ABSTRACT
This essay examines the art historical and historical import of artworks representing the Ravensbrück concentration camp by two French political prisoners, Jeannette L’Herminier and Violette Rougier-Lecoq. Ravensbrück, which was established in May 1939 and liberated in April 1945, was a camp specifically conceived to house women prisoners. Many of the artworks by L’Herminier and Rougier-Lecoq were produced clandestinely while the camp was operational. Through their form and subject-matter, they provide material and visual testimony about conditions at Ravensbrück. The evidentiary value of Rougier-Lecoq’s drawings were recognized soon after liberation and some of them were presented as evidence at the 1946 Ravensbrück trials in Hamburg. Close readings of several artworks by the artists provide insight into how the women experienced Ravensbrück as a gendered space and how they sought to resist Nazi efforts at dehumanization. The essay concludes by signalling how the drawings not only supplement contemporary historical scholarship on Ravensbrück, but also comprise a type of knowledge overlooked by more traditional histories which use the drawings only as illustrations, privileging textual over visual archives.
