In May 1939 the Ravensbrück labour camp for women was founded in Germany. The only camp of its kind, Ravensbrück was designed to hold 15,000 prisoners, and eventually housed over 42,000 women from 23 countries. But who, Judith Buber Agassi asks, were they?

Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück offers insight into the identities of the women within Ravensbrück’s walls, presenting original research from major archives in Germany, Israel and the USA. The author has recovered the identity of over 16,000 Jewish women over the six year history of the camp, drawing data from transport and death registration lists, as well as from records that were smuggled out of the camp before liberation, all double-checked, where possible, with personal testimonies.

Unlike many Ravensbrück memoirs, these testimonies are intended to corroborate details, rather than produce an impressionistic account of camp life. And yet Buber Agassi’s laboriously constructed data is no dispassionate array of facts: at the very heart of her work is the quest to give the dignity of an identity – a memory – to thousands of women.
For further information, please visit the author's website at http://www.tau.ac.il/~agass/judith-book.html.

Judith Buber Agassi has taught sociology and political science at universities in the United States, Canada, Israel, Germany and Hong Kong. She currently resides in Tel Aviv with her family.

“For the first time the fate of Jewish prisoners originating from many countries becomes known ... This work … will set standards for the research of other camps and its method and analysis will serve as an example.”
Sigrid Jacobeit – Professor of History, Humboldt University, Berlin, and former Director of the Ravensbrueck Memorial

“Very scholarly and very moving.”
Shevah Weiss – Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council

“Silences impede our histories of the Holocaust. Records were destroyed. Camp survivors often kept silent. Judith Buber Agassi’s extraordinary work of historical scholarship The Jewish Prisoners of Ravensbrück is a voice for history against silence.”
Jancis Long – Psychologists for Social Responsibility, USA, and The Wright Institute, Berkeley, CA

“An extraordinary combination of data and personal stories, sociologically astute and emotionally sensitive.”
Judith Lorber – Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College and Graduate School, CUNY

“In the transition period between the living memory of the Holocaust and its history, it is time to forge the tools for its historical study. Here is a pioneer work that does this.”
Vittorio Dan Segre – Institute for Mediterranean Studies at the University of Lugano, Italy