Everything about Ravensbrück, the largest Nazi concentration camp for women in Germany, was designed to kill love in all its forms. This makes the story told by Gwen Strauss in Milena and Margarete: A Love Story in Ravensbruck not only unexpected, but downright miraculous.
Unlike death camps such as Sobibor, Majdanek or Chelmno, Ravensbrück was not built for the sole purpose of murder. It opened with a “lofty” ideal of female reeducation, housing political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the “Asoziale”—the “antisocial” Roma and Sinti women, prostitutes, vagrants and lesbians who failed to meet the Nazi ideal of fertile and subservient womanhood. When German former Communist Margarete Buber-Neumann first arrived in 1940, she was struck by how orderly and clean Ravensbruck was—at least in comparison with the Soviet gulag in Kazakhstan where she had been imprisoned on Stalin’s orders. But conditions deteriorated as the war went on, and every day brought a possibility of death by gassing, gunshot, torture, disease or the whim of an SS guard.
But Ravensbruck was also where cautious Margarete met and loved Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist whose incandescent passion for life and fierce independence enabled her to transcend the limits Ravensbrück tried to impose on her. Charming, funny and intelligent, Milena was easy to love. Strauss, whose great-aunt was also in Ravensbrück, delicately unfolds the story of these two women, creating a portrait of love, loyalty and friendship flourishing amid the death, disease and despair.
Milena and Margarete is more than a love story. It is a significant contribution to Holocaust literature. Queer people were targeted by the Nazis for persecution, but their stories are rarely heard: Victims silenced themselves to avoid stigmatization or prosecution in countries where homosexuality was a criminal offense. Strauss’ extensive research drew from the women’s letters, as well as Milena’s prewar journalism and Margarete’s memoirs, to tell their story. As a result, she brings to life voices that have too long been suppressed.