21-05-2025
Diane Kruger's chilling role as prisoner at Nazi death camp for women where inmates were deliberately injected with PETROL and had their bones shattered in horrifying experiments
It was a place that typified the depraved horror of the Nazi regime.
Between 1939 and 1945, more than 130,000 inmates were subjected to brutal forced labour, starvation, torture, executions and grotesque medical experiments at Ravensbruck.
Now, the story of what was the Nazis' only concentration camp exclusively for women is set to be re-told in a film starring Diane Kruger.
First-look pictures released this month for Each of Us show the the 48-year-old star, who dazzled at Cannes at the weekend, in character as a prisoner in the camp.
Dressed in a striped prison uniform to echo what actual Ravensbruck inmates had to wear, she is seen looking sombre as she walks in character alongside a younger co-star.
The Troy star portrays the character of Gertrud, a petty German criminal who is made a Kapo – a prisoner given the duty of overseeing other inmates in exchange for privileges.
Over time, she slips further and further into brutality to stay alive and protect her adopted daughter in the camp.
The 48-year-old actress told Radio Wroclaw last week: 'At the beginning of my career, I promised myself that I would never star in a film about World War II.
'And that was only because at the time, that was all I got. This project is different.
'There are four female directors, the story is little known, and my character is a mother fighting for the child she met in the camp.
'The subject itself is not easy. What attracted me to this role was this female point of view.
'History knows many films about concentration camps - very masculine images, brutal.
'This film also has no shortage of brutality, and many people died in Ravensbrück.
'But it is a film about women, and a women's camp, and this changes the type of interaction between the characters.'
Anna Jadowska, the co-producer of Each of Us, said: 'The film tells the story of four women, which takes place just before the liberation of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was intended exclusively for women.
'The history that unfolded there and the experiences of these women, which you can read about, shows what a cruel species we are, what great harm we can do to each other.'
Standing less than 60 miles from Berlin, Ravensbruck was the site of myriad horrors.
Nazi doctors deliberately infected the legs of inmates - mainly Polish women dubbed 'Kaninchen', or 'Rabbits' - with gangrene, shattered their bones to test drugs and carried out macabre sterilisation surgeries without anaesthesia.
Those who survived were often left permanently disabled.
The camp also became the main supplier of women for Nazi brothels. Most of them died from venereal disease and sexual abuse.
Survivor Maria Broel-Plater recalled later: 'They wanted to destroy our bodies but we did everything to preserve our dignity.'
English agent Elsie Marécha, from Acton in west London, was sent to the camp after being caught working for Belgium resistance.
She recalled: 'The first thing I saw was a cart with all the dead piled on it.
'Their arms and legs hanging out, and mouths and eyes wide open. They reduced us to nothing.
'We didn't even feel like we had the value of cattle. You worked and you died.'
Established in May 1939, by the time it was liberated in April 1945, an estimated 132,000 women had been incarcerated at the camp.
These included around 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria and nearly 8,000 from France.
Another 2,000 were from Belgium and thousands more from other countries including the UK and the USA.
Of these, around 50,000 died from disease, starvation, overwork and despair, while 2,200 were murdered in the camp's gas chambers.
Pregnant women and mothers with children were not spared.
In the early years, prisoners who were carrying children were often forced to undergo abortions or saw their newborn babies taken away and killed.
Later, some were allowed to give birth; but with no medical care, most infants died within weeks.
At its peak, Ravensbruck had more than 150 female guards.
Among the most notorious was Dorothea Binz, who rose through the ranks to become the camp's deputy commandant.
According to survivors, her reign of terror was was marked by extreme violence and sadism.
She would beat prisoners with her riding crop and while selecting prisoners for punishment or execution.
It was also believed that she hacked a prisoner to death with an axe during a work detail.
After the war, she was captured by the British and later executed by famous hangman Albert Pierrepoint.
One of the female Nazi physicians carrying out medical atrocities was Herta Oberheuser.
Working under the command of Dr. Karl Gebhardt, Heinrich Himmler's personal physician between 1942 and 1945, Oberheuser injected women and children with lethal substances including petrol and barbiturates to clear beds for new experiments.
Witnesses said she also killed girls who had become too ill to work, and performed operations without anaesthesia.
During the Nuremberg trials, she was found guilt of causing death and permanent injury and crimes against humanity.
Sentenced to 20 years in prison, she was released after five years and set up a private practice before being recognised by a camp survivor and having her medical license revoked.
She died unrepentant in 1978.
The crimes that took place at Ravensbruck were exposed after four women inmates - Krystyna Czyz, Wanda Wijtasik and sisters Janina and Krystyna Iwaska recounted various horrors in letters sent home to their families.
Aware that the letters were checked by camp authorities before being sent, the women used their own urine as ink to secretly add extra detail that was only visible when heated up.
Between 1943 and 1944, the women risked their lives to send 27 of these letters in the hope of highlighting the sick abuse of camp inmates to the world.
But their plan relied on their families figuring out the dull letters contained a coded message and discovering how to decipher the true meaning. And by some miracle, they did.
On May 1944, more than a year after the first coded letter was sent, the contents of the women's messages were broadcast to the world.
A gas chamber was installed at the camp in 1945. Gassing of inmates continued up until the end of the war.
