Between 1939 and 1945, some 130,000[1] to 132,000[2] female prisoners passed through the Ravensbrück camp system. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, about 50,000 of them perished from disease, starvation, overwork and despair; some 2,200 were killed in the gas chambers.[8] on 29–30 April 1945 some 3,500 prisoners were still alive in the main camp.[8] During the first year of their stay in the camp, from August 1940 to August 1941, roughly 47 women died.