The Uckermark concentration camp was a small German
concentration camp
A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...
for young women near the
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück () was a Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure of 1 ...
in
Fürstenberg/Havel
Fürstenberg () is a town in the Oberhavel district, Brandenburg, Germany.
Geography
Fürstenberg is situated on the Havel, River Havel, south of Neustrelitz, and north of Berlin.
The town lies at the southern edge of the Mecklenburg Lake Di ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
and then an "emergency"
extermination camp
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocau ...
.
Overview
The camp was opened in May 1942 as a detention camp for girls, aged 16 to 21, who were considered criminal or difficult. Girls who reached the upper age limit were transferred to the
Ravensbrück women's camp. Camp administration was provided by the Ravensbrück camp. In its early years, the head overseer at Uckermark was a woman named
Lotte Toberentz, and one other ''
Aufseherin'' (female warden) is known today by the name of
Johanna Braach. Both of these women were tried by a British court at the
Third Ravensbrück trial.
In January 1945, the juveniles' camp was closed and the infrastructure was subsequently used as an extermination camp for "women who were sick, no longer efficient, and over 52 years old".
[A. Ebbinghaus, ''Opfer und Täterinnen. Frauenbiographien des Nationalsozialismus.'' Nördlingen (1987) p. 287. Reprinted 1996: . ] Over 5,000 women were murdered there; only 500 women and children survived. Though it was shut down in March 1945 the
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
s liberated the camp on the night of April 29–30, 1945. Today only very few structures of the camp lie in ruins, barely recognizable.
Some of the responsible
SS wardens of the camp, amongst them chief warden (''
Oberaufseherin'')
Ruth Neudeck, were tried in the Third Ravensbrück Trial, called the "
Uckermark trial".
See also
*
German Resistance to Nazism
The German resistance to Nazism () included unarmed and armed opposition and disobedience to the Nazi Germany, Nazi regime by various movements, groups and individuals by various means, from assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler, attempts to ass ...
*
Glossary of Nazi Germany
This is a list of words, terms, concepts and slogans of Nazi Germany used in the historiography covering the Nazi regime.
Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members. Other words and concepts were borrowed and appropriated, ...
*
The Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
*
List of books about Nazi Germany
*
List of concentration and internment camps
This is a list of Internment, internment and concentration camps, organized by country. In general, a camp or group of camps is designated to the country whose government was responsible for the establishment and/or operation of the camp regardle ...
*
List of Nazi-German concentration camps
*
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe.
The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...
*
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
*
Nazi songs
*
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
References
External links
* S. Schäfer:
Zum Selbstverständnis von Frauen im Konzentrationslager: das Lager Ravensbrück'. PhD thesis 2002,
TU Berlin. (
PDF
Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
file, 741
kB). In German.
* Susanne Luhmann: ''Memory care and queer akinship at the former Uckermark concentration camp for girls and young women.'' Memory Studies 2023, Vol. 16(1) p. 32–50 (online
{{Authority control
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Buildings and structures in Uckermark (district)
1942 establishments in Germany