Ravensbrueck2012

The SS Headquarters

SS Headquarters | 1940–45

This building housed the SS headquarters and the administration of the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. The “political department”, the mail censorship office and the infirmary for SS members occupied the ground floor. The first floor housed the offices of the commandant and his adjutant, the SS headquarters office and other administrative offices. After the camp’s liberation in 1945, the building was used by the Soviet Army until 1977. It has served as the Memorial’s central exhibition space since 1984. The first floor currently contains the exhibitions “Ravensbrück. The Topography and History of the Women’s Concentration Camp” and “Women of Ravensbrück”.

- Historical Overview and Map. Memorial Ravensbrueck pdf

How it once looked

The Visitor Centre

The Siemens Camp

Siemens & Halske Production Facilities (Siemens Camp) | 1942–45

Between 1942 and 1944, the company Siemens & Halske set up several production facilities on this site. Female prisoners were forced to perform slave labour inside the buildings’ 20 workshops. From December 1944, the prisoners who had to work there were housed in huts that formed a separate camp section. Over 2,000 prisoners were forced to produce coils, switch parts and other parts for the armaments industry.

- Historical Overview and Map. Memorial Ravensbrueck pdf

According to the Historical Overview and Map. Memorial Ravensbrueck (which I downloaded from the official Ravensbrueck Memorial website), the area indicated in the red box was the site of the former Siemens Camp, but the photos below were taken from the position and direction indicated by the red arrow. Even to take these pictures I had to point my camera through a fence, as the vast majority of the former Nazi and later Soviet run concentration camp, including the Siemenslager, is out-of-bounds to the general public.

A lager version of this photo, which someone with knowledge

of German should be able to decipher, can be viewed here

The Camp Prison

Cell Building | 1940–45

The camp prison or cell building which the prisoners also referred to as the bunker was an integral part of the camp’s internal penal system and the site of acts of particular cruelty. The building contained 78 cells. When the Memorial was founded in 1959, the cell building held its first exhibition. In 2006, a new permanent exhibition entitled “Ravensbrück. The Cell Building” was opened, which also deals with the history of the national memorial rooms.

- Historical Overview and Map. Memorial Ravensbrueck

The south-side of the camp prison, behind the crematorium

I was there on a Monday, when the exhibition was closed, so I've no photos of it

The New Laundry

“New Laundry” | 1943/44–45

Former prisoners referred to the brick buildings erected outside the camp’s northern wall in 1943/44 as the “pathology department”, the “disinfection department” or the “new laundry”. Their exact purpose is unknown. Both of these brick huts underwent considerable structural alterations after 1945, when they were used by the Soviet Army. From 1945 to 1994, the building on the left contained the kitchen and mess hall for the Soviet soldiers. The building on the right was used for medical purposes and as a dispensary.

- Historical Overview and Map. Memorial Ravensbrueck pdf

This thing is between the two buildings, if I was forced to have a guess,

I'd say it was part of a mobile kitchen. And yes, I gave the tire a kick.

Photo taken in the position and direction indicated on the aerial photo below

The Tailor's Workshop

“Tailors’ Workshop” | 1942–45

This complex was called the “Mechanical Workshops” or the “Tailors’ Workshop” and consists of eight interconnected manufacturing halls. After its completion in 1942, the building became one of the central sites of slave labour at the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. It underwent extensive renovation in 1999/2000. Today, it contains an exhibition on slave labour at the Ravensbrück camp.