Ravensbruck The Women’s Camp of Death – By former camp prisoner Denise Dufournier. Published by G. Allen & Unwin, London, 1948 – First English Edition, featuring numerous passages not included in the French edition.
“We have heard much about Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau, but of Ravensbruck – the camp where the women of Europe died of hunger, disease, and torture – we have been told far too little, ” writes Denise Dufournier, a former prisoner of Ravensbruck, in a searing testimony exposing the horrors of the women’s camp. Originally from Germany, Denise lived in France during the war under a false identity as a doctor and caregiver, assisting wounded British and American pilots and organizing their escape across the Pyrenees to Spain and then to England. In 1943, she was arrested at the home of one of her commanders, sent to Fresnes prison for interrogation by the Gestapo, and held in isolation in an underground cell for four months. In January 1944, she was deported to Germany along with 1,000 other women from across France. She was transferred to Ravensbruck, assigned to Block 26 with her group. Describing the horrors upon arrival, she writes: “We were herded en masse into this hut, so small that we had to remain standing, crushed against one another. The air was unbreathable. We began to feel ill. Those who fainted had no room to fall and leaned on their neighbors, indifferent. When we tried to open the windows, prisoners with red armbands – clear signs of guards – came under the pretense of air raid precautions and threatened to unleash the dogs we could hear howling outside… We were extremely thirsty, but the toilet water was undrinkable… The guards shouted and prodded us, and we lost all sense of time…”
Denise recounts in detail how the Nazis dehumanized the prisoners, starting with shaving their heads (“Will I ever forget the sight of that young woman whose long hair was shorn in an instant?”), confiscating their belongings, and forcing them into grueling labor in malaria-infested swamps. She describes the exhausting daily roll calls, the “work inspections” where weak women were selected for death, the horrific task of clearing bodies, constant hunger, torture, and death. In the book, many passages are difficult to read due to the harrowing descriptions of the atrocities that took place in the camp. Among other accounts, Denise describes Block 10, where women who had gone mad from the camp’s tortures were held shortly before being sent to their deaths, and more. During the years she spent in the camp, thousands of female prisoners were shot to death around her, suffocated, gassed, buried alive, or worked to death. All the camp’s prisoners, including small children, were forced into grueling labor, which often led to death.
Finally, Denise describes the long-awaited day of liberation by Allied forces. Denise returned to Germany with five women, accompanied by Red Cross personnel, on a journey through several cities, during which they were given small portions of butter and sausage: “There were no more shouts, no more beatings, no more threats, no one ordering us to hurry…” Denise completed writing her notebook of horrors in Switzerland in September 1945. After the war, little was said about Ravensbrück, which was then considered one of the smaller camps, and very few accounts about it were published. This is one of the earliest detailed testimonies ever released, exposing to the world the unimaginable scale of the Nazi crimes committed in this camp.
Originally published in French under the title La Maison des Mortes, it was translated into English by Mrs. F. W. M.
XIV, [2], 150 leaves. Hardcover with the original dust jacket featuring a small repaired tear in the corner using paper on the inner side. Condition: Good – Very Good.
