Introduction
After the National Socialists came into power they developed in their territory a micro societal climate, in which discrimination resulted in ruthless persecution and the destruction of unwanted groups. For many women, it was the start of their ‘via dolorosa’, a period of great suffering, in prisons and concentration camps. If they survived, it left an indelible impression on their histories as a group and on their individual life stories.
Among the first women to be persecuted were Jehovah’s Witnesses who, much like political non-conformist women, stood out to the Nazi’s and were persecuted with increasing intensity. The female Witnesses of Jehovah were known as Bible Students in those days and their religious conviction offered the believers a lifestyle of strict non-violence, focusing on the commandments of the Bible and in recognition of only one authority, their God, Jehovah. This brought Jehovah’s Witnesses practising their religious beliefs into conflict with the National Socialist regime. Consequently, the religious group was systematically and cruelly persecuted. Many Bible Students were robbed of their freedom for years, subjected to economic exploitation and put under pressure to break their loyalty to their faith. The women were subjected to continuous humiliation and dehumanisation in the Nazi concentration camps. Many of them did not survive the Nazi regime and its machinations of destruction.
The fact that there ever was a concentration camp for women as a sub camp of Ravensbrück, besides the six sub camps of Mauthausen for male camp prisoners, has been almost erased from regional memory. Its absence from the collective consciousness is because there are no memorials to this concentration camp for women and the life stories and suffering endured there. No commemorative plaque brings the fate of the victims to attention and so they are robbed of a place in the present and in the future. In the light of the present findings, it is my intention to change this situation and bring it to the attention of the public, for example by erecting a tangible memorial.
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