I knew some Jehovah’s Witnesses were rounded up although I never really knew why or how many – I thought it was just a few but nope – there were several thousand. Witnesses assigned there and their brave determination not to bow in any way to Hitler or his war. I was surprised at the number of Jehovah’s A few were even interviewed by the author. There were Jews, gentiles married to Jews, prostitutes, Marxists and Jehovah’s Witnesses along with gypsies and other “worthless mouths.” I felt I owed it to them to listen – they told their tales in notes smuggled through and then in diaries and letters and finally in court documents. These were real women, not characters in a novel, and they wereĬompletely dehumanized and then treated like sick cattle or criminals.

There’s loyalty and sacrifice and love amongst the prisoners as well as some treachery. It’s just that there’s so much brutality and pain and it’s quite a slog at times, but absolutely necessary for the impact to be made. I was more impressed by the descriptions of what was happening at the policy level than with life in the barrack although it is the life in the barracks part that makes this book different and really stand out. The narrative is chronological for the most part and a mix of dry and riveting – makes for slow reading at first but picks up considerably in Part 2 ( out of 6). I say perfectly because she does just exactly that – details as much as possible the life, from beginning to end, of the only Nazi concentration camp specifically for women – Ravensbruck. Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women

The book would try to throw light on the Nazis’ crimes against women, showing, at the same time, how an understanding of what happened at the camp for women can illuminate the wider Nazi story.

I understood now what this book should be: a biography of Ravensbrück beginning at the beginning and ending at the end, piecing the broken story back together again as best I could. In the Prologue (Kindle locations 292-294) Helm states her premise perfectly:

If this is a woman by sarah helm