CALL
FOR
COLLECTIONS
Ravensbrück Memorial
We are seeking your support in collecting objects and documents related to the main camp for male prisoners at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp or its satellite camps, such as Barth, Karlshagen, or Neubrandenburg.
These could include photos, drawings, memoirs, letters, official documents, everyday items, or personal mementos. Anything that provides insights into the camp's history, the experiences of the inmates, and their struggles with persecution is of exceptional value. Even source materials produced by perpetrators or bystanders contribute significantly to our understanding.
If you are unsure about the origin or significance of an object or document, please contact us! We look forward to investigating these items together with you.
Help us to preserve important historical testimonies and the memory of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp.
A men’s camp was added to the camp complex at Ravensbrück in April 1941. As part of the camp complex, it was also under the authority of the women’s camp’s commander. The men’s camp was a labour pool for skilled trades before the concentration camp was fully completed. In August 1941 five accommodation huts and one manufacturing hall for the men’s camp were completed in the South-Eastern part of the site immediately next to the industrial yard. Although the number of detainees was constantly rising (up to 1500-2000 prisoners at the same time) no additions were made until the camp was liberated.
The male slave labourers served also for the ongoing expansion of the Ravensbrück camp and its satellite camps.
More than half of the labour batallions were construction units that were assigned to civilian construction companies. During this hard labour the boys and men suffered brutal abuse. Until the end of 1942 about half of all male prisoners died from the consequences of the heavy physical labour, malnutrition, lack of medical care or were murdered.
From 1943 the majority of men outside of the camp were working for the arms industry.
Most of the prisoners aged 16 to 45 were from German-occupied Poland, and the Soviet Union, as well as the Third Reich and very often were transferred from other concentration camps. For the most part they were forced labourers who had been put into a concentration camp for various "offences" such as escape or sabotage.
Boys, some of whom had been of deported together with their mothers to Ravensbrück, were separated from the women as soon as they had completed their 12th year of age and were placed in a separate block inside the men’s camp.
Between 1941 and 1945 some 20,000 men were imprisoned in the men’s camp.
Contact
Jan Švimberský
Have you recently made an interesting discovery in your attic or basement? Do you possess special family heirlooms? Might you have items that could be of interest for the new exhibition project ”The Men's Camp within the Ravensbrück Camp Complex”?
22