Footsteps of WWII · Berlin & eastern Germany
Ravensbrück Memorial
Camp memorial · May 1939–30 Apr 1945
The story
Ravensbrück, 90 km north of Berlin, opened in May 1939 when the SS moved 900 women there from Lichtenburg. It was the only large concentration camp built for women, and an estimated 130,000 to 132,000 passed through it, from across occupied Europe. Prisoners worked in SS textile workshops and for firms such as Siemens. From summer 1942 SS doctors carried out experiments on 86 women, mostly Polish, whom they called 'rabbits'. In January 1945 the SS converted a hut near the crematorium into a gas chamber. The Red Army liberated the camp on 30 April 1945, finding fewer than 3,500 prisoners alive.
What to look for
On the Schwedtsee shore Will Lammert's bronze 'Tragende', a woman carrying another, faces Fürstenberg across the lake. See the crematorium, the camp road, the female guards' houses and the main exhibition in the former commandant's building.
Plan your visit
Exhibitions daily 10:00–18:00; grounds 9:00–20:00 (Apr–Sep), 9:00–18:00 (Oct–Mar). Free. Cell block closed for renovation until 2028. RE5 to Fürstenberg, then 25 minutes' walk.
Things change, so check opening times before you travel.
Nearby sites
- Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum · 48 km
- Reichstag, Berlin · 76 km
- Soviet War Memorial, Tiergarten · 76 km
- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe · 76 km
- Site of the Führerbunker · 77 km
- German Resistance Memorial (Bendlerblock) · 77 km
All 160 sites in Footsteps of WWII →
Footsteps of WWII: Europe 1939–1945
A free field guide for your phone: the route, the maps and the stories built in, even with no signal. The whole Second World War in Europe, from the first shots at Westerplatte on 1 September 1939 to the German surrender in May 1945: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, Normandy, Arnhem, Bastogne, Stalingrad, Berlin and the camps, in 15 areas from Britain to Russia.
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