If This is a Woman

For decades the story of Ravensbrück was hidden and today is still little known. Using testimony unearthed since the end of the Cold War, and interviews with survivors who have never spoken before, Helm has ventured into the heart of the camp, demonstrating for the reader in riveting detail how easily and quickly the unthinkable horror evolved.

'Using material once locked behind the Iron Curtain, Sarah Helm has performed a tremendous feat of historical rescue: this book at last gives full voice to the women of Ravensbrück, one of the most notorious women's prisons in history, for the very first time' Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag

'Compelling . . . [Helm] has painstakingly sought out many survivors and talked to them herself. The results are devastating . . .What one is left with at the end of this momentous book is a sense of the power of human nature, both for good and evil' Independent on Sunday

'Read this book. Be appalled. Be moved. And be angry that so little action was taken to help or to remember until it was nearly too late. Read it and weep' Julia Neuberger, Jewish Chronicle

'An epic feat of scholarly investigation' Spectator