In The Golden Doves a few scenes take place in the Ravensbruck camp clinic, known as the Revier. It also plays an important role in my novel Lilac Girls, since the brutal medical experiments performed on the 72 Polish women known as “the Rabbits” took place there. So it was incredible to find so many pieces at the Ravensbruck museum’s excellent exhibits concerning the Revier, filled with old photos, ephemera and artifacts, that bear silent witnesses to what everyday life was like there. Above, Polish artist Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz’s haunting sketch of fellow prisoner Janina Piatek who lost a hand while doing slave labor at a munitions factory and transferred to the Ravensbruck Revier. The caption to the sketch reads: “Janina Piatek died after a bombing of munitions factory. Sent to the oven in March 1945.”
The map of the Revier, above, drawn by camp prisoner-nurse Gerda Ganzer Quernheim as evidence at her trial, shows the layout of the building. Gerda, a character in Lilac Girls, worked under Dr. Herta Oberheuser and provided inhumane treatment of patients. She and her lover, camp doctor Rolf Rosenthal, were later imprisoned by camp staff once a colleague reported that Rosenthal had terminated Gerda’s pregnancy in the Revier and had been stealing stolen dental gold from the Reich.
Archival photos are an important part of the exhibit. It’s strange to think that the orderly treatment room, above, circa 1941 (complete with floral arrangement), exam room and creepy dentistry area, below, existed while Ravensbruck prisoners were being starved and worked to death, with little access to the medications on these shelves.
The exhibit also includes objects used by the nursing staff. Below, the arm band used by prisoner nurses, allowing them access to all parts of the camp. This armband, with the raised, red embroidered letters, inspired the one in Lilac Girls, which Kasia’s mother Helena wears.
A prisoner’s sketch (below) of daily life in the Revier. Note the SS man sitting on a Revier table among naked prisoners.
If you are in Berlin, a trip to Ravensbruck is only an hour north of the city and well worth the trip. The museum alone, is a fascinating journey back in time.
