Women were within the ranks of the Nazis at the Nazi concentration camps : these were the Aufseherin and generally belonged to the SS . They were guards , secretaries or nurses . They arrived before the start of the war , some of them being trained from 1938 in Lichtenburg . This took place due to the need for personnel following the growing number of political prisoners after the Kristallnacht on 8 and 9 November 1938 . After 1939 , they were trained at Camp Ravensbrück near Berlin . Coming mostly from lower - or middle-class social origins , they previously worked in traditional professions ( hairdresser , teacher , for example ) but were , in contrast to men who were required to fulfill military serve , the women were driven by a sincere desire to reach the female wing of the SS , the SS-Gefolge . Of the 55,000 total number of guards at all the Nazi camps , there were 3,600 women ( approximately 10 % of the workforce ) , however , no woman was allowed to give orders to a man
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Women in Nazi Germany