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RAVENSBRÜCK: The Ravensbrück women’s camp was located near Berlin. The only Nazi concentration camp built specifically for women, it was a centre for the economic exploitation of female prisoners – a profit making enterprise with the goals of re-education, work, and extermination. In the six years that Ravensbrück existed 132,000 women and children passed through its gates. 117,000 perished, the highest mortality rate of any concentration camp on German soil. The gendered responses of the women in Ravensbrück make this camp unique among Nazi concentration camps. The living conditions, work assignments, and responses to victimization were different than those of their male counterparts. This new graphic exhibition, Ravensbrück: Forgotten Women of the Holocaust, features drawings and quotes from survivors that highlight their sense of spiritual and physical resistance and acts of solidarity and friendship. The Nazis destroyed official camp records during the final days of the war. It is the visual and written records made by inmates that tell the story of the camp. Women, at great personal risk, made, hid on their bodies, and smuggled out tiny pencil drawings and writings on scraps of paper that documented the realities of camp life. The exhibit depicts the daily life of the female inmates through the reproduction of artefacts, such as Rebecca Teitelbaum's recipe book written on tiny pieces of paper, meticulously stitched and bound and a metal cup issued to Irene Fleischer Klein, both survivors' of Ravensbrück. Other drawings have been enlarged from tiny remnants into large ceiling banners.
The exhibit was produced by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre in partnership with the Ravensbrück Memorial Site with generous support from The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Dr. Roberta Kremer and Scott Anderson of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre curated the exhibit. Metaform Design produced the exhibit concept and design. VHEC Education Coordinator Frieda Miller developed the 38 page Teacher’s Guide, and docent led on-site interactive program for this exhibit.
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