As you approach the memorial, your guide will provide an overview of the camp’s structure, scale, and function within the Nazi regime. We’ll begin our visit at the Visitor Centre, where you’ll be given maps and materials to accompany the experience. The housing estate for SS members of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, which was never completed, is still mostly intact as an ensemble to this day. Higher-level SS members lived in the houses with their families. It is unclear who these SS soldiers were and what their lives were like on this housing estate. According to reports, private businesses from the Fürstenberg area built the majority of the dwellings in the SS colony.

Our first stop is the former SS administrative building, now a museum that sets the stage for what Ravensbrück was — and what it became. Inside, you’ll explore the permanent exhibition, which provides essential context about the camp’s founding, operation, and liberation.

The monument Zwei Stehende (Two Women Standing) is located in front of the camp wall near the former cremation on the grounds of the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Fürstenberg, Germany. The SS created Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1939, and it was Germany's largest concentration camp for women during WWII.

From 1939 to 1945, Ravensbrück was a German concentration camp for women in northern Germany, 90 km (56 mi) north of Berlin, in the village of Ravensbrück within Fürstenberg/Havel. The camp memorial estimates that 132,000 women were in the camp during the war, including 48,500 from Poland, 28,000 from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 from France, and thousands from other countries, including the UK and US. Over 20,000 (15%) were Jewish. Other races and cultures made up 85%. Over 80% were political prisoners. The SS erected a tiny neighboring camp for male detainees in early 1941, who built and managed the gas chambers in 1944. About 50,000 female prisoners in Ravensbrück died, including 2,200 in the gas chambers.