At the end of the Second World War, a number of trials were held bringing many Nazi war
criminals to justice inside of a court room. Many were sentenced to death and were executed
and amongst them were a number of women who were known for their brutality, evil and executions
that they carried out at the concentration camps. Bergen-Belsen was a site of depravity
when the Allied liberators entered the camp, and they came across a camp where over 10,000
corpses were lying unburied. The task following the clean up operation then shifted to bringing
the guards who committed these evils to justice, and it was found that many had worked at other
sites such as Auschwitz. But amongst the guards were 3 women who were sentenced to death and
were executed inside of Hamelin Prison by the British executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
But following their executions, they were initially interred in a hastily dug grave,
but then these women were disinterred and were dug up. Join us today as we look at the
exhumation of the female guards of bergen Belsen, to support our channel, please make
sure to subscribe.
When the liberators entered Bergen-Belsen, they found a camp which was overcrowded and
there was much suffering. Many people had succumbed to diseases and conditions at the
site, and a reporter summed up the feeling. He said, ‘Here over an acre of ground lay
dead and dying people. You could not see which was which... The living lay with their heads
against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated,
aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your
way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here,
tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British
sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran
off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.’ There was a huge amount of horror,
and the British did not initially have the amount of manpower to clean up the camp, and
then they forced the SS guards who had worked there to bury the bodies, and many of those
brought to do this job were women who had been placed under arrest.
Many of the former SS guards who survived the typhus epidemic and remained in charge
at Belsen were then taken to the Belsen trials. There were at least 480 people who had worked
there, but there were only 45 brought to trial including former commandant Josef Kramer and
16 female SS guards. Amongst these women were three women who would be condemned for their
involvement in the concentration camp system, and these were the notorious Irma Grese, the
powerful Elisabeth Volkenrath, and the Sadistic Johanna Bormann. Johanna Bormann was a woman
who had joined the SS to begin with to earn more money and cash, but she was sent also
to work inside of Auschwitz, and whilst there she became known as the Weasel, or the woman
with the dogs. She would patrol the selection yards picking women and children to be sent
to their deaths in the gas chambers, and whilst patrolling the camp she would encourage her
dog to attack, maul and even kill the prisoners. She was known for being sadistic, with her
big wolfhound attacking helpless prisoners. She was said to have murdered a number of
inmates in this way, but she was involved in the murderous selections and she got stuck
into the deadly day to day running of the camp. Bormann travelled to Belsen and remained
there to allegedly keep order, but she continued her brutality and beatings there, before she
was arrested and placed on trial. The court room heard of her evil and murder that she
committed at Belsen and also Auschwitz, and for this she was sentenced to death. Johanna
Bormann was hanged by British executioner Albert Pierrepoint, and he later said of her
execution that, ‘She limped down the corridor looking old and haggard. She was 42 years
old (actual age, 52), standing only a little over five feet. She was trembling as she was
put on the scale. In German she said: 'I have my feelings'. She was executed on the gallows,
but she was one of three female guards of Belsen who were condemned.
What saved a number of women from their date with the gallows was the fact those who were
executed had all worked at Auschwitz, and had been involved in the selections. One woman
who became notorious for her running of Auschwitz was Elizabeth volkenrath. She was just a young
woman in her 20s when she was executed, but she became one of the most powerful women
in the whole of the concentration camp system. She began life in the SS working at Ravensbruck
as a guard, but she was then picked out and mentored by Maria Mandel, and she was sent
to Auschwitz Birkenau. Whilst here she took part in selections, and she worked then as
the Oberaufseherin meaning that she was the most senior female guard at Auschwitz, and
had power over all women prisoners and female guards. She would carry out executions and
was known for beating inmates, but then she was also sent to Bergen-Belsen when Auschwitz
closed. She continued to be the superior female guard at Belsen, but then following arrest
she was sentenced to death and was executed at Hamelin Prison, and was just 26 when she
was executed for her evil. But one woman who encountered the gallows at a younger age was
Irma Grese, who was known as the beautiful beast. Grese has become one of the most notorious
women who worked inside of the concentration camps, and she was an ardent Nazi who began
her career at Ravensbruck. She then was transferred to Auschwitz, and whilst here she was known
for her evil. She would force inmates to work incredibly hard, and would shoot inmates when
she wanted, and would brutalise and beat women on a daily basis. If someone looked at her
she would take their lives, and she would patrol also with a large dog she trained to
kill.
She was known for her poor treatment of inmates, and she was also sentenced to death for her
crimes. Albert Pierrepoint wrote of her execution, ‘We climbed the stairs to the cells where
the condemned were waiting. A German officer at the door leading to the corridor flung
open the door and we filed past the row of faces and into the execution chamber. The
officers stood at attention. Brigadier Paton-Walsh stood with his wristwatch raised. He gave
me the signal, and a sigh of released breath was audible in the chamber, I walked into
the corridor. 'Irma Grese', I called. The German guards quickly closed all grilles on
twelve of the inspection holes and opened one door. Irma Grese stepped out. The cell
was far too small for me to go inside, and I had to pinion her in the corridor. 'Follow
me,' I said in English, and O'Neil [sic] repeated the order in German. At 9.34 a.m. she walked
into the execution chamber, gazed for a moment at the officials standing round it, then walked
on to the centre of the trap, where I had made a chalk mark. She stood on this mark
very firmly, and, as I placed the white cap over her head, she said in her languid voice, Schnell.
The drop crashed down, and the doctor followed me into the pit and pronounced her dead. After
twenty minutes the body was taken down and placed in a coffin ready for burial.
Following the execution of the guards of Bergen Belsen, the stories of these men and women
would not over. The women’s coffins were taken out of the execution chamber, and they
were then buried next to the other SS guards in the prison yard of Hamelin Prison. These
graves were dug very quickly, closeby the execution chamber. But at the time the prison
was under British control, but then when Hamelin was scheduled to be closed the prisoners were
sent to a different prison. But the graves of the female guards and the former Belsen
guards were then dug up and disinterred, and this included the coffin of Volkenrath, Grese
and Bormann. These graves were mass graves, and in 1950 the British handed Hamelin back
to the Germans. There was a lot of tension about pro-Nazi groups in Germany at the time,
and some of these wanted to give the women a proper nazi burial and send off, but in
March 1954 the graves were exhumed and the ground was broke to dig them up. The remains
were exhumed, and specialists identified the remains of the women, and their bones were
then placed inside separate coffins and was prepared for reburial in a different plot.
In total 91 bodies were exhumed, and they were to be buried in Hamelin’s Am Wehl Cemetery.
This cemetery held the remains of World War 1 soldiers, but then to begin with it was
said that no memorials would be allowed on the graves of the exhumed former guards, but
wooden crosses could mark them if the families paid for it.
The three female executed guards of Bergen Belsen, Grese, Volkenrath and Bormann were
buried there following their exhumations. One newspaper article stated that, ‘‘British
occupation authorities refused to interfere with German authorities who moved the bodies
from a mass grave to individual plots in the city cemetery, after a campaign by neo-Nazi
elements in Hamelin, Lower Saxony. Thirty of the 90 bodies of the executed Nazi war
criminals have already been moved from a common mass grave near Hamelin and reinterred in
the city’s cemetery. The remaining bodies will be moved later. Among those reburied
are Joseph Kramer, named the “Beast of Belsen” by inmates of the notorious death camp, and
Irma Grese, who hounded women prisoners at Belsen. The decision to rebury these women
and the other war criminals attracted some criticism, but these women had been imprisoned
in Hamelin, had been executed there, buried in the prison yard, and then dug up before
being buried in a cemetery nearby. As years went on, many neo-nazis would visit the grave
site and would hold rallies there, and wooden crosses were placed on the site, and the graveyard
became a site for tourists to visit. But then the crosses were removed, and the gravesite
became just a plain grass field, but today the female executed guards still are buried
there today near to a path.
The female guards of Bergen Belsen who were executed were known for their brutality and
evil, and they became infamous for their murderous antics inside of Auschwitz and Belsen. There
was a great amount of criticism with their exhumation, as many ex nazi war criminals
including Rudolf Hess had been cremated in the years after the war and their ashes were
scattered. But still today Irma Grese, Elizabeth Volkenrath and Johanna Bormann are buried
in the graveyard, a short distance from where they were executed.
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