In 1938, a program called 'Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich' (Action Against the Work-shy) was launched which thus created a new stage in the Nazi purge of not only Germany's Jews, Gypsies and mentally or physically disabled individuals but of Germany's underclass.
The primary targets of this program were those "considered social outcasts, largely unnoticed by the outside world, and unreported within Germany, more than 20,000 so-called 'asocials'--'vagabonds, prostitutes, work-shy, beggars and thieves'--were rounded up and earmarked for concentration camps." (Pg #16 of Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm)
While gathering evidence for this article, I was gobsmacked to discover that there is little to no real information about this program or it's victims. Sarah Helm's Ravensbrück is the only real source that provides any insight that I have found.
This is partly due to this stigma attached to the "asocials" imprisonment, and therefore, fear of speaking out. Sarah Helm describes it perfectly, "Although we learn alot about what the political prisoners thought of asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame...The German associations set up after the war to help concentration camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help 'asocial' survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as 'fighters' against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black-or-green triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or any later trials. As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials' stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans' groups." (pg #90 of Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm)
My heart weeps for women, such as, Anna Solzer, Ottile Gorres, Elisabeth Fassbender, Else Krug, Agnes Petry and countless other women who perished in Ravensbrück and who's memory is dismal and faint. At the same time, I am angry that victims of the same Holocaust as Anne Frank or Gerda Weissmann Klein are stigmatized and deemed irrelevant.
The women of Ravensbrück, regardless of their imprisonment, and all the victims of Hitler's Holocaust and of any violation of human rights are important. Let's start to look at and value human lives simply as human lives. Not by the measure of how they made a living to survive or how the world views/ viewed them.
For more research I highly recommend you read:
1. Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm
I have attached a link that allows you to read up to the end of the first chapter:
https://blog.longreads.com/2015/07/14/the-missing-history-of-ravensbruck-the-nazi-concentration-camp-for-women/
The primary targets of this program were those "considered social outcasts, largely unnoticed by the outside world, and unreported within Germany, more than 20,000 so-called 'asocials'--'vagabonds, prostitutes, work-shy, beggars and thieves'--were rounded up and earmarked for concentration camps." (Pg #16 of Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm)
While gathering evidence for this article, I was gobsmacked to discover that there is little to no real information about this program or it's victims. Sarah Helm's Ravensbrück is the only real source that provides any insight that I have found.
This is partly due to this stigma attached to the "asocials" imprisonment, and therefore, fear of speaking out. Sarah Helm describes it perfectly, "Although we learn alot about what the political prisoners thought of asocials, we learn nothing of what the asocials thought of them. Unlike the political women, they left no memoirs. Speaking out after the war would mean revealing the reason for imprisonment in the first place, and incurring more shame...The German associations set up after the war to help concentration camp survivors were dominated by political prisoners. And whether they were based in the communist East or in the West, these bodies saw no reason to help 'asocial' survivors. Such prisoners had not been arrested as 'fighters' against the fascists, so whatever their suffering none of them qualified for financial or any other kind of help. Nor were the western Allies interested in their fate. Although thousands of asocials died at Ravensbrück, not a single black-or-green triangle survivor was called upon to give evidence for the Hamburg War Crimes trials, or any later trials. As a result these women simply disappeared: the red-light districts they came from had been flattened by Allied bombs, so nobody knew where they went. For many decades, Holocaust researchers also considered the asocials' stories irrelevant; they barely rate mention in camp histories. Finding survivors amongst this group was doubly hard because they formed no associations, nor veterans' groups." (pg #90 of Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm)
My heart weeps for women, such as, Anna Solzer, Ottile Gorres, Elisabeth Fassbender, Else Krug, Agnes Petry and countless other women who perished in Ravensbrück and who's memory is dismal and faint. At the same time, I am angry that victims of the same Holocaust as Anne Frank or Gerda Weissmann Klein are stigmatized and deemed irrelevant.
The women of Ravensbrück, regardless of their imprisonment, and all the victims of Hitler's Holocaust and of any violation of human rights are important. Let's start to look at and value human lives simply as human lives. Not by the measure of how they made a living to survive or how the world views/ viewed them.
For more research I highly recommend you read:
1. Ravensbrück by Sarah Helm
I have attached a link that allows you to read up to the end of the first chapter:
https://blog.longreads.com/2015/07/14/the-missing-history-of-ravensbruck-the-nazi-concentration-camp-for-women/
