Why did five Irish women end up in Ravensbrück Concentration camp in World War II? They were like me, you or someone you know –nun, secretary, nanny, au pair and mostly anonymous until now. In February 2025 the Irish Embassy in Berlin will commemorate these women eighty years after their liberation. The Director of Ravensbrück Memorial Museum, Dr Andrea Genest will participate in a discussion, moderated by Kate Katharina Ferguson. The Berlin choir (lavoixmixte.de) will premier Hope and History a choral composition by Uta Schlegel from verses by Seamus Heaney. 

Cathi Fleming who has researched the life of Franciscan nun, Sister Kate Mc Carthy. will give insight into the compassion of these women which saved the lives of hundreds of British servicemen Cathi’s biography of Sister Kate is due to be published this year.

How did these Irish women end up in a concentration camp near Berlin? Answers include participating in the French and Belgian resistance, betrayal, torture, forced labour, hunger, death or survival. What inspired these “ordinary” women to engage in resistance? Why has there been so little known about them until now? Hard questions to answer.

Before I knew their stories, they inspired me to find out more about Ravensbrück and to write a novel (Bone and Blood, a Berlin novel pub.2014) which sought to explore connections between the silence of an Irish woman survivor of Ravensbrück and Celtic Tiger Ireland at the turn of this century.

Register for event: https://www.ireland.ie/en/germany/berlin/news-and-events/news-archive/commemorating-irish-women-of-ravensbruck-concentration-camp-19-20-february/

Bone and Blood, a Berlin novel by Margo Gorman available online from books.ie and curiousfoxbooks.com in Berlin

Performance of this choral composition of verses from Seamus Heaney by Uta Schlegel is restricted to this event in Berlin and one event in Donegal.