Uckermark concentration camp

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The Uckermark concentration camp was a small Nazi concentration camp for girls near the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany and then an "emergency" extermination camp.

The camp had been opened in May 1942 as a detention camp for girls aged 16 to 21 that were considered criminal or just difficult. Girls that 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 is known today by name, Johanna Braach. Both these women were tried by a British court at the Third Ravensbruck Trial.

In January 1945, the juvenile's camp was closed and the infrastructure was subsequently used as an extermination camp for "sick, no longer efficient, and over 52 years old women" (Ebbinghaus 1987, p. 287). Over 5,000 women were murdered there; only 500 women and children survived. Though it was shut down in March 1945 the Soviets liberated the camp on the night of April 2930, 1945. Today it lays in ruins, unrecognizable.

Some of the responsible SS wardens of the camp, amongst them chief warden (Oberaufseherin) Ruth Closius, were put to trial in the third Ravensbrück Trial, the so-called "Uckermark trial".

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