Review by Choice Review
Ravensbruck concentration camp housed approximately 132,000 women and children, of which 100,000-117,000 perished. Saidel's timely and important 15-chapter study blends survivors' oral histories with official documents to reconstruct day-to-day camp operations. While the author's main focus is the small Jewish percentage of the camp, her examination of the different prisoners interned is the work's chief strength. Female political dissidents, mostly communist, represented the largest number, but Ravensbruck also housed French, Polish, and Dutch resistance fighters as well as Soviet and British prisoners of war. The Nazi regime was equally intolerant of Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic nuns, prostitutes, lesbians, and those considered racially inferior, such as gypsies and Jews. In June 1944, 60-year-old Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, the daughter of a Jewish mother and sister of New York's mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, became Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler's "political hostage" and one of Ravensbruck's most famous internees. Saidel's discussion of these different women, as well as her heavy reliance on oral interviews with survivors makes this book an important and valuable addition to Holocaust literature. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Appropriate for general readers to researchers/faculty. R. V. A. Gomez Anne Arundel Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
