Today, 30th April 2014, marks the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Ravensbrück. On this day in 1945, Soviet troops entered the grounds of the camp, located aside the Schwedtsee, near Fürstenberg, north of Berlin, where work began on establishing the camp as early as autumn 1938, as a f.KL - Frauen-Konzentrationslager (women's concentration camp) - although later, a men's camp was also founded at the site. The main camp and its system of sub-camps saw over thirty different nationalities of inmate, with over one third arriving from Poland. By January 1945, the prisoner population had grown to over 50,000. It is estimated that between 30,000-92,000 people died within the Ravensbrück camp system. Thousands of these victims were killed shortly before the arrival of the Soviet forces - including infants and pregnant women. Over two thousand sick and exhausted mostly female inmates were left behind by the SS when the final evacuations left the camp in late April 1945. Survivors of the death marches were freed by Soviet patrols shortly after.
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