February 18, 2025
Polish Experience

Not Only Jews! The Mass Gassings of Polish Women at Ravensbrück

Ravensbrück, by Germaine Tillion. 1975. Anchor Press/Doubleday, New York

The author was a French inmate of the Ravensbruck Nazi German concentration camp. She describes events that counterintuitively resemble the endlessly-discussed extermination of the Jews in the so-called death camps.

RAVENSBRUCK GAS CHAMBERS: SCALE OF GASSING

The German Schwarzhuber cited 2,300 or 2,400 Ravensbruck victims that were gassed. (p. 155). In contrast, Tillion writes, “There were two prisoners–both completely trustworthy and in excellent positions to know the truth–who placed the number of gas chamber victims considerably higher: one has said 3,600, and the other 3,660.” (p. 155).

She concludes that, “If we make the simplest estimate of the total number of gas-chamber victims–based on the duration of its operation (March 2–April 2, 1945 for the official gas chamber alone) and the daily totals of 150 or 170–we arrive at a minimum of 4,500 and a maximum of 5,270. But was there a ‘gassing’ every day? And were there not a few occasions when the gas chamber functioned at capacity twice in one day?” (p. 158).

RAVENSBROOK GAS CHAMBERS: THE SAME GERMAN COMPANY THAT MADE ZYKLON FOR GASSING JEWS (AT AUSCHWITZ) ALSO MADE IT FOR GASSING POLES! 

The author cites Wanda Kiedrzynska, a well-informed senior Polish prisoner, “She also cites an invoice dating from 1943 and showing that the firm Tesch and Stabenov [Stabenow] had provided the camp with 351.5 kg of Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide). Kiedrzynska also has estimated that between January 22 and April 14, 1945, about 4,500 women were gassed.” (p. 155).

NOT ONLY RAVENSBROOK GAS CHAMBERS: ALSO CREMATORIA

There were two crematory ovens at Ravensbruck, but they could not keep up with all the bodies (p. 94). Some bodies were burned in a crematorium at the nearby town of Furstenberg. (p. 95). So, obviously, crematoria were not the sole property of the “death camps” where mostly Jews were gassed and burned.

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACIST SEMANTICS: “DEATH CAMPS” OR “DEATH WORKSHOPS”?

Nowadays, advocates for the pre-eminence of the Holocaust make a big deal about the presumed distinction between “death camps” (where mostly Jews were murdered), and the “ordinary” Nazi German concentration camps (where mostly non-Jews were murdered). Is this so?

Ironically, Tillion points out the irrelevance of this distinction, especially at the level of individual suffering. She comments, “But in any case, Struthof [Stutthof] was not a ‘death factory’ like Auschwitz, but something more like a ‘death workshop’–more terrifying for the individual, perhaps, but less efficient.” (p. 20).

RELEASE OF PRISONERS? JEWS VS NON-JEWS: A HOLLOW ARGUMENT

Some Jews assert that Jewish prisoners in Nazi camps could never be released, while non-Jewish prisoners could. Regardless of the truth or otherwise of the “Jews never get released” argument, we must realize that released non-Jews were largely limited to Germans, and even this was trivial. Referring to Ravensbruck, Tillion comments, “German prisoners were sometimes released along the way but in small numbers, and only rarely…The prisoner-secretaries estimated these releases totaled about 3 percent for the first four years, after which they were completely halted. A few French prisoners were also freed.” (p. 17).

THE HEROISM OF POLISH WOMEN INCARCERATED AT RAVENSBRUCK

French author Tillion gives unstinting credit to the Polish inmates, “The Poles also knew how to organize an efficient system of mutual aid and, in some cases, true ‘resistance’. One notable example: in the face of enormous risk they managed to get messages sent to the Allies telling of the medical experiments going on in the camp.” (p. 29).

REPUDIATING HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY

Mass gassing is usually associated with the Jews at Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc., but it also happened to non-Jews in “ordinary” concentration camps. The Ravensbrook gas chambers were not unique. The likes of Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen also had them. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2023/07/24/auschwitz-survivorship-low-in-the-long-term-concentration-camps-gassing-of-non-jews-inconsistent-nazi-killings-of-jewish-forced-laborers-jewish-laborers-not-preferentially-killed-no-existential-e/

It is high time that the Holocaust-serving artificial dichotomy, between so-called death camps and the “ordinary” concentration camps, be abandoned once and for all.

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