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Ravensbrück (XXe siècle)
French
468 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
About the author
Germaine Tillion
30 books7 followersGermaine Tillion (30 May 1907 – 18 April 2008) was a French ethnologist, known for her work in Algeria in the 1950s on behalf of the Government of France. A member of the French Resistance in World War II, she spent time in Ravensbrück concentration camp with her mother Émilie Tillion, author of France's Guides Bleus travel guides.
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October 22, 2011The next time anyone says to me, “But Ravensbrück wasn’t one of the death camps,” I am going to have to punch that person in the teeth.
It wasn’t set up as a death camp, and for most of the war didn’t function as one. This changed. No one’s really sure of the statistics. The agreed numbers suggest that in 6 years of operation, 120,000 women were interned here, of which 90,000 died. 90,000 women died here. Seventy-five per cent, three out of four, of all women sent to this concentration camp ended up dead. During the last four months of World War II, at least one gas chamber was in constant operation at Ravensbrück—first secretly, then overtly—and an estimated 6,000 women were gassed here at a rate of about 150 or so every day. Why didn’t they get rid of them faster? It was the end of the war. They were short of gas.
(And that’s not taking into account the numberless anonymous women—almost all Ravensbrück’s records were destroyed before the camp was liberated—who were summarily transported out of Ravensbrück to be gassed elsewhere.)
Tillion’s interesting argument, and one I hadn’t encountered before but which seems convincing, is that Ravensbrück essentially filled a gap when Auschwitz was evacuated. The first gas chamber at Ravensbrück was built during the month that Auschwitz was shut down, and prior to that several thousand detainees from Auschwitz had in fact been transferred to Ravensbrück—so many that there wasn’t any place to put them. A tent was erected in the main square of the camp, and 5000 doomed women and children were stuffed inside it, not allowed out, and pretty much left to die of starvation and disease—conditions in this tent were so appalling that even the existing resident prisoners of the camp shunned it. (I’ve read several eyewitness descriptions of this notorious tent from the outside, but haven’t come across anyone who survived living inside it.)
Tillion also argues that the simple answer for the high number of random deaths of French prisoners (also a thing noted in other accounts I’ve read), for no apparent reason, is starvation. All French prisoners were labelled ‘political’ and most of them were ‘NN,’ ‘Nacht und Nebel,’ night and fog, which meant their imprisonment was secret. Simply, they couldn’t receive mail. Eastern European and German prisoners, by contrast, depended on food packages from outside the camp to supplement their meagre rations. Even when the Red Cross distributed food here, the French NN prisoners were not allowed to receive it.
Buried within Tillion’s statistics is a personal account. Her tone is both bitter and distanced at the same time, as she sets out to hammer home her points with endless lists of dates and head counts, most of them approximate, a few verified on paper. Occasionally she’ll interrupt her impersonal flow with a comment like, ‘I was suffering from lockjaw at the time and couldn’t speak or eat, so I may not remember the exact number’ or ‘This was told me by a girl who had been beaten so badly I had to hold her up during a sudden midnight roll call while we stood in our shifts in the snow for three hours.’ (I made up these specific examples. They’re representative.) The last section of the book is dated like a daily journal for all of March 1945, and there is a kind of desperation to the endless numbers of the executions tallied here, especially since you KNOW half of them are made up if not inaccurate. After a while you want to shake the author and yell, OKAY, I GET THE PICTURE. And then you realize that it was during this time Tillion was finally separated from her mother, who was gassed here in the LAST MONTH before the war ended, after they’d both survived an agonizing two-and-a-half year imprisonment for resistance activities. And then you kind of forgive her ferocious heavy-handedness with the dry, relentless details.
I CAN’T BELIEVE I READ THE WHOLE THING.
--------------------------------
500 pages including 8 appendices in 8 point type, with large parts of that in 6 point. I confess to skimming the statistics in the sections about other concentration camps. Because this really was a book that focused on statistics. They are riveting in their terrible significance, but they’re still statistics, and lack the gripping visual jolt of testimony or experience. Still, I do feel it was worth the effort.
A note to other researchers:
If there is anyone else out there hungry for peculiar details such as “What number might be assigned to someone turning up here in September 1944” or “How many people would actually be present at a roll call in that month” or something like that, Appendix 7 provides a useful chronology. There is also an extensive bibliography and map of the camp… and this map is somewhat more detailed and explicit than the one on the Ravensbrück website, which goes a bit vague about what certain of the surviving buildings were used for. Although I do appreciate how some of this stuff might be on the sensitive side.
It wasn’t set up as a death camp, and for most of the war didn’t function as one. This changed. No one’s really sure of the statistics. The agreed numbers suggest that in 6 years of operation, 120,000 women were interned here, of which 90,000 died. 90,000 women died here. Seventy-five per cent, three out of four, of all women sent to this concentration camp ended up dead. During the last four months of World War II, at least one gas chamber was in constant operation at Ravensbrück—first secretly, then overtly—and an estimated 6,000 women were gassed here at a rate of about 150 or so every day. Why didn’t they get rid of them faster? It was the end of the war. They were short of gas.
(And that’s not taking into account the numberless anonymous women—almost all Ravensbrück’s records were destroyed before the camp was liberated—who were summarily transported out of Ravensbrück to be gassed elsewhere.)
Tillion’s interesting argument, and one I hadn’t encountered before but which seems convincing, is that Ravensbrück essentially filled a gap when Auschwitz was evacuated. The first gas chamber at Ravensbrück was built during the month that Auschwitz was shut down, and prior to that several thousand detainees from Auschwitz had in fact been transferred to Ravensbrück—so many that there wasn’t any place to put them. A tent was erected in the main square of the camp, and 5000 doomed women and children were stuffed inside it, not allowed out, and pretty much left to die of starvation and disease—conditions in this tent were so appalling that even the existing resident prisoners of the camp shunned it. (I’ve read several eyewitness descriptions of this notorious tent from the outside, but haven’t come across anyone who survived living inside it.)
Tillion also argues that the simple answer for the high number of random deaths of French prisoners (also a thing noted in other accounts I’ve read), for no apparent reason, is starvation. All French prisoners were labelled ‘political’ and most of them were ‘NN,’ ‘Nacht und Nebel,’ night and fog, which meant their imprisonment was secret. Simply, they couldn’t receive mail. Eastern European and German prisoners, by contrast, depended on food packages from outside the camp to supplement their meagre rations. Even when the Red Cross distributed food here, the French NN prisoners were not allowed to receive it.
Buried within Tillion’s statistics is a personal account. Her tone is both bitter and distanced at the same time, as she sets out to hammer home her points with endless lists of dates and head counts, most of them approximate, a few verified on paper. Occasionally she’ll interrupt her impersonal flow with a comment like, ‘I was suffering from lockjaw at the time and couldn’t speak or eat, so I may not remember the exact number’ or ‘This was told me by a girl who had been beaten so badly I had to hold her up during a sudden midnight roll call while we stood in our shifts in the snow for three hours.’ (I made up these specific examples. They’re representative.) The last section of the book is dated like a daily journal for all of March 1945, and there is a kind of desperation to the endless numbers of the executions tallied here, especially since you KNOW half of them are made up if not inaccurate. After a while you want to shake the author and yell, OKAY, I GET THE PICTURE. And then you realize that it was during this time Tillion was finally separated from her mother, who was gassed here in the LAST MONTH before the war ended, after they’d both survived an agonizing two-and-a-half year imprisonment for resistance activities. And then you kind of forgive her ferocious heavy-handedness with the dry, relentless details.
I CAN’T BELIEVE I READ THE WHOLE THING.
--------------------------------
500 pages including 8 appendices in 8 point type, with large parts of that in 6 point. I confess to skimming the statistics in the sections about other concentration camps. Because this really was a book that focused on statistics. They are riveting in their terrible significance, but they’re still statistics, and lack the gripping visual jolt of testimony or experience. Still, I do feel it was worth the effort.
A note to other researchers:
If there is anyone else out there hungry for peculiar details such as “What number might be assigned to someone turning up here in September 1944” or “How many people would actually be present at a roll call in that month” or something like that, Appendix 7 provides a useful chronology. There is also an extensive bibliography and map of the camp… and this map is somewhat more detailed and explicit than the one on the Ravensbrück website, which goes a bit vague about what certain of the surviving buildings were used for. Although I do appreciate how some of this stuff might be on the sensitive side.
March 16, 2018
Il me semble que pour pleinement apprécier ce témoignage il est préférable de connaître l'histoire du camp de Ravensbrück et de ses annexes, notamment les années précédant l'arrivée de Germaine Tillion (soit de l'ouverture du camp en 1939 à 1943).
September 30, 2017
"Durante le sospensioni delle sedute, la sala si svuotava, e io restavo davanti a loro a guardarli in silenzio, sopraffatta dal dolore di fronte a quegli esseri che avevano fatto tanto male e che ora, allineati a qualche metro da me, dovevano rispondere di quelle migliaia di assassinii, compiuti a sangue freddo su delle donne indifese. Erano quindici e io sapevo di non conoscere che un numero minimo, infinitesimale, di tutti i loro crimini, di cui nessuno al mondo potrebbe mai fare il calcolo esatto. Loro stessi, i più informati, ne avevano già dimenticata una parte…
Devo dire che provavo orrore allo spettacolo di quelle persone che difendevano la propria vita contro il meccanismo sempre spaventoso costituito da qualsiasi apparato giudiziario. Ma allo stesso tempo riconoscevo ciascuno di quelli che ora si trovavano davanti a me e pensavo che con un solo cenno del dito quei criminali avrebbero potuto salvare degli esseri tanto cari, e quel segno non l’avevano fatto, anzi si erano affannati, avevano corso, pieni di zelo e d’impegno, per far sì che nessuno sfuggisse alla morte. Adesso erano lì, e io li guardavo.
Si può chiamare “odio” quel dolore cupo, troppo accorto per non includere una straziante compassione? Giorno dopo giorno osservavo, proprio mentre si venivano tessendo, quelle misteriose connivenze che tutti i prigionieri conoscono bene e, al di sopra delle teste dei soldati inglesi che li sorvegliavano, io li vedevo, non senza provare pietà, comunicare a gesti e sguardi con qualche persona cara, tra il pubblico…
Nel frattempo proseguiva la rievocazione dei crimini, e io potevo misurare l’abisso sempre più profondo che si apre tra ciò che è realmente accaduto e quella rappresentazione incerta che si chiama storia.
Loro erano lì, ben vestiti, curati, puliti: dignitosi. Un dentista, dei medici, un ex tipografo, delle infermiere, qualche modesto impiegato. Nessun precedente penale, studi normali, infanzia normale…
Gente comune." (pp. 124, 125)
Devo dire che provavo orrore allo spettacolo di quelle persone che difendevano la propria vita contro il meccanismo sempre spaventoso costituito da qualsiasi apparato giudiziario. Ma allo stesso tempo riconoscevo ciascuno di quelli che ora si trovavano davanti a me e pensavo che con un solo cenno del dito quei criminali avrebbero potuto salvare degli esseri tanto cari, e quel segno non l’avevano fatto, anzi si erano affannati, avevano corso, pieni di zelo e d’impegno, per far sì che nessuno sfuggisse alla morte. Adesso erano lì, e io li guardavo.
Si può chiamare “odio” quel dolore cupo, troppo accorto per non includere una straziante compassione? Giorno dopo giorno osservavo, proprio mentre si venivano tessendo, quelle misteriose connivenze che tutti i prigionieri conoscono bene e, al di sopra delle teste dei soldati inglesi che li sorvegliavano, io li vedevo, non senza provare pietà, comunicare a gesti e sguardi con qualche persona cara, tra il pubblico…
Nel frattempo proseguiva la rievocazione dei crimini, e io potevo misurare l’abisso sempre più profondo che si apre tra ciò che è realmente accaduto e quella rappresentazione incerta che si chiama storia.
Loro erano lì, ben vestiti, curati, puliti: dignitosi. Un dentista, dei medici, un ex tipografo, delle infermiere, qualche modesto impiegato. Nessun precedente penale, studi normali, infanzia normale…
Gente comune." (pp. 124, 125)
January 31, 2014
it is not bad but it is designed more for documentation, methodology and research rather than experiences or even an overview of the camp as a whole. I wasnt expecting that and it didnt engage me as much but that doesnt diminish the authors experience and important contribution.
January 27, 2022
Voici une étude ethnographique et historique précise de Ravensbrück écrite par la grande Germaine Tillion, connue pour ses travaux sur l’Algérie. Témoin de première main, elle a eu a coeur de recueillir et de conserver le plus d’informations possibles sur ce qu’était un camp de concentration. Ce n’est donc un enième livre de souvenir d’une déportée, mais un rapport détaillé et étayé sur Ravensbrück.
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August 16, 2021a grim and harrowing account of her time there. I read that dirt from her grave is in the Pantheon because her family did not want her grave moved. She is a hero in France.
She was concerned with the numbers and accounting of what was being done and kept good records so that we know more of what happened there than we would otherwise.
She was concerned with the numbers and accounting of what was being done and kept good records so that we know more of what happened there than we would otherwise.
November 17, 2025
it's a tough book to get through, considering when it was written and how the world wanted to move on so quicky from WWII. It's strange to read an account from a survivor where she had to prove the terrible things that happened to the women there. I didn't know much about Ravensbruck until the last year, but will continue to study it.
September 26, 2017
关于Ravensbruck的资料国内基本没有，所以这个选题本身是很有意义的。
本书为集中营亲历者缩写，类似于回忆录与资料集，并无议论部分，但情感倾向明显。
材料非常之多，有档案也有口述材料。
很多故事都非常吸引人，尤其是德共的Heinz Neumann和夫人Grete Buber-Neumann的几经辗转，把斯大林和希特勒、共产国际和纳粹、古拉格和集中营串在了一起，相当精彩但也相当沉重。
文字流畅，描写也很生动，还蛮值得看一看的。
本书为集中营亲历者缩写，类似于回忆录与资料集，并无议论部分，但情感倾向明显。
材料非常之多，有档案也有口述材料。
很多故事都非常吸引人，尤其是德共的Heinz Neumann和夫人Grete Buber-Neumann的几经辗转，把斯大林和希特勒、共产国际和纳粹、古拉格和集中营串在了一起，相当精彩但也相当沉重。
文字流畅，描写也很生动，还蛮值得看一看的。
August 31, 2021
Impresiile mele despre această carte le găsiți pe blog: https://www.lutyk.ro/2021/08/ravensbr...
November 4, 2020
Al leer la contraportada de este libro parecía que tenia ante mi un libro brutal, pero nada mas alejado de la realidad. Si la autora hubiese contado su experiencia a detalle aun que no fuera tan salvaje el libro estaría bueno, pero fue tan, pero tan poco lo que conto a lo largo del libro que precisamente el libro fue eso: larguísimo, tedioso, aburrido. Me tarde meses en terminarlo. Este libro habla mas de papeleo, cuestiones administrativas y política, muy decepcionante.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews