A groundbreaking, masterful, and absorbingaccount of the last hidden atrocity of World War II — Ravensbrück — thelargest female-only concentration camp, where more than 100,000 womenconsisting of more than twenty nationalities were imprisoned.Shortlybefore the outbreak of World War II, Heinrich Himmler, the head of theSS and the architect of the Holocaust, oversaw the construction of aspecial concentration camp just fifty miles north of Berlin. He calledit Ravensbrück, and during the years that followed thousands of peopledied there after enduring brutal forms of torture. All were women.Thereare a handful of studies and memoirs that reference Ravensbrück, butuntil now no one has written a full account of this atrocity, perhapsdue to the mostly masculine narrative of war, or perhaps because itlacks the Jewish context of most mainstream Holocaust history. Ninetypercent of Ravensbrück's prisoners were not Jewish. Rather, they werepolitical prisoners, Resistance fighters, lesbians, prostitutes, eventhe sister of New York's Mayor LaGuardia. In a perverse twist, most ofthe guards were women themselves.Sarah Helm's groundbreakingwork sheds much-needed light on an aspect of World War II that hasremained in the shadows for decades. Using research into German andnewly opened Russian archives, as well as interviews with survivors,Helm has produced a landmark achievement that weaves together variousaccounts, allowing us to follow characters on both sides of theprisoner/guard divide. Chilling, compelling, and deeply unsettling,Ravensbrückis essential reading for anyone concerned with Nazi history.