Six Wooden Women’s Hair Clips from the Ravensbrück Women’s Camp [Early 1940s].
These personal clothing items, used by women in the camp, were collected at Ravensbrück after the war by two surviving prisoners and were preserved in a home in Jerusalem for over 60 years. (See Dynasty Auction 22, Item 69, from the same source).
Ravensbrück, located approximately 100 km north of Berlin, was the largest concentration camp (and later also an extermination camp) for women in Germany. At its peak, including its subcamps, it held around 46,100 female prisoners. Jewish prisoners in the camp were forced to wear the yellow patch. As part of the broader Nazi strategy of exploiting camp inmates for the war economy, Siemens established production facilities in the camp in June 1942, where female prisoners were subjected to forced labor. Living conditions were unbearable—thousands of women were shot, suffocated, gassed, buried alive, or worked to death. Ravensbrück became infamous as one of the camps where German doctors conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners, beginning in August 1942. In total, the camp claimed the lives of approximately 40,000 victims.
9 cm. Good condition.
