Reinhard Heydrich chats to Himmler at Hitler's estate in 1940 - Daily Mail

It was one of the big secrets of the murderous Nazi regime: a camp of 72 female prisoners used as experiments to test torture techniques. The girls, all high school-age Catholics from Poland, were dubbed the 'rabbits' since they were treated like laboratory animals, and their injuries meant many had to hop instead of walk. They had their bones broken, muscles removed, and limbs amputated - without painkillers - in a series of inhumane experiments after Hitler's friend died. When they war ended, they were rescued by the Red Cross along with the hundreds of other prisoners in Ravensbruck concentration camp - but all accounts of their 'treatments' had been destroyed. It meant their ordeal paled into oblivion as the world grappled to deal with the aftershocks of the Holocaust, particularly the horrific obliteration of the Jews. But the women were finally brought out of the shadows in 1958 by an unlikely fairy godmother: a socialite from Connecticut. Caroline Ferriday heard of their ordeal aft