Ravensbrück Memorial Museum
New Memorial Plaque for Individuals Imprisoned in Ravensbrück after the 20 July 1944
20. July 2025
On 20 July 1944, the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler failed. Many individuals involved in the plot, as well as supporters of the attempted coup, were arrested, tortured, and murdered.
Resistance members were also imprisoned in the Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp, among them Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg, Elisabeth von Thadden, Johanna Solf, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Julius Leber, and the Catholic trade unionist Nikolaus Groß. They were classified by the Gestapo as so-called “kin liability and special prisoners” (Sippen- und Sonderhäftlinge).
Beginning in February 1944, the detention wing of the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and the police training school in Drögen were used as sites of incarceration for individuals associated with the German resistance against National Socialism. Many of them were executed in Plötzensee following interrogation.
In the presence of many family members, the 20 July Foundation unveiled a memorial plaque last Friday at the new commemoration site of the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum, in memory of those imprisoned in Ravensbrück.
The simple stone plaque bears a verse from Psalm 124: “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.”
“These verses seem to us well suited to reaching beyond the concrete event and to express a hope for reassurance and solace through the experience of an inner sense of freedom – also in reference to the many people who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered at this site,” said Elisabeth Ruge, board member of the 20 July 1944 Foundation.
