On this day in 1945, Soviet forces liberated the Ravensbruck concentration camp.Opening in 1939 after the Lichtenburg concentration camp closed, Ravensbruck was the largest concentration camp in Nazi Germany that was created almost entirely for women. In April 1941, SS authorities established a sub-camp for men adjacent to the main camp.The first 900 women sent to Ravensbruck were transferred there from the Lichtenburg concentration camp in May 1939. By the end of 1942, there were 10,000 inmates, and in January 1945, the camp had grown to hold over 50,000 prisoners, most of whom were women. The camp also included female guards, who, despite not being members of the SS, were considered female civilian employees.Occasionally, the SS authorities at Ravensbruck would kill prisoners who were deemed too weak or injured to work. This was originally done through shooting, but in 1942, when Operation 14f13 began, the selected inmates were transferred to the sanitarium at Bernburg, where they were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Right before liberation in April 1945, between 5,000 and 6,000 inmates were sent to the gas chambers. Beginning in the summer of 1942, SS doctors began experimenting on patients with wounds by treating them with a variety of chemical substances, including sulfanilamide. The doctors also tested various methods of setting and transplanting bones, including amputations on 74 women, many of whom died as a result. The women, referred to as ‘rabbits’, were exploited by SS doctors that recreated war wounds in their legs, infecting them and damaging their nerves, muscles, and bones. On February 4, 1945, the Nazis sought to murder all of these women, wanting to eliminate all evidence of war crimes. The rest of the inmates at Ravensbruck came up with a plan and successfully hid them for the three months leading up to liberation. Three months before liberation, the camp held over 45,000 female prisoners and 5,000 male prisoners. By March, with the Soviets nearing, the SS began to evacuate the camp, transferring 2,100 male prisoners to Sachsenhausen and 5,600 female prisoners to Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen. By the end of April 1945, SS officers sent 20,000 female prisoners and the remaining male prisoners on a death march to Mecklenburg. The remaining SS officers fled the camp on April 29, as the Soviets arrived. On May 1, more Soviet units arrived at the camp, where they found over 2,000 sick prisoners. In the six years of the camp’s operation, over 130,000 women passed through the camp and 20,000-30,000 of them were killed.In the postwar period, SS doctors from Ravensbruck were among the defendants in the Doctors Trial and Nuremberg Proceedings, and other Ravensbruck officers were prosecuted by East Germany up to the 1960s.