At the end of the Second World War, there were a number of war crimes trials that occurred
to sentence those members of the SS and the staff of concentration camps for their terrible
crimes.
Inside of Bergen-Belsen, when the British liberated the huge camp they came across thousands
of dead bodies and decaying corpses lying all around Belsen, and what these liberators
saw that day haunted them for the rest of their lives.
The truth was that as the war had turned against the Germans thousands of prisoners were sent
to Belsen and the camp became very crowded, to the point where the camp crumbled.
But amongst the diseased and dying prisoners who were left alive were many SS guards who
had remained at the camp to keep law and order.
But amongst these guards was a huge woman who towered over the rest of the prisoners
and the guards.
Hertha Bothe stood at 6 feet 3 inches tall, and she was larger than many of the soldiers.
But as time went on, she was considered to have been a beast of a female guard who worked
at many different concentration camps, and she was known for her violent actions and
beatings.
She was a woman who could very easily have been sentenced to death for her evil actions
inside of many camps, but she was different to other executed women of the Belsen trials
due to the fact she had never worked at Auschwitz.
But Hertha Bothe was known as the Sadist of Stutthof, and a long list of her crimes and
torturous actions emerged at the end of the war.
Join us today as we look at the torture of the female sadist of sturhof, and to support
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Hertha Bothe was born on the 3rd January 1921 inside of Mecklenburg.
As a young girl she joined the League of German Girls, the Nazi youth groups for women.
Inside of this they would be taught how to become mothers, as the Nazi policies was that
women were enoucraged to have as many children as they could for Hitler’s reich, and inside
of the group thousands of young women were indoctrinated to become virulent and ardent
nazis.
Hertha Bothe despite being taught domestic tasks wanted a different life, and she was
antisemitic, but she would whilst she attended the classes help in her father’s shop as
a young girl.
But she had been turned towards the Nazis and the policies, and with this in September
1942 she became a member of the SS and specifically a female guard inside of a concentration camp.
She was just 21 years old, and had sought to take up work as an SS Aufsehrein, and because
of this she was then sent to Ravensbruck.
This was an all female camp where the majority of the female guards of concentration camps
learned how to become brutal guards.
Women such as Irma Grese learned under other women such as Maria Mandel, and they were
schooled in brutality.
Bothe was sent on a four week training course, and following this she was then considered
trained and was then sent to Danzig to work at the Stutthof Concentration Camp.
Stutthof was a camp established following the outbreak of the Second World War, and
it’s believed that around 65,000 prisoners died within the barbed wire fences and that
110,000 were held there.
The conditions of Stutthof were known for being brutal as many prisoners succumbed to
violent beatings, starvation, disease outbreaks and the forced labour that they were ordered
to do each day.
Many died from typhus epidemics that swept through the sites, and those who were considered
too sick to work were killed in the small gas chamber there.
Whilst Bothe worked at Stutthof, there were executions that were carried out each day
as many prisoners were shot, and others were hanged in roll call yards.
But she became known as the Sadist of Stutthof for her violent actions and the savage beatings
that she administered to prisoners.
Hertha Bothe remained at Stutthof for two years, and when she was arrested at the end
of the conflict she was interrogated and questioned about her violent streak.
She was asked, ‘Have you ever beaten anybody at all,’ and Hertha Bothe admitted her crimes
and she said ‘Yes with my hands, because they stole wood and other things, I have never
beaten anyone with a stick or a piece of wood or a rubber truncheon.’
She claimed to have slapped prisoners at times, but denied using a weapon.
But at Stutthof this was witnessed, and prisoners told of her huge stature that was enhanced
by her jackboots which made her a very intimidating figure.
She walked around the camp armed with a pistol, and she regularly beat prisoners, and she
would state that whilst she was at Stutthof she was not involved with the prisoners, but
this was a lie.
Following two years at Stutthof, Hertha Bothe was then transferred across in July 1944 to
Bromberg sub camp, and she then worked here for some time before she was part of a death
march of female prisoners in January 1945 from Poland to Bergen-Belsen.
At the time in the war the Soviets were advancing towards German lands, and they were pushing
back the Wehrmacht and the Axis forces to a huge extent.
But the concentration camps towards the east were the evacuated and staff and prisoners
were sent to camps such as Bergen Belsen.
The huge influx of inmates led to Belsen crumbling from overcrowding and the camp could not cope.
There was little to no food, and there was no medical facilities or healthcare given
out.
Disease continued to spread and run riot inside of Belsen, and each day hundreds of people
were dying and in the final months of the war thousands of prisoners were being killed.
Hertha Bothe’s actions there were noticeable, and the prisoners of Belsen would remember
how she towered above the rest of the guards.
But at her trial she documented what she did for a number of months at Belsen.
Bothe stated that she arrived without any specific duties and jobs, and she was then
appointed to supervise the bath house before being transferred to the Wood Commando.
This was a group of prisoners who had to gather wood for fires, and she then said of her time
there that, ‘‘There were 60 internees in a.
Kommando which was under the charge of an SS man, and I was the Aufseherin.
The Internees were practically all Russians, and were in quite good states of health.
Big tree trunks were fetched from the woods into the camp and the male internees cut them
into smaller parts, and the women into even lesser parts.
Whilst I was working with this commando, I had nothing to do with other prisoners.’
But she claimed that she never hit a prisoner whilst working in the wood commando, but prisoners
would then allege disturbing things about Hertha Bothe’s violent side.
One prisoner said that he saw Hertha Bothe beating prisoners with her bare hands, and
that she bear a prisoner to death who worked collecting vegetables for stealing food.
The women in her wood collecting group were given slightly more food because of their
manual labour, but this was still not enough for them to survive.
Bothe would state that she dealt with prisoners who stole wood, and that if she caught someone
then she would not hesitate but to slap them around the face.
She continued to deny the fact she used a weapon, but there were accusations that she
brualised inmates who were caught with wood in their pockets.
Another accusation emerged about her beating a prisoner to death who took turnip peelings
from the camp kitchens, but it was clear to the court that Hertha Bothe was a liar.
She would claim there were no bodies lying around the camp in the final days of Belsen,
but this was of course a lie.
To those in the courtroom of the Belsen Trials, Hertha Bothe was a brutal and ruthless female
guard, who forced women and men to work very hard and she was constantly intimidating these
prisoners with the threat of violence.
When the camp was liberated she was one of many women guards who were forced to clean
up the bodies of the camp and she was not allowed to wear gloves from this, and Bothe
then believed she would get typhus.
She said that the bodies were so rotten that when she moved them limbs would detach, and
Bothe shockingly complained that she had a bad back from doing this, but she had obviously
inflicted much more suffering.
She was then after this arrested and held in Cell Prison.
The Belsen trials showed she would enjoy beating and hitting prisoners, but Bothe continued
to deny that she had beaten a prisoner to death.
There was evidence that she had battered a Hungarian woman named Eva to death with a
wooden block, and another prisoner said Hertha Bothe shot two prisoners for reasons not known
with her pistol.
But the evidence behind this was not the greatest, and it was this that spared Hertha Bothe going
to her execution.
Many of those condemned during the Belsen Trials were executed for their involvement
in the selections of Auschwitz too, and because Bothe had never worked here she was spared
the gallows.
But she was a violent and brutal SS guard who worked at the worst concentration camps,
but she was sentenced to 10 years imporisonement.
Bothe was released early on the 21st December 1951 alongside many other female concentration
camp guards.
Hertha Bothe was known for being the sadist of Stutthof.
She was a huge woman who would inspire fear and intimidation inside of the camps where
she worked, and she would beat prisoners with her bare hands.
She was spared execution for the fact she did not work at Auschwitz, and it was the
testimony of witnesses against her own, and because of this she was spared.
But she committed all of these crimes when she was in her early 20s.
She lived until 2000 when she died at the age of 79, and she claimed that she was forced
to go and work inside of a concentration camp.
During an interview she would say, ‘‘Did I make a mistake?
No.
The mistake was that it was a concentration camp ,but I had to go to it, otherwise I would
have been put into it myself.
That was my mistake.’
It was clear that she was loyal to the Nazi cause to the end of her life, and she is remembered
in history today as one of the most evil female guards of the concentration camps.
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