What do you think?
Rate this book
Beyond Human Endurance: The Ravensbruck Women Tell Their Stories
This book is a selection of reminiscences of 20 Ravensbruck concentration camp ex-prisoners who had experimental operations performed on them by Nazi physicians. The descriptions presented are a unique document of unprecedented crime committed on people by Nazi medicine.
- GenresNonfiction
181 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
1 person is currently reading
65 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 23, 2013
It took me a looooong time to finish this book because the subject matter was just so brutal! To hear, in their own words, about the experimental surgeries performed on them in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp was almost too much to want to have in your mind. They also described an average day living (if you can call it that) in the camp and the constant terror that evoked. An important book for history but I wouldn't recommend it to hardly anyone.
July 18, 2025
"You must live... and show to the world what they have been doing here."
The critical importance the Ravensbrück Rabbits and those who knew them ascribed to sharing their story cannot be overstated. The above quote is taken from a brief anecdote in the book detailing how an incredibly brave woman was willing to switch her camp number and be executed in place of one of the Rabbits so that the story would not die with them in the camp. As such, I find it baffling and an immense shame that so few people know of their story.
Admittedly, I knew quite a lot about the Rabbits before reading this book, but this was my first time reading their story straight from their lips. It is even more harrowing to hear the details of what was done to them. Unsurprisingly, they remember so much.
Reading their thoughts upon waking to find their legs forever changed by the cruel experiments performed on them, everything they did to try to survive, and the ways they risked everything to help each other even when they were in immeasurable pain made their experiences so much more harrowing.
The medical experiments performed by Nazi doctors, not just at Ravensbrück but across concentration camps, must be more widely recognised as a tool used to aid in genocide, not simply because of the high risk of death associated with such experiments but because of the associated dehumanisation. Performing medical experiments on prisoners sentenced to death enforced the idea that these prisoners were less than human purely because the Nazi regime had deemed them so. The Holocaust is far from the last time this happened, and it must not be forgotten, brushed aside, or ignored.
Knowing and sharing the Rabbits' story is incredibly important, and it saddens me that such a powerful book is no longer in print and so difficult to get ahold of. Decades later and in the midst of more genocides, it is more paramount than ever to understand and remember everything that constitutes a genocide and the lengths people will go to to be evil to one another. The Rabbits wanted to tell the world. It continues to be the duty of the rest of us to try.
The critical importance the Ravensbrück Rabbits and those who knew them ascribed to sharing their story cannot be overstated. The above quote is taken from a brief anecdote in the book detailing how an incredibly brave woman was willing to switch her camp number and be executed in place of one of the Rabbits so that the story would not die with them in the camp. As such, I find it baffling and an immense shame that so few people know of their story.
Admittedly, I knew quite a lot about the Rabbits before reading this book, but this was my first time reading their story straight from their lips. It is even more harrowing to hear the details of what was done to them. Unsurprisingly, they remember so much.
Reading their thoughts upon waking to find their legs forever changed by the cruel experiments performed on them, everything they did to try to survive, and the ways they risked everything to help each other even when they were in immeasurable pain made their experiences so much more harrowing.
The medical experiments performed by Nazi doctors, not just at Ravensbrück but across concentration camps, must be more widely recognised as a tool used to aid in genocide, not simply because of the high risk of death associated with such experiments but because of the associated dehumanisation. Performing medical experiments on prisoners sentenced to death enforced the idea that these prisoners were less than human purely because the Nazi regime had deemed them so. The Holocaust is far from the last time this happened, and it must not be forgotten, brushed aside, or ignored.
Knowing and sharing the Rabbits' story is incredibly important, and it saddens me that such a powerful book is no longer in print and so difficult to get ahold of. Decades later and in the midst of more genocides, it is more paramount than ever to understand and remember everything that constitutes a genocide and the lengths people will go to to be evil to one another. The Rabbits wanted to tell the world. It continues to be the duty of the rest of us to try.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews