"Many women had forced abortions, others lost their children after the pregnancy, when the children where taken from them with violence. And if one got a child from a German it could end in a barbarious treatment, where the walk with a bold head through a city full of people, spitting and beating you. Rassenschande was the name of the crime; the punishment could end in the KZ Ravensbrück as a 'rabbit' (so did they call the women there!) on an operation-table without any narcotics and a nazi-medical treatment." by C. Maihoefer, / Germany, 2003
----------Olga -
Here are some pictures/drawings about Ravensbruck Nazi Concentration Camp for Women. These were published in one of the Ukrainian D. P. Camps in Western Germany sometimes right after WWII. Who are the painter and publisher of this booklet - I don't know. This booklet has been in my family at least from 1947. Please use them in your Concentration Camps website. Maybe the people to whom CC were sent out can give us more info on these pictures.
Also, as a suggestion, please leave the Ukrainian descriptions/captions. This will be proof that Ukrainian women were in this particular Camp as prisoners. At the same time please do translate these captions into English.
Z Bohom, C/\ABKO
Download book of drawings
ravensbruckArt.pdf
from the Archives of S. M. PIHUT Family.
click to enlarge photos - See art below for English translation provided by Laryssa Courtney laryssac@aol.com
Jewish Women of Ravensbruck exhibition
April 27, 2017 Olha, I visited your website after reading about it in The Ukrainian Weekly. You are doing very important work.
I actually have the Ravensbruck book, which was published in English and Ukrainian in 1992 by the artist Olena Wityk Wojtowycz* in Chicago. The paintings were originally published in Berlin immediately after the war, which is what you have. Olena Wojtowycz was a slave laborer along with my mother at Ravensbruck and in her book, lists the names of the Ukrainian women at the camp, including my mother, Ariadna Kotko Lapychak. They were forced to work for Siemens, assembling airplane parts. My mother, by the way, was not able to get compensation from Siemens after the war because they told her that they did not have any record of her being there. I don’t know if Olena is still alive. She lived in Plano, Illinois, where her husband was a doctor.
My father Dr. Toma Lapychak was the commandant of the DP camp in Berchtesgaden. Prior to that, he was arrested in Lviv, together with my mother. He was picking her up to go to a movie, when the gestapo knocked on the door. He was already practicing medicine. He was sent to Sachsenhausen. Both he and my mother were released from the camps after about 1 1/2 yrs, when Hitler made a deal with the Ukrainian government to exchange the political prisoners for a division of Ukrainian soldiers.
Good luck with your work, and all best wishes,
Laryssa Courtney laryssac@aol.com
*Olena died quietly surrounded by family at home at the age of 91 on March 31, 2013 in Madison, Wisconsin.