Created to incarcerate women and serve as a “model” concentration camp, Ravensbrück imprisoned about 132,000 women and children between 1939 and 1945, committing them to slave labor and miserable conditions. In addition to thousands of political prisoners, criminals, Jehovah’s witnesses, and those deemed “asocial,” about 20 percent of the camp’s prisoners were Jewish.

A Communist activist before and during World War II, Olga Benário Prestes’ political activities led her to the highest ranks of the Communist Youth International. Her relationship with Brazilian Communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes, who was part of a failed coup, led to her deportation to Germany, where she was gassed at Bernburg in 1942. Although her name is not well known in the United States, Olga is famous in Brazil and was considered a great heroine in the German Democratic Republic.