dense pine forests and tranquil lakes, the location was strategically chosen: it was secluded enough to ensure that the activities within remained hidden from the public, yet close enough to Berlin for efficient administrative oversight.
Over the course of six years, more than 130,000 women from 40 different countries passed through its gates. Among them were thousands who arrived pregnant or became pregnant while imprisoned. In the logic of the camp system, a pregnant body was viewed as a “logistical failure” because it could not fulfill its primary purpose: manual labor.
The Administration of Labor and Pregnancy
Commandant Fritz Suhren, who took over in August 1942, managed the camp not through impulsive cruelty, but through a structured, bureaucratic policy. Under his tenure, pregnancy was treated as a data point in a prisoner’s record, indicating when that individual would “cease to be available for labor.”
The medical wing, known as the Revier, was the center of this administrative control. It was staffed by several notorious figures:
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Dr. Percival Treite: A technically competent surgeon who used his skills to conduct selections and sign death certificates.
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Dr. Richard Trommer: The chief physician during the early years.
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Herta Oberheuser: The only female doctor tried at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial. She participated in agonizing medical experiments and oversaw forced procedures on pregnant prisoners.
Evolution of Policy: 1939–1945
The treatment of pregnant women was not static; it shifted based on the camp’s population and the progress of the war.
Early Years (1939–1941)
Initially, the prisoner population consisted largely of German and Austrian political dissidents, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and those labeled “asocial.” During this period, the policy was direct:
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Forced Procedures: Terminations were performed in the Revier regardless of the stage of pregnancy, often without anesthesia.
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Immediate Elimination: If a child was born, they were frequently eliminated immediately so the mother could return to the labor force.
The Expansion of the War (1941–1943)
As the Reich expanded, women from Poland, the Soviet Union, and France arrived in massive numbers. This demographic shift created a hierarchy of treatment based on the Nazi racial ideology:
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Polish and Soviet Women: Occupying the lower rungs of the hierarchy, these women were subjected to the most brutal medical interventions.
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French Resistance Women: Due to the political complexities of occupied France, these women occasionally experienced a slight margin of variation in their treatment, though they were still subjected to severe labor and malnutrition.
Strategies of Concealment
For many women, the only hope for their unborn child was total concealment. This was an extraordinary challenge given the nature of camp life.
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Geometry of the Body: The standard-issue gray cloth uniforms were not designed to hide physical changes. By the fourth or fifth month, a pregnancy became a “problem of geometry.”
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Roll Call Tactics: Women would bind their abdomens tightly with bandages or ask fellow prisoners to form a physical screen during inspections to block the guards’ line of sight.
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The Risk of Discovery: If a guard like Dorothea Binz (the chief female guard known for her volatility) discovered a concealed pregnancy, the punishment was often violent, extending beyond the medical procedure to include physical assault or assignment to lethal work details.
The Kinderzimmer: A Room of Euphemism
By 1944, the camp was so overcrowded that the administration established a space called the Kinderzimmer (Children’s Room). While the name suggested a place of care, it was a room where infants were deposited to succumb to the elements.
Instead of the immediate elimination practiced in earlier years, mothers were sometimes allowed a few days with their newborns before the infants were moved to this unheated, unventilated room. There, the infants faced:
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Starvation: Mothers were often barred from nursing, and no adequate milk substitutes were provided.
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Exposure: The room lacked proper heating during the freezing German winters.
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Dehydration: Surviving nurses recalled the specific, haunting scent of the room—a result of newborns being left without hygiene or hydration.
Demographic and Statistical Overview
The scale of the tragedy at Ravensbrück can be understood through the recorded numbers of those who passed through the system. While many records were destroyed as the war ended, historian estimates and survivor testimonies provide a somber picture:
National Groups by Population (Estimates)
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Polish: ~35%
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Soviet: ~20%
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German/Austrian: ~15%
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French: ~10%
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Jewish (all nationalities): ~15%
Medical Experiments and Long-Term Impact
The treatment of pregnant women intersected with the broader “medical research” conducted at the camp. Doctors like Carl Clauberg used the prisoner population to develop methods of mass sterilization.
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Intrauterine Injections: Procedures designed to cause irreversible infertility were tested on women, ensuring that even if they survived the camp, they could not rebuild their families afterward.
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The “Rabbits”: A group of Polish prisoners were subjected to sulfonamide experiments, where wounds were deliberately infected to test antibiotics. Many of these women also witnessed or underwent the forced procedures related to pregnancy.
The Legacy of the Survivors
When the camp was finally liberated in April 1945, the survivors carried physical and psychological scars that modern science classifies as severe, complicated trauma.
Women like Germaine Tillion, a French ethnologist and Resistance member, used their training to methodically document the camp’s internal functioning. Her writings, along with the testimonies of nurse-prisoners like Stanisława Michalik, ensure that the administrative coherence of the camp’s cruelty is not forgotten.
For these women, the “future” had often been synonymous with the child they tried to protect. When that child was lost, the survivors faced a void that labor could not crush and time could not fully heal. Their testimonies remain a vital record of a period where the human body was treated as nothing more than a biological resource to be managed and, eventually, discarded.