A Prayer From the Concentration Camp Ravensbrück

track name: A Prayer From the Concentration Camp Ravensbrück
album and band name: from Poetical by avoxx

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about: A prayer from women's concentration camp Ravensbrueck.
Since 1938 the SS deported numerous female prisoners to Ravensbrueck in Mecklenburg, Germany, where they were forced to work for the weaponry of the Nazis. Between 1938 and 1945 132000 women and children had been registered in Ravensbrueck.

Thanks to David Daniel Ball (ddball) for providing an English translation (see the "Lyrics" below). It's highly recommended to read the lyrics while listening ...

Wikepedia about the Life in the camp:
When a new prisoner arrived at Ravensbrueck they were required to wear a color-coded triangle (a Winkel) that identified them by category, with a letter sewn within the triangle indicating the prisoner's nationality. Polish women wore a red triangle, red denoting a political prisoner, with a letter "P". By 1942, Polish women became the largest national component at the camp. Jewish women wore yellow triangles, but sometimes, unlike the other prisoners, they wore a second triangle for the other categories or for "race defilement". Some transports had their hair shaved, such as from Czechoslovakia and Poland, but "Aryan" transports did not. For instance, in 1943 a group of Norwegian women came to the camp. (Norwegians/Scandinavians were ranked by the Nazis as the purest of all Aryans.) None had their hair shaved. Between 1942 and 1943 almost all Jewish women from the Ravensbrück camp were sent to Auschwitz in several transports following Nazi policy to make Germany "Judenrein" (cleansed of Jews). Common criminals wore green triangles, Soviet prisoners of war, German and Austrian Communists had red triangles and members of the Jehovah's Witnesses were labeled with lavender triangles. Classified separately with black triangles were prostitutes, Gypsies, lesbians, or women who refused to marry.
Based on the Nazis incomplete transport list "Zugangsliste" consisting 25,028 names of women sent by Nazis to the camp, it is estimated that inmates of Ravensbrück ethnic structure was the following: Poles 24.9%, Germans 19.9%, Jews 15.1%, Russians 15.0%, French 7.3%, Gypsies 5.4%, other 12.4%. Gestapo categorized the inmates as follows: political 83.54%, anti-social 12.35%, criminal 2.02%, Jehovah Witnesses 1.11%, racial defilement 0.78%, other 0.20%. The list is one of the most important documents, preserved in the last moments of the camp operation by courageous members of the Polish underground girl guides unit "Mury" (The Walls). The rest of the camp documents were burned by escaping SS overseers in pits or in the crematorium.
One of the forms of the resistance were underground education programs organized by prisoners for their fellow inmates. All national groups had some sort of program. The most extensive were among Polish women where various high school level classes were taught by experienced teachers.
Inmates at Ravensbrueck suffered greatly. Living in subhuman conditions, thousands were shot, strangled, gassed, buried alive, or worked to death. Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to "selections" in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them. At first, "selected" prisoners were shot. Beginning in 1942, they were transferred to "euthanasia" killing centers or to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The SS staff also murdered some prisoners in the camp infirmary by lethal injection.
Starting in the summer of 1942, medical experiments were conducted without consent on 86 women; 74 of them were Polish inmates. There were two types of the experiments done on the Polish political prisoners. The first type tested the efficacy of sulfonamide drugs. These experiments involved deliberate cutting into and infecting leg bones and muscles with virulent bacteria, cutting nerves, introducing substances like pieces of wood or glass into tissues, and fracturing bones. The second set of experiments studied bone, muscle and nerve regeneration, and the possibility of transplanting bones from one person to another. Out of the 74 Polish victims, called Króliki, Kaninchen, Lapins or Rabbits by the experimenters, five died as a result of the experiments, six with unhealed wounds were executed and the rest survived, with permanent physical damage, due to the help of other inmates in the camp. Four of them -- Jadwiga Dzido, Maria Broel-Plater, Władysława Karolewska and Maria Kuśmierczuk -- testified against Nazi doctors at the Doctors' Trial in 1946.
Between 120 and 140 Gypsy women were sterilized in the camp in January 1945. All of them, unaware of the consequences, signed the consent form after being told by the camp overseers that the German authorities would release them if they agreed to sterilization.
All inmates were required to do heavy labor, ranging from heavy outdoor jobs to building the V-2 rocket parts for the giant German company, Siemens AG. The SS also built several factories near Ravensbrück for the production of textiles and electrical components.
The bodies of those killed in the camp were cremated in the nearby Fuerstenberg crematorium until 1943. In that year, SS authorities constructed a crematorium at a site near the camp prison. In the autumn of 1944, the SS constructed a gas chamber near the crematorium. The Germans gassed several thousand prisoners at Ravensbrueck before the camp's liberation in April 1945.
lyrics: Friede den Menschen, die bösen Willens sind,
und ein Ende aller Rache
und allen Reden über Strafe und Züchtigung.

Die Grausamkeiten spotten allem je Dagewesenen,
sie überschreiten die Grenzen menschlichen Begreifens,
und zahlreich sind die Märtyrer.

Daher, o Gott,
wäge nicht ihre Leiden auf den Schalen
Deiner Gerechtigkeit,
fordre nicht grausame Abrechnung,
sondern schlage sie anders zu Buche:

Lass sie zugute kommen allen Henkern,
Verrätern und Spionen
und allen schlechten Menschen,
und vergib ihnen
um des Mutes und der Seelenkraft des andern willen.
All das Gute sollte zählen, nicht das Böse.

Und in der Erinnerung unsrer Feinde
sollten wir nicht als ihre Opfer weiterleben,
nicht als ihr Alptraum und grässliche Gespenster,
vielmehr ihnen zu Hilfe kommen,
damit sie abstehen mögen von ihrem Wahn.

Nur dies allein wird ihnen abgefordert,
und dass wir, wenn alles vorbei sein wird,
leben dürfen als Menschen unter Menschen,

und dass wieder Friede sein möge auf dieser armen Erde
den Menschen die guten Willens sind,
und dass dieser Friede auch zu den andern komme.

English Translation by ddball:
Peace to all those who are full of evil intent
and an end to taking revenge
and an end to speeches about punishment and scolding.

The matchless cruelties defy description,
they exceed anything that may be learned,
and the martyrs are numerous.

Henceforth, o God,
don't weigh their sufferings on the scales
of your justice,
Don't ask for cruel reckoning,
but weigh it in a different way:

Let the hangmen,
traitors and spies,
and all evil peoples benefit from their crime,
and forgive them
for the sake of courage and the sacrifice of the others.
All good shall be reckoned, but evil spilt and lost.

And in the remembrance of our enemies
we shall not live as their victims,
not as their nightmares and terrible monsters,
but rather come to their rescue,
that they abstain from their delusion.

Only this will be claimed from them,
and that we, when all this will be over,
may live as humans among humans,

and that peace may again reign on this poor earth
for all with good in their heart
and that this peace shall extend to the lost ones, too.
credits: from Poetical, track released 14 April 2009
Music, Vocals, Instruments, Production: Andreas Herrmann
Artwork: Maria Hiszpanska (who had been a prisoner in Ravensbrueck)
license: All rights reserved
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