How terrifying was the life of women in Nazi camps during WWII?

When people talk about the events of World War II history, more often than not, all that most people discuss are matters of battles between various tanks and soldiers. However, when it comes to the experiences of women in the Nazi concentration camps, there were horrific things that took place.

There was one location just north of Berlin, Ravensbrück, which the SS opened in 1939. This concentration camp was unique in that it was reserved solely for female prisoners. More than 130,000 women were sent to this facility, and almost none of them walked out of its gates.

It all started the moment these women set eyes on the camp after arriving in trains. As soon as the doors opened, the SS guards grabbed these women and tore their children from their arms. When an imprisoned mother had a child or young infant with her, the guards sent them straight to the gas chamber. The rationale given for this was that mothers with young ones were useless for hard labor.

As for the mothers that the guards allowed to live, the guards did everything they could to break these women's spirits. For instance, they made women disrobe before male guards, cut off their hair, and take away their names by forcing them to wear numbers as their identification.

Living conditions within the camp were no better. These poor women had barely enough food to sustain themselves, live in constant fear of their guards, and suffer from lack of access to clean water. As a result, many women stopped having monthly periods after several months due to malnourishment and stress. Meanwhile, diseases such as typhus and other illnesses ran rampant through the camps.

The worst part of it all was that the Nazis conducted various medical experiments on these poor women.

For instance, there was a Polish girl named Wanda Półtawska who was 19 when she was sent to Ravensbrück in 1941. She and other imprisoned women were forced to refer to themselves as rabbits, as the doctors liked to perform medical tests on them as if they were animals. The doctors cut open her legs and inserted dirt, glass, and bacteria into her legs to see how her body would react to it. They also removed a portion of her leg bones to test various medications.

Despite her condition, Wanda was fortunate enough to survive due to other camp inhabitants hiding her during the camp's execution. After the war ended, she went on to become a medical doctor and helped treat other traumatized patients. Moreover, she testified against many of the doctors who worked at the camps during the Nuremberg trials.

When examining the conditions that women had to suffer through during WWII, one cannot help but think that the entire purpose of the camps was to dehumanize people.

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