Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 155. Ravensbrück Concentration Camp

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155. Ravensbrück Concentration Camp · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

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Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Died What Now?
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Speaker 1: The History podcast. It's not your history class with me,
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Speaker 1: your host Katie Charlwood, History Harlote and read all books.
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Speaker 1: So did you know, gentle listeners, that Who Did What Now?
0:18
Speaker 1: It was number two on the US Apple Podcast History
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Speaker 1: charts this week. So thank you. That's not me, that's you.
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Speaker 1: You did this. You've been listening and sharing and commenting
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Speaker 1: and doing all the good stuff, And thank you, thank you,
0:34
Speaker 1: thank you. It's really really nice to just see that happen,
0:40
Speaker 1: because it means that I'm doing something right, you know,
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Speaker 1: and I really really appreciate you for listening. I know
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Speaker 1: I'm a little bit more emotional today because I'm recording
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Speaker 1: this on My grandfather was an aniversary. The kindest man
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Speaker 1: I've ever known and the pettiest. He once blow up
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Speaker 1: a quarry out of spite. And you may be thinking
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Speaker 1: to yourself, Katie, how does one blow up a quarry
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Speaker 1: out of spite? And let me tell you, with great
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Speaker 1: determination and a really good understanding of physics. Now I
1:15
Speaker 1: don't have the physics part, but I do have the
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Speaker 1: determination and the pettiness, which is why I don't blow
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Speaker 1: things up I just set files for legal reasons, that's
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Speaker 1: a joke. I've never even been to Louisiana, so not here,
1:31
Speaker 1: not a way anyway, So that's such a silly joke. Away,
1:35
Speaker 1: there was such a silly joke. It was definitely a
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Speaker 1: joke for legal reasons. Definitely absolutely joke. No, and day
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Speaker 1: of release is actually going to be my son's birthday.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, oh goodness. If any of you do want
1:50
Speaker 1: to get him some weird ass lego, go to town
1:54
Speaker 1: the addresses on the websites and the notes, do what
1:57
Speaker 1: you want to do at this point, do what you
1:59
Speaker 1: want to do. The boy, God, the boy loves his lego,
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Speaker 1: he really does. Yeah, I think my house is gonna
2:06
Speaker 1: be made a lego at one point, Like if he
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Speaker 1: keeps Karen on, and honestly, I'm not mad about it,
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Speaker 1: it'd be great. Maybe he could bug me some more
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Speaker 1: shelves or something like a bookcase, a bookcase made of lego.
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Speaker 1: That would be amazing. So what's been really interesting this
2:22
Speaker 1: week for me actually has been seeing how people perceive me.
2:26
Speaker 1: So like, if you've listened to me or seen me
2:28
Speaker 1: for a long time, then you know what I'm about.
2:29
Speaker 1: You know where I'm coming from and you understand what
2:33
Speaker 1: I do. A lot of people have seen me for
2:36
Speaker 1: the first time this week, can then a little bit viral,
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Speaker 1: A little bit viral. I like, I feel like, once
2:42
Speaker 1: you get over a million and a half views, I
2:46
Speaker 1: feel like, that's yeah, I'm gonna take that. It's a
2:49
Speaker 1: viral moment because that's that's that's a country, you know,
2:55
Speaker 1: that's a population of a country, you know. And so
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Speaker 1: people have seen me for the first time talking about
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Speaker 1: very horrible things, and I've had a lot of accusations
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Speaker 1: and complaints about me being perky or joyful or happy
3:10
Speaker 1: to talk about horrible stuff, which is well to me
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Speaker 1: because no, I think people need to spend time with
3:18
Speaker 1: other humans more, because I understand media literacy is dead,
3:21
Speaker 1: but like, come on, and so people have been watching
3:27
Speaker 1: me for a long time. I've actually had comments and
3:31
Speaker 1: messages going thank you for this. I can see how
3:35
Speaker 1: this is draining, Like I can see how exhausted you are.
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Speaker 1: I can see how much this is affecting you, and
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Speaker 1: it is. I mean, I lost my voice. I lost
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Speaker 1: my voice from scream whispering because I was trying not
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Speaker 1: to like just get overwhelmed and just can upset my neighbles,
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Speaker 1: you know, And and it has been it has been
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Speaker 1: a lot, and I had to take I had to
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Speaker 1: take a week off because it was just too much
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Speaker 1: for me. And that really solidified the idea that I
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Speaker 1: need to just power through, like the only way up
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Speaker 1: is through, Okay, And so that's what we're gonna do.
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Speaker 1: And I'm gonna try and get as much information out
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Speaker 1: there this month and just to get it done, and
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Speaker 1: then I'm going to talk about anything else. Email me
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Speaker 1: suggestions for weird shit from history. I need something silly
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Speaker 1: and fun. I'm ridiculous because I'll do it at this
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Speaker 1: point because this stuff I have had to look at,
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Speaker 1: the horrible, horrible stuff, Like I haven't felt this bad
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Speaker 1: since I was reading Jean Bonny Ramsey's autopsy notes as
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Speaker 1: my six year old daughter as she was at the time,
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Speaker 1: was curled up sleeping sort of have on me because
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Speaker 1: my kids are little clumpets. They just like stuck on me.
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Speaker 1: And and yeah, that was that was tough. Raid. That
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Speaker 1: was a tough one. And I haven't felt that bad
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Speaker 1: since I was looking at that. There's a lot a
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Speaker 1: lot going on here. But I know what you're thinking,
5:19
Speaker 1: you're thinking, Kerrie, it's been five minutes. Quite your Jebel dabba,
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Speaker 1: In fact me, in fact you. I. Well, but first
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Speaker 1: we've got to get our source on. Our sources are
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Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos by the United States, Holocaust
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Speaker 1: Memorial music, The Dynamics of Destruction, The Development of Concentration
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Speaker 1: Camps nineteen thirty three and nineteen forty five by Nicholas Waxmann,
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Speaker 1: The Final Judgment, The Story of Nuremberg by Victor Hayen
5:48
Speaker 1: Bernstein so For and My Research on Human Subjects and
5:52
Speaker 1: Nazi concentration Camps. A Critical Reevaluation of the epistemological and
5:56
Speaker 1: ethical dimension by Voca Rulka. The role of psychopharmacology in
6:02
Speaker 1: the medical abuses of the Third Reich, from euthanasia programs
6:05
Speaker 1: to human experimentation by Francisco Luis Muno's Ittal, The Holocaust
6:12
Speaker 1: Chronicle by Marilyn harron Ettal Cleansing the Fatherland by Peter Kraust,
6:18
Speaker 1: and God's Alleh. Forced labor in Nazi concentration Camps by
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Speaker 1: Mac Bugellen. Inside Ravensbrook by Janet Flanner Remembering Ravensbrook Holocaust
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Speaker 1: to Healing by Natalie hess If this is a woman
6:36
Speaker 1: inside Ravensbrook, Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah helm
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Speaker 1: The Nazi camp System by Karl Hines Roth. I use
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Speaker 1: it incomfortably good then leads begin. So we touched on
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Speaker 1: Ravensbrook a little bit in last week's episode when we
6:56
Speaker 1: discussed the horrible, horrific, vile human that was Ilma Gracie,
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Speaker 1: the Beast of Belson, the Hyena of Auschwitz. Her right.
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Speaker 1: I don't know why, but you know what I think
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Speaker 1: of is an arrested development. And like when it comes
7:17
Speaker 1: to Ilma, I just get that vibe but evil, you know,
7:23
Speaker 1: and Ilma Gletsie was just just a terrible person. If
7:26
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to last week's episode and you think
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Speaker 1: that you can do that in a safe mental way,
7:32
Speaker 1: go do that this week's episode. I don't think it's
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Speaker 1: going to be much better. So blanket warning. I'm talking
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Speaker 1: about concentreation camps. This is not going to be a
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Speaker 1: safe episode. If you are upset by human suffering, it's
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Speaker 1: going to be bad. It's bad. Put it's on me
7:52
Speaker 1: to listen to the whole thing. If you want to
7:53
Speaker 1: do it, that way if you want to support me, otherwise,
7:57
Speaker 1: just go do something else. Listen to the episode the
8:00
Speaker 1: Chicago Testical Thieves, because that's just funny and also very surprised,
8:05
Speaker 1: and nobody's made that into a silly like gangster maybe,
8:08
Speaker 1: like I feel like the Cohen Brothers could do it,
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Speaker 1: you know, I feel like that's the thing. So I
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Speaker 1: also feel like I have to explain again, I'm really
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Speaker 1: I really struggle with the German R sound and and
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Speaker 1: so there's a possibility I'm going to say the name
8:26
Speaker 1: of this camp correctly once. The other times it's gonna
8:30
Speaker 1: sound vaguely possible to it kind of like how if
8:35
Speaker 1: you squint it an old Potero, it kind of looks
8:37
Speaker 1: like Mother Teresa. That's like me saving Lavin's book. It's
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Speaker 1: it's kind of there, but it's not so. Lavin's Book
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Speaker 1: was established in the autumn of nineteen thirty eight in
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Speaker 1: the north of Germany neil Fulstemburg, So it's like fifty
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Speaker 1: miles north of Berlin, and it was the only major
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Speaker 1: concentration camp for women. And yeah, that's the thing. So
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Speaker 1: there were other concentration camps like ouranium Burg and Liechtenberg
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Speaker 1: and a few of those is and what happened is
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Speaker 1: they consolidated them so like because they had some that
9:16
Speaker 1: were just like shacks that they had built, and they
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Speaker 1: slowly made more formal camps. And they even had some
9:24
Speaker 1: places where they just reutilized spaces that were already there,
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Speaker 1: like in Australia had hard Time castle. They did that
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Speaker 1: with a lot with castles. They're like, here's a castle.
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Speaker 1: They dug underground bunkers like they did all these weird,
9:39
Speaker 1: weird options. They utilized old prisons, all this jacks, right,
9:44
Speaker 1: but they constructed I say they it was the I
9:48
Speaker 1: think it was the top that did it. So but
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Speaker 1: basically it was a camp for women because they removed
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Speaker 1: women from other camps and just brought them solely for
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Speaker 1: this right. And like most concentration camps, it was built
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Speaker 1: fairly close to a railway station see Haima Chimla. Chose
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Speaker 1: this location because it was out of the way but
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Speaker 1: still accessible and maybe thinking, but how did they build
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Speaker 1: the camp? Like most camps, they feried in prisoners from
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Speaker 1: other camps, so they did this here. They did this
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Speaker 1: on the island of Aldernay, like they would take prisoners
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Speaker 1: make them build the camp. And then PFT that's what
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Speaker 1: they did. So in late nineteen thirty eight, five hundred
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Speaker 1: prisoners were transferred from Sachsenhausen To build the new camp.
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Speaker 1: They built an infirmary, a kitchen, a crematoria, and fourteen
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Speaker 1: barracks well I think it was eight barracks initially and
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Speaker 1: then it grew and each was supposed to hold about
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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty prisoners each. They also built a
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Speaker 1: small camp for men that was isolated from the women's
11:03
Speaker 1: camp and the camps. The camps weren't just one big structure.
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Speaker 1: There went just one building with like a wall and
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Speaker 1: the barbed wire on top, Like there was walls with
11:18
Speaker 1: barbed wire on top, like that's a thing. But it
11:20
Speaker 1: wasn't just one singular building. And I think when we
11:23
Speaker 1: discussed concentration camps, there's this concept that it just this
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Speaker 1: small or not even small, but like this one singular
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Speaker 1: thing because it's a camp. But it's not. It's it's
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Speaker 1: it's a whole network, it's a whole series. So it's
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Speaker 1: not just one structure. It's a complex. And the Ravensbrook
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Speaker 1: had thirty one SubCamps, like over the course of its life,
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Speaker 1: the camp expanded four times in these thirty one SubCamps,
12:01
Speaker 1: just to like layer this onto you so you understand
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Speaker 1: just how big this is. These are the SubCamps Abderada, Ansbach, Belzig,
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Speaker 1: bok Eyed, Berlin, ober schonevde Bergenteine Contree, Tablob, Ebberswald feldberg Hennegsdorff, Helzenbruk,
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Speaker 1: Colinke and carls Hagen, Klutzov, Staggard, Corning, bed New Mark,
12:28
Speaker 1: markov Neustad, Renn, Pinamunza, Prinzil, Rutlin, Ratzal, Staggard, Stinholn, schwazenforst
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Speaker 1: Uchemerk and Vulcan. And so the camps Rostock, Marienne and
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Speaker 1: Berlin Schoenfeld, these were run by Heichel. So that's the
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Speaker 1: that's the plain manufacturer. Like that's that's all the Plaines
12:56
Speaker 1: and Fustenburg and New Brandenburg. They they were run. I
13:00
Speaker 1: say they run, they were I don't know. I don't
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Speaker 1: want to seem least, but Semens like the electric company,
13:09
Speaker 1: you make the phones and the TVs and whatever else
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Speaker 1: they do these days them So they had that one
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Speaker 1: or those ones. On the eighteenth of May nineteen thirty nine,
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Speaker 1: the first female prisoners arrived at the camp, you had
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Speaker 1: eight hundred and sixty German women and seven Austrian women.
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Speaker 1: On the twentieth of May, four hundred roma were brought
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Speaker 1: in and on the twenty eighth of September the first
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Speaker 1: Polish prisoners began to arrive, and by the end of
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Speaker 1: the year the camp population was two thy two hundred
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Speaker 1: and ninety and as the war progressed, prisoners were arriving
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Speaker 1: from twenty European countries, and by the end of nineteen
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Speaker 1: forty one, two years in, there were twelve thousand prisoners.
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Speaker 1: By nineteen forty two fifteen thousand, and by nineteen forty
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Speaker 1: three forty two thousand. In nineteen forty four, Lavensburg Camp
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Speaker 1: had over eighty thousand prisoners and the camp it did,
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Speaker 1: like I mentioned earlier, had a crematoria which was used
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Speaker 1: for corpses, and in November nineteen forty four a gas
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Speaker 1: chamber was built. See the thing about the crematoria is
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Speaker 1: it existed specifically for burning the corpses because people would
14:37
Speaker 1: just die there, Like you would just die at the camp,
14:42
Speaker 1: so you would have you know, labor, you would have illness,
14:46
Speaker 1: you would have all this stuff. Happening and bodies were piled.
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Speaker 1: They were just piled on the floor or on the ground,
14:56
Speaker 1: and then someone's work duty was to move of the
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Speaker 1: corpses and take them to the crematoria. So I had
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Speaker 1: mentioned the hochen Likens subcamp earlier, and it was a
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Speaker 1: medical facility, a sanatorium for treating injured ss men. So
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Speaker 1: doctor Carl gebrat Kahl he was appointed the medical superintendent
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Speaker 1: at hochen Likeen, focusing on sport and occupational injuries from
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Speaker 1: military personnel. On top of that, it became a rech
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Speaker 1: sport sanitarium. It was a fashionable place to stay as
15:39
Speaker 1: top athletes and national players were covered there and Nazi
15:43
Speaker 1: celebrities would visit. Right, So you've got like Hitler Himmler.
15:48
Speaker 1: Then you've got people like the Mayor of Tokyo, the
15:51
Speaker 1: Greek Crown Prince and Princess Rudolph Hess and delegations from Italy, France, Portuguese,
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Speaker 1: Peru and Argentine that let's visit. For most of those,
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Speaker 1: you were not surprised. So here's the interesting bit for me.
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Speaker 1: If you listen to my Princess Alice of Battenberg episode,
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Speaker 1: which I still think is one of my better ones.
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Speaker 1: If the sound quality is up to snuff. I haven't
16:17
Speaker 1: listened to her in a bit. So what Alice of
16:20
Speaker 1: Battenberg would do is she would travel and sort of
16:24
Speaker 1: bring supplies and she would help out allies in the
16:28
Speaker 1: Second World War. And she was like she would travel
16:31
Speaker 1: because she'd be like, I'm going to visit my sister
16:33
Speaker 1: and this person and that person, and they're like, okay,
16:37
Speaker 1: your daughters are married to Nazis, and the crown princes
16:41
Speaker 1: and princesses they're they're really into the whole Nazis and thing.
16:45
Speaker 1: And so they assumed that she was on their side,
16:49
Speaker 1: and she got away with a lot of stuff because
16:51
Speaker 1: of that. That and the fact and she was congenitally deaf.
16:56
Speaker 1: Alice of Badenberg was a boss and we support Okay,
17:01
Speaker 1: I'm not usually a fan of nuns, but she's cool. Actually, actually,
17:07
Speaker 1: this is the one time in history where you see
17:09
Speaker 1: a lot of nuns do things and you're like, yes, none,
17:11
Speaker 1: you do your thing. So in the hochen Liken subcamp,
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Speaker 1: you had cinema screenings and a treatment pool because it
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Speaker 1: was like fancy, you know, and doctor Carl Gibhart worked
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Speaker 1: his way up the SS Ladder because he had been
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Speaker 1: the head physician at the nineteen thirty six Summer Olympics
17:36
Speaker 1: in Berlin. I'm pretty sure we all remember the black
17:41
Speaker 1: power moment that happened there. So good for it. And
17:46
Speaker 1: what was that about your gentleman, aaran superiority the law? No?
17:52
Speaker 1: So uh, Carl wasn't only the best of doctors. He
17:56
Speaker 1: was a good ss man, but not a great doctor, say,
18:01
Speaker 1: because he almost killed several patients because he refused to
18:05
Speaker 1: use antibiotics. And so he rises up through the vlughinesses
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Speaker 1: and gets put in charge of medical staff at Blog
18:15
Speaker 1: ten in Ravensbrook. And whenever you hear anything medical and
18:20
Speaker 1: concentration camp that is never going to be a good
18:27
Speaker 1: a good outcome. Now I looked at the photos because
18:34
Speaker 1: some prisoners had managed to sneak in a camera and
18:38
Speaker 1: so they were taking photos of the experimentation that had
18:43
Speaker 1: happened to them when they were in the camp. It's
18:45
Speaker 1: amazing that these photos managed to survive at the best
18:48
Speaker 1: of times. But like the risk you're taking doing that,
18:52
Speaker 1: like to get that information out there, knowing that if
18:55
Speaker 1: you're caught your your debt, like there's no if I
19:00
Speaker 1: or buts about it, you're dead. So here's the thing
19:05
Speaker 1: about medical experiments of the Glavin's book, and the thing
19:09
Speaker 1: is they didn't actually sell any medical purpose. Patients were
19:14
Speaker 1: more the guinea pigs than anything else. But I am
19:18
Speaker 1: getting ahead of myself, because you may associate concentration camps
19:24
Speaker 1: with the Jewish people, people that the Reich saw as
19:27
Speaker 1: racially inferior. So the question remains, how would they be
19:33
Speaker 1: good lab rats? Because like, if they're physically inferior to you,
19:38
Speaker 1: how are you going to test on them? Like, because
19:41
Speaker 1: you have a peak physical arian shit going on, like
19:45
Speaker 1: you see them as subcuman. That's not accurate medical testing.
19:49
Speaker 1: Like that's not a thing. So initially the camp held
19:53
Speaker 1: the politically undesirable socialists, communists, social dea democrats. I shouldn't
20:03
Speaker 1: have to keep telling you this, but the Nazis were
20:06
Speaker 1: not socialists. They used the term social democrats, but they
20:10
Speaker 1: were not. They were not. They were not in the
20:14
Speaker 1: slightest they were not any of it. They were just
20:17
Speaker 1: a bunch of pricks. Okay, So you also had Catholics,
20:24
Speaker 1: Jehovah witnesses, and the A socials. I think I covered
20:29
Speaker 1: this before, but a social people were anyone who were
20:33
Speaker 1: not seen as as worthy when it came to the right,
20:38
Speaker 1: like the homeless, anyone who wasn't working, anyone in a
20:43
Speaker 1: receipt of a welfare payment, homosexuals, So they all came
20:48
Speaker 1: under that a social banner, you know. So the idea
20:54
Speaker 1: was that these women would be re educated through slaves, sorry,
21:01
Speaker 1: forced labor. But we're gonna circle back to that in
21:06
Speaker 1: a little while. The medical Block ten looked like well,
21:10
Speaker 1: a regular medical block, but was effectively a torture chamber
21:15
Speaker 1: under the guise of scientific research. Block ten had a
21:25
Speaker 1: laboratory which I think Dexter probably would have had a
21:28
Speaker 1: better one, and depending on your age, you either will
21:32
Speaker 1: or won't know which Dexter I'm referring to. It had
21:36
Speaker 1: sterilization facilities and an operating table. Doctor Helta Obahiza one
21:43
Speaker 1: of the first women in Germany to hold a medical doctorate,
21:46
Speaker 1: although that's not so much because a Nazi medical degree
21:50
Speaker 1: was just a shitty ideology smaller in eugenics with a
21:54
Speaker 1: Roman salute on top. So Obajaiza, GiB Hat and Percy
21:59
Speaker 1: Trette were under the commandant Fritzuleen and the doctor's authority.
22:04
Speaker 1: It was never never questioned by anyone, not prisoners, not
22:09
Speaker 1: camp staff, not SS guards, the not the Osohannan, none
22:14
Speaker 1: of them, right, none of them. The doctors had a
22:17
Speaker 1: team of SS assistants. These were not members of the
22:23
Speaker 1: SS by the way, like the amount of papers I
22:25
Speaker 1: read that they were labeled as SS assistants, which is
22:28
Speaker 1: like assistant to the SS, not assistant to wear the SSS,
22:32
Speaker 1: which I think is a good distinction we need to
22:35
Speaker 1: make because they were often function schafflinger who are recruited
22:40
Speaker 1: from the prisoners. So this is just more abuse, more control,
22:48
Speaker 1: and a whole show of power within the camp. And
22:52
Speaker 1: him La fucking him La. He was a big fan
22:55
Speaker 1: of human experimentation, seeing it as critical to the Nazis'
22:59
Speaker 1: racial purity and eugenics program. Because they had Himler support,
23:04
Speaker 1: they had even more protection for the doctors and their experiments.
23:10
Speaker 1: And the power structures within the camp, I mean all
23:13
Speaker 1: the camps. Really they were designed to allow the medical
23:17
Speaker 1: torture to occur and the doctor supported by a network
23:22
Speaker 1: of assistance administrators and of course high ranking Nazis. They
23:27
Speaker 1: had a carte blanche to do as they placed as
23:31
Speaker 1: long as it was done with the intent of furthering
23:33
Speaker 1: the Aryan race normality, empathy, and ethics were not that
23:41
Speaker 1: big of a deal here. The experiments conducted at Lavinsbrook
23:45
Speaker 1: didn't mean shit, and I feel they need to confirm this.
23:49
Speaker 1: They didn't mean shit, y'all. Can you know, go on
23:53
Speaker 1: about Oh, look what we learned from all their experiences.
23:56
Speaker 1: The majority of the shit they did, the majority of
24:01
Speaker 1: the torture that they did, the suffering that they actively
24:08
Speaker 1: participated in and ensured continued. Oh, most of that, the
24:14
Speaker 1: majority of that eighteen ninety percent of that didn't mean shit. Okay,
24:22
Speaker 1: let's be clear. It didn't mean anything. Okay, there was
24:26
Speaker 1: no valuable research to be obtained by this, right, No, no, no.
24:35
Speaker 1: If this had gone through any sort of like appropriate system,
24:41
Speaker 1: most of this wouldn't have made it through, you know,
24:43
Speaker 1: the hypothesis stage, Like, it wouldn't have gone past that
24:48
Speaker 1: the abstract. No, sorry, I'm not sorry. The purpose of
24:58
Speaker 1: them was to advance then Nazi war effort for the
25:02
Speaker 1: ideals of racial superiority and eugenics, and to test the
25:06
Speaker 1: limits of human endurance. The Nazis were bloody obsessed with
25:13
Speaker 1: racial impurity, and so they wanted to ensure undesirable procreation
25:18
Speaker 1: was not an issue, so they fought this war against
25:22
Speaker 1: internal enemies. So Roma and Sinti people were sterilized, some
25:30
Speaker 1: as young as eight years old. And how did they
25:35
Speaker 1: do this? Radiate it. Radiation was one of the ways
25:39
Speaker 1: they did this, where they aggressively radiated the whims of children,
25:47
Speaker 1: causing them excruciating pain, sterilizing them and quite often killing them.
25:54
Speaker 1: Like it would create. It would create growths and welts
25:59
Speaker 1: in the body. People would suffer, they would be in
26:02
Speaker 1: excruciating pain, and they would die. So you've got sterilization
26:06
Speaker 1: which prevents people from being pregnant. What if you're already pregnant. Well,
26:11
Speaker 1: Abortions were common and often performed late term and brutally
26:16
Speaker 1: for the majority of the camp's run. If a baby
26:19
Speaker 1: was born in the camp, they did not survive. Now
26:22
Speaker 1: you will hear the odd story of infants being born
26:28
Speaker 1: later sort of nineteen forty five, sort of as the
26:33
Speaker 1: Allies are making their approach, and babies that are born
26:37
Speaker 1: in Raven's Brook at that time some did survive, but
26:42
Speaker 1: before that they did not because they were murdered. Sometimes
26:47
Speaker 1: they were left on the floor of a sealed room
26:50
Speaker 1: and just left to either succumb to elements or starve,
26:57
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Others, when they were born,
27:03
Speaker 1: they were smothered or they were drowned, usually in front
27:08
Speaker 1: of the mother, and in some cases they were just
27:13
Speaker 1: thrown into the crematoria alive, although on occasion a doctor
27:18
Speaker 1: might find it interesting to experiment on one. So the
27:23
Speaker 1: most well known experimentations were the bone muscle and nerve
27:26
Speaker 1: regeneration and bone transplantation experiments. These were designed to simulate
27:31
Speaker 1: injuries suffered by Nazi soldiers out in the world. So
27:34
Speaker 1: gil Pat would deliberately injure healthy women, breaking bones, amputating them,
27:41
Speaker 1: cutting them, and at one point they even cut out
27:45
Speaker 1: segments of thigh muscle just because these women became known
27:50
Speaker 1: as rabbits. Doctors would try to transplant nerve, tissues, and bones.
27:58
Speaker 1: Sometimes they were injured just see how it progressed. Others
28:03
Speaker 1: were used to test hypothermia cures. They were chilled, sometimes dunked,
28:10
Speaker 1: their temperatures brought down to close to death. Sometimes they
28:15
Speaker 1: were immerston iced cold water, or exposed to zero temperatures
28:19
Speaker 1: until they lost consciousness or died. Then they tested different
28:25
Speaker 1: methods to heat them up, including body heat and by
28:31
Speaker 1: body heat. I mean, they were raped by guards. So
28:37
Speaker 1: when I read this, and I was reading the reports
28:40
Speaker 1: on this, I mean, apart from the fact that I'm
28:43
Speaker 1: already really fucking angry about it, as I'm sure you
28:46
Speaker 1: can tell. On top of that, the language that was
28:52
Speaker 1: used about the hating them up was they were forced
28:56
Speaker 1: to have sex with guards. It's fucking ripe. They were
29:01
Speaker 1: assaulted and raped by guards because it was just another
29:06
Speaker 1: way for them to just fucking insert their power. And
29:10
Speaker 1: they were just like, oh, well we did it for
29:12
Speaker 1: experting what I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Were you Are you
29:17
Speaker 1: seriously saying that this is your plan? Are you gonna
29:21
Speaker 1: go to you know, the higher ups and go, well,
29:24
Speaker 1: the best way to treat hymothermia and our soldiers is
29:28
Speaker 1: for them to bang each other. Ah, you think that's
29:32
Speaker 1: gonna fly and the right like, no, No, that was
29:36
Speaker 1: never the intention. The whole purpose of it was to go, well,
29:39
Speaker 1: we just wanted to roll it out. What No. No.
29:47
Speaker 1: Then of course you had the starvation. They were starving anyway,
29:51
Speaker 1: and so they studied malnutrition like just how many calories
29:56
Speaker 1: did a body need to survive? And the doctors took
30:00
Speaker 1: meticulous notes as the prisoners slowly starved to death. Then
30:05
Speaker 1: of course we had the sulfonamide trials. Selphonamide was an
30:11
Speaker 1: early type of antibiotics, and female prisoners were cut open
30:16
Speaker 1: winds created in their flesh, winds that would be deliberately infected.
30:23
Speaker 1: You know, they would infected with bacteria including Streptococcus, gas
30:28
Speaker 1: gangrian and tetanus. And this was for the benefit of
30:33
Speaker 1: the German armed forces. They wanted to replicate battlefield wounds.
30:41
Speaker 1: Blood circulation was interrupted by tying off blood vessels at
30:44
Speaker 1: both ends to simulate that infection was aggravated by shoving
30:49
Speaker 1: ground up glass, dirt, and wood shavings into the wound. Sulphonamide, sulfonamalide,
30:56
Speaker 1: and other drugs were trialed on treating the infections. Some
31:00
Speaker 1: died from experimentation, others were just killed after And that's
31:07
Speaker 1: that's what they did. That's just what they did. But
31:12
Speaker 1: being in the medical block was not the only way
31:15
Speaker 1: to be killed at the camp. And when it came
31:18
Speaker 1: to work, when it came to labor, the women would
31:22
Speaker 1: be selected for work call, which conveniently overlapped with row call.
31:28
Speaker 1: They could be out there digging ditches, creating pats of
31:31
Speaker 1: a handkell which made aircraft for the army. So the
31:34
Speaker 1: Luftwaffa they could be building the two rockets for Semens,
31:38
Speaker 1: they could be working in textile mills or making uniforms
31:41
Speaker 1: for soldiers. Like one of the things they had to
31:44
Speaker 1: do was sort through the uniforms of like Soviet soldiers,
31:50
Speaker 1: which were often like dirty, infected with lice and all this.
31:56
Speaker 1: So you had them, you had people that were on
32:00
Speaker 1: and like corpse detail, so they would move corpses. Like
32:07
Speaker 1: there was one work detail which basically had a big
32:11
Speaker 1: i want to say, like a plow, except it was
32:13
Speaker 1: a big stone and they were just drag it until
32:19
Speaker 1: they died. So when they left, like you know, the
32:24
Speaker 1: main camp where the barracks are, and they had to
32:27
Speaker 1: travel to all of these factories to work. They would
32:32
Speaker 1: walk miles, like you're talking miles, and so eventually sort
32:37
Speaker 1: of like Stemens, I know, what they had done is
32:40
Speaker 1: they had moved their their sort of buildings, their little
32:44
Speaker 1: factory workshops closer because they were like, no, they're too tired,
32:49
Speaker 1: they don't have this. And the women who worked in
32:54
Speaker 1: the factories, like factory detail was one of the worst
33:00
Speaker 1: that you could get because you're more likely to die
33:02
Speaker 1: if you were on factory detail, Like you have an
33:06
Speaker 1: eleven hour workday and you were not allowed to break.
33:09
Speaker 1: You just weren't allowed one. And that's ah. Now, I
33:15
Speaker 1: don't want to say it's a form of labor, because
33:19
Speaker 1: this is slavery. So because the majority of the Lavin's
33:24
Speaker 1: Brook camp prisoners were political prisoners, asocials, et cetera, their
33:30
Speaker 1: heads weren't necessarily shaved, especially if they were blonde. See
33:37
Speaker 1: Lavinsbrook being a female. You know, concentration camp because that's
33:42
Speaker 1: where they put them. It was the main supplier for
33:47
Speaker 1: the brothels set up in most major camps towards the
33:50
Speaker 1: end of the war. And you'll hear people argue, oh,
33:53
Speaker 1: it was voluntary, it was a voluntary thing. No, some
33:56
Speaker 1: women were sent there as punishment. First of all, there's
34:01
Speaker 1: no such thing as voluntary when you're a prisoner, right,
34:07
Speaker 1: if you're a slave, you can't volunteer to do a
34:10
Speaker 1: thing because other people have the power they are controlling you. Like,
34:16
Speaker 1: don't don't act like this was a choice. That isn't
34:21
Speaker 1: a choice. These women desperate, starving, suffering, many of whom
34:29
Speaker 1: not speaking the same language as each other, they're here
34:33
Speaker 1: and they are told that they're going to be freed
34:36
Speaker 1: from the camp system in six months if they if
34:40
Speaker 1: they volunteer for the service. Nobody was ever released. They
34:48
Speaker 1: were never released early. It was a lie. What the
34:52
Speaker 1: Nazis lied? Shocking, what's next the British government. So these
35:01
Speaker 1: women got slightly better rations and they were exempt from
35:05
Speaker 1: factory work, but they actually had a higher death rate
35:11
Speaker 1: from sexual abuse and venereal diseases. So there's this whole
35:17
Speaker 1: thing of of the brothels in the camps, and the
35:21
Speaker 1: brothels in the camps weren't necessarily there to service theess
35:26
Speaker 1: because it was seen as a violation to have sexual
35:31
Speaker 1: relations with a Jewish person, you know, so if they
35:34
Speaker 1: were Jewish, couldn't do that. A socials and things you got,
35:39
Speaker 1: you've got wiggle room there, which yeah, otherwise you're like
35:42
Speaker 1: a race difiler, you know. And so and so a
35:46
Speaker 1: lot of the purpose for these brothels within the camps
35:52
Speaker 1: was for the male inmates, Like a lot of it
35:57
Speaker 1: was you did a good job, go have sex now,
36:01
Speaker 1: like that was a thing, which again is just another
36:07
Speaker 1: way to elicit control. So although you had more women
36:15
Speaker 1: dying in factory work or as a result of factory work,
36:20
Speaker 1: the death rate comparative Lacau. Obviously, less women are being
36:22
Speaker 1: sent to the brothels. You have a higher death rate
36:26
Speaker 1: for women in the brothels than those working in the factory.
36:30
Speaker 1: But more people. More women died doing factory work. But
36:34
Speaker 1: no matter which way you put it, they were commodities. Now,
36:38
Speaker 1: adult women weren't the only people in the camp. There
36:42
Speaker 1: were also children. The arrivals list that Lavensburg named eight
36:47
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty one children between ages two and sixteen
36:50
Speaker 1: from eighteen different nations. Between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen
36:54
Speaker 1: forty five, children would arrive with their mothers. The largest
37:00
Speaker 1: I believe was after the Vasa uprising. Children would have
37:04
Speaker 1: to line up with their mothers for row call, which
37:07
Speaker 1: could take hours, and they had to stand. They had
37:12
Speaker 1: to do it. I don't know if you've ever met
37:15
Speaker 1: a toddler. That's not an easy thing to do. When
37:20
Speaker 1: the women were working, the children had to stay indoors
37:23
Speaker 1: in the barracks. When they turned twelves, boys were sent
37:29
Speaker 1: to the men's camp and girls were sent to work
37:31
Speaker 1: in the factories. And with the combination of diseases sleeping
37:35
Speaker 1: through the camp. Children were often the first to die. Now,
37:39
Speaker 1: I'm saying people argue people who never took a biology
37:42
Speaker 1: class or home ech because they teach you body science
37:47
Speaker 1: in home ech. Right, that's part of it. It's not
37:49
Speaker 1: just learning how to bake a pie. Right. So I've
37:52
Speaker 1: heard these kind of people argue that, you know, children
37:56
Speaker 1: don't need as many calories, and children should survive longer
37:59
Speaker 1: because they to eat less. No, No, what's something you
38:04
Speaker 1: notice about children? It's not the same as adults. Right,
38:08
Speaker 1: they grow, they get bigger, right, A lot of their
38:12
Speaker 1: calorie consumption is used to help them grow. Right, that's
38:18
Speaker 1: how that works. Right, Adults we've stopped growing. We just
38:24
Speaker 1: need calories to maintain. Right, That's why kids can snack, right, becauds.
38:29
Speaker 1: They're just consuming more calories a little bit often to
38:33
Speaker 1: keep them growing and producing more cells and blood and
38:37
Speaker 1: all that jazz. Right, all that. So they're doing that,
38:42
Speaker 1: that's what they need them for. And so children because
38:45
Speaker 1: they actually need to consume more. Then, of course, if
38:48
Speaker 1: they get any sort of pre existing conditions like those
38:53
Speaker 1: can also also force them to require sometimes double triple
38:58
Speaker 1: the calories that other children would need. You know, So
39:02
Speaker 1: children because they are smaller, they are more susceptible, and
39:06
Speaker 1: so they would die. Some women were worked to death,
39:13
Speaker 1: leaving children orphaned, with no one to care for them,
39:17
Speaker 1: making them susceptible to dangers. And then sometimes you would
39:23
Speaker 1: get these they'd call them camp mothers, so they would
39:27
Speaker 1: just take care. They would claim a child and look
39:31
Speaker 1: after them and care for them. And some of these
39:33
Speaker 1: kids managed to survive somehow, I say, somehow, through care
39:39
Speaker 1: and community and protection from other women, Like they didn't
39:45
Speaker 1: have this child, this was not their child, this was
39:47
Speaker 1: someone else. And they were in a situation in which
39:51
Speaker 1: their lives, their lives were on the line, and they
39:55
Speaker 1: still went out of their way to protect them. Like
39:59
Speaker 1: that's how they survived. That's how. So, like I said earlier,
40:06
Speaker 1: some babies that were born near the end of the
40:08
Speaker 1: war managed to survive as well. Conditions worsened over time
40:19
Speaker 1: at the camp and the crematoria just couldn't keep up
40:22
Speaker 1: with the bodies of the dead. And on top of that,
40:27
Speaker 1: it just it wasn't running at maximum capacity because Germany
40:32
Speaker 1: was having a coke shortage. Coke, if you don't know,
40:36
Speaker 1: it's it's coal based. It's a coal based fuel, right,
40:40
Speaker 1: So it's a little bit like charcoal, you know. In
40:44
Speaker 1: it it's a very consistent like burning unit, Like it
40:50
Speaker 1: keeps a very consistent burn, and it's sort of chalking,
40:55
Speaker 1: is probably the best way I could describe it. And
40:58
Speaker 1: so there's a shortage in Germany cause well the war,
41:02
Speaker 1: and they don't have the same supply chains. It's kill
41:05
Speaker 1: of like how they invented Fanta. They just didn't have
41:07
Speaker 1: the supply chains. Of course I had to make a
41:10
Speaker 1: fontal stage reference. Of course I did. I can't help myself.
41:14
Speaker 1: Listen back to the Coca Cola episode, which I think
41:16
Speaker 1: is like episode three or something. If you don't listen
41:20
Speaker 1: to it, it's shit. So I could read it that one.
41:24
Speaker 1: So in the beginning of nineteen forty two, the SSS
41:28
Speaker 1: started selections and the prisoners who were deemed too injured,
41:33
Speaker 1: week or sick to work were killed. Initially, they were shot,
41:39
Speaker 1: but bullets are expensive and time consuming. They decided instead
41:43
Speaker 1: to transfer them to Bernberg, which had been used for
41:46
Speaker 1: Action T four. Action T four was the state sponsored
41:51
Speaker 1: euthanasia program where they killed disabled people, adult children, psychiatric patients, etc.
42:01
Speaker 1: It had a gas chamber because, of course they tested
42:04
Speaker 1: out on disabled people first, as part of Operation I
42:09
Speaker 1: Fear If I'm Try. The Essays sent sixteen hundred female
42:14
Speaker 1: prisoners and three hundred male prisoners to start. Half were Jewish,
42:20
Speaker 1: twenty five were Roma, and thirteen were Jehovah's witnesses. The
42:25
Speaker 1: next round of the euthanasia killings happened later that year.
42:31
Speaker 1: This carried on until nineteen forty five, when a gas
42:33
Speaker 1: chamber was constructed at the camp, and during those two
42:38
Speaker 1: and a half years, around sixty transports left for Hattime
42:43
Speaker 1: near Lyndz in Austria. Each of those transports held anywhere
42:49
Speaker 1: between sixty to one thousand prisoners each time. Some weren't
42:53
Speaker 1: sent away at all, some were just killed using lethal
42:56
Speaker 1: injections in the camp infirmary. Other were transferred out to
43:01
Speaker 1: AlSi fitz Berganal And like the gas chamber in the
43:07
Speaker 1: Raven's Brook was only running for three four months, and
43:13
Speaker 1: during that time they gassed six thousand prisoners. What's interesting
43:19
Speaker 1: is when the camp opened up, initially it was seen
43:21
Speaker 1: as like a really decent prison, Like you had women
43:28
Speaker 1: who were sent there who had been placed in sort
43:31
Speaker 1: of camps and prisons in the Soviet areas that the
43:36
Speaker 1: right had taken over, and like there was one such
43:41
Speaker 1: prisoner she was talking about, Like when she first went there,
43:44
Speaker 1: she was given like proper meals. You had porridge with
43:50
Speaker 1: dried fruit, you had coffee, like it was a substantial breakfast.
43:55
Speaker 1: Right by the time the camp were nearing the end,
44:03
Speaker 1: they were getting black bread and like a little like
44:08
Speaker 1: a half cup of coffee, Like it was barely enough
44:11
Speaker 1: to sustain you. But when it started, it was like, oh,
44:15
Speaker 1: look we're treating our prisoners really well. Look at all
44:17
Speaker 1: the food they're getting. So on and so forth, and
44:22
Speaker 1: like the barracks were supposed to be initially like one
44:25
Speaker 1: to a bed, and by the end it was four,
44:28
Speaker 1: and they were topping and tailing, so like your head
44:31
Speaker 1: was next to someone's feet. The bodies of the dead
44:35
Speaker 1: they would just leave on the floor of the barracks.
44:39
Speaker 1: And they used to have like toilets, I say toilets.
44:43
Speaker 1: They had latrines, and they had sort of little bathrooms
44:49
Speaker 1: to clean themselves. And by the end there wasn't really
44:55
Speaker 1: anything to clean themselves with. It was it was filthy.
44:57
Speaker 1: But the women the camp they would have like I
45:02
Speaker 1: want to say it, like a clean ritual and they
45:05
Speaker 1: would make the effort to wash themselves, you know, with
45:08
Speaker 1: whatever they could, so that they had this semblance of
45:14
Speaker 1: of of normalcy, you know, something that was like a
45:18
Speaker 1: little protest to the abuse they were suffering. So many
45:23
Speaker 1: women were in this camp, like from a whole host
45:27
Speaker 1: of backgrounds, Like you had like a princess and a
45:33
Speaker 1: watchmaker and a French member of the s OE, the
45:39
Speaker 1: Special Operations Executive, which is like I five before it
45:43
Speaker 1: was m I five, So you've got you know again, princesses, watchmaker, spies,
45:48
Speaker 1: Irish nuns because of course there are go place, go
45:53
Speaker 1: into any country and try and not find an Irish nun,
45:56
Speaker 1: I dare it. I mean I think currently the only
46:00
Speaker 1: p there isn't an iriturn as Palestine, and that's because
46:03
Speaker 1: they've probably already been shot. So what I'm gonna do
46:09
Speaker 1: as well, is I'm going to do an episode a
46:11
Speaker 1: bit y so probably where I'm just going to like
46:14
Speaker 1: explain a few people who were you know, murdered in
46:17
Speaker 1: these camps or died as a result of being in
46:20
Speaker 1: these camps. And again I'm not a fan of nuns
46:24
Speaker 1: at the best of times, but these guys, I mean
46:29
Speaker 1: respect for some of them. You know. I mean some
46:31
Speaker 1: of them did did very well, you know, and you
46:36
Speaker 1: know weren't horrible. They actu did things to save lives.
46:42
Speaker 1: So so many people died in these camps, so apart
46:46
Speaker 1: from gas chambers, little injection and being transferred to a book.
46:54
Speaker 1: Now you had around four thousand prisoners who were sent
46:58
Speaker 1: to Ukomach, which was a youth camp for deviant girls
47:03
Speaker 1: which had been dissolved because they needed the room. I
47:07
Speaker 1: think I'll cover that as well in another Bayso some
47:11
Speaker 1: people when they were brought here were murdered by gassing, starvation,
47:15
Speaker 1: or strychnine poisoning. Every two to three weeks, the prisoners
47:20
Speaker 1: would be tested by the ESSs Commandant and the doctors
47:24
Speaker 1: by lifting their skirts above their heads and running. Anyone
47:31
Speaker 1: with scars, swollen ankles, or were two weak to keep
47:34
Speaker 1: up were sent to recovery at Midvada. Sometimes this meant
47:40
Speaker 1: that they were locked in a room and left to die.
47:44
Speaker 1: Others were put in a special van that had been
47:47
Speaker 1: converted into mobile gas chambers with the exhaust pipe directly
47:51
Speaker 1: connected to the freight compartment, and people were dead within
47:55
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty minutes. More than one hundred and thirty
47:59
Speaker 1: two thousand women and children were incarcerated into Lavin's book,
48:03
Speaker 1: and it's estimated that ninety two thousand died by starvation, executions,
48:08
Speaker 1: or disease. In the last few months of the war,
48:13
Speaker 1: and with the Red Army approaching, Thes decided to cut
48:17
Speaker 1: their losses and exterminate as many prisoners as possible. They
48:22
Speaker 1: wanted to get rid of the evidence, to remove as
48:24
Speaker 1: many witnesses of their crimes as possible, because they were caught.
48:29
Speaker 1: They were caught. They shitted at the fan, and the
48:33
Speaker 1: Red Army was coming for them. So in March nineteen
48:36
Speaker 1: forty five, one hundred and thirty pregnant women and babies
48:40
Speaker 1: were gassed. They tried to cover up their shit, some
48:44
Speaker 1: of the documents destroyed, but they had so many. Because
48:48
Speaker 1: they were fastidious. They even tried to manipulate the perception
48:53
Speaker 1: of the camp. They collected a group of the healthiest
48:56
Speaker 1: French women and had them sent back to France with
48:59
Speaker 1: the so promised that they would not speak of the
49:02
Speaker 1: worst of it. Basically, the Swedish and Danish Red Cross
49:07
Speaker 1: had well they existed, and so they found basically the
49:13
Speaker 1: healthiest looking girls they had. They grabbed their inmates. They
49:17
Speaker 1: put them on these and were just like, we will
49:19
Speaker 1: let you live, but watch out. And some women, till
49:27
Speaker 1: the day they died, could not speak of the horrors
49:30
Speaker 1: that happened to them at the camp. They could not
49:34
Speaker 1: speak of the worst. At the end of March nineteen
49:39
Speaker 1: forty five, the SS decided to transfer the archives and
49:42
Speaker 1: machinery from the workshop to a safer place. On the
49:48
Speaker 1: twenty seventh and twenty eighth of April, all women who
49:51
Speaker 1: still could walk were ordered to leave the camp in
49:53
Speaker 1: a death march. Twenty four thousand, five hundred people marched.
50:00
Speaker 1: Three thousand women and three hundred men would survive the march.
50:06
Speaker 1: Lavensbrook was liberated by the Russian Army on the thirtieth
50:09
Speaker 1: of April nineteen forty five. So they came in, they
50:14
Speaker 1: saw the horror of the camp, and they were told
50:18
Speaker 1: by those who could not leave that others had marched
50:21
Speaker 1: ahead of them, and the survivors of the march were
50:25
Speaker 1: liberated by a Soviet scout unit some hours later. After
50:31
Speaker 1: liberation came the trials. The Lavensburg Trials were a series
50:36
Speaker 1: of British military tribunals held in Hamburg between December nineteen
50:41
Speaker 1: forty six in July nineteen forty eight, the purpose of
50:44
Speaker 1: which was to bring to justice those responsible for the
50:47
Speaker 1: atrocities at Raavensbrook. So remember it's the largest concentration camp
50:54
Speaker 1: for women in the entire German Reich. Those responded for
51:01
Speaker 1: subjecting women to force labor executions, starvations, and medical experiments.
51:10
Speaker 1: The trails were conducted in like seven separate proceedings and
51:15
Speaker 1: they would target a range of accused camp commandants, SS doctors,
51:21
Speaker 1: the officernins, so the female guards, the prisoner functionaries, so
51:27
Speaker 1: they function schaftling, so the people, the prisoners that they
51:31
Speaker 1: had recruited to work for the Nazis, like in the camps,
51:38
Speaker 1: which again it's a bit of a sticky wicket because
51:45
Speaker 1: in a place where you are under physical and psychological torture,
51:53
Speaker 1: is there really a choice? Is there really an option?
51:56
Speaker 1: Like this is where the idea of just following orders
51:59
Speaker 1: will like, it doesn't fly with me any member of
52:03
Speaker 1: the SS. It was like, mother goddess, no, motherfucker, you
52:06
Speaker 1: don't make up the ladder and the SS like, you
52:10
Speaker 1: don't get that high by just following orders. If you
52:14
Speaker 1: are a prisoner and you are being forced to work
52:19
Speaker 1: and the present and which you are imprisoned, were like,
52:25
Speaker 1: it's due or die. I don't really see you having
52:30
Speaker 1: much of a choice, especially when you are you know
52:34
Speaker 1: you are are being tortured yourself because you've got sleep deprivation, starvation,
52:41
Speaker 1: like physical abuse. You've got it all. Like they deliberately
52:46
Speaker 1: caused suffering in the camps, like that's the goal. So
52:53
Speaker 1: those who were collaborating or involved in this. The charge
53:00
Speaker 1: included murder, brutal abuse, deportation for forced labor, medical experiments
53:08
Speaker 1: that maimed or killed prisoners, and these trials were significant
53:13
Speaker 1: in that they placed many female perpetrators, which were often
53:16
Speaker 1: overlooked in accounts of Nazi crimes, on the same legal
53:20
Speaker 1: footing as their male counterparts, and the outcomes reflected the
53:26
Speaker 1: severity of the crimes proven in court. Many defendants were convicted,
53:31
Speaker 1: with sentences ranging from prison terms to execution by hanging.
53:36
Speaker 1: Others were acquitted when evidence was insufficient or their involvement
53:40
Speaker 1: deemed minimal. Testimony from survivors was crucial, and this painted
53:46
Speaker 1: a harrowing picture of daily life in the camp in
53:48
Speaker 1: exposing the systemic cruelty. Like the Lavin's book trials, they
53:54
Speaker 1: didn't just provide justice for victims, but they also expanded
53:57
Speaker 1: the historical understanding of the Holocaust, and this challenged the
54:02
Speaker 1: stereotype that women in the third record really passive participants,
54:05
Speaker 1: and because they were involved, like el mccracy from last
54:11
Speaker 1: week's episode, she was involved. And as someone who's always
54:14
Speaker 1: fighting and arguing about how women are often left out
54:17
Speaker 1: of the history books, how their stories are hidden and
54:20
Speaker 1: removed and everything they've done is swept under the rug
54:23
Speaker 1: and ignored, it would be disingenuous of me, It would
54:28
Speaker 1: be insincere, and it would make me a fucking terrible
54:31
Speaker 1: historian if I didn't talk about this too, if I
54:35
Speaker 1: didn't bring this up. Because the majority of the people
54:40
Speaker 1: running the camp on the day to day were women,
54:44
Speaker 1: the officer heraline, and it was then because a lot
54:50
Speaker 1: of the men were fighting the war, so they had
54:53
Speaker 1: to hire women even though they didn't want women to
54:55
Speaker 1: have jobs, which I'm going to clarify even though I
54:59
Speaker 1: really shouldn't have to. But that is not a win,
55:02
Speaker 1: That is not a step forward for feminism. That's just
55:05
Speaker 1: cruelty and murder. So as I was researching this, I
55:08
Speaker 1: came across an interesting statistic, and that was the rate
55:14
Speaker 1: of death in the Raven's Brook or from Laven's Brook,
55:20
Speaker 1: and it was I think forty two percent basically depending
55:25
Speaker 1: on where look, it kind of goes anywhere between third
55:27
Speaker 1: and nine and forty two. And if it is forty
55:30
Speaker 1: two percent, then that would mean that within the German borders,
55:36
Speaker 1: like we're talking nineteen thirty seven borders of Germany, the
55:40
Speaker 1: core country, that Ravensbrook would have had the highest death
55:46
Speaker 1: rate out of any of the German camps. Now that's
55:51
Speaker 1: only if that's that's correct. I haven't been able to
55:55
Speaker 1: fully validate that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it
55:58
Speaker 1: was true, because A rounded about that it's new and
56:01
Speaker 1: Rama and Bug and Bilson like they're very very close,
56:07
Speaker 1: only because the mortality rate I think ran longer in
56:10
Speaker 1: the Leaven's Book. So it's a very interesting statistic to
56:13
Speaker 1: think about anyway. So those three are very interesting to
56:18
Speaker 1: consider because people talk about how there wasn't death happening
56:23
Speaker 1: within Nazi borders, like of their own country as opposed
56:26
Speaker 1: to where they'd invaded. But yeah, that's that one hundred
56:34
Speaker 1: and thirty two thousand passed through the camp. Ninety two
56:37
Speaker 1: thousand did not survive, and like all fucking cowards, when
56:42
Speaker 1: they were caught, they tried to cover it up, and
56:44
Speaker 1: so ends our story on Raven's book Concentration Camp. It
56:49
Speaker 1: feels really weird to say if you enjoyed this episode.
56:52
Speaker 1: So if you were informed by this episode, if you
56:56
Speaker 1: were educated by this episode, if you were made to
56:58
Speaker 1: cry goddamn it by this episode, rate and review five stars.
57:02
Speaker 1: If you're thinking, geez, she didn't say fuck this for
57:05
Speaker 1: a game of soldiers. I didn't have a point. I
57:09
Speaker 1: didn't have a moment where that was appropriate. But there
57:12
Speaker 1: it is. I've said the catchphrase, and in the end,
57:16
Speaker 1: it's there. You've got it. But here's the thing. I
57:21
Speaker 1: know I haven't covered everything in this episode, but we're
57:23
Speaker 1: already urging on an hour, and it feels weird to say.
57:28
Speaker 1: If you liked this episode or enjoyed this episode, if
57:32
Speaker 1: you were informed by this episode, if you were educated
57:37
Speaker 1: in any way by this episode, feel free to rate
57:39
Speaker 1: and review five stars. You can say nice things about me.
57:42
Speaker 1: You don't have to say nice things about the episode
57:44
Speaker 1: because it's horrible, and I know I missed stuff. I
57:48
Speaker 1: know there's things that I haven't included in this but
57:52
Speaker 1: there's so much. There's so much, so I am going
57:56
Speaker 1: to cover some pieces and some people in the whole etisode,
58:04
Speaker 1: I think in a few bits on social media, just
58:07
Speaker 1: to kind of cover everything. I'm gonna try and do
58:11
Speaker 1: different parts. But because I'm focusing on Nazi concentration camps,
58:14
Speaker 1: it has given me somewhat of a finite space, not
58:18
Speaker 1: a lot, because there's a huge, huge amount that I
58:23
Speaker 1: can talk about and I've barely touched on out with Germany.
58:29
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna be dealing with that in covering a
58:32
Speaker 1: few more and we're gonna power through and get through
58:35
Speaker 1: as much sounds really weird to say it, to try
58:40
Speaker 1: and educate you as much as possible, although I feel
58:42
Speaker 1: like with the recent happenings, I'm gonna be having to
58:44
Speaker 1: explain Gestapo to people, which is gonna be super fun.
58:49
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not gonna be fun at all. Recommendation time,
58:54
Speaker 1: We're just gonna skip right into recommendation time because like
58:57
Speaker 1: I'm on the socials, you know where I am. You
58:59
Speaker 1: just just go for me. Katie Charlewood, who didn't want
59:02
Speaker 1: to know one of those is gonna be right, okay.
59:05
Speaker 1: So we have we have watching for watching. I'm gonna
59:13
Speaker 1: recommend because it's the twentieth anniversary, watch When the Levees Broke,
59:20
Speaker 1: like or I think there's one on National Geographic It's
59:25
Speaker 1: a Race against Time, another Hurricane Katrina documentary. They are
59:30
Speaker 1: they are powerful and worth watching, and it really gives
59:36
Speaker 1: a very human side to the story because history doesn't
59:42
Speaker 1: exist in a vacuum. The whole is the sum of
59:45
Speaker 1: its parts, you know, And and I just think it's
59:49
Speaker 1: very important to have like the whole story, like from
59:54
Speaker 1: the boots in the ground, from the people that survived it.
59:58
Speaker 1: For lessening sidebar, because I haven't done a sidebar this
1:00:02
Speaker 1: whole time because I've been too upset. So I have
1:00:06
Speaker 1: tried listening to four separate podcast series, just anything that
1:00:12
Speaker 1: has that sort of like eight to ten episodes, Like
1:00:16
Speaker 1: I'll settle for a six episode series if it's really good,
1:00:19
Speaker 1: you know, something finite, and when something that's the beginning
1:00:23
Speaker 1: of middle of an end, you know, I want to
1:00:24
Speaker 1: hear a series like over my Dead Body, Doctor Death,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: the Cotton Club, Barder, West Cork, you know, something like hmm.
1:00:37
Speaker 1: But there is nothing I despise more when I'm listening
1:00:41
Speaker 1: to a podcast than a reenactment. I can't stand them.
1:00:46
Speaker 1: I can't. I've actually stopped listening because of very very
1:00:50
Speaker 1: poor reenactments, because like, if I wanted to listen to
1:00:55
Speaker 1: a radio play, I'd listen to a radio play. I
1:00:57
Speaker 1: love a radio play, but don't put radio play in
1:01:00
Speaker 1: my podcast. I'm I'm here to listen to you tell
1:01:05
Speaker 1: the story, like, I don't mind if you bring someone
1:01:07
Speaker 1: else to do the odd voice or you have a
1:01:09
Speaker 1: quote in, but don't reenact a scene, like unless you're
1:01:14
Speaker 1: doing it for humorous purposes, which I can I can
1:01:17
Speaker 1: be fine with. But I don't listen to a lot
1:01:20
Speaker 1: of like humor podcasts actually because I don't. I just
1:01:25
Speaker 1: I just don't. I'm like infor me, like tell me
1:01:29
Speaker 1: the whole story, like I want to hear the bits,
1:01:31
Speaker 1: but like, and there was one that I tried to
1:01:33
Speaker 1: listen to and I thought, this is gonna be really
1:01:34
Speaker 1: interesting because the whole point is that it tells two
1:01:36
Speaker 1: sides of the story. I was like, Oh, this is
1:01:39
Speaker 1: gonna be really good. It was not. It was not.
1:01:43
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I should try, like the
1:01:46
Speaker 1: second episode to even get into it. You know what,
1:01:49
Speaker 1: I'm not done yet. You know what, else bothers me
1:01:51
Speaker 1: when a podcast has a misleading name, motherfucker, don't do
1:01:55
Speaker 1: that to me. No, don't call yourself cult talk and
1:02:01
Speaker 1: then have two episodes on cults and the rest of
1:02:03
Speaker 1: it just be here's weird crime, Like, no, don't do that.
1:02:08
Speaker 1: Tell me about cults, like, come on, there's there's been
1:02:13
Speaker 1: enough of them. You can tell me things. Or it'll
1:02:15
Speaker 1: be like, oh, it's it's the poisoners notes and it's
1:02:21
Speaker 1: like great, and then it'll be like two episodes and
1:02:23
Speaker 1: poison and the rest will just be general crime. And
1:02:27
Speaker 1: I'm like, why are you telling me that? Like this
1:02:30
Speaker 1: isn't this isn't even vaguely related, Like I want to
1:02:35
Speaker 1: know what I'm getting into before I start, Like I
1:02:40
Speaker 1: know what Generation why is about small town world? Da
1:02:43
Speaker 1: is ron sealed. Diamond Goat does exactly what it says
1:02:45
Speaker 1: on the tin right, Crime in Sports, Crime in sports right?
1:02:53
Speaker 1: This is sports sports crime, sporty people doing crime right,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: which is like one of my you know what, fucking
1:02:58
Speaker 1: listen to Crime in Sports. I've decided listen to Crime
1:03:00
Speaker 1: in Sports. It's a really really good show. I enjoy it.
1:03:05
Speaker 1: You don't need to know anything about sports to enjoy it.
1:03:07
Speaker 1: That's listening recommendation, because fuck it. Now reading and this
1:03:14
Speaker 1: is where I'm going to get serious. I am going
1:03:20
Speaker 1: to urge you to read the Eyes of Gaza, a
1:03:24
Speaker 1: diary of resilience by pleas Ya Alahad. It is beautiful
1:03:33
Speaker 1: and optimistic and horrific and painful, and it is such
1:03:38
Speaker 1: a worthwhile read. It's heavy, but it's worth listening to.
1:03:44
Speaker 1: Her story is worth listening to. And with everything that's happened,
1:03:51
Speaker 1: because at time of recording, the Algazera, entire, entire Algerie
1:03:59
Speaker 1: journalists in Gaza have been murdered by Israel. That is
1:04:07
Speaker 1: what's happened. And when you're killing the journalists, when you're
1:04:13
Speaker 1: killing the people that are showing what is happening, that
1:04:16
Speaker 1: are telling the truth, then in no way are you
1:04:21
Speaker 1: protecting anyone you are destroying. And with that, I am
1:04:28
Speaker 1: going to bid you good night. Adios au revoirs of
1:04:33
Speaker 1: Where Is My Friends? Bye bye